I searched a Gaza war crimes archive for my family.
I quickly realized I wasn’t using it the way most people would. I wasn’t browsing it as an activist, researcher or journalist.
I was looking for my family.
My heart sank as I filtered the archive by the dates we lost them and searched for someone I loved.
I found footage I hadn’t seen before of the bombing of the Church of St. Porphyrius, where my cousin Soliman was killed.
I searched for the day my great aunt Elham was murdered, and the day Nahida and Samar Anton were killed by Israeli snipers at the Holy Family Catholic Church.
Eyewitnesses told us Elham was crushed by an Israeli tank. I have graphic photographs of her body that were sent to me by church workers in Gaza, but I found no footage of what happened.
It made me wonder how many people died without leaving behind any visual record.
The realization stayed with me.
Here was a digital graveyard where pieces of my own family history are preserved for journalists, historians, truth seekers and, undoubtedly, those seeking to exploit or consume human suffering.
I know I won’t be the only person to experience this. Other Palestinians searching for loved ones almost certainly will too. But it struck me that this is a form of grief that could scarcely have existed before our time.
It’s a form of grief I never imagined could exist.
@WHENESOTA Ive seen this in like texas or georgia where they are not used to particular weather.
How can people in the north even contemplate doing this.
Not even legal
@RealDianeYap A guy isn’t going to get to that stage until they are married and have kids and already has had sex for years together and now wants to grow old together with or without sex anymore.
No single guy would or should express that. If they do, it would be suspicious
I have never heard of a country invading a neighbor and then calling it unfair that their soldiers died in that invasion. I don’t think any other country ever even thought to make that complaint.
On top of that, Israel now wants to retaliate for its soldiers being killed while invading their neighbor.
This is pure madness. Just leave Lebanon.