We Are ALL Buried in Gaza.

Not metaphorically. Actually. That mass grave isn’t just filled with Palestinians. It’s filled with US. With our tax dollars. With our silence. With our complicity. With the part of our humanity that left us when we saw the dead child and kept scrolling.

You are in that grave. I am in that grave. WE are all in that grave.

The 2,000-pound bomb doesn’t appear from nowhere. It has a birth certificate. Aerojet Rocketdyne in Camden, Arkansas. They make the motor that propels it. The workers go to work every day and build the thing that falls on the apartment building in Gaza. Boeing in St. Louis. They make the JDAM kit that turns a dumb bomb into a smart bomb. Smart enough to find the apartment building. Not smart enough to know the children are inside. General Dynamics in Garland, Texas. They make the 155mm artillery shells. The ones that turn a living room into a crater.

The senator who voted for the $14.1 billion aid package. The president who bypassed Congress to approve the emergency arms transfer. The specific votes. The specific signatures. The specific names on the specific receipts.

$22.76 billion in military aid to Israel since 1948. $3.8 billion per year in baseline military aid. $14.1 billion in emergency supplemental aid approved in 2024. The numbers blur. The bombs don’t.

Your tax dollars. My tax dollars. The money taken out of your paycheck before you ever saw it. The money that could’ve been healthcare. Could’ve been housing. Could’ve been schools…

Instead it was a 2,000-pound bomb dropped on a refugee camp.

Hind Rajab was six years old. She was in a car with her family, trying to flee. The car was fired upon. Her aunt, her uncle, her cousins, all killed. Hind was the only one left alive. She called the Palestine Red Crescent. She was on the phone for three hours. “Come take me,” she said. “Come take me.” The ambulance they sent to rescue her was also attacked. The paramedic, Yousef Zeino, was killed. Hind was found dead days later. She was six. She was alone. She was begging for someone to come take her. Nobody came.

The premature babies in the incubators at Al Shifa Hospital. The power was cut. The incubators stopped. The babies died. The world watched. The world did nothing.

Over 15,000 children killed. That’s not a statistic. That’s 15,000 individual deaths. 15,000 individual mothers who’ll never hold their child again. 15,000 individual futures that’ll never exist. 15,000 individual graves that had to be dug.

Over 140 journalists killed. The most journalists killed in any conflict in modern history. They were documenting their own deaths. They were reporting on the bomb that was about to fall on them. They were telling the world what was happening. The world kept scrolling.

Over 280 aid workers killed. The people who were trying to feed the starving. The people who were trying to heal the wounded. The people who were trying to save the dying. They were killed for trying to help.

The dates blur. The bodies don’t. October 31. Jabalia refugee camp. 2,000-pound bomb. Over 120 killed. November 2. Al Shifa Hospital. Siege begins. Patients die. December 2. Khan Younis. Artillery barrage. Bodies in the streets.

How we live with ourselves is the question we can’t answer. The scrolling past the dead child while eating dinner. The cognitive dissonance of witnessing and ignoring simultaneously. The technology that puts the mass grave in our pocket and lets us swipe past it to a cat video.

The brain can’t hold it. The scale is too large. 15,000 children becomes a number. One six-year-old girl begging for someone to come take her becomes an image. The image becomes a memory. The memory fades. The child is still dead.

The dissonance is the survival mechanism. If you felt the full weight of 15,000 dead children, you couldn’t function. So you don’t feel it. You scroll past. You go to sleep. You wake up and do it again.

And the media helps. On December 5, 2023, the New York Times published the headline “At Least 42 People Killed in Strike on Camp in Central Gaza, Gaza Officials Say.” The passive voice. The attribution to “officials.” The careful framing that makes the 2,000-pound bomb sound like weather. Like something that just happened. Like nobody dropped it. Like nobody paid for it. Like nobody made it in a factory in Arkansas.

Algorithms that feed you the dead child, and then feeds you the cheery advertisement. The dead child is content. The advertisement is revenue. The dead child makes the platform money. The platform has no incentive to stop showing you the dead child. The platform has no incentive to make you care.

“Never again” happened again.

The world said it about the Holocaust. Then Rwanda. 800,000 killed in 100 days. The world knew. The world watched. The world did nothing. Then Srebrenica. 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed in one week. UN peacekeepers were there. They didn’t stop it. They couldn’t stop it. They weren’t allowed to stop it.

Now Gaza. Over 40,000 killed and counting. The world knows. The world watches. The world does nothing.

“Never again” never meant “never again to anyone.” It meant “never again to us because we are going to do it first.” The grave is familiar. We’ve been digging it for a long time.

The pattern is the same. The dehumanization: They’re not like us. They’re not civilized. They’re not human. Then the killing. Then the hand-wringing. Then the memorial. Then the promise. Then the next time. The next dead kid.

We are not learning from the graves. We are digging and filling them.

Lockheed Martin. Stock price up 12% since October 2023. RTX Corporation. Up 15%. General Dynamics. Up 10%. Boeing. Up 8%. The bombs are selling. The children are dying. The shareholders are profiting. The CEOs made millions in compensation last year. The children made nothing. The children are dead.

The dividend was paid in blood. The quarterly earnings report doesn’t mention the bodies. The annual shareholder meeting doesn’t have a moment of silence for the dead. The stock ticker doesn’t pause when another child is killed.

You own a piece of this. If you have a 401k, if you have a pension, if you have a mutual fund, you own a piece of this. Your retirement is funded by the bombs that fall on the children. Your financial security is built on their physical destruction.

The journalists silenced. The posts removed. The accounts suspended. The algorithm that suppresses the images of dead children. The platform that calls the images “sensitive content.” The dead child is sensitive. The bomb that killed her isn’t.

The “both sides” framing. As if there are two sides to a mass grave. As if the dead child has a side. As if the mother holding her dead baby has an equal and opposite counterpart. There’s no both sides to a dead child. There’s only the dead child.

At Columbia University, students were suspended for protesting. At Harvard, faculty were targeted for speaking. At the University of Southern California, the valedictorian was told she couldn’t speak at graduation because she was Muslim. Asna Tabassum. She earned the right to speak. She was told her existence was too controversial. The censorship that says you can talk about anything except the thing that matters.

The silence is the violence. The silence is the permission. The silence is the thing that allows the bomb to fall without anyone hearing it.

And when you say “I can’t do anything,” you can stop paying for it. You can refuse to be silent. You can demand that your government stop sending the bombs. You can demand that your tax dollars stop funding the slaughter. You can stop scrolling past the dead child.

When you say “both sides,” there are no sides to a mass grave. There are no sides to a dead child. There’s only the dead child.

When you say “it’s complicated,” a dead child isn’t complicated. A six-year-old girl begging for someone to come save her isn’t complicated. A 2,000-pound bomb falling on an apartment building isn’t complicated.

It’s simple… It’s murder. It’s slaughter. It’s a war crime.

When you say “Hamas started it,” the dead child didn’t start anything. Hind Rajab wasn’t Hamas. Hind Rajab was six. Hind Rajab was alone. Hind Rajab is dead.

When you say “Israel has a right to defend itself,” defense isn’t slaughter. Defense isn’t the killing of 15,000 children. Defense isn’t the bombing of hospitals. Defense isn’t the starvation of a population. Defense isn’t the destruction of a civilization.

I’m not innocent. I wrote this on a computer made with minerals mined by children. I paid taxes that bought the bomb. I scrolled past the image of the dead girl begging for help. I went to sleep.

I’m in the grave too. I’m not standing above it. I’m not looking down. I’m in it. With the bodies. With the blood. With the silence.

This isn’t a confession that absolves. This is a confession that implicates. I’m complicit. You’re complicit. We’re all complicit. The only question is what we do with the complicity.

Over 25,000 children who’ve lost both parents. Over 10,000 children who’ve lost limbs. Every child in Gaza who heard the bomb. Who saw the body. Who smelled the blood. Who’ll never forget. The PTSD that’ll last a lifetime. The nightmares that’ll never end. The fear that’ll never go away.

The grave isn’t just the dead. It’s the living who wish they were. The grave isn’t just the bodies in the ground. It’s the bodies above it that can’t escape the ground.

We’re ALL buried in Gaza. Not metaphorically. Actually. Our money is in the bomb. Our silence is in the cover. Our complicity is in the grave.

The grave is still open. The bodies are still falling. The earth is still moving.

And we’re all there. With the mothers. With the children. With the dead.

The question isn’t whether we’re complicit. We are. The question is whether we’ll stay in the grave or climb out.

The question is whether we’ll keep scrolling past the dead child or stop. Look. And refuse to let another child die while we watch.

The mass grave has your name on it too.

What’re you going to do about it?

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