On the day I was born, Israeli military bulldozers cleared nine areas of Palestinian farmland in the Gaza strip. Grape vines, eggplants, guavas and olive trees were uprooted, and a further two homes housing twelve people were demolished. The day is an insignificant event in Palestine’s history, and I doubt its news even travels to my parents in Melbourne. They stand joyfully in a hospital, celebrating the birth of their sixth child.

I am five days old. Fifteen Palestinians are arrested after a raid in the Gaza strip. Their ages range from seventeen to forty-five, and among them are students, agricultural engineers, tailors, a university lecturer and an accountant.

By the end of my first week, five Palestinians were killed, thirty-nine homes destroyed, and eighteen areas of agricultural land bulldozed. It is just another week.

I often wonder what it means to be Palestinian in a world where we are denied the right to return. It is a life condemned to being raised on stories.

Like the story of my great grandmother fleeing her home during the 1948 Nakba. With her house key in hand and false teeth waiting by her bedside, she fled north, unaware that it was the last time she would step foot in her home and her country again.

And the story of Beita, a Palestinian village whose history is blemished by the death of a Jewish girl named Tirza Porat. Porat was only fifteen years old when she was killed while hiking through the region. While raging politicians cried for the village to be “wiped off the face of the earth”, the truth about her death remained hidden in an autopsy report until after the public funeral and media storm. The report revealed that Porat’s true murderer, an Israeli soldier named Aldubi, had accidentally shot her in the back of the head as he fired bullets randomly into a crowd of villagers.

Despite Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir affirming that “God will avenge her blood”, Aldubi walked free. Never mind that he had also killed two Palestinian men during his shooting frenzy and that none of the villagers had even possessed guns. Never mind that the IDF investigation revealed several Palestinian villagers had indeed provided medical care to the injured teenagers rather than tried to harm them. This did not fit the public impression of the barbaric murderers that inhabited Beita, and thus the collective punishment ensued. Thirty houses were destroyed, and nearby olive trees and an almond grove were uprooted.

As news poured in during May of 2021 of the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank and the fifty new homes encroaching on Beita, I couldn’t help but feel the seams of old wounds ripping open again. In another move backed by the state military, Palestinians would be cut off from their olive groves and pushed further and further into nothingness. The resulting protests saw nine Palestinians killed at the hands of Israeli soldiers; this brutality can be summarised in a quote from the New York Times following Tirza Porat’s death in 1988. It reads, ”Beita is different now because the people are revengeful. Now we know how the Israelis treat Palestinians, the way a wild animal treats a victim.”

I am the child of refugees who are the children of refugees. How many more generations of Palestinian refugees will be able to recite the number of homes that were demolished and acres of farmland cleared on the day they were born until there is nothing left? How much time must pass until the world will deeply condemn these atrocities with the comfort of knowing their ancestors were responsible and not them?

The world watched in disbelief as the death toll in Gaza surpassed 46,000, their blood painting the walls of schools, hospitals, and relief shelters. While waves of bewilderment shudder across the world, we know that these horrors are not unprecedented.

Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco investigates the brutal 1956 massacre in Khan Younis, a region so beset with the hostility of war and blockade that the bloodbath now occupies but a footnote in Palestine’s history. In it, he speaks to a man who was just nine years old when he witnessed his uncle lined up, shot and killed. “It left a wound in my heart that can never heal,” he said. “I’m telling you a story and I am almost crying. They planted hatred in our hearts.”

The recent genocide in Gaza has planted hatred in the hearts of its survivors and onlookers, a painful wound so immense that it will continue to throb generations on. Plant hatred in our hearts and watch as hope and resilience grow in its place. Long after the rubble has settled and the refugees have dispersed across the world, we will share our stories.

In the years to come, I will tell my children the stories of today. I will tell them of the 167 journalists in Gaza who were murdered in cold blood. I will tell them of the doctors who stood firmly by their patients’ sides as hospitals crumbled around them. Of the millions of people across the world who took to the streets condemning Israel’s slaughter of civilians. Of the millions of others who stayed silent.

As I sift through UN records of the Israeli human rights violations that mark my birthday, I am reminded just how cyclical the events in Palestine are. Whether publicised or not, Palestinians have constantly endured the brutality of the Israeli occupation. Let the recent events in Gaza stand as a reminder that even after seventy-six years, the Palestinian people are still here. We share our stories like the olive tree holding firm to its roots. We remember our villages’ names long after they are wiped clean from your maps. Our joy, sadness, and fury paint an image that cannot be erased. This is what it means to be Palestinian; we are here, we tell our stories, and as long as that is true, there is hope.