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This Is Not an Anniversary

Does remembering the date of October 7 make it easier to name?

A man carries away a Palestinian killed in an Israeli airstrike at the Erez crossing between Israel and the northern Gaza Strip, on October 7, 2023.

The world remembers Gaza again this week. Had Palestinians wanted remembrance after each date we experienced atrocity, a full, long year wouldn’t have enough days. We have been faithful victims, though, haven’t we? Since 2023, the world has applauded the resilience of our bare chests standing up to the tanks grinding us dead. Our blood must’ve shed beautifully. The women and children mourning everything and everyone they had ever known have cried in perfect tears for protests and, indeed, outraged slogans. Our homes, no longer recognizable, could have been spared if they had not borne witness to lifetimes of destruction. And if only our screams hadn’t been too loud. Three years in, forgive us for not making as many stories about our sons and daughters as the world can give standing ovations. I wish my late journalist colleagues were a bit more courageous to commit a crime and call it out. They would have been worthy of support. Probably they would’ve been deserving of protection.

My life has become a tale of a thousand anniversaries. So I dare ask: Does remembering the date of a tragedy make it easier to name? To live with? How is recalling our trauma—and dedicating an anniversary for it—going to help erase it? How is the mere reflection on something still happening and painful beyond any human’s language will bring it to an end? The notion of marking an anniversary that kicked off a rather inhumane and unimaginable memory in a long history of erasure points to the fact that the world has already moved on. It supposes that all we ever asked for was empathy. And that, frankly, is why we’re more at peace with a senseless world than we are with our tragedies. If........

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