10/08/2026
78 years since the Nakba, and Palestinians are still being asked to prove their humanity.
Palestinian-Canadian poet Rafeef Ziadah wrote this during the bombing of Gaza in 2008-09, after a journalist asked her whether it would all be fine if Palestinians just stopped teaching their children to hate. This is her answer.
Three years ago, following the attack by Hamas that Israel had known about for a year, Israel began the assault on Gaza that a UN inquiry has since found to be genocide.
More than two million people are still there, holding on to their land through another winter in tents and rubble, and the "ceasefire" signed almost a year ago hasn't stopped the killing, the devastation, or the expansion of illegal settlements.
We see you. We won't look away. Free Palestine 🍉
🎤 "We Teach Life, Sir" by .ziadah, from her album We Teach Life, with music by Phil Monsour
📷 Photos via Wikimedia Commons by Jaber Jehad Badwan, Hla Bashbash, WAFA and Mahmoud Fareed, Odai Wahidi, Mohammed Masri, Saied Albayya, Oday Yaish, Al Jazeera English, Trócaire, Marius Arnesen and gloucester2gaza (CC BY, CC BY-SA and CC0)
