Dear Khani,
I write as we approach a year of the unimaginable. Now, as then, I wake up wondering whether my friends and colleagues and their precious families in Gaza are alive. I refresh my news feed regularly, thinking of members of our extended community in Lebanon. I wait to hear pings on my phone from our team in Haifa, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Ramallah, short notes that they are “fine.” As if anyone could be fine with the world being destroyed around them.
I’m struck by the fact that no single day can capture the enduring ache of humanity in Israel-Palestine. October 7th was a painful punctuation mark. And we must remember that it was one among countless others shaped by power systems that dehumanize, devalue, segregate and oppress – every day, for decades and on repeat. One day cannot hold the weight of our collective grief, nor can it capture the injustice of all that came before and after.
There is no moment in which we do not mourn the more than 42,000 Palestinians killed by Israel’s relentless bombing and starvation of Gaza, the wiping out of entire families or the leveling of mosques, churches, schools, hospitals, farmland – a genocidal war with no end in sight. We grieve, every day, the more than 1,100 Israelis killed in Hamas’ attack last October and the hundreds taken hostage. And now, we grieve a growing number of Lebanese civilians killed by Israeli bombs. We hold in our hearts the Palestinian journalists reporting from Gaza at unbearable costs, the farmers in the West Bank who cannot harvest their olives because state-backed settlers rampage unchecked, the thousands of Palestinian prisoners being detained in inhumane conditions and the internally displaced: now over 1 million in Lebanon, over 70,000 in Israel and nearly the entire population of the Gaza Strip – 2.2 million people whose lives and livelihood the Israeli army is systematically erasing.
This time demands that we face certain truths.
We are where we are today because we – collectively – have not sufficiently addressed the conditions that led us to this moment: the unresolved trauma of the Nakba, decades of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people and land, the humiliation and indignity of apartheid and the crippling siege of Gaza. Underneath all of this, a system designed to ensure the dominance of one population over another, no matter the cost.
If we wish to see a reality in which Palestinians and Israelis can live in freedom, dignity and equality, we must do everything in our power to undo these conditions. And we must hold our political leaders and institutions to account – the ongoing arming, funding and diplomatic cover for the Israeli army and government is wholly indefensible.
At Just Vision, we believe that uncompromising journalism and compelling storytelling can provide crucial context, reveal hard truths, demand accountability and lead to cascades that eventually shift narratives in vital ways. Our team of Palestinian, Israeli, Lebanese and North and South Americans do that work not only because we believe in it, but because – with a genocide raging – we have no choice.
As we approach a year of heartache and outrage, we grieve, but we move forward. We take strength, too, from our community, people like you who hold dear the sanctity of human life and who stay steadfast in their struggle for a world free from oppression. May this coming year be kinder and more just.
With resolve,
Suhad Babaa President & Executive Director, Just Vision | 
