This morning I opened social media to look for news from Gaza. I had to scroll through my news feed for a while before I saw the first mention of my home country.
Yet the news we receive from Gaza via friends, family and social media is no less bleak than it was a year ago. People continue to cry out for help and hope that the world will hear them.
For three months, Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, appealed to the world for help as the Israeli army besieged the hospital, cutting off care, bombing it and slaughtering people around it, injuring some of the medical staff Staff and patients inside.
In one video In an appeal published on December 12th, Dr. Abu Safia: “We are now running out of capacity and offering a low level of service. I hope there are open ears. We hope that there is a living conscience that will hear our request and enable a humanitarian corridor to the hospital so that Kamal Adwan Hospital can continue its work of providing services.”
But his cries for help fell on deaf ears. The day after Christmas, an Israeli bombardment killed a woman at the hospital’s front gate and five medical staff: Dr. Ahmed Samour, a pediatrician; Esraa Abu Zaidah, a laboratory technician; Abdul Majid Abu al-Eish and Maher al-Ajrami, paramedics; and Fares al-Houdali, a maintenance technician. A shrapnel shattered the skull of hospital nurse Hassan Dabous, putting his life in danger.
Yesterday Israeli soldiers stormed the hospital and set it on fire, expelling 350 patients and killing Dr. Abu Safia and other medical personnel were kidnapped.
This terrible news received little attention in the international media; There was no response from foreign governments or leading institutions, except for some Middle Eastern states and the WHO. Israel has clearly succeeded in normalizing its brutal attacks, destruction of Palestinian hospitals, and killing of Palestinian patients and medical workers.
There was also no reaction from the world when, earlier this month, Dr. Said Joudeh, the last remaining orthopedic surgeon in northern Gaza, was murdered on his way to work at the barely functioning Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia refugee camp. Dr. Joudeh was a retired surgeon who was forced to return to work due to the severe shortage of doctors caused by Israel’s targeted killings.
Just a week before his murder, he had learned that his son Majd had been killed. Despite his sadness, Dr. Joudeh continues his work.
As part of its depopulation policy, Israel seeks to eliminate all aspects of civilian life in the northern Gaza Strip. For this reason, it attacks civilian infrastructure throughout the North and hinders its functioning. The few medical facilities were the last remnants of civilian life.
In addition to trying to exterminate medical workers, the Israeli army also systematically prevents civil defense teams and ambulances from saving lives in the north, often beating and killing them in the process.
And it’s not just appeals from the north that are being ignored.
Famine struck the entire Gaza Strip as Israel drastically reduced the number of humanitarian and commercial trucks entering Gaza. Hunger is pervasive and affects even those who may have means to buy food but cannot find it.
My cousin, a UNRWA teacher, recently told me about his visit to his sister, who was sick and displaced in Deir el-Balah. He was unable to sleep during his visit. He hadn’t eaten bread for 15 days, but it wasn’t his own gnawing diabetic hunger that kept him alive. It was the screams of his sister’s children, just begging for a piece of bread. Desperate to comfort them, my cousin told them story after story until they fell asleep. But he stayed awake, haunted by her hunger and his own.
Aside from food, Israel is also blocking the delivery of urgently needed materials to build shelters. Four babies already have it frozen since the beginning of this month.
Despite the famine and the harsh winter, the Israeli bombing of the houses and tents of the displaced people has not stopped.
On December 7th, a distant relative, Dr. Muhammad al-Nairab, his wife and three daughters as the Israeli army attacked their home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood west of Gaza City. Two of his daughters, Sally and Sahar, were doctors and helped save lives. They can’t do it anymore.
When my niece Nour, mother of two children, turned to her uncle Dr. When she turned to Muhammad to express her condolences, she found the pain of his loss unbearable. I spoke to her shortly afterwards. Her words pierced the despair like a scream: “When will the world hear and see us? When will these massacres matter? Aren’t we human?”
On December 11th, another family not far from Dr. Hit Muhammad’s house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. This Israeli attack killed Palestinian journalist Iman al-Shanti with her husband and three children.
Days before her murder, Iman shared one video of herself reflecting on the reality of genocide. “Is it possible for this level of failure to exist? Is the blood of the people of Gaza so cheap for you?” she asked the world.
There was no answer. Just as war crimes against Palestinians have been normalized, so have the death and suffering of Palestinians. This normalization not only silences their suffering but also denies their humanity.
But for Palestinians, the pain of loss is anything but normal – it remains, penetrating deep into the soul, raw and unrelenting, borne by the echoes of those they lost, both inside and outside Gaza. It is a transnational pain, a grief that crosses borders and defies borders, connecting Palestinians in exile with those enduring the horrors of genocide.
In a social media post on December 3, journalist Dayana al-Mughrabi, currently displaced in Egypt, described the endless grief of the people of Gaza: “Our loved ones don’t even die, they die many times after their actual death. A person died the day he died, and then died again the day the watch I wore on my wrist for years broke. He died again when the teacup he was drinking from broke. This person died again on the day that reminds us of his actual date of death, and after his funeral, when the coffee residue was washed from his last cup and when I saw someone collecting the rest of his medicine to get rid of it. Those we love continue to die many times – they never stop dying – not a single day.”
As this repetition of death occurs more than 45,000 times, the world seems ready to leave Gaza. Fifteen months into this genocide, advocates and activists around the world are devastated and exhausted by the endless destruction in Gaza and the overwhelming silence and acceptance of it.
As a native Palestinian and third-generation Palestinian refugee, I refuse to give up hope, despite the indelible mark that the genocide left on my soul – marks that time cannot erase. I remember the words of Czech dissident Vaclav Havel: “Hope is definitely not the same as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, no matter how it turns out.”
South Africa’s case against the apartheid regime at the International Court of Justice and the work of the International Criminal Court are not only significant – they are also crucial in establishing Israel’s status as a pariah, one of the nations seeking the extermination of entire peoples. The world must not forget Gaza. Now more than ever his cries must be heard and the call for justice answered.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
