In his travels to Palestine between 2005 and 2008, the South Korean poet and photographer Park No-hae was unsettled by what he witnessed. In Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth, he saw the Israeli-built concrete wall separating the city from Jerusalem. In Salfit, an ancient town in the central part of the occupied West Bank, he saw olive trees, some as old as a thousand years, cut down by the Israeli army to make way for illegal settlement expansion. As he traveled the West Bank, he saw Israeli checkpoints where Palestinians languished in lines for hours and were subjected to humiliating inspections.

The parallels between Israeli colonialism in Palestine and Japanese colonialism in Korea would not have been lost on Park, whose parents participated in the struggle for Korea’s independence. To those who have been affected by histories of occupation, colonialism, and apartheid, the story of Palestine is a familiar one. In the words of the South African anti-apartheid hero, Nelson Mandela: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

But one needs not to know colonialism and occupation firsthand to oppose it, and one needs not to have experienced the horrors of war to empathize with the 2.3 million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip facing displacement, starvation, and death. For months, people and governments around the world have called for a ceasefire, and protests in solidarity with the Palestinian people have taken place regularly in every corner of the globe. And yet, the carnage continues ahead. Whole families and communities have been wiped out. An entire generation of Palestinian children have been traumatized to their core. Their suffering is indescribable, their anguish unimaginable.

Nothing excuses indiscriminate violence and attacks on civilians, be they Palestinian or Israeli. The targeting of Israeli civilians in the Hamas-led 7 October attacks can be neither denied nor justified. It is, nevertheless, both possible and necessary to attempt to understand the context of the ongoing violence. We will not find a way toward peace if we do not see the path which has brought us to the present moment. History, as Palestinians would remind us, didn’t begin on 7 October.

For decades, Gaza’s refugee camps have been home to people who can testify to a history of dispossession, displacement, and massacre. Many of them are descendants of Palestinians who were driven out of their homes as a consequence of the partition of historic Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. In “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006),” Israeli historian Ilan Pappé chronicles the events of 1947 to 1948 when over 750,000 Palestinians, more than half of the native population, were either expelled or fled from their homes for fear of being killed.

Israel’s 1967 military occupation of Gaza and the subsequent creation of Israeli settlements in the occupied territory displaced more Palestinians, exacerbating an already precarious situation. In 2005, Israel withdrew its settlers and troops from Gaza, but kept the territory fenced in by barbed wire and concrete walls. Following the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, which resulted in a Hamas victory, Israel placed Gaza under a stifling blockade, turning the narrow strip of land into a densely populated open-air prison.

The historical context of the ongoing violence also includes what the Jewish-American philosopher Judith Butler describes as Israel’s “systematic devaluation of Palestinian lives.” In “Precarious Life” (2004), Butler discusses how the “dehumanization” of Palestinians at the hands of Israel and its Western allies has rendered Palestinian lives “ungrievable.” This devaluation of Palestinian lives has been on full display during the past six months, as Western countries including the United States and Germany have continued to supply Israel with weapons and diplomatic support in the face of the overwhelming number of displaced, starved, and killed Gazans.

Park No-hae’s photographs from Palestine remind us of the humanity of a people whose faces are too often unseen, their voices unheard, their humanity denied, and their deaths either ignored or reduced to mind-numbing statistics. They remind us of the resilience of a people who refuse to be erased, and who continue to cultivate the dream of a future free from occupation, blockade, and forced exile. Perhaps sometime this week, you’ll take a couple of hours out of your day to visit Park’s “Beneath the Olive Tree” exhibition at Ra Gallery. As you view these photos, you’ll be reminded that the humanity of the Palestinian people is intrinsically connected to your own humanity, and you may recall the words of the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish:

"As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others

(those who have lost the right to speak).

As you think of others far away, think of yourself

(say: “If only I were a candle in the dark”)."

The author is an Associate Professor at Seoul National University's Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations --Ed.