The Palestinians feel beaten and sad because they have lost their culture and their people. Many Palestinians have been affected by the war. One American Palestina resident, Lena Badr, said she was “horrified and immediately concerned” about what Israel’s next move would be for Gaza.
Badr said she rushed to send money to her family in Gaza because she didn’t know what was going to happen to them. “I knew it was going to be bad.” That it would be this bad is something I didn’t think possible.
She went on to say that fifteen family members had died because of the war and that two of her family’s houses had been bombed. “Palestinian people have always been deliberately silenced, or preferably unheard victims and I’m determined to change that,” said Badr.
Palestinians have spoken out, saying that the huge number of deaths has also hurt their society. The loss of so much of their bloodline makes many of them worry about what this might mean for their society and the people who will come after them.
It could have an effect on Palestinian society for years to come, said Helga Tawil-Souri, a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. “Every song, every dance, every recipe, every expression is itself a form of resistance against our erasure and our obliteration,” she said.
She said, “Culture is also not just simply what is being done at the moment, but what connects us across these sorts of timeframes.”
Along with the deaths, cultural places for the Palestinian people such as mosques, universities, and museums have been destroyed. Arabs in Palestine have said that they can’t think of any part of their society that hasn’t been changed by the war.
