The absent people of Gaza

A study published through the Harvard Dataverse uses location mapping and data to assert that nearly one-fifth of the population is missing from the Gaza Strip. Of Gaza’s 2023 population of 2.227 million, 377,000 people no longer appear. They are absent. Gaza’s population appears to be 1.85 million.

Those of us with Gazan friends have struggled to reconcile the scale of our friends’ losses with the official counts of Gaza’s death toll. For the numbers to make sense, our friends’ families would have to have been disproportionately targeted – or the number of deaths would have to be far greater than those counted by Gaza’s health ministry.

This measure of missing population makes a great deal more sense. It also lets us include those who have been forced to leave, taking on crippling debt for the sake of their children’s safety. How many, we do not know – but Harvard’s measure embraces their absence. Anyone who has been physically to places waking up from genocide knows that a pervasive, silent sense of absence precedes meaningful numbers. Spacial mapping captures that. Israel is emptying Gaza of its people.

Yet again, Alternative Jewish Voices implores our government to stand up and act on what we know of Israel’s illegal occupation and genocide. It is no excuse for our government to say that we cannot end the genocide alone. For two thousand years a Jewish adage has reminded us that we are obliged to undertake even the work we cannot complete.

It matters to state who we are and attach ourselves to morality, international humanitarian law and human dignity. It matters to every one of our battered souls that we do what can be done to stop the genocide taking place on our watch.

Alternative Jewish Voices