Each Palestinian grief is particular. For the diasporic Palestinian, sorrow helices with guilt – guilt from knowing we are spared many of the direct violences inflicted on our kin living in Palestine. And sorrow, for exile is its own kind of violence. We carry murdered histories across a fractured map. We live in the shadows of the world that might have been – a world which we do not see, but feel in our bones.
This sorrow is often an internal wound. For the Palestinian diaspora, “survival” often means living among those who would prefer you disappear. Too many of us have felt condemned to silence our sorrow and rage, left only to swim in a consensus that sanitises and excuses our deaths. Nothing is more lonely than grieving among people who erase, or cheer, your tragedy.
Since 7 October 2023, we have seen an intensification of such efforts in the West, with the suppression and demonisation of Palestinians and pro-Palestinian speech reaching new levels of violent absurdity. Meanwhile, what we have lost – in Gaza, in the rest of historic Palestine and in our global humanity – will never be quantified. The depravity and horror of the last ten months have shattered me in ways I sense I will never fully recover from.
And yet, Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza has also shaken millions into critical awareness and outrage. The horror in Palestine – and the hypocrisy of a Western bloc that flouts its own institutions of justice and international law – has turned us both inward and outward. We have studied history, witnessed the present and are looking deeply into the future offered us: one of climate catastrophe, disastrous capitalism and the interlinked oppressions of neo-imperialism, racism, ethno-nationalism and endless, escalating war. We see how the treatment of Palestinians echoes and upholds a global regime in which some lives – non-white, poor, colonised – are not only disposable, but reviled.
For some, these connections are newly clear. For the rest of us, they are all too familiar. But for great numbers, the violence of this status quo has stirred resistance anew. Mass demonstrations have swept the world, from east to west, south to north. The word Palestine is on lips, screens and streets like never before, uniting disparate communities in ten months of sustained solidarity – a phenomenon that builds on other recent essential movements, including the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the death of George Floyd. And the brutal responses of professional institutions, school administrations and law enforcement only confirm further what the past months have revealed: that Israel’s impunity, and Western complicity, are a threat to all of us.
From Jenin to Rafah, so much of Palestine still hangs on the cusp of annihilation. Yet the once-marginal “Palestine issue” has marked millions anew. Our flag is flying across the world, and its colours mean so much more than statehood. Though only liberation and return will remedy our century-long catastrophe, this awakening is already a victory. To quote a popular resistance chant: Palestine is everywhere.
Sarah Aziza is a Palestinian-American writer with roots in Deir al-Balah, Gaza
This article is part of the series Losing Gaza
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