Last weekend a longtime friend of my father, Mahmoud, was killed at a so called ‘food distribution’ site, an increasingly common phenomenon as Israel peruses its Final Solution for the Palestinians. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about this ongoing genocide (yet another in a long list of genocides that have occurred since we started proudly proclaiming ‘never again’). There is a lot I want to say, and a lot I could say but for right now I just want to speak about Mahmoud and the personal connection with him that my father had and therefore, I by second-hand proxy had.
Mahmoud was born in 1997, he wasn’t yet 30 years old. He has three children and a wife. Outside of his family his greatest passion was football which he played whenever he could spare the time. His english was not good, non-existent really, but this proved a boon in my father’s quest to learn Arabic.
I don’t know much more about Mahmoud, he didn’t have a chance to write much of a life story, it was denied to him by blockade, violence, and eventually murder. He’s one of tens of thousands of Palestinians who are dead. While he lived he was one of millions who starved. Every one of those people has a story, has or had hopes and dreams, family and friends. En masse they are statistics (which should be no less horrifying) but individually they were somebody’s world. Everyday I see reports of starvation; killings in hospitals, schools, aid tents, refugee camps. This isn’t a war, it’s a genocide.
See: Guilty for the Crime of Being Palestinian Punishment Execution by Robert Fantina