#Forcibly_Involved

Hashtag – forcibly involved

Once upon a time / she was / they were and are gone

The format of words opening every naming of a child / slaughtered since October 7, 2023

Hashtag – forcibly involved

A mixture of nations – Jews, Palestinians, Druze, Lebanese.

Children. Were and now they are not.

Ever since I was born a ghost has hovered above me

Not really…

But the half-silenced story of a 2-year-old, daughter of the person who took me in as a adoptive grandfather (my grandfather passed away before I was born), her name, her being, and the cruel circumstances of her death in the swamp where her partisan parents hid during another Nazi raid of the forest where they stayed.

A baby girl

Was and is no more

Without a name.

Thus – her blurring out of unbearable pain was the catalyst of the Forcibly Involved project and its former versions.

Almost immediately after October 7, 2023 I began looking for the real victims of the bloodshed.

The children.

38 Israeli children

12 Druze children

202 Lebanese children

18,044 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip

210 Palestinian children in the West Bank

Data. Numbers that contain tens of thousands of potential lives and choices, potentials that were and are gone.

But these children are not just numbers.

They had a name.

Thus, obsessively and sweepingly I wished to re-humanize the victims of de-humanization and cruelty. Even if I could not revive them.

Every day

Names, the pictures of their smiles that froze for all eternity, the place of their death, the date. A clean formulation. Clinical. Cruel.

Naya, Reem, Mohammad, Ahmad, Lior, Yahel, Bana, Banan.

Israeli proper and family names, Palestinian proper names, the father’s name, the grandfather’s name and the usual family name.

Many of them are formulated wrongly.

It seemed hopeless.

The wall of denial, as the cracks expand, tends to close ranks. Throw out, defend oneself.

Where do you get this?

Can the Palestinians be trusted?

It’s fake

It’s exaggerated

It’s impossible

You really believe an Israeli sniper would shoot a child?

And more

And more

At the same time, I realized that Forcibly involved can potentially cross this fortified wall of denial and I held on to this intention, one step at a time.

And indeed

Testimonies leaked

The world saw

The documented horrors

And reaction to children’s pictures underwent a process, from alienation to attack, to cursing, doubting, being startled, understanding, sensing pain, sorrow… perhaps compassion.

Proof – the children’s pictures protest has accelerated these days and shows more than anything else that the time has come.

Let these pictures be a wake-up call from despair, mourning and denial. Let the pain of their no-longer-being be the spark that awakens the cry to end this bloodshed and find a political solution

Until then we (The Daily File team) continue to document, give them a name and a face

Forcibly Involved

They were here, and not anymore

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Forgetting / Orit Putchnik

Unknowingly we shut our eyes

And did not want to hear the screams.

Mourning and grief gave the signal.

Fear, anger gave the power,

To the body making a fist – to strike,

To the heart that is as stone – to forget.

Forget the horror of hungry children

Forget the cry of the displaced

Calling schoolchildren – enemies

Detesting babies still in their mother’s womb

Being glad that the dead multiply

And learn nothing, just drown in blood.

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Adi Ronen Argov is the Editor-in-chief of the Daily File project.