The Gaza Strip is renowned in Palestine for its bright red and delicious strawberries. Once a major agricultural export, Gaza’s fields of “red gold” have been decimated by Israel’s genocide.

Israel wants you to believe that airdrops and symbolic aid trucks will solve the famine in Gaza. Don’t believe them. These measures are not meant to end hunger, only to quell growing global outrage as the genocide continues unchecked.

Israel’s war on Iran has buried our genocide in the headlines, but what Israel is doing in Gaza is a stain upon humanity. Don’t stop talking about it.

We called it the Gaza Sea even though it is part of the Mediterranean, because Israel isolated us from the world and made us believe that it was unreachable. The Freedom Flotilla broke that spell.

Gaza cannot survive without UNRWA and the life-saving services it provides. That is why Israel’s attack on the UN agency is an attack on Palestinian existence.

For many of us, the idea of leaving Gaza feels like a quiet betrayal. But how do you stay when the weight of loss grows heavier each day?

Our hope for a ceasefire has been weaponized against us. Every time politicians issue statements, mediators shuttle between capitals, headlines promise a breakthrough, and then it all falls apart. And every time, my hope breaks me.