Captain Osama Shakman

By CaIn a life that has exceeded seventy years, I have never witnessed anything comparable to what is happening in Gaza today. Over seven decades, I have lived through wars and crises, observed conflicts from the air and from the ground, and read extensively about the tragedies of nations. Yet never have I seen human beings erased with such brutality, reduced to numbers updated coldly in news bulletins.

Gaza is no longer treated as a city inhabited by people, but as a case managed from afar. Its fate is debated in conferences, plans are drawn, councils and committees are proposed, while killing and siege continue as if they were secondary details. The discussion revolves around “administration” and “the day after,” not around saving lives that are being lost right now.

What is happening in Gaza today is not only the continuation of aggression; it is the continuation of stripping human beings of their value. We hear: the number of the dead, the number of the wounded, the number of destroyed homes. Names are not spoken. Faces are not seen. Children are mentioned as statistics, the sick as burdens, and survivors as temporary figures awaiting the next update.

In the latest developments, despite talk of ceasefires or upcoming political phases, violations continue, hospitals remain overwhelmed, and people still live among tents and rubble. The only real change is that the news itself has grown colder, as if the world has grown accustomed to the scene and learned to live with it.

From the experience of a long life, I say that the most dangerous aspect of this phase is not weapons alone, but the normalization of injustice. When killing becomes routine news and siege turns into a technical discussion, we enter a stage where moral witnessing is lost. The world sees, hears, and knows—then postpones.

Gaza does not need more headlines or more committees. It needs a stance that restores the value of human life and breaks this logic that turns entire peoples into numbers. History does not remember spreadsheets; it remembers who remained silent, who spoke out, and who left human beings alone beneath the rubble.