Palestine Is Still Here
Two years of genocide couldn't erase the Palestinian people.
The picture right above this paragraph was taken in the al-Bureij refugee camp in Gaza on September 22, 2025—nearly two years into a genocide that has turned Gaza into a hell beyond comprehension for anyone who has not experienced it in person.
I want you to look—really look—at the picture, and think about everything it contains.
Think about where this scene unfolded. The Bureij camp was founded to house some of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who were forced to flee their ancestral lands due to the 1948 Nakba. Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people are etched into its very existence.
In 1953, an Israeli military unit led by future Prime Minister Ariel Sharon massacred 43 refugees in Bureij. 70 years later, as the Gaza genocide marches on, Bureij has again become a byword for Israeli butchery. 30 people killed in an attack on a school. 15 killed in a series of strikes. 23 killed after Israel bombed people’s homes. On and on and on.
The boy in this picture has surely lived through some of this horror. Unless they were very lucky, his family no longer has a home of its own, since at least 92 percent of all residential buildings in Gaza have reportedly been either damaged or destroyed completely. Is he standing on the ruins of what used to be his house? Is there anyone he knows buried under that rubble?
Hopefully he is not one of the at least 20,000 children who have been orphaned since October 7. Hopefully nobody in his life has succumbed to Israel’s deliberately induced famine in Gaza. Hopefully nobody he knows was murdered trying to get desperately needed aid. Hopefully he has enough to eat. Hopefully the fetid water in Gaza is not making him sick.
At least a third of the dead in Gaza are children. Israel has killed, on average, one child every hour in the region. Hopefully this kid is still alive.
But look again. Look at this child. Amid all of this, he grabs hold of the Palestinian flag, the symbol of his people, and he strides atop the rubble, and he stands against the sky, and he reaches out to the rest of us with a message of peace.
That flag is wrinkled and maybe a little dirty. But it’s still flying. This boy has gone through unspeakable things. But he is still here. Palestine is still here.
A long string of entities—governments, militaries, individuals—have been trying to exterminate the Palestinian people for most of the last century. They have never succeeded. This is not because Palestinians are superheroes. It’s because, contrary to the sick racism that has fueled the genocide, they are human beings. They love each other and look out for each other and care about their homeland and won’t be erased from the planet just because that would make things more convenient for the world’s imperial powers.
Most of us here in the United States will never have to live through what the boy in this picture has had to live through. Our worlds have not been blown apart. We turn the tap on and the water flows. We open the fridge and there’s food. There’s a roof over our heads. Our personal universes are, for the most part, intact. We get to live a life. That’s what this little boy deserves: a life. The chance to aspire to something beyond bare existence, to grow and thrive and love and hope and dream and live.
It is now October 7, 2025—two full years of genocide. Look at the picture one last time. And then ask yourself: what are you going to do to help that boy get his life back?
Mourn the dead. Fight like hell for the living. We will win. Free, free Palestine.
"Actually, those Gazan children were going to lose their parents in 40-50 years anyways." - Bari Weiss, probably.