The Gaza I knew is gone with our martyrs

It is difficult to believe it has been a year since the start of this genocide. It is difficult to imagine that Gaza is still drowning in concrete and blood as we have failed to stop the bombardment and systematic annihilation of the Palestinian people. And now, as the war expands to Lebanon, it does not seem there is any one of us who can stop Israel and its quest for destruction. 

I always had hope that as long as my loved ones, my family,  were still alive, things would simply be rebuilt when the nightmare ends. Although my husband was heartbroken over the bombing of his childhood home in Khan Younis, we reassured each other that houses get rebuilt, new memories can be made as long as our loved ones survived. 

And so, clinging on to this hope of reunification, I fought my country’s complicity in genocide. I attended every protest I could and advocated for the people of Gaza on social media and through political campaigns. In my organization which was created in October, Zaytouna, we persevered to bring the consciousness of the Palestinian liberation struggle to regular German citizens. 

Except, in Germany, the simple act of protesting or challenging Israel’s war crimes, can land you in a sea of fines and legal battles for simply saying chants such as “from the river to the sea,” or even the basic fact that “Israel is creating a genocide.” 

For me, it is clear I am on the radar of the federal government. I recently learned that I am flagged by German state police (Bundespolizei)  for “radicalization in the direction of anti-Israel hate and antisemitism,” as well as their belief that I, and my husband, “do not believe in Israel’s right to exist” or so I was told at border security. Although never arrested or charged for a crime, even a politically motivated crime, the federal government has blacklisted, surveilled, and attempted to entrap me and my fellow colleagues for practicing our right to protest. 

But this was all okay to me because if it is the price I have to pay to fight for my family’s survival, then so be it. All was okay as long as they survived, and we would be united once again once the war was over. I longed to see my cousin-in-law, Sama, again. She held me tight on the last day of our visit to Gaza in August 2022 and said, ” Please come back soon.” I promised her I would.

Israel, however, did not allow me to fulfill my promise. On Sunday, February 4, 2024, Israel bombed Sama Abdelhadi’s home in Deir Al Balah. Along with Sama and her 17-year-old brother Hassan, their mother Wissam, their grandfather, and aunts and uncles were all killed in a single strike. 

After that fateful day, news of martyrdom in our family kept coming. One cousin here, another cousin there, and in one fateful airstrike on the Maghazi refugee camp, my husband’s uncle lost all of his sons and all of his granddaughters. 

I know that fighting for liberation can only be an uphill battle filled with heartbreak, pain, and everlasting struggle. The Gaza I once knew is gone along with our martyrs. The Khan Younis that my husband was raised in has instead been razed to the ground. The history that was preserved throughout the centuries is destroyed. The Palestine that has existed, simply does not anymore. Sama does not exist anymore. 

I am no longer fighting by clinging to the hope of reunification and survival. The sad truth of the Palestinian people is that even if Israel killed every member of my family, along with every Palestinian in Gaza, we, as a people, will never alter our demands. We will never accept to live in subjugation, occupation, apartheid, and in siege. We can never accept or forgive a state to continue its settler colonial expansion on top of the graves of the old and young. 

As I am living here in Germany, and my friends face police brutality, colleagues face court summons and activists across the country undergo brutal house raids, it still does not change our course of actions. We understand our country’s role in the ongoing brutalization of the Palestinian people, and until that reality changes, ours will not. 

We fight for Palestine not for our family. We fight for Palestine because the liberation of its people means the liberation of so many of us who live in states that are reliant on Israel to carry on their colonial fantasies. The German Reason of State that prioritizes “Israel’s national security,” does not do so to relieve themselves from the guilt of the Holocaust. They do so because Zionism has successfully allowed white supremacy to exist in a new form, this time against individuals who denounce propagandized state doctrine. 

Sama may not exist in this Palestine. I often rationalize her death by saying she never wanted to be in this Palestine. A Palestine of war, starvation, and pain. I rationalize her death by believing she is in paradise currently foreseeing the beauty of liberated Palestine free of walls, fences and outposts and is happy and proud that we did not give up. 

We will not give up, for Sama and the tens of thousands of martyrs who died from the sheer bad luck that they were born as a Palestinian.