Alaa Karajah, journalist
Poster by Mahasin Al-Khatib, killed on 19 October 2024
“is the world truly seeing the genocide that Israel is committing against the people of Gaza? And why has no one taken action? How long will this torment continue?” My friend’s words come to me like a shock, whenever I manage to contact my friend Maha from Gaza to ask after her, her voice trembling with emotion, she responds to me with questions I can’t answer. Each time, I try to console her, I find myself helpless and at a loss for words, only to break down in tears after the call ends.
It has been over a year since Israel’s war on Gaza began—a year and more of one of the most horrific humanitarian disasters in modern times. A genocide is being carried out against the Palestinian people in Gaza, broadcast live for the entire world to see. Civilians, particularly women and children, are paying the highest price without any fault of their own. Words in all languages fail to describe this daily massacre, this senseless killing. Terms like pain, loss, sorrow, fear, anger, oppression, suffering, torment, humiliation, violation, displacement, trauma, and betrayal are paralyzed in their attempt to describe the endless processions of death in Gaza.
I worked in Palestine for many years, in media, civil society organizations, human rights organizations, and women’s rights institutions. I attended dozens of workshops and received training in women’s rights, including human, health, and psychological rights. I have written dozens of articles and research papers and conducted hundreds of television interviews with women and about women, defending their rights. Today, in the face of the genocide and ethnic cleansing practiced by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people, all of that seems meaningless, in the face of international hypocrisy, double standards, and biased scales of justice. The world has failed the test of humanity, as it refuses to see that Palestinians deserve life, just like anyone else.
Since the beginning of the genocide, I have tried to stay in touch with my journalist friends in Gaza to check on them. With every moment that passes, I fear that I might be agonized with the news of their martyrdom, along with their children and families, just like hundreds of families in Gaza. I was constantly in contact with my colleague Khawla, who works in television. Although we had never met, our phone calls relationship spanned years. Khawla, besides being a distinguished and beautiful TV presenter, is a talented artist. Her artworks once became the focus of one of our TV discussions. Just before the war, she invited me to visit Gaza, a place I have never been to because of the Israeli blockade imposed for 17 years. She promised to gift me one of her paintings. Days after the war started, the Israeli army bombed Khawla’s house in northern Gaza, but miraculously, she, her husband, and their four children survived. I sent her a message to check on her, writing: “Khawla, I hope you and your children are okay. I love you.” She replied, “We survived death. The important thing is that the kids are okay, and I love you very much. Pray for us.”
Khawla moved with her family to Khan Younis, then Mawasi, and then Rafah. Her children are scared and traumatized after losing the home they had lived in for years—her children’s toys, their belongings, childhood memories. Yet, Khawla insisted on continuing her work as a journalist to report on the horrors of Israel’s war crimes and the suffering of people on the ground.
A few days later, our colleague, Mohammed Abu Hatab from Palestine TV, was broadcasting live from outside a hospital. Less than half an hour after he returned to his home in Khan Younis, the house was bombed, and Mohammed and 11 members of his family were martyred, including his wife, son, and brother. Since the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza, 177 journalists have been targeted and martyred.
The language of numbers alone is devastating. As of the writing of this article, the Israeli occupation has killed 42,438 people in Gaza, including 17,029 children and 11,585 women. An additional 10,000 people are missing under the rubble, including 4,700 children and women. The occupation has also killed 986 medical personnel, along with 756 Palestinians in the West Bank.
These are not just numbers; each one had a life, memories, dreams, and loved ones. The Israeli army’s destruction of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure is almost impossible to quantify. The Israelis destroyed 60% of schools and hospitals, hundreds of mosques, three historic churches, and dozens of cultural institutions and centers, along with universities, museums, murals, publishing houses, printing presses, studios, production companies, public libraries, historic buildings, and heritage and religious sites.
People in Gaza flee from death only to face death. There is no safe place there. Even schools, shelters, and refugee camps are bombed by Israel. Life is impossible in displacement camps, with no water or electricity, under the scorching sun in the summer and bitter cold in the winter.
Women who survive death face painful experiences every day, taking on exhausting tasks, especially those who have become breadwinners after losing their husbands to death or imprisonment. These women spend hours in line to get a meal, flour, or a bottle of clean water, or search for firewood to light a fire. They also search for a safe place to escape the Israeli occupation’s fires.
We, who do not live in Gaza, are consumed with anguish over what is happening to our people. We live in constant fear and anxiety. As women, we ask about each other. Each of us tells stories of friends who have been martyred with their families or have lost their children. My friend Mays tells me about her friend Hiba Al-Agha, who was displaced from her home on October 13, 2023, and has not returned since. Hiba writes on her Facebook page and various sites about her journey of loss, displacement, and the desperate search for moments of survival.
Mays also tells me about the poet and writer Alaa Al-Qatrawi, who lost her four children: Yamin, Karmel, and the twins Kinan and Orchida. Their names were once music that echoed among Alaa’s friends and loved ones. The Israeli forces surrounded them and prevented them from leaving, then bombed the house a week later. They remained under the rubble for months. The Israeli army prevented anyone from approaching the house, and after some time, news of their martyrdom reached their mother, who had known nothing about them.
These days, I follow Hiba’s posts, where she writes cries for help coming from the Jabalia camp, which is facing extermination and starvation to drive out those remaining in northern Gaza: “Death surrounds us from every direction; there will be no morning for us in Jabalia.” On October 19, Israeli forces killed young artist Mahasin Al-Khatib, who had endured a year in Northern Gaza, refusing to flee despite the siege, starvation, and Israel’s blockade of all aid and supplies.
I search among faces, names, and pages for women I know and those I don’t, united by the same tragedy. On Hiba Al-Agha’s page, I read what Asma Maghari wrote about the killing of her two children, Aya and Aboud: “My fallen gazelle… my rose that has gone to the eternal house… a few days and it will be a year since you were killed. My tears have never dried, my heart has become empty, and without you, I have become a body without a soul. I wake up every day, missing you both with an unhealable pain.”
I looked for Asma’s agonizing story, where she says: “This war broke me and took away my soul and peace, and those I lived for. A year has passed since I lost my family and my two children in the most horrific way… on October 17, 2023, we were all at home. My father was standing at the door, waiting for my brothers to take what he had bought for us. My mother was on her way to the kitchen to cook us lunch. My two children were playing, and the rest of my family were hanging around in their spots. As opposed to what they claimed, we posed no threat, but the Israeli army bombed our house. Everyone in the house was killed—all 24. My sister, my cousin, and I survived, but we are still suffering from our injuries to this day. God, reunite me with my daughter Aya, my son Aboud, and my family, and do not leave me in this unjust world where I can no longer bear to exist.”
Many think the aggression against Palestinians began after October 7, but the Palestinian people have suffered from the Israeli occupation and its atrocities for decades. These stories are just a drop in the ocean of thousands of stories throughout the years of conflict with the occupation.
My grandmother, who is 90 years old, experienced the bitterness of displacement from homes, villages, and cities under the threat of cannons and air raids during the Nakba of 1948-The same story. She survived to tell me and my children about the crimes of Israel, which has never ceased killing, besieging, stealing land, and destroying people and land. Yet, the story of Palestinian death has reached a new and unprecedented level in Gaza: it is genocide in a mute world.
The great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish said that we are “condemned to hope.” Hope and faith are what drive Palestinian women to rise again. Surrender has never been in the Palestinian people’s dictionary. The women who survived, burdened with heavy hearts, do everything in their power to protect their children and provide them with essentials. They look forward to a near dawn, when this tragedy will end—a dawn of freedom and liberation from Israeli occupation and oppression.
