I sat down with Double Down News to talk about the ongoing genocide and Nakba in Gaza. They asked me “which was the worst day” to which I replied “Every day is the worst day” and began a 5 minute improvised monologue of many of the suffocating scenes of human suffering that have been seared into our global collective memories over the last two months, scenes which play out on our phones like the latest episode of Black Mirror, but are more tragically, someone’s life. Every baby is someone’s everything. Every toddler was running around moments before. Every kid had a favorite food, toy, and color. Everyone had a soul. A soul that was cruelly stolen using brutal weaponry inflicting the peak of human physical and mental suffering on the body before fulfilling its purpose to kill.
The specific features of this genocide will be studied for the rest of time, but perhaps one of its unusual aspects is the frequency with which new and different horrors are committed.
I realized after I finished filming the Double Down News clip that there are so many scenes that I didn’t recall in the moment simply due to the sheer impossibility of remembering at once every remarkable instance. I decided to publish in writing an updated, expanded, and lightly edited version of the text from the video to serve as another effort to preserve the record. That is the text the follows.
Everyday has been the worst day.
Israel outdoes itself in brutality and destruction every day so every day is the worst day.
The day that Yoav Gallant called Palestinians “human animals” and announced that we would be denied food, water, fuel, and electricity in a total siege was the worst day;
The day that the Israeli officials announced that they were “rolling out” the “Gaza Nakba” was the worst day;
The days that Israel sieged and raided Al-Shifa hospital, bombed the maternity ward, bombed the outpatient clinic, bombed the outside ambulances, and bombed the solar panels, leading to the hospital’s total collapse and closure, those were the worst days;
The days that corporate media confirmed one by one that Israel was lying about Al-Shifa hospital but it was too late anyway because the damage was already done, those were also the worst days;
The day that we had to transfer 31 premature babies outside of Gaza after 8 had already died because Israel refused to provide fuel to power their incubators, was the worst day;
The day that I read that the Director of Al-Shifa hospital was calling on the world for assistance because people were “screaming of thirst” was the worst day;
The day that Israel dropped six one ton bombs on the Jabalia refugee camp killing hundreds of civilians was the worst day;
Every day after that was the worst day because Israel continued to bomb Jabalia refugee camp every single day after that but the media stopped reporting on it;
The day that we watched the Al-Nasser hospital premature babies be discovered in their hospital beds decomposing after Israel sieged and attacked the hospital and prevented their evacuation was the worst day;
The day that we watched photos and videos of dozens of Palestinian men who were kidnapped from one of the schools where they were sheltering with their families, stripped of their clothes, blindfolded, forced to kneel, after which they were taken away in the backs of trucks, was the worst day;
The days that we watched hundreds of thousands of Palestinians be forcibly displaced on Salahuddin road from the Northern part of Gaza to the South in images reminiscent of the Nakba of 1948, images that our grandparents seared into our collective consciousness when they told us stories of living the Nakba, that was the worst day;
Indeed, watching the Nakba of 2023 play out on our phones was the worst day;
The day that we read accounts of children sniped by Israeli snipers as they were being held by their parents who were being forcibly displaced and their parents were forced to lay their children’s bodies down on the ground and continue marching — the day that report came out was also the worst day;
The day that an Israeli airstrike hit a convoy of evacuating families on the so-called safe route was the worst day;
Every day after that Israel bombed, using one of its most destructive bombs, alleged self-proclaimed safe zones, while Palestinians who have consistently drawn attention to this are ignored, was the worst day;
The day that Palestinian children held a press conference asking the world to intervene in their massacre was the worst day;
Every day that the world did not stop this after that day was also the worst day;
Every day I see a video of a Palestinian toddler whose head has been blown off, split open, or Palestinian child whose limbs are sliced off, those days are also the worst days;
The day I saw the faceless boy with both of his legs blown off groaning in agony was also the worst day;
The day I saw the young Palestinian girl dressed in a pink pajama completely disemboweled with her intestines hanging out of her body take her last breath was the worst day;
Each day that a new “Wounded Child No Surviving Family” is created is also the worst day;
Each day after that where the child recovers from their injuries alone, looking for their family, unable to process what is happening, while the bombs continue to drop, is also the worst day;
Every day I see a child who has had to undergo amputation after being injured in an airstrike is also the worst day;
The day we learned that 25,000 Palestinian children lost either 1 or both parents to this genocide was the worst day;
The day we learned that a Palestinian physician had to amputate his child’s limbs without anesthesia only for the boy to succumb to his wounds was the worst day;
The day that we passed 10,000 babies and children killed was the absolute worst day;
Every time a mother undergoes a C-section without anesthesia is the worst day;
The day they killed Wael El-Dahdouh’s family was the worst day;
The day we saw Muhammed El-Durra’s father, Jamal El-Durra, grieve his two brothers, was the worst day;
The day that a child carried another child’s body, wading through the flood of Jabalia camp, that was the worst day;
The day a Palestinian mother begged the doctors not to put her daughter’s body in the refrigerator because she hates the cold, that was also the worst day;
The day another Palestinian mother asked her martyred son for forgiveness in case there was anything she did not do for him was also the worst day;
The day an IVF mom crumbled while holding her child’s body, choking the words “but I swear I struggled to have him mama, 580 injections,” that too was the worst day;
The day they killed Reem and Tareq was the worst day;
The day Amal asked the civil defense workers to rescue her from under the rubble last so her family, also under the rubble, could be rescued first, was the worst day;
Every day we watch Palestinian boys and men dig through the rubble with their hands for survivors, lacking any tools, equipped only with their compassion, strength, and determination, is also the worst day;
The day we reached 100 journalists assassinated by Israel in Gaza was the worst day;
Every day anyone is alive and conscious under the rubble with no way to be reached is the worst day;
Every day they erase another family name from the civil registry is the worst day;
The day that we heard that disease began to spread in Gaza and an Israeli official wrote an op-ed saying “let the disease spread, it will help us achieve our objectives quicker” — that was also the worst day;
Every day a Palestinian is forced to pay thousands at the Rafah crossing to secure escape from a genocide is the worst day;
Every day has been the worst day because every day is the worst day for some family on the ground and we are, as a community, every day, grieving every act of brutality as an attack on us, on our families.
Because the stated aim, time and again, has been nothing short of genocide and therefore the target is all Palestinian life itself;
Making each moment of suffering, each ounce of pain felt by any of us, each killing, an electric shock reverberating through our collective Palestinian body worldwide.
So every day has been the worst day.