The poets of the world often capture realities which are unseen by others. For instance-First Nations poet Evelyn Araluen – who writes in her recent poetry collection:

“You will never be who you were before Gaza”

“In Gaza girls bleed on tent scraps sliced by bunker busters”

“Six days and 75 years into the genocide a library in Gaza writing to a sister library in Barcelona – we don’t know if we’ll be able to keep in contact from now on, so please tell the following generations about us.

Source: Lines from The Rot by Evelyn Araluen (QUP 2025).

The data is, of course, as compelling as the poetry.

About 70,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of Israel’s military assault on 7 October 2023. The vast majority of the victims were killed in the Gaza Strip. These included about 18,000 children and nearly 12,000 women. The number of wounded is around 170,000. At the same time Gaza’s health system has been destroyed.

These figures come from Palestinian sources but are confirmed by many other sources.

In the West Bank, escalating Israeli military operations and settler violence have killed more than 1000 Palestinians and injured 9000 others.

The scale of displacement has been equally devastating. Since the beginning of the war, nearly two million Palestinians have been forced from their homes in Gaza, out of a pre-war population of about 2.2 million. An estimated 100,000 people have fled the enclave entirely, while repeated internal displacement has become the norm for most families.

As a result, Gaza’s population has shrunk dramatically. It is estimated that the population of the Gaza Strip has fallen by 10.6 per cent, or approximately 254,000 people, over the past two years — an unprecedented demographic decline caused by killings, displacement, and deteriorating living conditions.

To their credit many Israelis recognise the reality.

For instance, the Israeli human rights organization Physicians for Human Rights (PHRI) has reviewed witness statements, official records and other evidence, thereby documenting 98 deaths since the start of the war. More than two-thirds of the deceased came from Gaza, according to PHRI, with the others hailing from the West Bank. The organization says that 52 prisoners died in military camps, more than half of them in Sde Teiman.

One thing is certain about this however – you will read less about it in the Australian media than you will about the alleged sins of Prime Minister Albanese.