There was once laughter, shared meals, and quiet dreams behind the Ayash family’s front door. Now, there is rubble. In a single moment, a missile turned their home into a grave, their names into memories, and their lives into another tally in Gaza’s growing list of erased families. Dr. Rafiq Mousa Ayash, his wife Iman, and their six children—doctors, engineers, students—were all killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Al-Karama, north of Gaza City.

They are not alone. More than 2,180 Palestinian families have vanished from Gaza’s civil registry since the renewed military onslaught began in March. They did not die slowly. They were obliterated in seconds—in tents, kitchens, bedrooms, at dawn, at night, while preparing food, or while trying to sleep.

Entire families are being wiped out with no warning, no shelter, and no justice. Medical teams cannot keep up. The injured bleed alone. The missing remain under the ruins. Most are never found. Names are crossed out from registries that once held the pulse of this land: birth certificates, school records, marriage documents—now irrelevant in a place where whole family lines cease to exist.

In less than two months, Palestinian sources report more than 18,000 children and 12,000 women have been killed. Some families lost dozens of members in a single attack. The Salem family lost 170 people. The Awad family lost around 100. For some, only one child remains—survivors of massacres who will grow up with no one left to call by name.

These are not isolated tragedies. They are the result of a systematic, relentless campaign targeting homes, markets, schools, and tents. Gaza's streets now carry the weight of too many goodbyes, too many voices that will never return. And still, the world turns its gaze elsewhere.

In the shadow of silence, the civil registry fades. But the memory of those erased will endure, long after the last missile falls.