Gaza, the world's first digital genocide: An analysis of conflict and contemporary censorship in Khaled Beydoun's Eyes on Gaza

"I wrote Eyes on Gaza: Witnessing Annihilation to memorialise the genocide unfolding, in real-time, so that it won't be unwritten from history — like genocides before it," explains Arab-American writer, professor and scholar of law, Khaled Beydoun.

Due to be published by Street Noise Books in February, the book is dedicated to Gaza, combining an analysis of events in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and the Middle East with renowned Palestinian cartoonist Mohammad Sabaaneh contributing to 60 illustrations in the book. 

Beydoun, who is also the author of the critically acclaimed, American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear, offers a powerful narrative of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

A lucid and articulated analysis, much more than just required reading, given the extent of censorship and the severity of the erasure of Palestinian stories, Eyes on Gaza appears as a book that hits the mark.

A collection of essays that not only tell the truth in the face of the lies from the powerful but also resist the forces that conspire to erase Gaza from history.

"Khaled Beydoun wrote Eyes on Gaza because the vilest attempt to consign the genocide to oblivion is taking place in the history books that are being written today"

"An intellectual form of genocide that stands alongside the airstrikes, tanks, white phosphorus bombs, and military campaign to erase a population," writes the author, who focuses on the concept of digital genocide. "Gaza is the world’s first digital genocide. A genocide where the images of intimate suffering and death are transmitted instantly onto our screens, seconds or minutes after they have taken place."

Beydoun continued the explanation by describing the implications of the concept of digital genocide: "We see everything, or at least, everything that is captured by witnesses on site. Witnesses who, in this new age of image and video sharing, were once ordinary people and are suddenly postmodern-day journalists."

The Arab Spring uprisings are a testament to the 'broadcast revolution' on social media platforms, which turned the script and provided fuel for the phase of aggregation, dissent and collective protest, which took place in the squares and streets of cities.

According to Beydoun, at the beginning, social platforms embodied the promise of information capitalism as a liberating and democratic social force, capable of captivating populations around the world. "That promise has been not only broken, but entirely turned on its head as Twitter (now X), Tik Tok, Instagram and other social media platforms become digital bastions of suppression and totalitarian control administered by an elite few,” he writes. 

In the new world order, social platforms have become places where genocides are encouraged, supported and justified: "The inhuman violence in Gaza has pervaded our digital timelines and mobile phone screens more than any other genocide before it. At an unprecedented frequency and with lucidity and transparency, it is a genocide more accessible than any one in human history. We have taken part in this annihilation, and it has taken hold of us. The genocide in Gaza has changed our understanding of what that crime means and looks like, and has changed many of us in the process."

The attempt to censor the ongoing genocide in Gaza is pervasive and manifests itself both online and in everyday life, in corporate offices and university campuses. Beydoun wrote Eyes on Gaza because the vilest attempt to consign the genocide to oblivion is taking place in the history books that are being written today.

Bombings and mass killings, displacement and famine have never stopped and are still ongoing. "The slow march of ethnic cleansing that preceded October 7th raced forward with blinding speed," Beydoun notes, "as the rightwing government’s project of expanding Israeli military control was achieved in days, expediting its vision of cleansing Gaza of its Palestinian population. The first day of the siege foreshadowed the violence to come, a prolonged bombing campaign that would mercilessly fall on the people of Gaza.”

All this while the Western media has distinguished itself by a narrative of events that facilitated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's aggression, painting all of Gaza as sympathetic to terrorists and as a Hamas base to justify the disproportionate and unbridled assault.

Innocent children have become human shields and the thousands of dead civilians are considered collateral damage. “The victims were made into villains, all of them, as bombs fell atop their heads," Beydoun recalls, writing: "The words of Malcolm X rushed into my head as I took in the propaganda portrayed by legacy media outlets in the United States: 'If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing'. Struck by the relevance, I crafted an Instagram post showcasing the ruins of the initial bombing campaign and using those words of Malcolm X to mark the moment and the spot. And this post instantly went viral.”

Eyes on Gaza: Witnessing Annihilation is available for pre-order now

Giovanni Vigna is a freelance Italian journalist with a focus on Middle Eastern and global politics