In almost a week of relentless violence, Palestinian authorities had already recorded 20 families completely wiped out from civil registry, meaning all living members of that family, of all generations, had been killed. It has been three months, and this number only grows. This, along with many of the war crimes Israel commits daily against Palestinians, is a form of genocide.
To kill entire families is to kill their stories, it is to burn a page of a people’s history, their roots. It’s deliberate.
“As the number of victims rises and more and more families disappear from Palestine’s rich tapestry of history and culture, there is a bewildered note to the mourning as people try to come to grips with what these disappearances mean.”
- Mohammed R. Marwish, October 13th, 2023, Al-Jazeera
When a family dies under Israel’s bombs, part of Gaza’s history disappears
For Palestinians, oral and material history really relies a lot on family heirlooms and stories. My own family has stuff from aunts and great aunts and great great aunts who have passed that were considered master tatreez makers. We have books we pass down through generations. We tell each other stories about our experiences. Most of what I know about my great grandfather, and his businesses (thereby a peek into economic history of his region) pre-nakba is from my mother’s stories about him.
A lot of our history was lost and homogenized, or just outright stolen by Israel (click), after the Nakba, then again after the Naksa, and then again after our elders die. There have been people people who have made efforts to reclaim our history, though (click).
The targeting of elders and entire families is intentional to erase their histories. That is one of the most frightening parts, that we forget ALL this heritage, and that we forget how to maintain our identity. Israel knows this. One of the things Palestinians have been pleading is not to forget them. But Israel wants to kill their memory because it isn’t enough to kill their flesh.