Israel’s assault on Gaza has shaken millions around the world into critical awareness and outrage.
For the Palestinian diaspora, grief is both deeply personal and collectively shared. Sarah Aziza reflects on the particular sorrow that diaspora Palestinians experience, compounded by a sense of guilt. While they are spared the direct violence their kin in Palestine face, they remain haunted by the sense of loss and displacement. The weight of exile, as Aziza explains, is a form of violence in itself, one that is carried across generations and geographies.
Exile means living in the shadow of a lost homeland, one that Palestinians can feel in their bones, even if it remains unseen. For many in the diaspora, the world they might have inhabited—one of a free and dignified Palestine—is a vision that never materialized. This sense of loss is intensified by the ongoing suffering of those still living in Palestine, particularly as Israel’s assault on Gaza continues.
In the diaspora, the grief of Palestinians is often internalized, existing in the quiet spaces where sorrow goes unspoken. Aziza highlights the difficult reality faced by many: “survival” is marked not by physical safety, but by an emotional and psychological toll of being alienated and marginalized. Diaspora Palestinians are frequently surrounded by a world that either ignores their pain or, worse, justifies it.
Too often, this pain is rendered invisible in the broader conversation about the Palestinian struggle. Aziza poignantly describes how too many in the diaspora are left to mourn in isolation, their grief silenced by a global consensus that erases their pain, while some even cheer the tragedies that befall them. This collective grief is a burden, one that calls for solidarity and acknowledgment. For Palestinians in the diaspora, every loss in Gaza is felt everywhere.
