AntiNote: The following outcry was translated into English by a small Mastodon account in early January 2024. According to them, it had been posted by a Khan Younis-based journalist in Arabic on Facebook and then translated into Hebrew by an Israeli scholar, from which their English translation was prepared.
Another Mastodon account shared the translation with this insightful comment: “The author speaks of the exploitation of Palestinian suffering by political leaders, but I see something similar on the far left in the West, with those who romanticize the Palestinian struggle and forget the real humans who are starving and dying in Gaza.”
We are reproducing the text here on the day the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza – and the global commercial and social media discourse has been absolutely flooded with hot takes and knee-jerk analyses, with voices from Gaza nearly nowhere to be found.
So let’s try and re-center and re-ground ourselves here, with at least this one voice, though indeed it is only one and there are plenty of others who may think differently – as well as so, so many others who have been silenced forever. The media blackout and destruction of life and truth being perpetrated by Israeli forces has been totalizing. We are grateful for this tiny glimmer that has reached us against all odds.
Stop the desecration in Gaza at any cost
by Ahmed Mustafa on Facebook, translated first to Hebrew by Dr. Assaf David
29 December 2023 (original post no longer accessible)
I watch your revelry, you rabble, in the fresh spilling of our blood. I see how Al Jazeera‘s viewership spikes into the hundreds of thousands when armed groups post their military pronouncements produced like movies. They satiate the cravings of all the gleeful human trash who do not taste destruction, all the defective human garbage wanting the war to continue, all those who do not want these groups to forgo anything as long as they keep broadcasting their operations and exporting their national orgasm.
Their lexicon does not include the value of admitting failure, or the human measure of saving Palestinian lives from the appetite of the Israeli war machine. The masses, along with the armed groups, are preparing to declare victory over Israel even if it comes with the last breath of the last child living on Palestinian soil.
I address all the revelers outside our country’s borders: Shut your mouths, all of you. Al Jazeera does not show you what I see here in Gaza: hunger, thirst, cold, disease, degradation, protection money, security anarchy, an inhuman reality. You do not hear the voices of the displaced, raising their hands to the heavens and wailing to god over Israel’s deeds and the catastrophe brought upon them by the groups. Al Jazeera does not point its cameras at the people cutting down cemetery trees to cook food for their children. It does not broadcast to you the practice of four young women surrounding their friend so she can relieve herself in the open air without water or toilet paper.
No Al Jazeera reporter tells you about the blood staining the clothes of women who could not obtain sanitary products for their monthly period. Al Jazeera does not host even one person crying out over donated tents being sold to destitute displaced people at astronomical prices. It does not show the angry and homeless sleeping on the wet sidewalks with no supplies and no shelter. It does not cover the looting of humanitarian relief convoys, and much more.
The “official” media mechanisms need to present Gaza as a power; they want to boast about their ally and gain broadcasting rights from them. Israel picks up on this discourse and uses it as propagandistic justification for the continued crushing of the Strip. There is no benefit in critical coverage of the catastrophe or humanitarian issues as long as there are those, like Qatar for example, who use our blood to boost their influence in the region.
What benefit will the “official” media gain from drawing viewers’ attention to the immense hardships of hundreds of thousands of Gazans, including elderly parents suffering from high blood pressure and unable to find suitable medications or substitutes? What interest does this media have in covering the abject failure of the armed groups’ government, which it supports, a government that after the outbreak of war disappeared from the scene and completely shirked responsibility? What will the media gain if we citizens stand before its cameras and demand the groups provide our innocent children refuge in their tunnels, like the shelter given to the young Israeli woman recently released?
The fact that none of you are interested in the fate of the ordinary Gazan puts you on the side of the occupation: just like it, you unequivocally adopt the image of us as subhuman creatures that can bear any suffering as long as we enjoy a bit of straw and fodder, indifferent to our living conditions and the circumstances of our deaths. The bodies tossed in Gaza’s streets and ruins without proper burial do not shake your hearts. After satisfying what you call “heroism,” you are ready and willing for broadcasts of even harsher atrocities. All at the expense of our blood; only our blood, you rabble, not anyone else’s.
Stop this desecration immediately, at any cost. Open the Rafah land crossing to Palestinian civilian movement so that those who remain here in the destruction are only those willing to trade their bodies for “steadfastness.” That way we can part from the project of our forced expulsion. Until then, shut your mouths, all of you; you revelers chanting worthless slogans of heroism over our spilled blood in vain. Shut your mouths, all of you; you who trade in us and profit off our souls from the luxury hotels in Doha, the presidential courts in Iran, the French Riviera of Turkey, the conference halls in Algeria, the alleys of Amman and the neighborhoods of Beirut.
You have made our blood into a cynical amusement, which the occupation forces delight in shedding and the feeble minded dance upon. Stop immediately.
