Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed…There would be no oppressed had there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation. Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons…
– Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
This week marks one year of Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, violence the Israeli regime has been emboldened to escalate in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. We are reflecting on this moment with a new visual and a re-release of the We Had Dreams platform.
Using October 7 as a pretext, Israeli officials have targeted the Palestinian people as a whole, unleashing a relentless assault on the essential foundations of their life in Gaza. In this visual, we look at various concepts scholars have developed to capture the all-encompassing destructiveness of genocide.
From “domicide,” which refers to the systemic destruction of homes, to “scholasticide,” highlighting the deliberate dismantling of education, Israel’s actions have rendered the entirety of the Gaza Strip uninhabitable. A recent report by UNRWA and a group of academics stated that if the genocide continues, it will “set children and young people’s education back by up to five years and risks creating a lost generation of permanently traumatized Palestinian youth.”
The many “cides” encapsulated in this visual capture the multifaceted nature of this genocide, which will impact Palestinians for generations.