Once the slaughter is over, and it has to be over, there is an expectation that Palestinians should move on regardless of the lives lost, of the limbs lost, of the loved ones lost. There is an expectation that parents will walk the earth with the shadow of their killed children and do nothing about it. The children who are orphaned will hold onto the memory of their parents but not to the anger over how they were killed.

There is an expectation that a nation will be able to move on from the reality of parents carrying their children’s remains in plastic bags, of families buried under the rubble or in the sand they found shelter in after everything else was destroyed. That we will be able to move on as a nation from the images of burning children, of starving infants, of the impact that bombs left behind, on the lives of many Palestinians, on their scarred bodies, in their hearts and minds, of the impact that a single bullet lodged in the child’s head or heart has over an entire family forever.

We said long ago, we made a choice, to seek justice not vengeance, but we cannot be prevented from seeking either. We cannot continue to be denied our right to life, to liberty, to dignity. We cannot be denied recourse and reparation.

No one has a rightful claim to supremacy, to exceptionalism, to domination, to oppression, no one.