400 days and nights

Have you done anything for 400 days straight? Can you fathom living through a genocide for that many days and nights?

Have you done anything for 400 days straight? Stuck to a diet? Read books? Workout? Spiritual practice? Anything for 400 days straight? No Sundays or cheat days or vacations allowed. You would need the devotion of a monk to be able to stick to a daily routine for over 13 months straight and if you manage to do it, it would make a profound difference to your being. It is not easy for the vast majority of us even if we do the most positive, fulfilling things for that many days every single day. With that in mind, imagine living through something horrible every single day for 400 days. How profoundly sick it would make you. How about living through a genocide for 400 days? When the non-stop buzz of the drones is only interrupted by the deafening sound of thousands-pound bombs that drop near and far not knowing which one has your name on it. Scenes and news of multiple massacres of your people dominate your thoughts and cellphone messages. Frequently running, either in search of safety to evade bombs and sniper shots, or ferrying the injured in the faint hope they could be saved if you just rushed fast enough to the last functioning hospital run by starving doctors devoid of essential medical supplies. Standing in lines to hopefully find a morsel of bread, fetch a can of water, to answer nature’s call. All of these things for 400 days straight — some days worse, because you watched your friends and relatives writhing in unimaginable, indescribable pain after a US-supplied Israeli bomb severed one — or several — of their limbs or caused their bodies to contort in unthinkable ways, perhaps even reduced them to a heap of ash.

“I always find myself wondering: what is the point of writing and reporting?” wrote Anas Al-Sharif, one of the few remaining journalists in northern Gaza where the genocidal Israelis have accelerated their plan to ethnically cleanse the land to make way for Jews-only settlements. “For more than 400 days, we have been slaughtered from vein to vein. Has the massacre stopped? Has anything changed?”

He continues: “Every day, we stand amidst the remains and blood, and what breaks my heart the most are the remains of children that haunt me even in my dreams. By Allah, the bitterness of betrayal is a thousand thousand times harsher and more painful than the suffering of aggression, war, massacres, displacement, and starvation.”

Anas, whose father was killed by the Israelis in December last year, wrote this after witnessing yet another massacre that killed nearly a dozen more Palestinians, mostly children, on November 5. There was the familiar sight of soot-covered, bloodied, dead children, two or more to a hospital bed or stretcher (almost never one because hospital beds are in short supply relative to the pace at which the Israelis have been slaughtering the children). Children who will walk and talk no more. They join the over 17,000 (the actual number is way higher) other children who have been sacrificed on the altar of Jewish supremacy so that Jews from anywhere in the world can savour brunch from their beachfront villas overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in an ethnically cleansed Gaza. This psychotic lot refuses to hear the cries of the children on whose corpses their Biblical utopia is supposed to be built.

The Government Media Office in Gaza on Saturday published an update on the key statistics from the Palestinian genocide to mark the 400th day of Jewish supremacist terrorism being carried out by the Israelis:

1. 400 days of genocide.

2. 3,798 massacres committed by the occupation army.

3. 53,552 martyrs and missing persons.

4. 10,000 missing individuals.

5. 43,552 martyrs who reached hospitals (Ministry of Health).

6. 17,385 child martyrs.

7. 209 infant children born and martyred during the genocide.

8. 825 children under the age of one martyred during the war.

9. 1,367 Palestinian families completely wiped out by the occupation, removed from the civil registry.

10. 38 martyred due to famine.

11. 11,891 female martyrs.

12. 1,054 martyrs from medical teams (Ministry of Health).

13. 85 martyrs from civil defence teams.

14. 184 martyr journalists.

15. 7 mass graves established by the occupation inside hospitals.

16. 520 martyrs retrieved from 7 mass graves inside hospitals.

17. 102,765 wounded and injured individuals who arrived at hospitals (Ministry of Health).

18. 398 wounded and injured journalists and media personnel.

19. 70% of the victims are children and women.

20. 202 shelters targeted by the "israeli" occupation.

21. 35,055 children living without one or both parents.

22. 3,500 children at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food.

23. 186 days of total closure of all Gaza Strip crossings.

24. 12,000 wounded individuals in need of travel for medical treatment abroad.

25. 12,500 cancer patients facing death and in need of treatment.

26. 3,000 patients with various diseases in need of treatment abroad.

27. 1,737,524 people affected by infectious diseases due to displacement.

28. 71,338 cases of hepatitis infection due to displacement.

29. 60,000 pregnant women at risk due to lack of healthcare.

30. 350,000 chronic disease patients at risk due to the occupation’s prevention of medication entry.

31. 5,300 detainees from the Gaza Strip during the genocide.

32. 310 detentions of medical staff 3 of whom were assassinated.

33. 38 journalist detainees whose names have been confirmed.

34. 2 million displaced persons in the Gaza Strip.

35. 100,000 tents torn and rendered unsuitable for displaced persons.

36. 206 government facilities destroyed by the occupation.

37. 129 schools and universities completely destroyed by the occupation.

38. 344 schools and universities partially destroyed by the occupation.

39. 12,700 students killed by the "israeli" occupation during the war.

40. 785,000 students deprived of education by the "israeli" occupation.

41. 750 teachers and education staff killed by the occupation during the war.

42. 138 scholars, academics, university professors, and researchers executed by the occupation.

43. 815 mosques completely destroyed by the occupation.

44. 151 mosques severely damaged, requiring restoration.

45. 3 churches targeted and destroyed by the occupation.

46. 19 cemeteries completely or partially destroyed by the occupation out of 60 cemeteries.

47. 2,300 bodies stolen by the occupation from various cemeteries in the Gaza Strip.

48. 159,000 housing units completely destroyed by the occupation.

49. 83,000 housing units rendered uninhabitable by the occupation.

50. 193,000 housing units partially destroyed by the occupation.

51. 86,400 tons of explosives dropped by the occupation on the Gaza Strip.

52. 34 hospitals rendered out of service by the occupation.

53. 80 health centres rendered out of service by the occupation.

54. 162 healthcare facilities targeted by the occupation.

55. 134 ambulances targeted by the occupation.

56. 206 archaeological and heritage sites destroyed by the occupation.

57. 3,130 kilometres of electrical networks destroyed by the occupation.

58. 125 ground-level power transformers destroyed.

59. 330,000 linear metres of water networks destroyed by the occupation.

60. 655,000 linear metres of sewage networks destroyed by the occupation.

61. 2,835,000 linear metres of roads and streets destroyed by the occupation.

Those 61 bullet points spanning over 550 words list some of the most depraved atrocities being carried out by the most genocidal regime in modern history. It’s hard to make sense of some of these numbers. 3,798 massacres in 400 days adds up to over 9 massacres every day. That’s a massacre every 2 hours or so for 400 days straight. 17,385 children slaughtered. 209 of them never saw anything other than genocide: they were born during this genocide and died in it. 1,367 Palestinian families completely wiped off the civil registry; no one will ever bear those 1,367 family names. 70 percent of those killed are women and children.

This depravity has no modern equivalent.

What’s more, most of these numbers are already old. In fact, just minutes before the release of these numbers, the very same institution behind this data, the Government Media Office, released the names of four more journalists slaughtered by the Jewish supremacists, taking the number to 188, as opposed to 184 in this list. The data became old even before it was made public! That’s how fast the Israelis are conducting their extermination campaign of the captive Palestinians in Gaza.

It’s hard to find words to put this Israeli terrorism in perspective. We have been trying for 400 days and words still fail. Just to draw up a list of Israeli depravities ran into 61 bullet points. Just. A. List. Not the stories behind those numbers. The countless lives, dreams, hopes, and aspirations that those numbers fail to reveal. No stat to reveal the oceans of tears that have been shed in Gaza and for Gaza. There will be no accounting of the millions of tiny pieces countless hearts have been broken in Gaza. No metric will measure the terror the tiny bodies of the million plus children have felt in Gaza for 400 days and nights, not knowing when their torment will come to an end.

Having perused through this list and witnessed Israeli terrorism every day since October 7, 2023, I can’t help but think how a genocide has been normalised. Looking for updates in the morning, I now first scan for the keyword “massacre,” which signify dozens, if not hundreds, of deaths. In a way, my mind has accepted that the Israelis will have slaughtered many Palestinians overnight because that has been the case for over 400 days so it now dreads massacres more. Israel has normalised the murder of Palestinians. The slaughter of Palestinians every single day is a given. Now murdered Palestinians only make mainstream news, if at all, if they are killed en masse in one go.

But none of this is normal. And none of this should ever be normalised.

Anas’s cri de coeur should haunt us until the Jewish supremacists are stopped and long after: “For more than 400 days, we have been slaughtered from vein to vein. Has the massacre stopped? Has anything changed?”

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