Images of Gaza's murdered bear witness to global injustice

I see a young man embracing a huge white mass. You immediately recognise that it is a shroud that covers an entire family. The young man knows that this is the last farewell, so he tries to prolong it as long as possible.

He stretches his body across the white mass in an embrace that human imagination cannot accommodate. The dead, no longer feeling pain or fear, will eventually be buried, perhaps in another mass grave, but the embraced body will remain hanging in the air.

I see the bloody face of a child. The child seems to be staring into nothingness. There is no corpse here. The crime is etched into the bloodlines and the scars that fill the face.

The narrative conveyed by the face needs no further proof. The expressions themselves serve as proof, just as they form an irrefutable argument against the misery of the world.

Like the body that will remain hanging in the air after the shroud is gone, these expressions will remain in the air after it is all over.

What this face and hundreds of similar faces express is not just the horror of war or the shock of murder, but it says something about the world itself in this dark moment: There is no human dignity on this earth.

The question is no longer who did what to whom and who started it all. The entire historical narrative becomes useless. The face speaks of a much deeper failure, and the paradox of the expressions is that they look directly into the future, without giving much regard to specific dates.

I see a little boy holding his little sister's hand. They are the only survivors after the killing of all their family members. Being an orphan is not everything the photo tells. The photo tells the nakedness first and last.

This nakedness is also an irrefutable testimony, and when everything is over, when the war is over, whether the body count has multiplied or not, this nakedness will also remain hanging in the air. This nakedness never dies. It is the nakedness after death, after the ruin.

Let's say it is Palestine, which has been naked for decades. Let's say it is the abandoned Palestinian. Let's say it is the violated and murdered childhood. Say what you want. But the photo says more.

It is a testimony to the nakedness of the world. And these two naked children in the middle of the ruins of Gaza are an undeniable testimony to the absolute emptiness that lingers like an unpleasant smell on the body and conscience of the world.

I see a man holding his dead infant child. The body is a single mass. This scene could have happened any day or night. But the child does not cry and does not laugh. The child is a lifeless mass.

As the father hugs him in this ordinary way, as if it were just another ordinary day, it is as if he is denying the death of the child, as if he is preparing to put him in bed. This little body will also be buried. But the hands that hold him will continue to hug a body hanging in the air.

The child is gone, just like thousands of other children. But his place in the embrace will not leave. The photo may be a testament to the futility of the world, but in its utter silence, it is more. It is a thunderous cry against the injustice of the world.

This cry will continue even when everything else ends.