Which Suffering is Acknowledged

Today was a hard and heavy day. I try to not let myself sit silently beneath the weight of the heaviness for too long, always mindful of those who are suffering and for whom every effort and every moment is a battle for survival, mindful of those to whom I owe everything. 

I have been thinking today about how in Gaza they are running out of room not just for the living, but also for the dead. I have been thinking about the 66 (known) infants and children who have been murdered through forced starvation. About how baby formula has been blocked by Israel and the U.S. from entering into Gaza, how it is even confiscated from the suitcases of medical workers trying to smuggle in just a few cans to share during the limited time they will spend trying to help at the hospitals and clinics, many which are no longer even in buildings but only in makeshift tents. And about how these clinics and hospitals and tents, what few remain, have also become places where people go to die in pain because there is no longer enough medication, no supplies, not even any gauze or saline, and fuel is running out. I've been thinking about how no place is safe, whether it is a place intended for healing that has become a place for dying, or whether it is a place meant to give shelter but cannot offer any protection.

A close friend in Gaza once said to me that this genocidal war is "a war on every front"–there's nothing left unscathed, no part of their lives untouched–it is a war on food and shelter, health and medical treatment, land and agriculture, nature, animals, and pets, babies and children, men and women, the young and the old, and everyone in between. It is a war on their social fabric and institutions, infrastructure and security, routines and stability, the past and the future. It is a war on hearts and minds, on bodies and spirits. It is a war on banks, stores, water, money, computers, phones, communications, schools, libraries, leisure, freedom–and even on time itself. It is a war on everything. Nothing escapes. I challenge you to try and think of a single thing that isn’t under attack in Gaza. I have yet to find one.

And Palestinians in Gaza never get a break, never get to rest, and can’t even find a temporary reprieve in sleep, as Israel continues to massacre entire families every single day and night. Night-time is a time of horror for families who are exhausted and just want rest. While Americans are shooting starving people searching for food every day. And more and more babies and elderly people are dying of malnutrition, all while the U.S. government dangles the elusive possibility of a ceasefire as a distraction from the constant normalized murder that they are enabling and sustaining.

As I listen to people in my physical proximity, at my workplace and elsewhere, complain about mundane things of no real consequence, especially when juxtaposed against the reality of those for whom every moment is one between life and death, I am overcome with weariness, impatience, frustration, and yes, anger. How I long for a future when everyone can be concerned with mundane, ordinary, even petty things. When such things can take our time and attention. But it is hard for me to take much care for what feels self-indulgent and superficial at this time.

Yes, today is a hard and heavy day. Another friend wrote this morning about how this day is the eleven year anniversary of the deaths of half a dozen members of his family, massacred in their home as they were spending time together enjoying each other's company. And I’ve been thinking about this, about how my friend has had to finish growing up without his father, how he took on the responsibilities of becoming a provider for his mother and younger siblings from an early age, and how he is still fighting for their survival even now, while he experiences constant grief and loss, as more loved ones are cruelly murdered every day.

Today is also the anniversary of the death of Ghassan Kanafani, who was assassinated by Israel on July 8, 1972. In her piece “We Knocked Until Our Hands Broke,” originally published in May 2025 but shared again online today, the brilliant Palestinian writer Alaa Alqaisi expresses how “abandonment is not an accident — it is a decision.”

As with anything Alaa Alqaisi writes, after I read it the first time, I kept returning to it, finding and feeling more each time, as there are layers that build upon each other with each new feeling and each added understanding. I have read it six times just today, and I cannot stop thinking about it. I brought her words to work with me, in my heart and in my head. And then I also read an even more recent piece of hers called "The Double Life of a Palestinian Translator,” where she writes:

"The world will always choose familiar narratives that preserve its sense of stability rather than those that unsettle it with the full force of disruption. And so, translation becomes not only a necessity but an ethical battle: to find a language that resists both disappearance and domestication, allowing pain to remain unfiltered while still ensuring it crosses the linguistic checkpoints that decide which suffering is acknowledged, and which is discarded."

Which suffering is acknowledged. And which is discarded. I have been struggling with this myself. Confused by this dynamic, by my inability to understand why there is this disparity. I encounter this discarded suffering daily in academic spaces here in the United States, spaces filled with people who seem more committed to constructing and maintaining the illusion that the genocide in Palestine is somehow not part of us, not something we should be working to stop, let alone acknowledge. 

Perhaps people are afraid to see, to acknowledge, to recognize because then it would mean they would have to act, they would have to take ownership, they would have to accept their personal responsibility. Whereas if they can keep pretending they somehow don't really know or understand, then maybe they believe they are somehow absolved? But they are not. And what a terrible soul-destroying lie this is. There is no absolution to be found in intentional retreat. In feigning ignorance. In masquerading behind self-indulgence as though it is a virtue. Abandonment is not an accident, it is a decision.

I am grateful to the writers, to the translators, to the poets and the teachers. To all my friends in Palestine. To  Alaa Alqaisi who writes: 

"And if the stories I carry are not always welcomed—if they are met with indifference or rejection—I will still carry them, because their very telling is resistance. Because to name the dead is to resist their disappearance. Because to write a sentence about Gaza in English is to defy the architectures of global indifference."