Photo: Israeli forces patrol the streets of Hebron following the funeral of Mufid Ikhlayel, 44, who was killed in the village of Beit Ummar on November 29, 2022. (Photo by Mamoun Wazwaz/APA Images)
Filed by Yumna Patel
Today Palestinians woke up to the news of three martyrs. Three more
people had been taken away from their families, loved ones, and homeland
with the pull of a trigger.
As I sat this morning in my local coffee shop, hammering away at my
keyboard, fielding phone calls and messages as my colleagues and I tried
to gather all the details from the night before, I overheard an
exchange between friends.
“F*ck this life. Two young guys, like flowers, killed in an instant,”
one said, as he watched videos of the grieving parents of Jawad and
Thafer Rimawi, two brothers, who were killed during a raid overnight on
Tuesday.
Another responded, “It’s not normal. Every day, more people are being
killed. You never know, maybe I’ll walk outside right now and get shot,
and that will be the end for me.”
It’s conversations like these that, no matter how often they happen
(these days they seem to be happening every day), I can never get used
to.
Despite all the conflict, violence, and injustice that exists all
over the world, I believe this feeling, the one described by my friends,
is a feeling that is truly unique to Palestine. The feeling that at any
moment, your life, or the life of your friends, your family, your
neighbor, or even your co-worker can be taken in an instant.
Almost everyone I know, or everyone I have met over the years
reporting and living in Palestine has experienced, to some degree, what
it is like to lose someone to the Israeli occupation. It’s become
difficult to count how many times I’ve been told “you never know when it
will happen to you.”
In a place where people are forced to normalize all the forms of
violence inflicted upon them – violent raids, bombs, checkpoints, walls,
prisons, borders separating families, the slow theft of their land –
the reality becomes one of constant and imminent danger.
No matter where you are, or what you are doing – maybe you’re driving
home in the middle of the night, maybe you’re sleeping at home, or
maybe you’re resisting against the armed forces raiding your hometown –
the reality is that even in the most mundane, or unexpected moments, the
occupation can creep up on you, taking your life away from you, and all
of your loved ones.
As I continued to reflect on the Palestinians who were killed today –
brothers, fathers, sons, friends, classmates – and the quickness in
which their lives, their past, and their futures were taken away from
them, my colleague sent a video of the young Thafer Rimawi, 19, giving
his high school graduation speech last year.
Still wearing his graduation robes, he delivered an impassioned
speech to his fellow graduates, who looked on bright eyed, and excited
for the future. Under the video, posted by the school, a caption read:
“you did great, Thafer, we wish you and your classmates success and
excellence.”
Just a year and a half later, Thafer was killed, and his future along with him.
He and his brother Jawad will be added to more lists, more numbers,
of Palestinians killed by the Israeli occupation. A list that has grown
too painfully long this year alone, and will inevitably continue to
grow, even in the last few weeks of this year.
It is a maddening reality to report on these heinous crimes every
day, forcing real people, who had real lives, real families, and real
hopes and dreams, into boxes and statistics, in an attempt to make it
digestible for audiences and readers, to try and help them understand
the true scale of the oppression forced on the Palestinian people.
But no matter how many painful, heart wrenching quotes we write down
from family and friends, nothing can ever truly capture the pain of what
it is like to lose a loved one in such an unjust way. To lose them and
know that chances are you will never get justice, and your pleas for
help will fall on deaf ears. To lose these precious lives, and know
that tomorrow you will wake up to it all over again. |