we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
In his successful electoral campaign, the mayor-elect of New York City was not afraid to talk about what is really happening in Palestine.
Screenshot from an Instagram post on Zohran Mamdani’s official account, on the day after he was elected mayor of New York City
Before I had heard of Zohran Mamdani, I had little interest in politics or elections, not in America and certainly not in Israel, where the entire society seems to either want us dead or gone.
Between studying and working (I am in my final year of medical school) and amid constant airstrikes and displacement, I have had no time and limited access to news or politics. My family and I now live in a tent after our home was bombed and destroyed. I was seriously injured in 2024 and we have lost countless family and friends.
I simply have had no energy for anything beyond my narrow world of daily survival.
But one day, while aimlessly scrolling the internet, I came across a video of Mamdani and was immediately impressed by him. From the first words I heard him utter, I felt he was different. There was something in his voice and the way he spoke, that made me feel he wasn’t just a politician giving a speech. He had a quality lacking in most politicians: honesty… rare, authentic, honesty.
I replayed the video from the beginning. Mamdani spoke of Gaza and when he did, I felt that he wasn’t speaking of Gaza as a distant abstraction or a topic to exploit for his campaign. Instead of offering tired political slogans or meaningless murky positions, Mamdani spoke as a human being about Palestinian humanity. I felt he understood our pain, which he expressed without exaggeration, and stood for what was right without hesitation. I was deeply moved by his words and his concern.
From far away in Gaza, I started following news of Mamdani. Not because politics suddenly became my passion (I have been around long enough to be cynical about the power of politics to change Palestinian reality). But because for the first time, I felt that the reality of people living through destruction, famine, and siege, had found a voice in an American politician, a man from the distant city of New York, from the country that has supplied the bombs that have killed so many in Gaza. I felt heard! I felt seen! And when Mamdani won, I felt something strange… a small spark of hope for me, my people, and the future of my country.
What a powerful and beautiful feeling to know that someone elected by the people of New York City, a place far outside the huge wall of senseless militarism confining us, sees us and isn’t afraid to speak the truth.
Since watching that first video of Mamdani on the campaign trail, I have been following him and learning more about his life, how he got started in politics, and what he represents. I’ve watched many of his speeches, some more than once.
When he speaks openly about the daily suffering in Gaza, I feel less alone and start to believe again in the goodness of most people.
His words don’t just describe our reality; they are a clear call to end U.S. military support for Israel, emphasizing that what happens in Gaza is a violation of human rights and international law! I think his supporters understand that what happens in Gaza affects the whole world, and that a country supporting a genocide will ultimately turn on its own people, too.
For me, it has been almost unreal to hear Mamdani speak of the Israeli occupation as a racist system of oppression and call for Israel to be held accountable. He does not settle for the empty rhetoric of most politicians. He has called for a suspension of U.S. funding for Israeli weapons; he wants voters to know that their tax dollars are directly responsible for the destruction of Gaza.
Mamdani supports boycotting Israel, he refuses to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” and he calls for an end the apartheid system of oppression imposed on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Screenshot from an Instagram post on Zohran Mamdani’s official account, in which he speaks in Arabic to New York City voters.
Here was a young man, just a few years older than me, in a city far removed from our world, talking about our cause as if he is in direct communication with me and my family every day.
His voice reached my heart and gave me a sense of hope despite all the surrounding darkness and suffering.
And I am not the only one. So many of us in Gaza have found hope in the powerful messages of Mamdani. We are not naïve and we know that his victory alone can’t change the daily reality of Israel’s assault on us. But his election has given us a rare feeling: that someone important is listening and standing with us! We are not totally alone!
In our conversations and Whatsapp messages, we have shared our mutual feelings that there is a young American leader calling out the immorality of a war on innocent civilians and insisting on our justice. Mamdani is not just another politician for us; like Marwan Barghouti—a leader in the Palestinian resistance, a man who has spent more than 20 years in an Israeli prison showing us the true meaning of patience and sumud—Mamdani symbolizes for us the power of human dignity, and like Barghouti he stands with oppressed people.
Mamdani’s courage and humanity stand in such stark contrast to the silence and complicity of so many others: Arab leaders, American politicians, rabbis, Muslim clerics, even scholars of the Jewish holocaust! They hedge their bets, waiting to see which way the wind will blow, protecting their reputations and their paychecks.
Many of them offer general, meaningless statements of support (“so tragic, but that’s what happens in a war”), while here is Mamdani, a proud Muslim, in the most Jewish city outside of Israel, with plenty to lose, standing boldly, naming things as they are, and defending our rights clearly. Mamdani is not just the mayor-elect of New York City; he is a symbol of intellectual and moral awakening in global politics.
In Gaza, we celebrated his win as if it were our own, seeing in him recognition of our suffering and a voice for our silent dead. In New York, Mamdani became proof that moral courage can overcome money, pressure, and hypocrisy.
As I write this, the Israelis continue to bomb. More lives are lost, including the family next door, just today. We are all traumatized, barely able to function, nearly mute. How could it be otherwise? I try to hold onto hope, to hear the words of Mamdani and all those who have cried for us and with us at the injustice we continue to endure.
Yet Mamdani’s victory does confirm a fundamental truth that I must hold on to or I will not be able to go on: that human solidarity can still cross oceans and borders, and that justice, however delayed, will always find those brave enough to carry its banner.
