Gazans killed by Israel are not numbers, they had dreams too

Our martyrs are not just numbers... they are real people, with real lives and real stories.

As Israel continues to brutally bombard Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Not Numbers is working hard to bring a humane side to the ever-rising death toll — which has reached over 9,000 people.

The Facebook page's mission is to do more than just provide a running total of dead Palestinians, as major news outlets often seem to do.

Instead, Not Numbers attempts to provide a rich portrait of the lives, hopes, and dreams of Gazans killed by Israel.

"The initiative adds a human dimension to the morbid statistics" 

The founder of the group, Aya Soufa, a Palestinian based in Scotland, told The New Arab that she aimed to create a database that includes the names of people killed, in addition to details about their lives.

"Our aim was to make an open-source database that can be used by anyone who needs more information about the people who were killed in Gaza recently," Aya explained. 

Not Numbers asks members to add pictures of those who were killed, as well as descriptions about who they were as people and more about their lives. 

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, Israel has killed more than 8,796 victims, including 3,648 children, with numbers increasing. Earlier last week, US President Joe Biden had said that he did not trust the number of casualties coming out of Gaza. In response, the Ministry of Health later issued a PDF file with the names of all the people killed, their ID numbers, and their ages. 

Aya's group is one of the many Palestinian initiatives that aim to fight this rampant dehumanisation of Palestinians in the media and politics today and is another notable initiative that has been working to preserve Palestinian humanity for years. 

Below, The New Arab has profiled some of the people mentioned in the group. 

Abeer Ayyoub is a freelance journalist based in Amman

Follow her on Twitter: @abeerayyoub