Collateral Damage.

Look at this. Really look. Forget the scripted speeches; forget what the leaders tell you to believe. Every brick, every crumbling shard of concrete is a name — and we crush them repeatedly, all in the name of “defense.” Of what, exactly? Look into the eyes of what’s left and tell me, with a whole heart, that all of this is worth something.

These dead — these children covered in dust and dried blood, these mothers holding the mangled bodies of their children — are not statistics. They’re not numbers thrown to the dogs by Gaza’s Ministry of Health. But if even the Americans accept those numbers, who can we deny them? Take them. Swallow every one of them, and tell me they don’t burn in your throat. Or maybe the number doesn’t matter. Perhaps you think this blood is part of some mathematical calculation, some damned “acceptable price.”

Since the start of this conflict, they say it’s 43,000 Palestinians. They say it is as though a disaster could be measured as significant. But look — on the other side, our soldiers, more than 900 since the beginning of October. And civilians — 1,200 of ours slaughtered in a single day. And then? More than 200 were taken like livestock to the slaughter, 101 of them still locked in some filthy basement, waiting for someone besides their mothers to remember they were alive. Is this what you call security?

Could you not talk to me about security? Please don’t hand me that polished lie, that illusion we repeat until it sticks like a parasite. Because you know, I know, that we’re not innocent. We march alongside them, accept it, and clap our hands while children watch this war with wide eyes. We say they’re “collateral damage,” as if that isn’t the worst justification a twisted mind could invent. And the leaders? Those men with their chests puffed out, voices that never falter? They only know how to peddle the same empty promises.

And do you feel safe? You, there, clenched in your complicit silence, do you think you’re defending something? They say it’s an “inevitable sacrifice.” So I ask you: inevitable for whom? What’s left that’s worth it, beyond this trail of bodies and this hunger for vengeance that will never be satisfied?

No. This isn’t war anymore. It’s a machine that tears flesh, that consumes lives, feeding on each one of us and our silence. Do you want to call it honor? Name it whatever you like. But look closely — look at what’s left of us, and answer: where are we going? Where do you plan to run when this machine has chewed up everything we are?

Maybe you’d rather close your eyes, clutching your small lie, believing this is a road to peace. But this soil has no peace—only the warped echo of a greatness that never existed.

Maybe it’s already too late. Perhaps the real collateral damage of this war is us.