MOTHERS and CHILDREN of PALESTINE
WE ARE WITH YOU.
Stop this genocide! Ceasefire now!
Invest in caring, not killing.
Like millions of people around the world we are horrified and outraged at Israel's bombing and siege of Gaza, cutting off water, food, electricity, fuel and medical supplies, the destruction of homes, schools and hospitals, and the forced evacuation of over a million people.
As mothers and grandmothers we cry in rage and despair at the mass murder of children in Gaza, and their murder and imprisonment in the West Bank. Even premature babies have been denied medical attention and purposefully starved to death. All children are our children and we must fight for every one. This slaughter of the innocents is the biggest crime against humanity.
Entire families have been wiped out. Those who survive are now homeless and threatened with starvation. We will never forget these crimes.
We are not represented anywhere. We must represent ourselves and each other! Those in power - starting with the US (and their prime stooge, the UK) which arm and fund Israel's apartheid and landgrab - refuse to call for a ceasefire. That's why ever growing numbers of people have taken to the streets, and are using every platform we have access to against this genocide that's happening before our eyes. The few who speak for us in the halls of power, like Representative Rashid Tlaib, the only US Palestinian woman in Congress, are sanctioned.
But wherever we are, we refuse to be silenced. Despite attempts in a number of countries to crimininalise protest, we continue to insist that our voices be heard.
In our thousands and our millions, we are all Palestinians.
Messages arrive from Gaza with news of dead children. It has become a graveyard for humanity’s conscience
Ghada Ageel 15 November 2023 Excerpts
From the mouths of babes comes truth, so the saying goes. In Khan Younis refugee camp, Shahd, my four-year-old niece, asked my sister-in-law: “Mom, is it painful to die? What is less painful, to die from a rocket or a tank shell?”
She also asked: “Mom, when I am killed, will you bury me next to my cousin Julia. I don’t want to be left alone in the graveyard after people go home. I want to play with Julia.” Julia was killed on 26 October when an Israeli bombardment levelled an entire block, killing more than 50 of my immediate family members, relatives and neighbours.
As a mother I implore the world to take note of the stories of these children…
I want to make a special appeal to every mother who reads this article. No mother ought to endure the pain that is today being inflicted on the mothers of Gaza. No mother should spend the rest of her life dreaming of giving her beloved child one more kiss.
No mother should endure the guilt of her child calling her from under the rubble crying: “Mama, can you get me out, where are you?” No mother should have to pull their dead child’s body from the rubble of the family home because a two-tonne bomb has been dropped on it while she was out shopping.
No mother should have to give birth while a battle rages in the neighbourhood outside her hospital. No mother should have her premature newborn taken off life support because the fuel in the hospital has run out.
As a mother I find these traumas to be unimaginable. Just as the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo met every Thursday at 3.30pm, I appeal to the mothers of the world to meet every day at 3pm – the time of Nawraz’s son’s death – to mark the suffering of Palestinian mothers and children.
Gaza has become a graveyard. A graveyard for children and for mothers. But Gaza has also become a place where the conscience of the world is being buried, alongside the failure of the world’s institutions to protect civilians. Gaza is the graveyard of human rights.
Read full article and others by Ghada Ageel here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/15/gaza-children-women-graveyard-human-rights
And here:
LIFE IN THE HEART OF DEATH: A SERIES ON THE EXPERIENCES OF MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS UNDER ATTACK – STORY 17, EXCERPTS
I turned thirty, three days ago!
…I thought I understood occupation when I suffered bitterly in my experience with Sofia, the birdie of my heart gifted to me a few years into my marriage. Visiting Sofia, whom I delivered in occupied Jerusalem at the time, required me to get permission from the Israelis, their permission to go see my daughter who was born at 6-month-gestation. She, her father, and I were in desperate need to be with each other when she was in the incubator. But it so happens that the occupier’s law prohibits parents from being together in the hospital, and provides a permit only for one member of the family at a time, and for a maximum period of one week… how much I needed my husband next to me and how much Sofia needed both of us together… and how many difficult decisions we had to make from afar, without looking into her eyes…
The struggle begins at the Erez Crossing, where you are forced into a long search from head to toe! You see soldiers and officers everywhere with their heavy artillery, arrogantly looking around, with their fingers on the trigger, ready to attack in cold-blood and empty all their bullets in the head of the victim, as per usual…
You see female recruits all around, and you can’t help but wonder how can a woman be so harsh on another woman this way… how does she not see that had she been born on the other side of the line, she would be in my place…
…I cry because in a few hours I will have to leave Sofia alone again and return to Gaza, not knowing when I will be allowed to see her again… and I cry at our whole situation! But even in my miserable attempts to feel some peace and safety, I only felt more bitterness and pain! For wherever you looked, you would see Israeli police, looking at you like a hungry cat ready to jump at its prey; ready and wishing for the moment in which they end your life!
Despite all this, I never truly understood the meaning of occupation until today. As we try to survive the most brutal of wars we have witnessed, I finally started to grasp what it means to be occupied. Today. Between death and us is zero distance, and nobody is reaching out to do us justice! Occupation as I see it now is that one party moves as far as possible from their humanity to chase their greed, and paints the enemy as the one devoid of humanity…
Yasmine Ayoub, 12 November 2023
Read the full story and all the stories in the series: http://upaconnect.org/category/gaza2023
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