Our theme for the month of October is “haunt.”

When I started writing about Palestine on this blog, it seemed like every month was accompanied by whispers of a ceasefire. By a prospect of peace. A glimmer of hope following seventy-five years of violence against Palestinians.

But another, acutely terrible year has passed. Israel has murdered nearly a thousand Palestinian health care workers. Almost every person in Gaza faces food insecurity and has no access to clean water. Israel has bombarded Gaza with more than 75,000 tons of explosives. Per the official numbers, which are almost certainly undercounted—more than 10,000 people are lost in the rubble from those bombs—Israel has killed 41,909 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. As Israel’s violence expands into Lebanon, where Israeli military attacks killed 127 children last week, that hope is nearly impossible to grasp.

I struggle to write in terms that will be received by a general audience as measured, considerate, thoughtful, because for the past year Palestinian suffering has been irrational, malicious, unthinkable.

In my lifetime, people have committed dozens of atrocities against other people. In my lifetime, people will continue to displace, starve, maim, terrorize, and kill other people. I may never know about many of these tragedies. I will likely have little power to stop them.

I wonder how many times I will be so starkly aware of evils enacted, empowered, or endorsed by those around me. By the governments funded by my taxes. By the news organizations that refuse to platform Palestinian voices but unquestioningly repeat talking points from IDF officials. By the acquaintances, colleagues, friends, family turned unrecognizable in their eagerness to celebrate, or even passively condone, the monstrous Israeli government and all its stomach-churning cruelty.

This divide, like the depravity at its root, haunts me. I do not understand it. I cannot comprehend how, massacre after massacre, mass grave after mass grave, bombed hospital after bombed hospital, demolished mosque after demolished mosque, murdered family after murdered family, anyone can even lend an ear to the side of the oppressor.

And if you do? If tens of thousands of children malnourished, orphaned, maimed, and murdered by the orders of the Israeli state don’t haunt you, I can’t imagine anything will.

And we have cultivated the earth

And we have harvested the wheat

We have picked the lemons

And pressed the olives

And the whole world knows our soil

And the whole world knows our soil

Long, long, long live Palestine

Gwyneth Findlay

Gwyneth Findlay is an editor living in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, where she mentally and physically collects world maps. She graduated from Calvin in 2018 with a degree in writing and minors in French and gender studies.