Gaza...the massacre of the century!

Amin Al-Hajj

Six hundred days have passed since the massacre, the likes of which contemporary history has never known. Six hundred days of continuous genocide, not through a passing bombardment or a momentary massacre, but through a systematic policy of eradicating lives, obliterating cities, annihilating a people, and assassinating a dream in broad daylight.
Six hundred days later, the world flipped through the channels, searching for the weather forecast or news about female artists, while the bodies of children decomposed under the rubble. Gaza, which had been suffocating under a siege for two decades, was drowned in blood.
What happened in Gaza was not a war, nor even a "traditional" aggression. It was a massacre orchestrated in the dead of night, involving aircraft, ships, tanks, and even robots. Western capitals "blessed" it with their silence, and even publicly supported it with their weapons, positions, and misleading rhetoric.
Every house that was destroyed, every child that was charred, every mother who bowed her head at her child’s grave, the blood that soaked the earth, the minarets that wept before they were bombed, and the churches that were destroyed were all the result of this shameful global complicity.
Six hundred days and the massacres continue without interruption, and the enemy does not "tire" from killing, until life in Gaza has become a "miracle."
Six hundred days of displacement and starvation, until flour became more precious than gold, and Western capitals did not bat an eyelid. Rather, white flags were raised in capitals drowned in silence and abandonment. Wheat was burned, schools were destroyed, hospitals demolished, electricity and water were cut off, and the air was poisoned with white phosphorus. This was all in plain sight of an international community that contented itself with cold statements of condemnation when it remembered.
Gaza has become the scene of a slow-motion massacre, a daily test of failed humanity, a city where the patience of heaven and earth is tested. In times of war, neutrality is not morality, but complicity. Who says hunger doesn't kill? In Gaza, infants starved to death before they could even say "mama." In Gaza, not only are people killed, but consciences are killed, and humanity is slaughtered live on air.
But, in the midst of this hell, Gaza stood firm. It did not fall, nor did it raise the flag. It turned into a living witness to what remained of the nation's dignity, and into a curse that haunts everyone who betrayed it or remained silent about its pain. It foiled the plans for displacement or subjugation, all the plans to tame the Palestinians, and all the lies that promoted the illusion of peace and the state project. Oslo fell, the shame of security coordination was exposed, and all the theories that "promised" the taming of a people who love life because they deserve it evaporated. In every displacement tent, and in every child who lost limbs, the occupation is defeated once again despite the hunger. While the women of Gaza were baking on firewood, they were teaching their sons that dignity cannot be bought or given.
Six hundred days have redefined the homeland and exposed the fragility of relying on international conferences and resolutions. The state we were promised was not born, and will not be born, from the womb of silence, or at the tables of the mean. The state project breathed its last in the ruins of Rafah, as it did in Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and Deir al-Balah.
What remains of the homeland cannot be summed up on a map, but is written in the blood of martyrs, in the voices of mothers, and in the eyes of children who have not been to school for two years. If the blood of Gaza were oil, capitals would have raced to save it, but it is the blood of dignity, and they have chosen to ignore it.
We write now not to cry, but to document, to be angry, to remind ourselves and the world that Gaza is not a temporary tragedy, but an eternal stain on the brow of humanity.
We write because we do not have the luxury of silence, and because Gaza's cry has the right to shake this dull world. Gaza, which they wanted dead, comes to life every day.
Six hundred days and there are still people in Gaza who say we will not leave.

.............

Every house that was destroyed, every child that was charred, every mother who bowed her head at her child’s grave, the blood that soaked the earth, the minarets that wept before they were bombed, and the churches that were destroyed, were all the fruit of this shameful global complicity.