2025 Body4Body Project

On October 7, 2023, the terrorist organization Hamas led a surprise attack on Israel, killed 1,200 Israelis, and took another 251 as hostages back to Gaza. Since then, thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been killed either by Israeli military weapons or starvation. The United States government is arguably the staunchest and most influential ally of the Israeli government, providing political, financial, and military support, including vast amounts of offensive weapons.

Body4Body presents a comparison of the cumulative deaths in Gaza over time to the population of US cities. As the war continues and escalates, and as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza becomes more catastrophic, millions of Americans continue to peacefully live out their daily lives in the communities across the country they know as home. Fewer and fewer Gazans see the end of each day in the only place they know as home.

Each day since October 7th that the death toll in Gaza increases by 1,000 bodies, a US city with a population closest to that death toll is looked at side-by-side with the situation in Gaza. Data on daily casualties in Gaza originate from techforpalestine.org and data on US city populations originate from US Census estimates for the most recent year: 2024.

A digital collage is constructed for each of these comparisons that includes one internet-sourced promotional image of the US city, one internet-sourced image from a news article about Gaza on that day, and outlines of both Gaza’s and the city’s political boundaries, sourced from GoogleMaps. Images are blown up like buildings and fractured like limbs to mirror the violence visually. This project will end when the killing ends. Until then, a collage will be made for every 1,000 deaths.

Check out Aid Gaza: Tools for Actions for resources to support an end to Israel's war in Gaza.

© 2025 Aaron Wilder. All rights reserved.