“Don’t scroll, please help me save my family.”
These are just two of the videos on my TikTok. In the mess of “Get Ready With Me” videos, fan-made edits of whatever is trending, there is a sliver of reality, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On my TikTok, I don’t post anything. No one has seen my account, and only people in my real life know that it’s me. I exist as a username and profile picture that occasionally reposts things I deem comedic or something more people should see. Except for those two people, whose lives I could save.
Social media is effective during a genocide, yet it’s so normalized to scroll away.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas, a Palestinian armed group, attacked Israel, killing about 1200 people and taking over 250 hostages. It was an act of protest, highlighting the longstanding historical tensions. In response, Israel launched a military offence through airstrikes and ground invasions. Now in December 2024, the death toll of Palestinians is over 45,000.
In the summer of 2024, the city of Rafah in Gaza was being invaded. The videos of struggling families were on my “For You Page” on TikTok. I, a broke university student, could only watch, repost, and share every video I saw. It sucked. I could only think, “I’m watching someone’s entire homeland crumble, and I can only send a heart and share the stories to help. What is this? What am I doing?” I spent moments overwhelmed by the amount of destruction, crying for people I didn’t know.
My breaking moment was when those two people followed me. I cried for hours in a room that I took for granted, under sheets on a bed that wasn’t covered in rubble. Two people who knew nothing about me followed me because I had reposted their video.
Unveiling Counter-Narratives: The Impact of Citizen Journalism via Social Media on the Israel-Palestine Conflict is a research paper published in September 2024 by three university students in Malaysia. The research discusses how using social media for things like vlogging can break propaganda.
Bisan Owda is twenty-seven years old. She vlogs her life. She isn’t making “Hot Girl Walk” videos or showing what she bought. She’s sharing how she sleeps in a tent, how there is no food, how her skin has lesions but she has no access to medicine, and in the background all you can hear are jets in the sky, constantly fueling fear.
In one video, Bisan shows that the encampment has brought books for people to read. In that video, Bisan finds her favourite book from her childhood, Anne of Green Gables. She hugs the book and smiles, and you remember she’s twenty-seven. I didn’t read Anne of Green Gables; I grew up watching re-enactments of Hindu gods and hearing fables from my mother. She told me how people would get their tongues cut off as an act of religious oppression, but it never worked since the people always found a way. In some ways, if I don’t watch a video like Bisan’s, it feels like I’m virtually cutting off the tongues of desperate voices.
Motaz Aziza is twenty-five, a photojournalist who evacuated Gaza in January 2024. In a channel he created on Instagram, he said, “I miss my friends.” Or “Again. The feel[ing] of want[ing] to disappear.” When I miss my friends, I can call or send a text message; Motaz can’t even find them under demolished buildings. I can disappear under my blanket and forget the world exists. I don’t think Motaz can forget; he’s seen too much.
On May 27, 2023, I opened Instagram. The first thing I see is a video from Rafah. Originally posted by Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa, a warzone photographer, it showed people frantically running in response to an airstrike. The post was later taken down due to Instagram guidelines. In the video, the night is lit by raging fires of demolished buildings as the camera pans. A father wails as he holds the body of his beheaded toddler in his arms. Suddenly nothing matters. I stare at the video as it replays. There are no words I could say that would be new or different.
I tell myself that my anger is justified. I believe in simple logic: if terrible things are happening to a human, I as a human can feel for them. It makes sense, but why aren’t others feeling this way? Why do my emotions feel like heavy stones pulling me down in a water fountain for everyone to watch?
Palestinian resistance isn’t limited to vocal activism. Symbols like the keffiyeh, olive branch, Handala, and watermelons show support for Palestine without uttering a word. The keffiyeh is a square cotton headdress worn by both men and women in the Middle East. It has a unique black-and-white checkered pattern that can be worn draped over the shoulders and around the head, neck, or waist.
I stand on a crowded bus, and in front of me is a person with a keffiyeh draped over their shoulders. There’s over 10,800 km between Victoria and Gaza, and a scarf can stand in solidarity taller than trees.
Another person has a watermelon slice hanging off their backpack. When cut open, the watermelon shares the same colours as the Palestinian flag: red, green, black, and white. The watermelon emoji now stands as a symbol across social media used to show support without getting censored.
Jewish Voice for Peace, a progressive anti-Zionist group in the United States, amplified the watermelon imagery in New York City protests in December 2023. Shawn Escarciga, the artist behind the alliance’s design, says, “You might be able to smash a watermelon. You might be able to destroy a fruit, but the seed is a little harder to crush.”
I often think about the Hadids when it comes to people who are vocal about Palestine. Supermodels Bella and Gigi Hadid, two Palestinian sisters, have openly spoken about their heritage and how their father, Mohamed Hadid, survived the Nakba in 1948. The “Nakba,” meaning catastrophe in Arabic, refers to May 15, 1948, the day Palestinian Arabs were displaced from their homes and victims of ethnic cleansing.
On the REP: The Story About The Stories We Tell podcast, Bella Hadid shares how her loud support has affected her life. “I had so many companies that stopped working with me,” and “I have friends that completely dropped me.”
In an interview with Middle East Eye, Alana Hadid, Mohamed’s second eldest daughter, shares her grandmother’s last moments. “My grandmother had Alzheimer’s dementia before she passed. She just wanted to go home, and I think that’s horrible. I know so many people who’ve told me stories of their parents and grandparents who have had bags packed at their door. [Waiting] for the day they get to go home.”
My grandmother died in June 2020. The pain of not being able to say goodbye now feels reassuring as she died in her birthplace of India. I feel relief knowing she had familiarity around her, surrounded by her children and in the home she provided for them.
It feels like we are fighting the same battle of life as everyone else but with our tongues cut off. That we need to find creative ways to be seen, to be heard, to be anything at all. If I don’t stand out, I’m not doing it right, failing all women before me and all the people who died because they looked like me. Maybe that’s why I scroll, to see if anyone else has their tongue cut off in the trenches, scouring for someone who knows how it hurts.When encountering a post about Palestine, there are two choices: swipe away or acknowledge it. Both have their outcomes; either way, the strength of human connection and social media allows resistance to travel across oceans to places like Victoria, B.C., where communities can be built through shared stories, artistic collaborations, and cultural exchanges that celebrate resilience and solidarity.