On a recent advocacy trip to Europe, I was asked by a young university student how to respond to his parents who shrug off the genocide in Gaza as something that is “unfortunately inevitable”. While this student maintained that his parents realized this was not an ideal situation, he admitted to struggling with their nonchalant attitude about the annihilation of the Palestinians. My answer was brief and to the point, albeit emotional. “Tell them: is this the kind of world you want to live in? Where a state can freely annihilate an entire people with impunity? Is this the world you want your children and grandchildren to inherit?”

The young man was well intentioned and he was clearly grappling with this existential conundrum. Jewish, he grew up in a household that believed in Israel and the Zionist project, but having witnessed what this entity and its ideology is capable of, he shifted course and is now trying to convince his parents it is their moral imperative to do the same.

Now over two months after this encounter, as Palestinians and many around the world continue to reel from the horrific scenes coming out of Gaza, this young man’s question has repeatedly crept back into my head.

In the past nine months, Israel has provided a sneak-peak into the world it envisions: one that does not question it, regardless of its atrocities; one where the word Palestine, along with its people, are wiped from map and memory. The Gaza slaughter is a foreshadowing of this new world order, which does not include us.

As the genocide grinds on mercilessly, the dead, wounded, missing and displaced soaring to unimaginable heights, a terrifying truth has dawned on us Palestinians: there is no question anymore whether the world will allow our extermination to happen or not. The answer is provided every day and with every unchecked massacre.

This world that really is callous, watching the slaughter of innocent men, women and children without blinking an eye. Or worse, they justify the rivers of Palestinian blood as “concerning” but immediately follow this up with the hackneyed phrase: “Israel has the right to defend itself,” or, “…but Hamas.” Where is the argument for the Palestinians’ right to self-defense against a brutal military occupation that has stripped them of rights and dignity for decades? Does that never calculate into the equation? Apparently not.

This is nothing new. Colonialist powers have always maligned the people under their colonization, dehumanizing them through language and deed as a means of justifying their annihilation. Indigenous peoples all over the world understand this painful reality, from New Zealand, to North and South America, to Africa and of course, Palestine. We are the “terrorists”, and the “human animals”, so our deaths will not matter.

This is where the world has it all wrong. To the parents of this young man who found his own humanity and compassion for the plight of Palestinians and was desperately seeking answers to how this compassion could be passed on to his parents, the answer is clear. The world will pay for this genocide in more ways than one, humanity being the first casualty. If “never again” signifies anything other than its literal meaning, then it means nothing at all, and this is a dangerous and slippery slope for everyone. If Israel is allowed to get away with mass murder and remain a nation among nations, who will stop Israel or others from doing this to another people ? Those who greenlighted this genocide from day one, unwittingly created a beast that will turn on them the first chance it gets.

I was born in the United States and lived there through early childhood, but since returning with my family to Palestine, I have never wanted to go back. The United States has always evoked mixed feelings in me. I have a certain nostalgia for the place of my birth but my overall sentiments always culminated in a sense of resentment for this so-called superpower that has systematically aided in my people’s oppression, occupation and dehumanization.

That is, until present day. The scenes of American university campuses breaming with students in kuffiyehs, waving Palestinian flags and resisting the brutality of the police and their own university administrations, has uplifted my spirit in ways I cannot fully articulate. In a word, what is happening on US campuses today is validation of our people, of Palestine and of our struggle. To those who live comfortable lives in free countries, this may sound like an exaggeration, but for my people, who have been denied their very right to exist, who have been demoralized, demonized and dehumanized, this is huge. We are seeing students of all races, creeds, backgrounds and religions, calling for an end to the genocide in the Gaza Strip and marching for a free Palestine and divestment from the Israeli occupation. We are hearing Jewish voices, debunking Zionist propaganda and its below-the-belt attempts to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. We are being validated for our struggle, for our resistance against oppression, occupation and settler-colonialism and we are finally being heard and seen.

Students have always been the litmus test for social and political justice. Rallies and demonstrations on university campuses have been the driving force against imperialist wars throughout the ages, the Vietnam War being the best example. However, what is so incredible about this movement is that American students are not directly involved in Palestine. Students are not being drafted into an army to fight on foreign soil, so the stakes are not as high for them at the personal level. What is happening today is the direct result of the intersectionality of struggles and the belief that no one is free until all of us are free. This is a force far more powerful than a genocidal regime will ever be.

The scenes from university campuses in the United States and now in Europe, juxtaposed against the crushing images from the Gaza Strip, are a balm for our wounded hearts. We feel a kinship with these incredible Gen Zs who have put their very lives on the line for Palestine. We send them love, energy and solidarity as we watch them being thrown to the ground, handcuffed and arrested and we burst with pride as we hear them chant ‘Free Palestine”.

This is a moment in time that must not be squandered. May these American university protests spread like wildfire throughout campuses across the world, putting to shame both Zionism and American imperialism, which has allowed this racist ideology to survive. The Palestinians have never wavered in their determination to liberate their land from Israeli occupation and oppression, whether they do it alone or with the help of friends. Today, thanks to the beautiful people all over the world who have championed our cause alongside of us, a free Palestine is not only an inevitability, it is just around the corner.

I once heard that anger is not a real emotion, but a cover for other feelings such as sadness, disappointment or fear. You need to peel back that outer layer to understand what is really going on inside.

Strange how this has lately resurfaced for me, but I think I know why. Lately, I and surely, millions of other Palestinians, have been filled with a blinding rage -- at Israel, at the United States, and at the world overall. This is a rage that is all-encompassing, the depth of which is palpable at the cellular level, permeating every molecule and every atom of our being. The genocide in the Gaza Strip has grated our emotions raw and we are left stinging and burning from our head to our toes.

Our anger is like a huge magnetosphere and we are all trapped inside, but its walls are translucent and we can see the source of our rage mocking us from beyond. We Palestinians are angry because we are so disappointed and we are angry because we are disillusioned and we are angry because we are drowning in sorrow.

Our disappointment lies in the fact that the world has failed us in the worst possible way and has allowed the unspeakable to be committed against us. Genocide is the ‘mother of all crimes’ and, contrary to the promises, the conventions and the historical lessons the world was supposed to learn, it has been committed over and over again. The Palestinian genocide, however, is unique in at least one way: it is live-streamed, which means no one can claim ignorance and everyone has a responsibility in stopping it. Hence, our disappointment is not limited to countries, Arab or otherwise, or to international and human rights organizations. It has spread to everyone in our orbit; acquaintances and people we thought were friends, but whose silence towards our slaughter is a deafening betrayal. Our sense of disappointment has discolored every relationship it touches because every relationship for us is a dichotomy: you are either with or against genocide and either support Palestine in word and deed, or not.

Our anger is a thin veil concealing our disillusion with the international community and its institutions, supposedly established to protect people in situations precisely like ours. We have confirmed what we knew all along, that these organizations were constructed for some and not all, for colonial powers and not those who suffer beneath them. Even when the highest court in the land rules in our favor, the Global North ensures that its ruling will not be implemented to save us, the oppressed, indigenous brown people whose lives apparently do not matter.

And finally, our anger is a survival mechanism to shield us from our own grief. Our sorrow over the murdered men, women and children, defenseless, homeless, starving and shivering in the cold, is so deep, so immense, we ourselves cannot fathom it. If we dare peek behind this anger and truly feel a fraction of the aching in our hearts, it will paralyze us for sure, because no people can endure the magnitude and scale of such suffering and not lose their minds.

We Palestinians know we cannot let go and that a new day is near. We know we must hold on just a little bit longer, because Palestine depends on it. We are no strangers to oppression, suffering and sacrifice and we know the price of our freedom has and continues to be painfully high. Still, we also know that a life without shackles and the yoke of oppression around our weary necks is the only life worth living.

Gaza has cracked the world wide open. The masks have fallen from just about everyone and when all this is said and done, the Palestinians will take inventory on both friend and foe.

This horrendous assault on the Gaza Strip has laid bare some very uncomfortable truths. For one, the grossly unbalanced world order has not changed, even as the bombs fall mercilessly on Gaza. While our guts already knew this, it was still shocking to witness how the slaughter peeled back the layers of falsehoods, concealing the ugly truth. The world is still a binary equation of colonizer and colonized, oppressor and oppressed and white vs black and brown, and there is no question under which category the Palestinians fall.

The colonialist past is playing out in real time today in Gaza and we, as Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” so succinctly described, are “the brutes”. We are the indigenous brown people, the sub-humans who are inherently violent and who are responsible for our own deaths.

This is also why the international and human rights organizations we erroneously banked on to do us justice, have fallen so sorely short. Now, over a month into this war on Gaza, not one country, not one international institution, including the mighty UN, has been able to force Israel’s hand. The result of course, has been devastating for Gaza. Not only have close to 12,000 innocent lives been lost in Israel’s “scorched earth” onslaught, but not one liter of fuel has been allowed into the beleaguered Strip, shutting off electricity, hospital generators, desalination plants and sewage systems. Babies have been taken out of incubators and Gazans are scrambling to find ways to desalinate seawater and building clay ovens to bake thin loaves of bread with dwindling supplies of flour.

And still, even in the bleakest of hours, we have found hope and solace in the millions who have raised their voices for us. The throngs of people marching in solidarity with Palestine in the streets of London, New York, Amsterdam, Jakarta, Sydney, and so many other cities, has been like a soothing balm for our broken hearts. We have seen journalists, celebrities and artists threatened, vilified and dehumanized in our name but who have pushed back against the intimidation and continued to speak up.

The world has split down the middle and the deep gash created by this genocide will take generations to mend. We have seen both ugly and beautiful from this world and, be assured, we will remember both.

Whatever you do, do not believe them. Push back against the insidious language and the dangerous narrative Israel is employing to justify the unjustifiable: a horrendous genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Do not believe them when they say they ordered people living in the northern Gaza Strip to “evacuate” for their own safety and to move south. This is no evacuation. The people of northern Gaza are not vacating their homes because of a fire or flood. No, this part of a much deeper, much more sinister plan hatched by Israel’s leaders, not today even, but many years ago. Today, as the bombs rain down on Gaza, slaughtering everything and everyone in their path, we must be very careful to use the right words to describe this nightmare.

Make no mistake, this is a genocide. When multiple Israeli leaders, military and political, actively call for the leveling of Gaza, dismiss the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians and even go as far as saying that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza is “an option”, their intentions become very clear. Hasn’t the Zionist movement always pedaled the phrase “a land without a people”?

The carpet bombing of the entire Strip is of course, the most immediate and visible manifestation of this objective. How better to get rid of an entire population than to kill them en masse? In any case, with the green light from nearly the entire western world, with the US at the helm, this has been both easily “said and done.”

However, this is not the only instrument of terror being employed against our people in Gaza. The term “evacuation” so casually being used by Israel and wholeheartedly regurgitated by the West is in fact “forced displacement”. This has nothing to do with the safety of Palestinian residents in the north, because frankly, there is nowhere safe in Gaza. Every region has been on the receiving end of the colossal bombs dropped on residential blocks, schools, mosques, churches, hospitals and shelters. Even those who still believed they could escape the bombardment were not safe as Israel bombed the displaced as they traveled on the southbound coastal road in search of refuge. Remember, Rafah and Khan Younis are in the south, both of which have been heavily bombed, killing thousands of civilians and burying hundreds of others under the rubble.

No, this Israeli scheme, being cloaked in the uncontroversial word “evacuation” is just a continuation of what the Zionist project began in 1948, which is to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous peoples. Why else would the Sinai even be on the table? And why would anyone even lend an ear to this dangerous proposal?

The reason this is still even a debatable option is because the United States and much of the western world, namely those countries with a shameful colonialist past themselves, are actively complicit in Israel’s plans. They know that whoever is pushed across the border into the Sinai, will never be allowed to return. It was not that long ago when close to a million Palestinians were forced out of their homes to escape the terror of Zionist massacres in 1948, keys in hand, which would never be used again. There are still living survivors of the Nakba, it was that recent, and yet here we are again, watching in horror as the world facilitates for a fresh, new Palestinian catastrophe.

So beware when you hear words like “evacuation” or ‘temporary refuge.” These are outright lies. Remember that 70 percent of Gazans are already refugees, expelled from their homes in 1948 during Israel’s first attempt to annihilate the Palestinians. Since they could not finish the job then, they are back now with the cruelest of intent. Israel has already surrounded and divided northern Gaza from its center and south and we have all heard Israeli voices, both official and civilian, making floor plans for ‘amusement parks and beaches’ after the Palestinians are ethnically cleansed from Gaza.

The fact is, even if the approximately one million Gazans who fled from north to south to somehow try and escape the bombs, are able to go back to their cities and camps, they will be returning to a wasteland. Their homes are probably gone, all of their belongings and memories vanished, buried deep beneath the rubble. If they are “lucky”, their memories will be the only things buried. More likely than not, members of their family are still missing, also buried under layers and layers of gray, unyielding cement.

The Palestinians have seen this horror movie before. They will not be forced out of Palestine again, even if their displacement is candy-coated with terms like ‘evacuation.” Don’t believe Israel. Don’t believe the United States. Believe us.

When Palestinians insist that nothing will be resolved until the root cause of their predicament is addressed, Jenin is exactly what they are talking about. The atrocities over this past week perpetrated in the city of Jenin and its adjacent refugee camp are the manifestation of Israel’s settler-colonial project in Palestine and the reason why its apartheid regime and decades-long occupation must be dismantled. If this oppressive system continues unabated, Palestinians will continue to suffer time and time again at the hands of Israel’s brutal military machine, commandeered by the ever-increasingly extremist and right-wing Israeli governments that pull the strings.

For two days straight, the Israeli occupation army and air force pummeled the Jenin refugee camp with airstrikes, artillery fire and ground forces. In 48 hours, Israel killed 12 Palestinians and injured hundreds of others. This number is likely to climb, given that even ambulances were prohibited from reaching the wounded, undoubtedly exacerbating the status of the injured. Harrowing videos showed young men, boys even, wounded and incapacitated on the street, bleeding because ambulances were not able to reach them.

This is not the first time Jenin has been under fire, and if Israel is not stopped in its tracks, it will not be the last. In April 2002, Israeli occupation forces and fighter jets invaded the Jenin refugee camp, backed by armored tanks and bulldozers. The “battle for Jenin” lasted for 10 days, at the end of which at least 52 Palestinians, civilians and fighters were killed. The bulldozers deliberately razed over 400 homes and damaged several hundreds of others.

Cut to July 2023 and the situation is painfully reminiscent. On July 3, Israeli occupation forces proceeded to tear up the roads in the camp, severing water pipes and cutting the power. Hospitals, severely overcrowded and overwhelmed by the mass influx of casualties and people seeking shelter from the bombing, also suffered water cuts and electricity outages with scenes outside the hospital looking like a full-blown warzone.

However, this is no war. This is an occupied, civilian-populated area, whose residents have already been displaced at least once, in 1948 and perhaps again in 1967. Most of the residents are young, having only lived under Israel’s military occupation, which began in the West Bank in 1967. Their parents and grandparents will recall even more heinous atrocities and massacres from the Nakba of 1948, when they were forced out of their original homes inside what is now Israel.

This is why, when thousands of Jenin camp residents were seen fleeing the gunfire, the explosions, destruction and home raids, men and women carrying their terrified children in their arms out of the camp, the whole of Palestine was reminded of this generational trauma. The Nakba is still etched deep in the collective memory of Palestinians, its trauma not ‘post’ but ongoing, the wound reopened over and over again.

There is no doubt that Jenin and its refugee camp will survive and rebuild, just as they did before because that's how Palestinians operate. The scars created by this trauma will always run deep. It is not only unfair that they remain under occupation and apartheid, it is cruel and it is inhumane. The world cannot continue to look on as Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps are decimated and still consider itself moral and civilized. The longer Israel is allowed to brutalize the Palestinians under its occupation, commit war crimes and violations with impunity, while still being welcomed among so-called civilized nations, the more the international community’s own moral standing will continue to erode.

This is not a story about numbers. Granted, numbers are very relevant, but not today. This is about role-play, about imagining yourself in another’s position and then, once realized, demanding justice, accountability and compensation for the unbelievable atrocity that must no longer be ignored.

This is about the Nakba, but this time, it is yours. Imagine that in a matter of days, sometimes hours, your entire world is turned upside down. You no longer have a home, belongings or money, except for whatever you could manage to hastily stuff in your pockets before running for your life. Zionist militias, armed and ready, invade your city or burn down your village and you have nowhere to go, so you flee. You have heard that in neighboring villages and towns, these militias have slaughtered hundreds of people, pillaged their homes and claimed the land as their own. Deir Yassin, where over 100 innocent people were killed, is just one of these documented massacres. This terrifies you to the bone, so you flee, children, house keys, maybe some pictures or personal documents, in tow. You join the leagues of other terrified people who are walking to an unknown future, hoping beyond hope that this nightmare will end in a few short days. Not in your wildest dreams did you imagine that you would never see your home again; that it does not matter if you left your front door unlocked or the clothes still hanging on the clothesline. Someone else, a stranger, will soon have taken your place.

This is just temporary, you convince yourself; this situation is not sustainable, you say, because nobody has the right to take away your home and your property, much less your homeland. If anyone dared, there was a world that believes in justice, rights and humanity that would not allow it. At least that is what you believed then.

But this is not your story and you should be very grateful for that. This is the story of the Palestinian Nakba and it is as real as it gets. According to official UN estimates, at least 750,000 women, men and children, or 75% of the Palestinian population of historical Palestine, were displaced, expelled and ethnically cleansed over the course of a few months, never to return to their homes. Their false hopes of return eventually turned into shattered dreams and a lifetime of exile in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jordan, or for those exiled closer to the northern border of Palestine, to squalid refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon.

Even the United Nations, upon realizing the magnitude of the Nakba or “catastrophe’ that had occurred, did not believe it would last for 75 years and counting. It created UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, to cope with the fallout of Israel’s creation over the wreckage of what was once Palestine. The agency was meant to provide emergency assistance to Palestinians displaced by the war until a permanent solution could be found. Its mandate has been renewed repeatedly since then for obvious reasons.

For those who were exiled, it is hard to tell when it finally dawned on them that they would never go home. Hope is a double-edged sword because it motivates people to continue to strive for their goals, in this case, the legitimate demand to return to their rightful homes. However, the flip side is the disappointment and desperation that takes over when year after year, this demand is ignored, maligned and pushed back by the powers that be, first and foremost by Israel, the perpetrator and maintainer of the atrocity and secondly, by its powerful global allies, the United States in particular.

The result is that these people, who had productive and meaningful lives just like anyone else, were so cruelly uprooted and dispossessed by no fault of their own and demand nothing more than their legitimate right of return. This is a right enshrined in international law and in particular, UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which clearly states: “Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date...”

These are nice words, ones that by any standard, should be binding. However, for anyone who has languished in the Biqa’a camp in Jordan, the Shati’ camp in the Gaza Strip or the Yarmouk camp in Syria, this resolution is nothing but useless ink on paper. The Palestinians have and never will relinquish their inalienable right of return to their original homes; time has proven that. Still, this is only part of the equation. It falls on the international community to uphold the standards, which it espouses. It has an ethical, legal and moral obligation to ensure that justice is realized for Palestine refugees and that Israel, the creator of this catastrophe, is held accountable for its dark past and crimes against the indigenous people of this land.

Now, think of this story, not from the lens of the Palestinians, a foreign people you may not know much about. Think of this story as if it were your own: it was your house that was stolen, your land that was given to another people, your relatives massacred and displaced and you whose identity and cause have been systematically denied for almost a century. Can you see it?