Palestinian American Raghad Abualhalaweh turned 18 just in time to be eligible to vote in the upcoming election, but her enthusiasm to participate waned when she looked at her choices.
While Trump wants Israel to “finish the job” and promises a ban on Gaza residents if he’s reelected, the Biden administration is currently letting them enact their final solution on Palestinians and Kamala and her VP stands by their unwavering right to do so.
This Bipartisan support of genocide has left Raghad feeling “out of place”.
Despite the insistence that the conflict started October 7th, 2023, articles published October 6th reveal that Israel had already killed 248 Palestinians and there had been 800 settler attacks on Palestinians that year.
“Palestine has been at war for 75 years,” says Abualhalaweh. She recalls her dad’s childhood experience in Palestine of seeing soldiers drive around in tanks and taking innocent people, including children, “My dad… is now in his fifties… That shows exactly how long it’s been.”
The reported death count of Palestinians since October 7th is around 40,000, but that is due to the collapse of Gaza’s health systems— it’s really closer to 335,500. Most people can correctly identify this as genocide, but genocide isn’t just mass extermination; it’s said that there are 10 stages, and the stages can happen simultaneously. For almost a century, Palestinians have had to face systematic discrimination, erasure of their culture, and relentless persecution.
This has culminated in the horrible things coming out of Gaza, most of which affecting children: Kids, shot in the head by snipers, 6-year-old Hind Rajab getting shot 355 times by tanks, entire families getting wiped out, people having to bury body parts and mangled flesh instead of bodies, and recently, a 19-year-old patient in a makeshift hospital getting burned alive in front of his remaining family members.
Buildings, universities, hospitals have been destroyed, and countless people have been displaced. The damage can even be seen from Outer space.
Raghad feels grateful that more people are aware of what’s going on, but “she never thought” she’d see this all unfold on her timeline and is exasperated that nothing is being done to stop the “horror” they’re living through. At times, she feels helpless that SHE can’t do anything to stop it.
A considerable amount of her family was displaced to Jordan after the bombing escalated. The ones that remain in Palestine face constant bombardment and shootings, even though they live in the West Bank, where things “aren’t as bad”. She tells me that food, healthcare, and income is hard to come by, so her and her immediate family have to send over money monthly to help support and feed them.
“My family is losing hope and slowly I am too.”