toby070

No matter how much you hate your enemy, that does not give you the right to starve their children, deprive their families of food, or use hunger as a weapon against an entire population. What kind of victory is built on the hunger of children? What kind of strength requires starving innocent people to force them into submission? Turning food into a weapon and leaving people to fight for survival against hunger in an attempt to break their will is neither strength nor courage. It is indefensible cruelty and a crime that time can never erase.

I don’t know how to describe how I feel as I write this. I don’t even know who I’m writing for or how to explain what’s inside me. I feel an indescribable sense of anguish and helplessness, as if I’m writing the same words dozens of times without anything changing. I’ve written dozens of times about the military cranes and vehicles positioned on elevated sandy berms, firing every night at displaced people’s tents and homes across Gaza City. Every day, people are killed and injured, including children. Today, a 7 year old girl died. She was playing with stones with her friends outside her tent when a bullet struck her directly, ending her life. At the same time, another person was injured, and then another. A seven year old child was simply playing outside her tent. How will her family come to terms with the fact that the little girl who was right before their eyes moments ago will never return? We have literally become a shooting ground. Every night, we live through the same fear, and every day, we hear of another person injured or killed. How can our lives be treated with such disregard? How can people be left at the mercy of gunfire, even in the places they fled to escape death? It’s a tent, just a worn-out piece of fabric that cannot protect a child from a bullet or a family from death. And yet, even these tents are no longer safe. Where are these people supposed to flee? Where can a little girl play without being killed? I swear, I no longer know what to write. What breaks me most is knowing that tomorrow, I may have to write the same tweet again, about another child, another family, and another life taken while all they were trying to do was survive.

My grandfather owned thousands of olive trees that provided enough food for our family and the entire neighborhood. Now, all these lands have been seized, and we haven’t eaten our olives for over three years. My grandfather passed away a few months ago. His only wish was to see his land again.