Good morning. As the death toll has risen in Gaza since the beginning of the war, and amid ongoing debates about which figures are to be trusted, Palestinians have sometimes used variations of a phrase to describe their despair at how invisible their individual losses have been to the wider world: “we are not numbers”.
Because of repeated internet blackouts, power outages making communication difficult and the danger to journalists on the ground, the stories of specific people that might work against that perception have often been difficult to tell. But through accounts like the Guardian’s serialised Gaza diary by 35-year-old Palestinian Ziad – who has described everything from having his messages of condolence finished by his phone’s autocomplete function to trying to save the family goldfish – and the many vivid social media posts coming out of the territory, it has been possible to understand something of the plight experienced by those on the ground.
