'Martyr' Event Lists Names of Palestinians Killed in Gaza

Volunteers kneeled down over a long scroll of paper on Wednesday evening outside Harvard University to begin the task of writing down the names of Palestinians killed so far in the genocide in Gaza. Days earlier, a student Palestinian solidarity committee had invited volunteers through social media posts to gather outside the university's Science Center to join the "Martyr Name Writing" event. When the Sampan arrived to photograph the volunteers in the first hour or so of the gathering, several volunteers had already meticulously written down many dozens of names of the dead. The event was set to continue through Saturday.

"Every martyr has a story and a name that we must honor," wrote the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee in a social media post.

Students and volunteers write the names of those killed in Gaza over the past two years. Photos by Adam Smith

The group's post stated that many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been killed over the past two years; the official toll is around 67,000, with around 20,000 of those dead children and teenagers. More than 200 journalists have also been killed by Israeli forces, according to press reports and journalism watchdog groups. The exact number of dead from Israel's bombardment is unclear, however, and the official figure is believed by some groups to be a vast undercount, possibly only a fraction of the true number.

"The current Gaza Ministry of Health figures may in fact be a significant undercount of the number of violent war deaths," wrote a recent report from Brown University's Watson School of International and Public Affairs titled, "The Human Toll of the Gaza War: Direct and Indirect Death from 7 October 2023 to 3 October 2025," by Neta C. Crawford.

One reason for this, according to the report, is that "the public health infrastructure in Gaza necessary for the reporting and analysis is badly damaged." Another reason, the report gave was that because of the vast devastation of the region of Palestine, "many of the bodies of those killed by bombardment have not been found."

"Indeed, no reliable figures are currently available for the number of people in Gaza whose bodies are yet to be recovered."

This story has some minor edits made after being published online.