Naming the dead

US President Joe Biden claims doubt about the number of Palestinians reported killed even as Israeli bombing intensifies to barbaric proportions The Palestinian Health Ministry responded by releasing names ages gender and ID numbers of 6747 people who had been killedmdashincluding 2665 childrenThe act of naming is an epic stand in the face of namecalling Zionists have called Palestinians animals rabid dogs people of darknessmdasha dehumanising name calling that is a call for exterminationThe act of naming is a painful assertion of dignity and humanity in the face of inhumanity and callousness We have known some as names on social media showing us the reality of Palestinian lives and deaths We have woken up to hear artists we followedmdashHeba Zagout Heba Kamal Abu Nadamdashhave died We have learned the name of the AlJazeera journalist who received the news of his familyrsquos death in a bombing just after a live broadcastmdashWael Al Dahdouhmdashand we have wept with his colleague who then reported this fact on television Because we have known the names of some we have witnessed the anguish of those whose names we do not knowmdashthe doctors who discovered their kin among the dead brought into their hospital the children who have lost entire familiesmdashnot as the pornography of violence but with the unbearable pain of witnessing a human tragedy and the anger of witnessing political injustice We have seen the names on those accounts fall silent one by one then all at once as Israel cut off the internet preceding even more horrific attacksThis act of naming is deeply political Unlike the ldquohuman interest storyrdquo where a person is divorced from context and their story told as a ldquouniversalrdquo human experience this naming insists that we recognise the context these people have lived and died in their identity as people and their identity as a people That we acknowledge political and emotional truths as one It demands that we remember our humanity and with it the capacity to acknowledge the humanity of others as a human act and a political act It resists and demands a reversal of the gaze that determines truths which enable violence It demands that we name that gaze for what it is racism power prejudiceAlso read Orthodox bowler unorthodox manIt demands we name the gaze which made Meta add terrorist to all user bios on Instagram ldquoA glitch in the algorithmrdquo they called it like others have called genocide the right to selfdefence A Freudian glitch thenmdashbut whose Eve Cohen an Israeli makeup influencer posted a video blackening her teeth and powdering her face mocking Palestinians affected by bombing as fakes No technical glitch has been visited on such posts But the account Eye on Palestine was taken down and by the way at this moment cannot be seen from Canada A Freudian coincidence of the free world perhapsAs one journalist emphasised who are the countries that cast doubt on the figure of the Palestinian dead The US UK and Israelcountries that want to downplay numbers to pretend they are not party to a genocide in order to retain moral and political centrality The naming of the dead in this war names the injustices at the heart of the world order and asserts the need for a global liberation from this continuous colonisationParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom