The Reality of the Genocide: A Message from Gaza | Mohammad AlTurk

## Life in Gaza, loss, and daily survival What emerges across the exchange is not only a catalogue of destruction but the intimate texture of a life reconfigured by sustained violence. The speakers describe Gaza as a place where normal rhythms—university lectures, family meals, casual walks—have been replaced by routines of survival. Education continues as a digital shadow: degree certificates issued as PDF files, classrooms reduced to memories. Young graduates, freelance translators, shopkeepers and students persist in trying to live dignified lives even as the infrastructure of daily existence crumbles around them. Loss in Gaza is both immediate and cumulative. Friends who disappeared into the unknown, classmates who followed advised evacuation routes only to be killed in so-called safe zones, professors assassinated—these are not abstract casualty figures but the people who filled everyday social networks. The conversation repeatedly stresses the psychological toll of constant displacement: tents become temporary homes, streets become lines for meagre loaves of bread, children rummage through trash and cardboard becomes fuel for cooking. Survival, in this telling, is improvisational: makeshift cookstoves, melting plastic into crude fuel, queuing for bread sold at nominal prices. These adaptations are practical acts of resistance to hunger, cold, and indignity. The narratives from Gaza make clear that death statistics alone cannot convey the deeper erosion of social life: neighborhoods that once held memories and property now exist as points on a map of loss. Even when a ceasefire is declared, people return to find their schools, clinics and homes demolished beyond recognition. The consequence is a displaced population whose attachment to place is severed not just by physical destruction but by the erasure of the mundane anchors—workplaces, libraries, professors’ faces—that make a community legible to itself. ## Destruction of homes and Israeli behavior One of the most vivid themes in the exchange is the methodical nature of the physical dismantling of Gaza. Beyond explosive strikes from the air, observers describe the use of heavy engineering and bulldozers to raze entire residential blocks. The testimonies put a fine point on what “demolition” means in practice: D9 military bulldozers driving through neighborhoods, engineering units embedding explosives in apartment buildings, and footage of those acts treated as trophies by perpetrators. The technique is significant because it signals an intent not merely to strike targets but to erase the civilian fabric that sustains a population. The impact of such tactics is multi-layered. Physically, demolition produces homelessness on a scale that bombings alone would not achieve. Politically, it transforms return into a hollow promise: even if residents can come back, there may be nothing to return to. Emotionally, the systematic destruction of domestic spaces—homes, family archives, places of worship—inflicts a distinct kind of violence by severing ties to memory and identity. When speakers recount how buildings that once stood a year prior are now flattened, the testimony reads as an indictment of a strategy that treats civilian infrastructure as expendable. Equally worrying are the behavioral patterns described: checkpoints that divide territory, corridors that allow one-way movement but punish attempts to reverse direction, and a militarized logic that turns evacuation orders into traps. The description that people were instructed to move to “safe” zones only to be killed there highlights how civilian protection rhetoric can be used to mask or facilitate harm. These patterns complicate conventional notions of armed conflict by blurring the line between combat operations and policies that systematically degrade civilian life. ## Iran, resistance, and Sunni-Shia divide The conversation places regional dynamics at the heart of how the conflict is unfolding and how it might evolve. An important observation is the apparent recalibration of geopolitical balances after significant diplomatic and military developments. The interlocutor interprets the recent agreement involving regional actors as a setback for U.S. military primacy and a relative victory for Iran, arguing that a reduced American footprint undermines one of Israel’s core security backstops. This, in turn, is seen as potentially altering the calculus of deterrence and enabling local resistance movements to assert more leverage. Crucially, the discussion rejects simplistic sectarian framings of the conflict. The idea that Iran’s influence automatically translates into a Sunni-Shia binary is contested by the lived reality of alliances and solidarities that cross sectarian lines. Resistance, as described, is not monolithic or reducible to Tehran’s agenda; rather, it is portrayed as a mosaic of local actors responding to occupation and destruction. The narrative suggests that while external patronage matters—arms, political support, regional alignments—the primary drivers of popular resistance are immediate experiences of dispossession and violence. At the same time, the regionalization of the conflict raises the risk of dangerous spillover. Increased engagements in Lebanon and attacks across borders were cited as signs of an escalating theatre of conflict that could redraw alliances and provoke broader confrontations. The interlocutor reads the moment as one of shifting power dynamics, where U.S. strategic retrenchment could both empower indigenous resistance and complicate diplomatic efforts to secure long-term protections for civilians. ## Colonialism, Palestine, and world order The conversation situates the Gaza tragedy inside a much longer history of colonial extraction and settler-colonial state-building. Israel is described not merely as a contemporary geopolitical actor but as an outcome of colonial projects that relied heavily on external backing and ideological networks. The argument foregrounds how such foundations shape legal, political and military practices that persist today: occupation, displacement, and the consolidation of territory through violence are framed as continuations of colonial logics. This framing extends to the role of global institutions and great-power politics. Support from powerful states—military hardware, diplomatic shielding, media narratives—does not simply facilitate isolated military operations; it reinforces an international order where certain forms of dispossession are normalized or rendered legible as security measures. The interlocutor underscores the role of Western publics and political systems in enabling impunity: when lobby groups and media ecosystems shape discourse, they can foreclose accountability and limit the policy choices available to democratic societies. Presenting Palestine through a colonial lens also reframes the possibilities for justice. If the problem is structural and anchored in long-running patterns of dispossession, then remedies that only address immediate humanitarian needs will fall short. The conversation invites readers to consider deeper transformations: rethinking alliances, altering military supply chains, and confronting how narratives of legitimacy are manufactured on the global stage. ## Boycotts, pressure, and media power Across the discussion runs a sharp critique of narrative control—how media, lobby groups, and political elites mold what counts as truth about the conflict. The interlocutor points to a long-standing monopoly over discourse that has framed Israel’s actions in defensive terms while marginalizing Palestinian voices. That dynamic, it is argued, has real-world consequences: it shapes foreign aid flows, limits criminal accountability, and muffles international pressure. Yet the conversation also gestures to tools for change. Boycotts, divestment and sanctions are presented as mechanisms to shift the incentives that sustain the present

The Reality of the Genocide: A Message from Gaza | Mohammad AlTurk Mohammad AlTurk, a recent Gaza university graduate and freelance translator, joins to tell us all about life in Gaza after almost 3 years of Genocide against his friends and family. He describes his bombed university, lost friends, daily survival, the return to a fake ceasefire, and why he believes Zionism and outside support are the roots of the violence. He also speaks about rebuilding Gaza, media pressure, and why he thinks the world is starting to change. Links: Mohamad Al Turk: X: https://x.com/MohAlTurk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mohalturkgaza? igsh=Y2NoOTd3YjlteWFn Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Merch: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Donation: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Timestamps: 00: 00:00 Introduction and Gaza background 00:01:25 University bombed and studies continued online 00:04:48 Life in Gaza, loss, and daily survival 00:13:08 Death toll, ceasefire, and changing politics 00: 19:28 What the ceasefire really means 00:22:54 Destruction of homes and Israeli behavior 00:25:00 Gaza’s future and who is to blame 00:28:47 Iran, resistance, and Sunni-Shia divide 00:31:14 Two- state solution, Israel, and history 00:35:52 Colonialism, Palestine, and world order 00:40:31 Rebuilding Gaza and breaking propaganda 00:45:01 Boycotts, pressure, and media power 00:47:01 More Gaza stories and Zionism vs Judaism 00:54:48 Final hopes and how to follow Mohamad #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies, today with a very special guest. I've got with me Mohamed Al-Turk, a Palestinian, recent university graduate, and a citizen of Gaza City, who's joining us from Gaza City. Mohamed, welcome. #Mohammad AlTurk Thank you, Pascal, for having me. I'm very happy to be here. #Pascal I'm very glad that you can be here and that we can talk. Mohamed, just maybe before we start, can you very briefly show us around what your environment looks like? Because you're actually in a part of Gaza City, you told me, that is not that badly destroyed, where the war is not that visible. Can you show us what that looks like? #Mohammad AlTurk Yes, I can show you what things outside the window look like. -- 1 of 15 -- #Pascal And so this is a building that is in use at the moment, where you're in one of the structures that are still standing, and you also have a decent internet connection there, right? #Mohammad AlTurk Yes, a lot of buildings in the Strip, most of them are wiped out basically, but the ones that are damaged, yeah, they are inhabited. There are people living inside them. Yeah. #Pascal And how is the... So what happened to you? Can you describe that a little bit, and maybe also interlace that with your studies at the Islamic University of Gaza during the last two and a half years of the genocide? #Mohammad AlTurk What did you go through? Yes, so I was a university student. It was my second, third year actually, the first semester. And I used to go to university like all other students. And my professor, you might know him, he was Rifat Al-Araib, who was assassinated by Israel in December 2023. I actually used to sit in the front row seats close to him, so I would be paying attention. He was a lovely person, and he was assassinated. Two or three days into the genocide, Israel struck the university. It was bombed. And the library building was bombed. The building that I used to study and take my classes in was bombed. Several buildings were bombed. And I just never imagined that this thing would happen — a university being bombed. And it was bombed several times throughout the genocide. I went to it just to see it. I go to university by foot. It takes me 15 minutes to go there. And in January 2025, that's when the ceasefire went into effect, one day before Trump's inauguration. I went to see the university, and there was a camp for displaced people. There were a few buildings that were damaged, but they weren't destroyed completely. Now they are. Now, a year and a half later, everything is destroyed in the university. And I actually took a video of it. And I went back. So they resorted to online learning. I continued my studies in September 2024, and I started taking classes and semesters. That's how we do it. And in the end, I graduated two months ago. It's a bachelor's degree, and it was a PDF file. It's not a paper, it's not a physical paper or a degree. It's a PDF file. So I was glad that I graduated. It was a lovely university, lovely people, lovely professors. And yeah, that's how it was with my university. #Pascal -- 2 of 15 -- Well, congratulations, first and foremost, on graduating. And now you're a freelance translator. You studied, if I understood correctly, English language and graduated in that. What is life like now in Gaza after two and a half years? How is your family, and how are your friends? Did you lose people? #Mohammad AlTurk I lost people. At the beginning, that was in November 2023, I used to send SMS messages to my classmates, checking on them, saying, hey, are you okay? Some of them fled to the south, because in the beginning, Israel issued these evacuation orders in northern Gaza, telling everybody to leave. Now, we did not leave. We stayed in northern Gaza. Some people fled. And in November, they established this Netzarim corridor that split Gaza into two, northern Gaza and southern Gaza. So anyone could go from the north to the south, but you couldn't go from the south to the north. If you tried to do that, to return, you would be shot and killed. And that happened to some Palestinians. They tried to go home and they were killed. And so I used to send these SMS messages. Some of them got back to me, some of them did not. And I later discovered that some of those who did not get back to me were actually killed. There was this guy, his name is Ali. He fled to the south, to Khan Yunis, and he was killed there. He followed the instructions of the Israeli military. They told him it was a safe zone, and he fled there, and he was bombed and killed there. Others were killed as well, but that's the one who comes to my mind, because before the genocide, I had a kind of close relationship with him. He was one year older than me, but he attended some of the same classes as me, and we used to chat and talk, and it's very sad. #Pascal Of course. No, it's absolutely horrible. I mean, the videos that have come out of Gaza are honestly the worst thing that I've ever seen in my lifetime. Like the level of death and destruction, and the way also in which these bombings just blew up people in the middle of dense cities and so on. Where did you live? I mean, you and your family, how is everyday life unfolding? I also saw a video of yours where you're showing how people are running after water trucks. So basic necessities of life are, to this day, very much disrupted, aren't they? #Mohammad AlTurk They are. But let me tell you, let's go back a few years. So I was obviously born here and lived here all my life. I lived in the As-Sabra neighborhood in southern Gaza City. And in 2016, we moved to the Ar-Rimal neighborhood in western Gaza City. Two years later, in 2018, the building that we... it was an apartment, we lived in an apartment. The building that we used to live in was bombed and destroyed. And so we had to rent an apartment in another place in the same neighborhood. And so we have been renting this apartment since 2018. We used to own that apartment, which no longer -- 3 of 15 -- exists. So since 2018, the home was bombed and destroyed. Most people in Gaza live in tents. I experienced that myself when we fled to the south two weeks before the ceasefire, this current big ceasefire. You know, the Israeli forces were advancing in Gaza City, and you have the Israeli defense minister saying, "We're going to make Gaza City look like Rafah and Beit Hanun," meaning they're going to wipe them all out. It just doesn't exist anymore. And it was scary. So we fled there, and I experienced what it's like to live in a tent, and it is horrific. But the ceasefire was announced, and we got back to Gaza City. But when I see—never in my life would I have imagined what happened. You know, I was walking in the street to this place where I'm doing the interview with you, and there were people sitting on the sidewalk waiting for bread, because what happens is, bread arrives in a supermarket—like a van or a car carrying this bread—and they give the bread to the supermarket, and they start selling the bread for a symbolic price, for three shekels. And they are just waiting in line for the van to arrive. When I walk in Gaza City, for example, I see people looking through the trash—kids in dirty clothes carrying these bags on their backs, women and men, old people. And not only are they looking for something to eat, but they're also looking for cardboard. They use it for fire, for cooking, because Israel almost restricts cooking gas to Gaza. So people have to use wood and cardboard. And I have used cardboard myself before. What I do is, basically, I have a tin, like a metal tin. It looks like a cube, but it's empty on the inside. And so I put cardboard inside the tin, and I put a pot of food, like pasta or rice or whatever. And there's fire underneath the pot from the cardboard. So these people use that. These kids, some of them collect plastic bottles. There are people who sort of—I don't know what exactly it is—but they melt the plastic and turn it into some kind of artificial fuel. And I have passed one of those places. It's a place on the beach, and there's black smoke coming out of that place, and the people are just all in black in that place, trying to burn nylons and plastic bottles and stuff like that to kind of make fuel, I think. #Pascal I could just go on and on. So at the moment, everybody is in a sort of survival mode, trying to get by somehow. What's your estimate of how many people you think have perished in the genocide? Because the numbers we are getting are, I mean, anyone's guess at this moment, but it's definitely not the 60,000 or 70,000 that we're reading about. What is your guess from what you're seeing on the ground? What percentage do you think is not in Gaza anymore? #Mohammad AlTurk So the numbers from the Ministry of Health are false because these people have lost their ability to count. By the way, they only count the bodies that arrive at the hospital. So if a Palestinian was killed and his body was not brought to a hospital, he doesn't count. It's a genocide—hundreds of -- 4 of 15 -- thousands of people killed, injured, abducted, or went missing, which usually means they're either killed or abducted by the Israelis. It's an unimaginable number. I don't know what the exact number is, but these numbers that you see are false. The actual number is much higher than that. #Pascal What is happening now? I mean, as we speak today on June 19th, for the first time ever, I think the United States was forced to actually stop one of its military onslaughts, the one against Iran. And we're seeing how Lebanon is included in that agreement that was just made. And just before we started, you told me that you're feeling that things are starting to change. Can you maybe discuss that a bit? #Mohammad AlTurk Absolutely. I'm very glad and happy that this agreement came into effect. This is basically a defeat for the U.S., and it's a victory for Iran. U.S. military presence—I think, in my opinion, the most important part of the agreement is pulling U.S. forces out of the Middle East. Now, they didn't say that they're going to pull out of everything, but they will definitely reduce their military presence. And American military presence in the region primarily serves Israel. And I think you have seen that the U.S. used more interceptors to protect Israel than Israel used for itself. And so, when the U.S. military is reducing its presence, this doesn't make Isr