If Palestinians have been denied one thing over the past week by mainstream American media, it's this: their humanity.
As Israel continues its intense bombing of Gaza, one of the most densely populated and impoverished places on earth, the numbers of those injured and killed continue to grow, the majority of which have been civilian.
And as those numbers have grown, Palestinians have been both passively dehumanized by having such suffering buried deep within articles on the conflict, or actively dehumanized by referring to them collectively as "human shields" or as nameless statistics.
But they are not human shields. They are humans. They are not statistics, they are mostly just regular people trying to survive, people unconnected to Hamas, which continues to fire rockets into Israel.
If we are to generate the empathy needed to demand an end to this madness, then we must cut through our societal bigotry which causes us to value Palestinian lives less than those of others.
And so I simply present four voices. Three people living in Gaza, and one covering it based in the West Bank. All of them in pain, and calling out to the world.
There are so many more like them.
Mohammed Suliman
Raised in Gaza; a non-white Mohametan, in need of enlightenment; the uncivilised, barbaric, backward and inferior Other. LSE student; a future walking lie.
Gaza City, Palestine
msuliman.wordpress.com
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Mohammed Omer
Award winning journalist. These are my personal views. Always in search of features, have any talk to me http://bit.ly/...
Gaza-New York-Amsterdam · rafahtoday.org
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Rania Zabaneh
Journalist, @AJEnglish producer in the WB. Born under occupation, living under apartheid, dreaming of a better future for my son. Tweeting in PERSONAL capacity.
occupied Palestine
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Omar Ghraieb
about.me/omar_ghraieb ~RTs ≠ endorsements! http://www.linkedin.com/...
Palestine
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David Harris-Gershon is author of the memoir What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, recently published by Oneworld Publications.