This is not a story update. Not today. Today I am aware that this may only reach the select group of people that follow this story, so if you respect me as a writer, I am begging you to not be silent. To start conversations, to boost the stories coming out of Gaza and the West Bank, to make sure the world never forgets.
I watch with a heavy heart the stories of Palestinians. We are witnessing in real time one of the biggest atrocities, beyond words, beyond anything I could have ever imagined witnessing during my lifetime.
It sickens me that we live in a world so desensitized to pain and suffering, to death and bloodshed, that it is only in the face of unimaginable horror that we pay attention to a literal genocide. That capitalism, individualism and privilege have created a world where, in the wake of everything happening in Gaza, people are advocating you turn off social media for your own mental health and well being. For the sake of productivity and money and comfort, turn a blind eye to those that can't.
My brain can't help but remind me of the revolutionary, uprising songs I was raised with, the pain of my own ancestors, the words "Freedom or Death" permanently etched in my mind. I think about the April Uprisings, the bloodiest point in Bulgaria's history and how it was its extremity that caught the West's attention, that ultimately helped us earn our freedom.
I pray what we are witnessing is Palestine's April Uprising. That this is the lowest low, that you can build up from. That the media attention Palestinians and their stories are generating, the millions of people talking, will make sure that all this pain and destruction is put to a stop. Sure, I don't have much faith in politicians, but I refuse to give up on humanity. Not now.
And if the worst comes to, the least we can do is remember. Remember the people of Gaza, remember their stories, remember their pain, remember their names. Grieve their loss, their families, their lives, their futures, their home. Feel their pain, carry it and never allow the world to forget. Don't look away.
To the people of Palestine: Bulgarians stand with you. Our ancestors cry with yours in pain and rage. I pray this is not a goodbye.
Either way, there are only to ways ahead: Freedom or Death.
Free Palestine!
"И тази епоха на кръв и на плам / And this age of blood and of flames,
през всички епохи и през вековете / through all ages, through all eons,
ужасна и мрачна в хаоса ще свети, / awful and dark in the chaos will shine,
растеща всечасно в по-голем размер / always growing in size
и ще фърля вечно като облак чер / and will throw forever like a cloud of tar
въз нашта исторйя една сянка тайна / in our history a secret shadow
от кръв и позори и слава безкрайна. / Of blood and heartache and glory unending."
Abstract from 1876, Ivan Vazov