up to 186,000 or more killed in Palestine

the TikToked apocalypse

Almost every single day now for the past nine months, multiple times a day, I’ve watched Palestinians on TikTok begging for their lives. If you’re someone who cares about the genocide, you’ve seen these videos. While being starved and bombed and displaced, families have been forced to become social media influencers in the desperate hopes that strangers around the world who’ve watched this live-streamed apocalypse will do something, anything, to save them. “Please, don’t scroll,” they say, holding their starving children while surrounded by piles of rubble. “You are our only hope.” Often they’ll ask that you “press the four buttons in on the side of your screen”: like, comment, save, share. The more viewers engage with a video, the more likely TikTok’s cruel and unpredictable algorithm will push that video to more people, which means more potential donations to the GoFundMe links in their bios.

I saw a different kind of post the other day—a series of photos from a Palestinian who’d managed to escape: the Rafah border, the waiting hall, entering Egypt with snacks gifted from kind soldiers. “Mom is sad that I will leave her. I never expected I would make it to the other side one day. I am soooo excited. I will meet my girl in a few hours! Can’t wait to see the hotel room…” I scrolled to the end, where a screenshot of another urgent GoFundMe was waiting. “Sorry but this was just a dream,” the text over the campaign reads. “I hope it will become a reality one day 💔”. I burst into tears. I felt ashamed that I’d consumed the post so excitedly: good news for once!

It’s young Palestinians, teenagers and 20somethings, on my feed who most successfully use cheerful TikTok trends and memes to bait and switch viewers like me into coming face to face with their suffering families so that we might engage, donate, give them home for a better future—for any future. More and more often, lately, I’ve heard people directly address the camera this way: “If you scroll,” they say, “You are denying me and my family the chance to survive, and I will never forgive you.”

Can you imagine how it feels to walk for miles in search of internet service to document daily atrocities—a little girl with her jaw blown off; fathers holding their headless toddlers or what remains of their children in bags; playgrounds and refugee camps and entire neighborhood blocks soaked in blood—and no one in the world has stopped it?

In a study published by the Lancet this week, researchers concluded “it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.” That’s the conservative estimate. 7-9% of the population, wiped off the face of the earth. It’s apocalyptic. It’s intolerable.

Those of us who aren’t personally affected by the genocide have the privilege to tune it all out, all while Israel illegally seizes and ethnically cleanses more Palestinian land in its largest West Bank settlement expansion in decades. This week I’ve seen reports that the bombing in the north of the Gaza strip is the most intense it’s ever been.

I’m glad there’s mounting pressure for Biden to drop out of the presidential race, even if it took his old age and not his war crimes to get us here. I don’t think I’ve ever hated someone more.

I’m late with this newsletter again—I’m sorry. I’ve been unable to think about much else besides Palestine lately, and all the others ways in which the world is on fire. Please keep speaking up, donate whatever you’re able, yell at your representatives. This must end. Palestine will be free.