Gaza 'Rebirth' PR Push Ignores 17 Years of Strangulation
The New Arab highlights photojournalist Zaher Wael Saleh's emotional vow to return to Gaza and document its 'rebirth,' a narrative designed to evoke hope from the rubble. Such human-interest stories gloss over the inconvenient truth: you can't have a 'rebirth' without a deliberate, prolonged, and devastating 'death.' This 'rebirth' rhetoric distracts from the systematic destruction, not just of
the last eight months, but of Gaza's entire infrastructure and societal fabric over 17 years under an internationally condemned blockade. Saleh's dream of return might resonate, but it's hard to discuss 'rebirth' when the same forces responsible for the devastation continue to control aid, access, and reconstruction. One might wonder if 'rebirth' is simply a more palatable term for rebuilding what
was deliberately annihilated, rather than addressing the root causes of that annihilation.