Category: Uncategorised

 I saw a child

That little child dancing with a big smile on his face, his family secured a tent, he will have a roof above his head.

That child carrying a sack of flour, walking barefoot, proud to secure some bread for his family 

I saw a child, carrying water, barely able to walk with the heavy weight of the bucket 

I saw a child, shouting his lungs out: ‘give me some pain killer, give me anaesthetics, both his arms are amputated 

I saw a child kissing the hand of a strange soldier for a little food 

I saw a child digging, searching for the bodies of his parents under the rubble of their home. 

A child who kept crying, unable to stop the pain of hunger 

Yes, I saw a child carrying his injured younger sister 

I saw children running away from explosions with fear and horror. 

I saw a child standing in a huge crowd with a cooking pot hoping to get some food  

I saw the hand of a child from under the rubble 

I saw thousands of children, with no eyes, with no legs, with no hands, with no arms, with no feet, with no hope

I saw thousands of children with white-red bandages covering their faces, their heads, their chests, their legs, their arms, their eyes

I saw children with skin and bones with open mouths and eyes staring at the sky 

I saw children carried for the last time by their screaming fathers and wailing mothers 

I saw thousands of children laid out for the last time in a white cover full of red spots 

I also saw many photos of smiling children 

Mohammed, the son of my brother 

Me: Hello Mohammed, how are you? How is your father and your aunt Faten? 

Mohammed: Hello uncle, we are ok, thank God. Everyone is so exhausted  physically and psychologically. Yesterday I survived death by a miracle.  

Me: What happened? How did you get that cut on your head? 

Mohammed: At the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution centre, a thief tried to steal my flour bag and he attacked me with a knife, luckily it was not a sharp knife. 

Me: Why did you go there?!

Mohammed: We have no choice. Either we die of hunger or risk our lives for some food. I went there and was trapped in the crowd for more than 4 hours. While the Israelis are shooting above our heads, each person is trying to use another as a shield, hiding behind each other. Many were injured and some killed. I was in this trap for 4 hours. I crawled more than 300 meters until I reached safety. Four hours of fear and panic. Then aid thieves were waiting for those who succeed in getting some food, waiting to steal from them.  There were 2 people, one with a knife, they threatened me, asking me to leave the bag of flour. I was ready to fight, I did not obey. The one with the knife attacked me. At the same moment an explosion happened nearby, everybody was running, including the thieves and myself.  I reached home with the bag of flour, half of it spilled on the way because the thieves cut into it while trying to take it from me. Never mind. We now have bread for one week.

Every thing is very expensive, only rich people can afford it. We are not rich; we don’t have income at all. All aid entering Gaza is stolen by gangs  and then reaches the market at impossible prices. 

Bara’a, the son of aunt Taghrid was injured, a truck drove over his foot, he has 3 fractures in his foot and toes.

We are living in a jungle. We never imagined such a life, not even in our nightmares. But it is happening. The famine has driven people to be monsters – not all people, but thousands, and they have guns. There are gangs created by individuals and by families. 

Me: I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry please take care … please.

 

  

Hunger again… and again 

Hunger… yes, that heavy guest who never leaves us. 

Welcome, O Hunger, to a land whose tables are bombed with every type of shell, and whose sidewalks are adorned with the flesh of children!

In Gaza, we chew the air, swallow the world’s tales about humanity, and drink our tears instead of water.

Do you know what it means to wake up to the growling of your stomach instead of the chirping of birds? To see your children licking the air off their fingers, and to catch the question in your wife’s eyes: Will we die from a missile or from starvation?

The world sends aid in hundreds of trucks, but just within sight, it turns into a fleet of memories, crushed beneath a tank or stopped at a checkpoint.

We are not merely hungry. We are a lab for experiments! Our hunger is internationally certified: salt without bread, flour without water, and life without dignity.

Don’t we deserve some gratitude for all this? We have given you everything you love: blood over hunger, and hunger over blood
And in between, a people digging through the rubble for the crumbs of their lives.

From Gaza, where the massacre calls itself defence, the dead are called numbers, and life is cheaper than straw.

And there’s no need to mention over a hundred martyrs each day, it’s just an upsetting detail, nothing more, nothing less.

Hossam Almadhoun 

الجوع مرة أخرى … وأخرى 

الجوع … نعم.. ذلك الضيف الثقيل الذي لا يغادرنا

أهلا بك يا جوع في بلد تقصف موائده بكل أنواع القذائف، يزين أرصفته لحوم الأطفال! 

في غزة نمضغ الهواء ونبتلع حكايات العالم عن الإنسانية، ونشرب دموعنا بدلا من الماء.  

أتعرف ماذا يعني أن تستيقظ على صوت قرقعة بطنك بدلا من صوت زقزقة العصافير؟ أن ترى أولادك يلعقون الهواء عن أصابعهم، وترى السؤال في عيني زوجتك: هل سنموت بقذيفة أم بالخواء؟ 

يأتي العالم بالمساعدات بمئات الشاحنات، وعلى مرمى البصر تتحول إلى أسطول من الذكريات تحت رجل دبابة أو حاجز تفتيش. 

نحن لسنا جوعى. نحن مختبر للتجارب! جوعنا بمواصفات دولية: ملح بلا خبز، ودقيق بلا ماء، وحياة بلا كرامة 

ألا نستحق الشكر بعد هذا؟ قدمنا لكم كل ما تحبون، دم على الجوع، وجوع على الدم. وبينهما شعب يبحث عن فتات حياته بين الرفات 

من غزة حيث المذبحة تسمي نفسها دفاعا، والموتى يسمون أرقاما. والحياة أرخص من قشة 

ولا داعي لذكر أكثر من مائة شهيد يوميا، فهي تفصيله مزعجة لا أكثر ولا أقل

حسام المدهون 

No Food

My friend Basel

Hey friends, there’s nothing left in the market—nothing at all to eat. All the goods have disappeared.

We want rice, we want lentils, we want sandals…a sandal to tear apart, fry, and eat!

I sent my sons Ahmad to the beach area, and Hossam to Al-Nasr and Sheikh Radwan—there’s not a single kilo of rice or lentils. There’re no goods in the market at all.

My sister Faten

Hossam, hello my dear,
How are you all doing?

Hossam, I’ve been sick for three months. I haven’t left the house, and I even pray while sitting on a chair.
I have a severe chest and bronchial infection.
I feel helpless.
I’m very tired.
Alhamdulillah (Thank God) for everything.
Your brothers and sisters come to check on me almost every day.

That’s besides the hunger—we can’t afford to buy flour or any kind of food. The prices are insane.
Today, a kilo of flour is 75 shekels in cash, and on the banking app, it’s 130 shekels because the commission has reached 43%.
The dizziness is unbearable from the lack of food and nutrition.
Alhamdulillah for everything.

That’s how things are for me, your sisters, the kids—boys and girls. We’ve become like shadows of human beings from weakness and imbalance.

And that’s just the flour—there are other essential items we can’t buy:

• Sugar (1 kg): 180 shekels
• Cooking oil (1 litre): 200
• Ghee (1 litre): 60
• Molokhia (1 kg): 23
• Salt (1 kg): 8
• Cucumbers (1 kg): 65
• Watermelon (1 kg): 35
• Tomatoes (1 kg): 57
• Onions: unavailable
• Potatoes (1 kg): 50
• Eggplant (1 kg): 28
• Lemon (1 kg): 40
• Long grain rice (1 kg): 80
• Egyptian rice (1 kg): 65
• Lentils (1 kg): 30
• Okra (250g): 35
• Coffee (250g): 450
• Green pepper (250g): 13
• Red pepper (250g): 25
• Tuna can: 30
• Extra meat can: 80
• Foul can: 20
• Small Abou Rayya cheese: unavailable
• Falafel sandwich: 12
• 3 falafel balls: 2
• Grapes: 100
• Figs: 100

At these prices, you can’t afford anything. And that’s if you’re paying cash. Commission has reached 45%. You have to add 45% because we don’t have cash.

The Sound of the Train

The sound of the train
it can stir joy.
That long-awaited arrival,
your journey finally beginning,
the destination within reach.

Or it can bring sadness.
You hear it from the top of the stairs,
just a few steps too late —
and it’s gone.
You wait for the next one,
wondering what might have been.

But sometimes, it’s not joy or sorrow.
It’s fear.
Because the sound doesn’t just mean travel.
It reminds you of something else —
something louder, deadlier.
Missiles.
Rockets.

Each time the ground shook,
each time you ran,
each time your heart stopped at the thought
of someone you loved not surviving.
You were just a child.
Then you were an adult.
Still running. Still hearing it.

Now, when I hear it, I flinch.
Yes, I get annoyed.
Maybe scared,
but only for a moment.

And then I remember —
there are children in my homeland
hearing this sound every second.
Not of trains.
But of rockets.
Every minute, someone they love
is injured, is killed,
is lost forever to the same sound.

To me, it’s a minor disturbance.
To them, it’s trauma.
A daily reality.
A haunting echo.

Whether it’s a train on a railroad
or a missile
the sound stays with you.
Forever.

Salma Hossam Almadhoun 

Dehumanization 

One of the most heinous crimes committed by Nazi Germany was not just the occupation of other countries, not just causing the deaths of millions, not just the murder of 6 million Jews solely because of their religion.  

The worst of all was the dehumanization of the Jewish people carried out by the Nazi propaganda machine.  

Stripping Jews of their humanity made German soldiers unhesitating in humiliating, torturing, starving, and killing Jews everywhere – without the slightest remorse. Instead, they did so with a sense of accomplishment and victory.  

What the Nazis did – dehumanizing Jews – contributed horrifically to the increasing number of victims and the diversification of torture and the mechanisms of oppression against every Jew in Nazi-occupied Europe.  

That’s why the world said: never again

Unfortunately, it is happening today. 

Israel has been and continues to dehumanize the Palestinian people by all possible means. What Nazi Germany did to the Jews, Israel is now doing to the Palestinians – not only in Gaza but across all the occupied Palestinian territories.  

The daily killing of Palestinians has claimed over 54,000 victims, more than a third of whom are children.  

The complete destruction of Gaza – homes, schools, universities, hospitals, clubs, municipalities, cultural centres, agriculture land, roads, water and sanitation infrastructures and historic buildings.  

They impose a total siege, leading to famine for over 2 million people.  

They attack civilians in the West Bank with savage assaults, burning crops, uprooting trees, slaughtering livestock, bulldozing water wells, and mercilessly torching Palestinian properties.  

They block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza – even destroying and sabotaging it before it reaches those in need.  

Many of their politicians openly call for the killing of all Palestinians in Gaza, including children. Some even demand dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza. They consider every Palestinian, even infants, as enemies who must be killed.  

Soldiers post videos on social media, boasting about the number of Palestinians they’ve killed or the homes and buildings they’ve destroyed.  

They kill and destroy continuously – without worry, without remorse, without hesitation.  

All because their government and media have stripped Palestinians of their humanity.  

And though the world knows everything mentioned above – sees it daily – we see no action from those Western regimes that could put an end to this atrocity. Yes, they could stop the genocide, but they choose not to.  

Palestinians are human beings. They shouldn’t have to prove their humanity.

The world’s silence and acceptance of dehumanizing Palestinians, of what is happening to Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem will not stop there. It will spread to many other places. It will become acceptable to dehumanize other people, other ethnicities.  

Shame on those who stay silent. 

نزع الإنسانية

من أبشع الجرائم التي قامت بها ألمانيا النازية، ليس فقط احتلال دول أخرى، ليس فقط التسبب بقتل الملايين، ليس فقط قتل 6 مليون يهودي فقط بسبب ديانتهم

الأبشع من كل هذا هو نزع الإنسانية عن العرق اليهودي التي قامت بها ماكينة الإعلام النازي 

نزع الإنسانية عن اليهود جعل الجنود الألمان لا يترددوا في إهانة، تعذيب، تجويع، وقتل اليهود في كل مكان بلا أدنى شعور بالندم وحتى بدون تردد. بل وبالإحساس بالإنجاز والنصر 

ما فعلته النازية من لا أنسنه اليهود ساهم بشكل مرعب في ازدياد الضحايا وتنوع آليات التعذيب والقهر لكل يهود أوربا تحت الاحتلال النازي.

لهذا قال العالم: لن يحدث ذلك مرة أخرى

للأسف إنه يحدث اليوم مرة أخرى

إسرائيل عملت وتعمل على نزع الإنسانية عن الشعب الفلسطيني بكل الوسائل. ما مارسته ألمانيا النازية ضد اليهود تقوم 

إسرائيل بممارسته ضد الفلسطينيين، ليس في غزة فقط بل في كل الأراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة

القتل اليومي للفلسطينيين حتى وصل العدد لأكثر من 54000 ضحية أكثر من ثلثهم من الأطفال 

تدمير كل قطاع غزة من منازل ومدارس وجامعات ومستشفيات ونوادي وبلديات ومراكز ثقافية وبنية تحتية من طرق ومياه وصرف صحي وتدمير الأراضي الزراعية والمباني تاريخية 

يفرضون حصارا مطلقا يقود لمجاعة لأكثر من 2 مليون إنسان 

يعتدون على المواطنين في الضفة الغربية بهجمات همجية، يحرقون الزرع ويقلعون الأشجار ويقتلون الماشية ويردموا آبار المياه ويحرقوا ممتلكات الفلسطينيين بلا رحمة أو شفقة

يمنعون دخول المساعدات الإنسانية لغزة بل ويدمروها ويخربوها قبل أن تصل لغزة

يخرج العديد من سياسييهم للمطالبة بقتل كل فلسطيني في غزة بما فيهم الأطفال. يخرج منهم من يطالب بضرب غزة بقنبلة نووية. يعتبرون كل فلسطيني حتى الرضيع عدوا يجب قتله 

يخرج الجنود في تسجيلات على مواقعهم الاجتماعية ليتفاخروا بعدد الفلسطينيين الذين قاموا بقتلهم أو بعدد البيوت والمباني التي قاموا بتدميرها 

يقتلون ويدمرون كل لحظة بلا قلق، بلا ندم، بلا تردد 

فقط لأن حكومتهم وإعلامهم نزع الإنسانية عن الفلسطيني 

ورغم أن كل ما ذكرته أعلاه يعلمه العالم. يراه يوميا. إلا أننا لا نرى حراكا من تلك الأنظمة الغربية التي تستطيع أن تضع حدا لهذا الإجرام. نعم يستطيعون وقف الإبادة ولكنهم لا يفعلون. 

الفلسطيني إنسان. لا يحتاج أن يثبت أنه إنسان

سكوت العالم وقبوله بما يحدث للفلسطيني في غزة والضفة والقدس لن يقف هناك. سينتقل لأماكن كثيرة في العالم. سيصبح مقبولا أن تنزع الإنسانية من شعب ما أو من عرق ما. 

عار على الصامتين

4 April 2025

Homeless

While sitting on a seashore other than the Mediterranean–not mine–I try to discover what remains of me in a place that doesn’t recognise me, in a cruel world that no longer holds space for my home. I sit in the unfamiliar, trying to breathe through the suffocating ache of being homeless, of having no home, of knowing that what once grounded me has been turned to bloody rubble.

I scroll through the news of my home—what used to be my reality—watching familiar skies, raining rockets, bodies pulled from the rubble, children whose names I’ll never know but feel as my own children, whose laughter I’ll never hear and whose cry was the last I heard of them. People—my people—hunted like shadows. And I ask myself: how am I still breathing? How dare I be alive when so many are not?

Is this unhealing pain in my chest and this relentless guilt enough to honour them? Is watching every video until my eyes burn and sob until there’s nothing left but silence in my bones enough? Is praying until words blur into pleas and until hope feels like a betrayal enough? I wrote a master’s thesis calling for the world to act, to care, to stop the genocide. I drafted a policy paper urging accountability, outreach, and resistance but no sentence, no advocacy, can resuscitate a beheaded child.

Still, people tell me, “Focus on yourself. You have a future. Life goes on”. But what kind of life grows from the ashes of mass graves? From the bones of children I’ll never be able to forget? If I bury my pain to chase my dreams, am I betraying my blood? My people? Myself?

They call us humans. I studied Human Rights and Democracy, I work in the humanitarian field, and I dream of defending rights—of being a human rights defender. But what does that term mean when humans are being blown apart while the world turns away? When pain becomes the language we inherit? Do rights still exist when mothers clutch their dead infants in silence because screaming won’t bring them back?

Guilt trips create a sense of agony in everything we do: sleeping, eating, and showering, and also in the emails I send, the work I do, the goals I set myself. All haunted. All shadowed by a river of blood, cut-out limbs, and beheaded babies. 

And then comes the whisper, quiet but steady: I want the world to explode. To end.
Not out of hatred, but because maybe only then will my guilt die too. Maybe only then will I stop carrying the unbearable weight of limbs torn from tiny bodies, of families incinerated, of voices silenced forever.

But even now, even after spilling all these words, I know what I feel is nothing. It is nothing compared to what my people are enduring every hour, every breath.

Kos Em Israel… By Salma Hossam Almadhoun 

Envy 

I won’t hide it from you. I now envy everyone outside the borders of the Gaza Strip for their normal life. I envy them for their roof, for the warmth of their home, for their sense of stability, for the peace in their heart, for their children, for their wife’s serenity and her feeling of safety, for their bathroom, for their privacy, for their work, for their health, for the water from their kitchen tap, for their bed, for their food, for their ability to walk in the street without fear, for their cup of coffee, for their cigarette, for their clothes, for their prayers in the last ten nights of the holy month of Ramadan, for their children’s joy as Eid approaches, for their laughter and games, for their ability to buy medicine when they cough, for the Soap and diapers they can purchase at any market, for the chocolate and the sweets they can get for their children, for the clothes and jackets warming them from the cold, for their preserved dignity, for the fact that they’ll sleep knowing they won’t die in pieces, won’t lose loved ones, won’t have to gather flesh from the ground, and won’t lose their children torn apart in a tent or under four floors of rubble. I even envy them for watching T.V. I envy them because I’ve lost all these blessings now, and with a not-insignificant chance that we might have departed this life by tomorrow, I’ve said what I said. I envy you all, my brothers, and I resent you, and I don’t forgive you.

Choiceless 

I am lucky, my home in Gaza City, my flat in a seven story building is still standing. Many apartments are damaged, several are burnt, but my flat is still good. No windows, of course, as they were blown out due to severe bombing nearby. The front door was broken by the Israeli army when they invaded the building and forced the neighbours who had remained to leave to the south of Gaza in late March 2024.

When the Israeli army left the area, some neighbours called their friends to go and check on the building. Looters had not reached the building yet. The friends of the neighbours brought a blacksmith who welded the doors so it could’t be broken into. During the truce, my neighbours went back to the building. My home is safe. 

Three days ago, with the resumption of the genocide and displacement orders to people in North Gaza, I received messages from my sister, my brother, and my friend Basel, all asking to use my apartment as they have no other place to go.

My sister with her husband and 5 children 

My brother with his wife and 6 children

My friend with his wife, mother, 4 children, daughter-in-law and granddaughter 

What can I do? To whom I should give my home? I don’t know? I am unable to decide.

I have not replied yet to any of them and I feel torn apart.  

23^rd March 2025

Tel Al Sultan / Rafah

7 in the morning I wake up. Before leaving my bed I go over the news headlines on my mobile. On this day there was an evacuation order for the people in Tel Al Sultan, south west of Rafah; another displacement, another agony and another quest for new shelter and some safety.  

Do you know what displacement is? From experience people know that there is no time to take down the tent and collect their belongings, the bombing will start soon. People immediately start moving with whatever they can carry in their hands. They carry mattresses, blankets, jerry cans for water, some bags with some clothes, their young children and babies, their disabled relatives, their parents who can’t walk. They don’t have the time or the ability to take down their tents or carry it with them. No transportation of any kind, they have to walk with what they can carry. 

With the borders closed and no goods entering Gaza, people will not find any alternative for what they have left behind. They will not find a tent or a water tank or food or clothes. 

I left my bed with these images in my head, finished my shower and walked my dog, then came back home to find these massages from my colleague Suleyman from Gaza 

“We are in a very dangerous situation. We have one of us dead and several injured. Please call some one to help us” 

And this massage from our colleague, Hadeel: 

“Please call someone. We are afraid and we have children with us.” 

I did not know how to answer him. All I said was: “Oh my God, oh my God”

Suleyman then sent another massage to say that we couldn’t reach two of our colleagues in Rafah, Ali and Yasser 

“Oh my God, oh my God.”

This time the Israeli army did not give people any time to leave. They started bombing Tel Al Sultan, leading to many people being killed on the roads. Then they invaded the area and surrounded it, installing a military check-point and forcing people to pass through it.

At noon, our colleague Hadeel passed through the checkpoint on his way to Khan Younis with her mother and children. Her father was shot dead and they did not allow them to take his body with them. He was there, lying on the road. Her husband and brother were caught by the Israeli army. They let women and children pass and kept all the men. 

The news from Tel Al Sultan is devastating; bombing, shelling, killing without mercy.

Our colleagues in Gaza and us here in Cairo kept calling the ICRC, the UN Protection Cluster, to get them to intervene, to find a way to let people leave safely, to ask for a safe passage from Tel Al Sultan. We received no answer. They have no power to do anything.  Neither do we. 

What a day, what a long day, I just think of my colleagues in Rafah and it makes me cry, I can do nothing but cry, cry of helplessness and despair.

At 7:30 pm Suliman sent me a massage that our colleagues Ali and Yaser are released, they are safe in Khan Younis. I don’t know any more what is the meaning of the word “safe” I only know that they are not dead for now.