Palestine Letter: The unfinished message coming out of Gaza

“I prefer to die rather than go through this again,” Malek said. “I’m tired,” he exclaimed. A father of a four-year-old girl and a one-year-old boy, Malek and his wife woke up to an Israeli bombardment a few hundred meters away from their tent in Khan Younis last Monday. They grabbed their two children and ran out of the tent, not knowing where to head. Malek and his family are experienced, as they have already been through the same experience more than seven times in the span of a year and a half.

When I spoke to him, Malek was finishing building a new makeshift tent, aware that soon he would have to do it all over again as the Israeli army already ordered Palestinians in the area to evacuate. “I’m tired,” he repeated. “I don’t have any more energy.”.

“But I have a lot of agony, disappointment, and anger,” Malek went on. “The fact that life outside Gaza goes on as normal, or the fact that people feel tired, as if we weren’t tired of living through it completely alone.” My screen indicated that Malek was typing something, and then he stopped. But I could guess the rest of the message.

I could think and feel it. I have been carrying it with me for seventeen months, while I talk, while I’m silent, when I’m putting on a smile or not even trying to, and even when I sleep. It is a message heavy beyond description, crushing to the point you regret having the capacity to feel it in the first place. It goes a little like this: “What am I doing about it?”

At a certain point, the entire political context loses all its relevance. Who cares what the leaders in Israel are thinking or saying, and who cares what Egypt’s president and Donald Trump agreed or disagreed on over Gaza? Who cares if Steve Witkoff said if he was optimistic or pessimistic about ceasefire talks or if another journalist embarrassed a State Department spokesperson over Gaza again? A four-year-old girl is shaking with fear and cold again in Khan Younis without any reasonable justification. What is there that isn’t known yet about her reality that we, journalists, still need to inform you about? And yet, nobody seems to be able to stop the bombs from dropping on her family’s tent. At a certain point, the question becomes inescapable: What are you doing about it?

There comes a point when journalism seems as pointless as politics. Malek told me that his daughter has grown too conscious for her age. She follows the news on the radio and asks about the specific locations of the bombing. She asks questions about the ceasefire talks and rants at Israel, and on Hamas too. “I always tell her that we have nothing to do with it and that we are safe. I lie to her, and I say that the war is over,” said Malek. “But then she wakes up to explosions and sees bodies burning while I run with her in my arms, she smells the gunpowder all around us and sees her little brother screaming in fear, how can I protect her from that?”

In the space of 15 months, 15,000 children like Malek’s children were killed with bombs that were paid for, transported, and approved by the entire democratic, liberal, free world. That is 1,000 children per month. But it continues to be business as usual. For Palestinians, this is beyond the dehumanization of our children that we faced at the beginning of this genocide. This is sheer indifference about our existence or disappearance. Again; What are we doing about it?

Malek did not finish his message. Maybe it was out of politeness, or maybe out of consideration. A consideration that Gazans are able to extend even when it is they who are living the bulk of this man-made hell. But if he has been sharing his story throughout this genocide, it is because he feels it is important. As a Palestinian, and as a journalist, I am writing these lines because I feel that it is important that you read them.

You and I don’t have to see the actual fruit of any of our words or acts of solidarity. What we have to do is continue to answer that haunting question, so that we can answer it not to anyone but our conscience. 

But there is something else: Our words disturb many of those in power, and that alone is a testimony to the fact that we are doing something. This is another reason why we should continue to do it. 

But when you or I feel that we are tired, remember, as you wake up safe in your bed, that there is a father in Khan Younis who has had to flee with his family seven times under the threat of bombs. And who doesn’t know how to protect his children from an awareness beyond their years, or from the bombs that never end. And who prefers to die rather than go through it all again.

And yet, he is still rebuilding his makeshift tent.