Palestine Letter: To report from Palestine is to work with ongoing collective trauma

One of the reasons behind my decision was the idea, held by most Palestinians, that our story wasn’t heard enough. By trying to dig as deep as possible into the Palestinian past and present, reporting and writing on Palestine means being in close contact with the constant, self-renewing, overwhelming collective and individual trauma of Palestinians. Palestinians have developed collective forms of co-existing with trauma; special traditions that have given traumatic experiences, including death, a ritualistic form. Since October 7, the collective Palestinian trauma has become immeasurable, especially in Gaza, where people aren’t even given the opportunity to mourn properly and in accordance with their traditions. Dehumanization is possible when a people’s collective story, made up of millions of individual human stories, has been erased from the world’s memory and awareness.