Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

A mother sits at the bedside of her baby girl, who appears more like a skeleton than a living human child.

A team of rescuers frantically dig through the rubble of a bombed home, hoping to find any sign of life from within. They find a cat meowing weakly. She is covered in dust, her human companions all dead, suffocated by the bricks and concrete of their home or burned slowly to death.

A father runs screaming down the street with his son in his arms. The boy’s face is almost unrecognizable.

A young man gingerly and with utmost reverence places a child’s head in a body bag with the rest of her remains.

The decomposing body of a boy with Down’s syndrome who was left to starve in his home are discovered by his family after they were forced at gunpoint to leave him with assurances from soldiers that he will be taken care of.

A six-year-old girl pleads for help on a cell phone from her family’s car. Her dead family all around her as she bleeds. A tank rolls in aiming at her. Her rescuers ambulance is bombed, and her remains are found with those of her family days later.

This is just a fraction of what I have seen, heard, or read so far, for almost a year.

Add to it scores of photos or videos of soldiers parading around in women’s lingerie. Women who may be dead or forced to flee for their lives.

Soldiers playing with or smashing children’s toys, school rooms, bicycles. Children who may be dead or forced to flee for their lives.

Soldiers dancing while they blow up shelters, hospitals, universities, mosques, churches, bakeries, water, and food supplies…

Add to it political leaders calling for complete annihilation. Civilians blockading aid trucks. And western leaders waving a scolding finger at anyone who dare speaks out. After all, they are “speaking” and we should not “interrupt” their election cycle, steal their “joy,” lest we get an even worse leader than them.

In my entire life, I have never seen this many children slaughtered, bombed, maimed, starved, or shot at for almost an entire year. A livestreamed genocide. The evidence is beyond clear, yet we are still being gaslit that it is self-defense. That this is about “security.” As during the war against Vietnam, we are told to disbelieve what we are witnessing because it is “tragic, but complicated.” We are shadow banned or suspended on social media for posting pictures or videos of the atrocities (one wonders how they would have censored the photo of “napalm girl”). Or told that we are bigots for wanting an immediate end to the slaughter of children, women, and men.

We are truly witnessing a nightmare. But one without even the glimmer of morning light to give us hope.

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