The Genocide in Gaza Did Not Start or End With Doxxing

As I write this piece, Israeli bullets pierce anything in Gaza which breathes life, which has yet to be obliterated, which signals Palestinian existence. As I write this piece, settlements in the West Bank fracture Palestinian lands. As I write this piece, Palestinian citizens of Israel are systemically discriminated against, a punishment for their people’s resilience.

As I write this piece, Palestine is still not free, and it currently suffocates as Israel bombards its cities, people, and life.

And yet, on this campus, silence resounds.

This silence is a testament to the indifference that enables Gaza’s suffocation. As news of no-hire lists and doxxing trucks quiets down, and University-wide statements are no longer a weekly occurrence, complacency consumes our campus culture. Plunged into aloofness, our community seems to have embraced a dangerous assumption: Just because doxxing has lightened, so, ostensibly, has the genocide.

Harrasment of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices has certainly underscored an institutional fear of growing consciousness and outrage around the present siege and decades-long settler-colonial project in Palestine. This is clear in the recent doxxing campaign launched against students at the law school, in response to their student government passing a resolution calling for divestment.

In general, though, the intensity of doxxing and harassment has declined since last semester, a trend many have taken to mean the genocide in Gaza has slowed, too. That couldn’t be more dangerous or wrong. While efforts at silencing and doxxing pro-Palestinian voices have relatively decreased, the atrocities on the ground are only increasing.

As of April 16, the death toll in Gaza has reached over 33,000 people, with over 8,000 missing, according to Palestinian health officials. In the West Bank, at least 465 people have been killed, with over 4,700 injured. Israel continues to attack and raid hospitals like Al-Shifa and Al-Amal, including a two-week siege on Al-Shifa last month that turned the complex into a “mass grave.” Israeli forces are reported to commit sexual violence against detained Palestinian women as self-proclaimed feminists around the world turn their heads away in silence. Currently, roughly 1.5 million Palestinians — over 70 percent of the population of Gaza — seek refuge in Rafah, a city subjected to intensifying attacks by Israel, as world leaders — including America’s very own — grant Israel total impunity.

In the unquestionable position of privilege we occupy at an institution like Harvard, silence is complicity in the face of mass death and starvation in Gaza. While we go about our daily lives on what this paper has deemed to be a “calmer” campus, Israeli forces bury the dead bodies of Palestinian civilians with bulldozers, continue to threaten a ground invasion of Rafah, and murder Palestinians seeking aid in the face of forced starvation.

We walk on the grounds of an institution which has yet to disclose and divest from its investments in companies that operate in settlements designated illegal by the United Nations. As of 2019, Harvard had also yet to divest from links to the Israeli military, which, for the past 75 years, has stripped an indigenous people of the lands that have rooted their ancestors, their homes, and their memories. In December, a Harvard Management Company official traveled to Israel to show support for the state and explore additional investment opportunities. Just last week, the Harvard Undergraduate Association indefinitely postponed a vote on a student referendum calling for divestment from financial interests in Israel’s occupation.

To assume both a physical and moral distance from destruction directly linked to our institution is to be willfully ignorant.

To those at Harvard who have grown desensitized: How much longer will you ignore the genocide of a people whose crime is its existence? How much longer will you choose to ignore the moral responsibility intrinsic to living in the United States, a state which promises Israel nearly $4 billion in aid every year?

How much longer will you remain silent about violence and occupation bankrolled by our very institution?

No matter how hard we try to claim a position of ignorance — of innocence — our silence speaks volumes to the world’s complicity as Israel decimates the once-vibrant and lively lands of Gaza. The occupation and bombardment of Palestine is unfolding before our eyes; the genocide will not cease once the trucks stop driving around campus. It did not stop with the doxxing, just as it did not start with the doxxing.

We owe it to Palestinians to continue speaking up, to continue protesting, to continue calling for a permanent ceasefire. We owe it to Palestinians to remain strong in our solidarity until Palestinian liberation transcends chants to become reality.

Dalal M. Hassane ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Leverett House and is an organizer with the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee.