It's today again: the 49th anniversary of the Lebanese war(s), which ended in occupation and never saw closure or accountability, so that we'll never be free of it. On this occasion I'm resharing this thread I wrote last year, a glimpse of what growing up in a warzone was like.

you cannot
make blossoms
by tearing off petals

Ikkyu

6 months ago our friend & colleague Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was brutally killed by the Israeli military. Over 6 investigations found that the journalists were directly targeted. It’s been 6 months since we lost him & six months of impunity. I miss your laugh the most 💔

This man sits by the grave daily, piquing residents' curiosity. When asked,he reveals:
'After 20 years of patience, treatment, and prayers, I was blessed with my only son. He grew before my eyes for 5 years until an Israeli missile deprived me of him,I can’t bear his loss.'
#Gaza

Invited to address a conference in Berlin about my work in Gaza hospitals during the present conflict.
The German government has forcibly prevented me from entering the country
Silencing a witness to genocide before the ICJ adds to Germany's complicity in the ongoing massacre.

We ECCHR filed against the German Government for granting export licenses for anti-tank weapons to #Israel . #Germany mentioned them CIJ_ICJ very briefly, but didn`t explain much on Tuesday. 1/5
ecchr.eu/en/press-relea…

🔺 Homes, schools & hospitals severely damaged
🔺 Roads reduced to dirt tracks
🔺 Civilians at grave risk of unexploded ordnance
🔺 Collapsed services

Yesterday, we carried out an assessment in #Gaza 's Khan Younis where, with United Nations partners, we saw profound destruction.

More 👇

In addition to being the head of Jabalia Police, Ridwan Ridwan has been in charge of organizing the food aid that enters North Gaza.
He was killed a few minutes ago in an air strike that also killed other family members and neighbors.

Just spoke to my mum after 4 months, since she left Jabalia to Khan Younis. I am the happiest and saddest person at the same time. I want to hide somewhere and just cry. How can this be allowed? A woman of her age, so tired and ill, in a tent somewhere with hardly any support?

I just returned from #Gaza for Medical Aid for Palestinians.
The scale of the suffering and humanitarian catastrophe inflicted by Israel is vast and horrific.
What is being done to the Palestinians of Gaza is a disaster for humanity.
History will judge all who are complicit.
#CeasefireNow

Anne Carson, in Plainwater: “My brother once showed me a piece of quartz that contained, he said, some trapped water older than all the seas in our world. He held it up to my ear. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘life and no escape.”

This incident was one of the single biggest mass casualty events of this conflict but it not the only one. The UN has documented two dozen attacks on Palestinians awaiting aid in the last three months alone. 5/5

“This child was pulled out of the rubble; losing all his family. He was hysterically crying, he kept asking about his bicycle, saying it belonged to someone else. The innocence and sorrow, thinking about the bicycle without fully comprehending what he’s been through hit me.”

The end of this war is so long overdue.

It is not enough for six months of war to be a moment of remembrance and mourning.

It must also spur a collective determination that there be a reckoning for this betrayal of humanity.

Like World Central Kitchen, the heroic Palestine Red Crescent first responders who went to rescue 6-year-old Hind Rajab also received clearance from the Israeli military to get her. They were killed by the Israeli military anyway and so was 6 year old Hind.

Philosophy professor Nancy Fraser, who is Jewish, has been uninvited from a guest professorship in Germany for signing a public letter in support of Palestine

'We have witnessed how journalists across the U.S. have demanded justice for fellow journalists like Jamal Khashoggii, Shireen Abu Akleh, and Evan Gershkovich. It is past time journalists take action for journalists in Gaza.' docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

& finally, in celebration and memory of, and in mourning for all the Palestinians silenced forever by US-backed Israeli forces, among them Shireen Abu Akleh and Refaat Alareer, whose Twitter handle was Refaat in Gaza 🇵🇸.

This new World Bank - #UN report shows that the estimates of the Gaza destruction used in my 'Anatomy of a genocide' report were conservative.

The report exposes a level of erasure of a society that is unprecedented in our time:
worldbank.org/en/news/press-…

This story isn't about AI, machines, technology.

It's really about expansive kill lists based on flimsy evidence, the industrialized killing of civilians, and a provable policy that involves many actual people and implicates the human chain of command.

theguardian.com/world/2024/apr…