Children at al-Shifa hospital pleaded in English for medicine, food, clean water, education, and the right to live like other children. Over 21 months, confirmed Palestinian deaths rose into the tens of thousands, with independent estimates far higher, while institutions and media oscillated between debate and denial. Eventually some academics and human rights groups declared the violence genocide, but recognition came only after prolonged refusal to credit Palestinian testimony. The persistent disbelief reflects a deliberate, philosophical dehumanization rooted in colonial dynamics that frames Palestinians as less than human and normalizes caging and killing.
They spoke in English, not their mother tongue, but the language of those who they thought might save them. We want to live, we want peace, we want to judge the killers of children, one boy said. We want medicine, food and education. We want to live as the other children live. Even then, the children pleaded. They had no clean drinking water, no food, no medicine.
Suddenly, the same institutions that spent months debating, or more actively denying, whether Palestinian testimony deserved credence are finding their voices. Western academics speak of genocide with newfound authority. Two Israeli human rights organizations issued reports declaring what Palestinians have screamed from under rubble since October. They say they are experts, but it took them two years to see what was always before them: that a sky that delivers bombs was never looking for hostages.
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