Everyone Deserves a Name
Is there even a Gazan child?
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Note: I’m focusing this writing on children because it’s “supposed” to be where our deepest, universal empathy exists. People of all ages and genders deserve to have their humanity recognized.
We’ve all seen the “Bring Them Home” signs: faces and profiles of the now 130+ hostages in Gaza still presumed alive. Hamas kidnapped them from a music festival and from their homes in a kibbutz, much like the one in which my own mother grew up, after their October 7th, 2023 attack that killed 1,200 Israelis—including those killed in the IDF’s response. Among the hostages are young adults with their lives ahead of them, the elderly already with ailments, children separated from families, and a 1-year-old baby. For the past six months, their lives have seen daily uncertainty—from degree of harm to degree of hope in any future at all.
Behind each face is a story, aspirations, dreams, and a ripple effect of friends and family who love and miss them every day. Everyone in that chain of love is collectively linked by a degree of shared trauma. Despite any related propaganda weaponizing grief for violence, all of them deserve a name and face—because they are more than just a footnote or chess piece; they are all undeniably human and equal.
And humans will not be convenient; they will have multiple dimensions, layers, and reasons for us to connect with them or not. But we can understand their pain and that of their families. This is what humans do, and how they feel; these reactions are all natural to our condition.
If we can just take that logic, that understanding, that empathy, and apply it to another group of people (insert famous SpongeBob Patrick meme here), there would be nothing difficult, nothing inconsistent, about collective response in our newsfeed, networks, and neighborhoods.
But we can’t.
But ‘they’ hate ‘us.’ But “if only ‘they’ loved their children enough so ‘we’ wouldn’t have to do this.”
Gazan children and their parents, just like the posters of hostages that demonstrate the entire impact on a family, deserve as much of their life and individuality shown to the public as anyone else. Their human condition is as equal as anyone else’s.
There have been attempts at individual Palestinian stories that cracked the mainstream’s consciousness, such as the gut-wrenching events of 5-year-old Hind Rajab’s murder as she asked an ambulance for help. Her story is one of many individual Gazan children and families. But that leaves me wondering, why must we always meet a Gazan child’s story at its tragic end? Why never its beginning? A childhood was murdered here, too—one with a timeline. One with hobbies and favorite colors and foods and graduations.
Where are the posters? The pictures? For 15,000+ faces and stories? Plus those of injured children and those dying because of destroyed medical supplies. Those surviving children with no family; children lost somewhere, alone in rubble; children held captive for months in Israeli prisons with no due process, where there are instances of beatings and sexual assault. Those currently starving to death while aid is obliterated. All of them deserve a blurb that is supposed to account for a life, too.
Or we could always just build a fucking pier.
Gazan children and young adults have hopes and dreams, too. They have professions, school assignments, a social life. Despite 75 years under the occupation, and its long-standing brutal, horrific conditions before 10/7, their humanity and nature still align with all our innate needs. And this is not even to address the violence, displacement, and disenfranchisement, of the apartheid West Bank.
Yet, if you listen to the reasoning of most who support or tolerate Israel’s actions over the past six months you would come to a different conclusion:
Gazan children are one conglomerate. One connected Hamas-to-be. Born ‘Little Hamas,’ whose hobbies include Hamas and hatred of all Hebrews going back to the King James Bible, which also happens to be their sole profession. And, since enough will grow to blend into the aforementioned Big Hamas, we can casually conflate the two.
Can’t a MF just be an architect? A scientist? A doctor? Engineer? Good with computers? Play soccer? A chef? Like music? How about Program Director? Make jokes? Administrative Assistant? Be a veterinarian?
Free to be?
In the US, we often conflate Racism HQ with the South and ‘Red States’ all the time. Which, obviously, still have people of varying levels of racism, just like ‘Blue States’ and ‘Long Island.’
And every election cycle, we are reminded all these people, no matter the state, have families, just like us, and people who would miss them. That they work hard, just like us. We’re reminded of things like: we all want our kids to be safe; we all want shelter; we all want to work meaningful jobs and live a meaningful life. And all of these things are true. It’s scarier that, save serial killers missing part of their frontal cortex, most of us share every single emotion—from the soul-crushing pain to butterflies in your stomach—in between the most disparate acts of hatred and selfless compassion.
Also, we don’t BOMB THE LIVING FUCK OUT THE BIBLE BELT TO GET RID OF THE KKK. OR UPSTATE NY.
Yet, ‘But Hamas’ somehow explains the entirety of the ‘complicated,’ ‘tragic’ question that is the ‘Gazan Children.’ And the genocidal campaign against them.
Now, of course, ‘but the IDF,’ or ‘but Netanyahu,’ or ‘but Biden,’ or but the Toy Story-ass sounding MFs he rolls out every day to the press briefing, etc., would never be sufficient grounds in this same narrative for Hamas’ acts of brutality. Nor should it be. People are not their governments, nor should they be aggregated as such to meet the same fate as an armed combatant. But, clear as day, this thought process does not extend to a Gazan child. Mainly because—there are none.
At least, that’s the only way this logic works, save you straight up saying Palestinian lives just don’t matter as much. Which would no longer make you sound like a good Democrat, humanitarian, peace activist, etc.
No, in order for the script to follow, there can be no individual, unique Palestinian Hamascito-detached child killed by Israeli forces and funded by our US tax dollars. Because if that were the case, then, like many things in life, people are going to have to reckon with something. With a level of dehumanization, contributed on their own volition, that shakes their identity to its core.
Like the lies we tell men about masculinity, as well documented on this site; the lies we tell the poor about who is to blame for their poverty; the lies we tell to uphold that our entire public safety rests in the hands of the police—if these things are not true, then how much of my consciousness has been false?
How many years did I live, decisions did I make, on this foundation? How many hundreds of thousands of people died without my empathy?
If this child could truly be seen as my child—what type of world have I left for them?
Why do all that, when there’s a refrain you can say, with the support of millions, to simply make it not so. Because after all, if we didn’t ‘have to do this’ that means part of me actually chose to.
In math, there’s the concept of absolute value. It doesn’t matter the sign attributed to the number—the value stands. Well, Palestinian children are not numbers. But their value as humans—and as individuals—is absolute.
They have names. They have dreams, a past, and a future. They all feel grief and joy and trauma acutely. And there is no Buthamas gene to wash all that away. There is no word, no attachment, coating, or caveat, that can change that—nor their absolute value as ‘human just like you.’
We’ve lost pieces of honor in our own human story if we can’t even pause to see that of a child. And we’ll never regain it until we start.
A very moving and important article. Yes, everyone, every Palestinian and Israeli child deserves a name. And the fighting must stop, as soon as possible, so that the healing can begin.
I agree. These are important ideas.