59,000 Palestinians dead and 59 Israeli prisoners: When the homeland groans and the state cries out

In a paradox that almost sums up the Palestinian tragedy at every level, we witness how 59 captured soldiers from the occupation army "succeed" in mobilizing the political and media community, both domestically and internationally, while the martyrdom of more than 59,000 Palestinians is met with silence and inaction, both locally and in the "greater" Arab world in general.

Why does a country shake over a single prisoner, while a nation does not explode over an endless "chain" of horrific massacres and a ceaseless torrent of blood? The answer lies not only in the world's double "moral" standards, but also in the gap between two cultures. One of them crafts the individual into a "cause," carrying it to the world, even if it is shoddy, but finds buyers or is forced to buy it. The other internalizes the pain and is content with passive patience, which is synonymous with impotence, or silent mourning devoid of anger, without transforming this pain into public action, or even political or media pressure.

Is it a conflict between symbolic value and numerical accumulation? There, every prisoner is a "state issue," presented as a "national symbol," around which pressure campaigns are built, demonstrations are organized, institutions—media, military, academic, and others—are mobilized, and families and "opposition" parties rally around his cause. He is presented as a son to every household, a symbol whose image must be restored, and above all, his image must be restored, no matter the "price," even if it costs tens of thousands of women and children. They have turned every prisoner into a target for a pressure campaign, and every soldier, dead or imprisoned, into a tool to reshape "public opinion," as if he were the state itself, or at least its memory and future.

In contrast, the martyr is often reduced to a "number" in a statement, his identity gradually "erased" after a few days, as if we have lost the ability to grant martyrs their symbolic weight and their vibrant presence in our collective consciousness. Images of martyrs and scenes of genocide and killing no longer produce the same jolt, as if we have grown accustomed to death, a death that some of us experience, but which we all live.

We have begun to count our martyrs en masse, a thousand, then two thousand, then ten, then fifty, and the martyr counter does not stop. The martyrs are buried - if possible - and then the masses pass on in silence, and with much helplessness, without the blood being transformed into a pressing political action, or into a unifying position, at least among the political "elite", some of whose members live and enjoy themselves as if they are from another planet. The sight of death has not changed their daily routine at all. They still wake up as they are accustomed to, from the warmth of their comfortable beds, to their warm bath, as warm as the blood of the martyrs when it first flowed. They do not give up their morning coffee, but they could give up all of us, of us the homeland, some or most of it.

We have lost the ability to transform martyrdom into a cause, and martyrs into symbols - with rare exceptions - or at least into demands for the establishment of truth and justice. Blood no longer inflames emotions or moves the squares, not because we no longer grieve - grief has become our daily sustenance - but because confidence in the narrative, as well as in leadership, as well as the ability to influence, has dangerously eroded. We now have a crisis of mobilization, not of feelings. The difference is no longer in the amount of grief, but in the mechanisms for expressing it. Their funerals are suppressed, their history is erased, and their images are distorted, until we suffer from a dangerous fragmentation in the national narrative, and a longitudinal and transverse division that has turned some of us into a graveyard for the voices of others.

Since when were the great sacrifices in Palestine merely numbers? Since when did martyrs turn into statistics? Who dares strip a martyr of his meaning? Who turned our sacrifices into mere words passing by on a blood-red news ticker? We no longer demand what is ours, nor do we insist on it. Rather, we retreat to mourn what we have lost. Yes, we mourn, but we do not pressure. Yes, we wail, but we do not advance. The culture of truth has receded in the face of the culture of loss. It is as if we are a nation content with eulogies, eulogies without a strategy. There, every individual has a state that cries out for him, and here, the homeland groans, but its voice is barely heard.

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Since when were the great sacrifices in Palestine merely numbers? Since when did martyrs become statistics? Who dares strip a martyr of his meaning? Who turned our sacrifices into mere words flashing by on a blood-red news ticker?