“We Have Forgotten God”: A Conversation with Waleed Siam

It is August 6, 2026 — 81 years to the day since an atomic bomb exploded over the city of Hiroshima. I am walking up four flights of stone stairs in a building in the Minami-Azabu area of Tokyo. Minami-Azabu is home to many embassies, but the building I am in is not technically an embassy. Its chief occupant, His Excellency Waleed Siam, has no state to represent. Siam heads a diplomatic mission to Japan from Palestine.

I met Siam once before, in 2024, about a year into Israel’s latest incursion into Gaza. Since then, the world has changed dramatically, but the only thing that has changed in Palestine is that the suffering of the innocent has multiplied, as has the death toll.

“The figure often cited in the news of 75,000 killed since October 2023 is not accurate,” Siam tells me. “There are bodies buried under the rubble, people who are missing, and people who have been injured. We may never know exactly how many people were killed. Israel is using bulldozers and heavy equipment to clear the rubble and pulverize what is left. When you destroy the rubble, graves, and human remains, you also destroy the evidence. If somebody wants to investigate what happened in Gaza years from now, what will they find? In many places, there may be almost nothing left to examine. Homes, graves, and entire neighborhoods have been turned into dust. They are erasing the physical evidence that Palestinians ever lived there, Christians and Muslims alike.”

I ask Siam about his family, whether they have managed to survive.

“Some of my wife’s family managed to escape Gaza and get to Cairo,” he answers. “But she lost four uncles because they couldn’t get the medicines they needed: heart medicine, blood-pressure medicine, and other essentials. They died in their beds. May they rest in peace. In a terrible way, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to them. The suffering three years ago was terrible, but it is completely different from what people are going through now.”