WAR | PALESTINE
The First Few Days of a “War”
Oct. 7 Retrospective from Palestine
2023–11–14
I happened to be in Palestine on October 7.
Beyond the initial confusion, two things quickly overwhelmed my consciousness: the distressing buzz of Israeli airplanes overhead; and the alarming response of Western governments and media.
The following excerpts from my other Medium posts, many written in real-time from Ramallah, capture the feeling in those early days.
The Airplanes
I know how many bombs they dropped on Gaza,
I counted the flights overhead.
10/9
The din of airplanes has not stopped since early last night. It is now afternoon and all I hear are airplanes high up that I cannot see. A bomb could fall at any minute — on Gaza, or here, or anywhere the cowardly Israeli pilots are ordered to drop. Sirens break out here and there. Heard a round of gunfire about midnight last night coming from the south end of Ramallah. A little later the news came of the murder of three Palestinians at the Qalandia checkpoint.
Another sleepless night of American-made Israeli terror. In the span it took me to type one paragraph, another sortie could be heard above.
10/27
Every airplane, every bomb,
marked for an apartment building,
Where frightened families wonder if their turn is up.
Turned up in the rubble:
Body parts of a teddy bear, and a broken butterfly hairpin -
Shreds of another life undone
10/27
We all knew, from footage of recent Gaza bombings what Israeli bombs do. A whole apartment building comes tumbling on the lives and families inside. The families don’t even know that their death sentence — for being born in Gaza — will be executed in the next five minutes.
But I, and everyone in Ramallah, can hear the plane, and know what is going to happen. Five minutes after my hearing each flight, the lives of several more Gazan families will be forever annulled. Worse, there is nothing, nothing that we, nor the people of Gaza, can do about it.
It is a genocide, and we’ve known it from Day 1. A formation of Israeli airplanes flew overhead every 10 minutes, for the first 72 hours straight, before they changed the flight path. At peak times of night they stepped it up to a sortie every 5 minutes. That was how frequently buildings were collapsing in Gaza.
10/10
It is only a matter of time before they repeat what they’ve done to Yafa, Palestine’s largest city at the time, on May 13, 1948 — ethnically cleansing it and sending its inhabitants to — you guessed it — Gaza!
My “friends” want me to keep my silence, to forget the history, to forgive them for taking my mother’s house. This is not about taking sides in a war among world powers. This is not about revenge, nor even recovering my patrimony. This is about survival, and not only mine.
I speak not for myself, but for humanity. For if we remained silent now, what is to stop colonial powers from doing it again to some other unfortunate people around the world?
The Coverage
The sense of urgent distress that every Palestinian felt could not pierce through the Western media, not during the first week. The one-sided rhetoric seemed to be prepping audiences to accept mass losses in Palestinian lives.
10/7
Where were those voices of condemnation over the last few years while Israeli routinely bombed Gaza, killing civilians and children in large numbers, or during their frequent raids on Nablus and Jenin killing Palestinian youths in their beds? Or when settlers carried out pogroms against isolated Palestinian villages like Huwarra, as they did just days ago? Or when the Israeli army destroyed and evicted isolated Bedouin communities in the West Bank?
(Murals by various artists, Photos by the author, Oct. 5, 2023)
10/8
The real pain comes from watching the coverage in the US and European media, which totally assumes Israel’s point of view and ignores our humanity. It’s “Israel at War”. The only civilians that matter are the Israelis. Israel’s attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank over the last several years are not mentioned. The illegal settlements are ignored. Long-standing violations of our human rights, imprisoning Gazans for 17 years — those are ignored.
10/12½
(We kept time in half days — day and night.
Though it was safer in Ramallah, anything could happen.
You went to bed not knowing if you’d wake up.)
4000 tons of explosives were dropped on residential neighborhoods in Gaza. My feed today was full of pictures of shattered children, families, and homes. While this is happening, the West enjoys a blanket media blackout about such atrocities. The only lives that matter to them are Israeli lives, and they will even propagate horrific tales of Hamas atrocities with little evidence, if any. The purpose is clear — manufactured “atrocities” are needed to inflame people enough that they would support the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It is a genocide. No movement, no electricity, no water, and the bombing of hospitals, ambulances, and reporters. No one in Gaza is safe.
The racist tropes resonate — “barbaric”, “uncivilized”, “savage” … epithets that historically preceded mass genocide of the indigenous peoples of Africa, America, and other colonized lands. I have never seen so much hatred focused on us simply because of our Palestinian identity.
10/20
(A week into it, my main social media account was taken down, ominously on the same night Israeli soldiers raided the next neighborhood to arrest social media activists.)
They ban me because I talk about my father’s house in Ramleh, or my mother’s destroyed house in Yafa, from which the Israelis expelled them in 1948. They mute me because I insist on mentioning the 56-year-old occupation, the 20-year-old Wall, or the last two years, during which Israel has bombed Gaza three times, while its daily Israeli raids into Palestinian towns to arrest or assassinate activists have left hundreds dead. They stop me from posting about what I’ve seen in Hebron, or my shock at the growth of their stolenments, or my tears at the destroyed village of Iqrit — its children 75 years denied justice.
“You are not alone,” Biden tells Israel, backed up by warships, bombs, strategists and logistical support, and even small arms for the settlers to embolden their escalating pogroms against Palestinians. He lands in Lydd airport, renamed “Ben-Gurion”, on the very eve of the hospital bombing to assert his support for the genocide.
The America that fought the Nazis is dead. Instead, we see the steely face of weapons industries that translate death into soaring profits and stock valuations. American’s own citizens are not safe, threatened by one supposedly-crazed mass shooter after another, racially motivated attacks, or deadly police violence against minorities.
Vegas, Buffalo, Uvalde, Boulder, Lansing, Nashville, Atlanta, Baltimore, LA, …, there is no shortage of American cities visited by gun violence — violence seeded by the very corporations now rushing to re-arm “Israel,” even after its latest war crimes against the people of Gaza.
No need to ask about me. Instead, underneath the rubble, seek and grieve humanity.
And no, they will not silence me, but my voice is hardly enough. We all need to speak out for Gaza, for Palestine, for humanity.
With love from Palestine,
Ramsey Hanhan
