Status Updates From Los ojos de Gaza: Un diario...

“What’s sad is that people have become reluctant to talk to the media, because they feel that it’s useless. And can I blame them? Can I promise them that sharing their story, reliving their trauma, will change anything in the world? No. All I can tell them is that I’ll try to do them justice, and that’s not enough for people who are dying.”

“(By the way, I don’t like using the word Gazan but I have to. I hate how the IOF has divided us by experience – by slaughter. Palestinians in Ramallah or Jerusalem can’t relate to those in Gaza, and vice versa. We’re all one, but they’ve managed to make us feel completely separated.)”

“If a child can smile, you can do the same, because no matter what the circumstances, humans will stubbornly remain human.”

“Sometimes I wish that I’d just die, for the sake of resting in peace, and sometimes I wish to live, to one day see Palestine become free.”

“I don’t think you should promise kids anything during a Genocide, because you might be killed before you can fulfil it.”

“It’s day twenty, and I am not used to this. I don’t think anyone is. I don’t think anyone could be. I wake up every day and wonder if it will be my last.

I feel selfish that I’m able to drink water or eat, when I know that others – my people – cannot.”

“Even writing, my therapy, isn’t working. Nothing makes me feel better.”

“The saddest thing is that I’m losing my ability to react, out of tiredness. I am so drained, just like everybody else. I want this nightmare to end, but I’m also afraid of what life will look like once it does. Will there even be a Gaza still? I’m terrified of the aftermath. And there’s nobody to question, nobody to reassure me that there’s a plan. Israel has deliberately destroyed every pillar that we have.”

“One thing I like about myself is my ability to un-sync my head and my heart. Every day, my heart aches for the trauma and pain I see around me, and I want to cry, but my brain tells me that I don’t have time for that. I have to report on what’s happening; it’s the only way I can possibly help. So I tell my heart to pause, and I just listen to what my brain tells me to do.”

“I’m embarrassed to say it out loud, but a part of me is happy that Al-Maamdani got bombed, because that might mean the end of the Aggression. After you strike a hospital, where do you go from there? What else is left for you to destroy? Which lives are left for you to target?”

☹️

“Isr@3l gaslights. It acts like you’re a hysterical woman, when really it’s just a toxic man flipping the table on you and telling you you’re wrong to every question.”

The worst specimens of toxic masculinity I’ve ever come across in my travels are I$rah3LLi men.

Incredibly tense and heartbreaking.

Absolutely intense. Just wow.

“Everyone in Gaza knows that they’ll eventually die, and that it’s only a matter of time....”