Last week, during another violent night, my niece of almost four years asked me a question that I will never forget.
“If we die while sleeping … Does it still hurt?”
I didn’t know what to say.
How do you say to a child – who has seen more death than daylight – who dies in your sleep is a mercy?
So I said to him, “No. I don’t think so. That’s why we have to fall asleep now.”
She nodded and turned her face to the wall.
She believed me. She closed her eyes.
I sat in the dark, listening to the bombs, asking myself how many children were buried alive just at the bottom of the street.
I have 12 nieces and nephews. All are less than nine years old. They were my comfort and my joy in these dark times.
But me, like their parents, I find it difficult to help them understand what is going on around us. We had to lie to them so many times. They often believed us, but sometimes they felt in our voices or our looks that something terrifying was happening. They would feel horror in the air.
No child should ever have such brutality. No parent should have to curl up in despair, knowing that they cannot protect their children.
Last month, the ceasefire ended, and with him, the illusion of a break.
What followed was not only a resumption of war – it was a transition to something more brutal and relentless.
In the space of three weeks, Gaza has become a shooting field, where no one is safe. More than 1,400 men, women and children have been killed.
The daily massacres broke what was left of our ability to hope.
Some of them hit home.
Not just emotionally. Physically. Yesterday, the air was filled with dust and the smell of blood in a few streets with a few streets. The Israeli army has targeted Al-Nakheel Street in the city of Gaza, killing 11 people, including five children.
A few days earlier, at the Dar al-Arqam school, a place that had housed inappropriate families, an Israeli air strike transformed classrooms in ashes. At least 30 people were killed in seconds – mainly women and children. They had come to safety there, believing that the blue flag of the United Nations would protect them. This is not the case. The school is less than 10 minutes from my home.
The same day, the nearby FAHD school was also bombed; Three people were killed.
One day earlier, there was news from a horror scene in Jabalia.
An Israeli strike targeted a clinic led by UNRWA, where civilians were sheltered.
The witnesses described the parts of the body scattered through the clinic. The children burned alive. A beheaded infant. The smell of burning flesh suffocating the survivors. It was a massacre in a place intended for healing.
In the middle of all this, some parts of Gaza City have received evacuation orders.
Evacuate. NOW. But where? Gaza has no safe areas. The north is leveled. The south is bombed.
The sea is a prison. Roads are death traps.
We stayed.
It is not because we are courageous. This is because we have no other where to go.
Fear is not the right word to describe what we feel in Gaza. Fear is manageable. Fear can be named.
What we feel is a muffled and silent terror that is in your chest and never leaves.
This is the time between the whistle of a missile and the impact, when you wonder if your heart has stopped.
It is the noise of children who cry under the rubble. The smell of blood spreads with the wind.
This is the question that my niece asked.
Foreign governments and politicians call it a “conflict”. A “complex situation”. A “tragedy”. But what we live is not complex.
It is an ordinary massacre. What we live is not a tragedy. It is a war crime.
I am a writer. A journalist. I spent months writing, documenting, calling the world through my words. I sent dispatches. I told stories that no one else could. And yet – so often – I feel like I’m screaming in a void.
However, I continue to write. Because even if the world looks away, I will not leave our truth without speaking. Because I think someone listens. Somewhere. I write because I believe in humanity, even when governments have turned their backs. I write so that when the story is written, no one can say that they did not know.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
