A Gaza Testimony One Year After

On the one-year anniversary of Israel’s on-going genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, facts and figures don’t capture the human cost of the crime.
Instead, we uplift a reflection from on the ground in Gaza.

Since 2022, we have been blessed to know Dr. Intimaa AbuHelou who completed an MA in Public Health in May and now pursues a PhD, also at St Louis University in the same field.

Hend AbuHelou is Dr. AbuHelou’s younger sister and is displaced with the rest of the family in Gaza. Dr. AbuHelou shares the following about her sister: “Hend is a medical student, researcher, and writer in both Arabic and English. She is deeply rooted in a loving, close-knit family. Her grandmother— the soul of the family—was martyred, along with two of our brothers and their families in January. Their love continues to inspire Hend every day. Hend is passionate about international law and human rights, particularly for Palestine, where justice feels out of reach but remains her hope. As a former student ambassador for UNRWA and as an advocate for Save the Children, she has spoken for those who need it most. Her heart yearns for a world without war, where no one is killed for who they are.”

Hend recently wrote the following tribute to her young nieces. Hend reminds us of who and what we are fighting for.

Hend AbuHelou, The drone is winking at me

I’m an aunt to four beautiful little girls. Each one is a world of her own—different in every way. Each has her own tiny battles, fragile thoughts, and ways of protecting herself. I thought I knew them, really knew them. But war has a way of revealing how little we truly understand.

Before, they were full of life—endless energy, love, and joy. But this war... it’s shattered their innocence, crushed their spirits, and wrapped them in chains of fear. This is the story of all Gazan children. They witness horrors that no child should ever see. I once read that Gaza is the worst place in the world to be a child, a place where children are born only to die. Here, their lives can end in a blink—killed, tortured, starved, or buried beneath rubble, or they lose someone they love. Humanity has failed them. Innocence never stood a chance.

But somehow, amid all this destruction, we’ve grown closer. It’s the only silver lining this war has offered. These dark times have shown me my own strength—strength I never knew I had. I’ve faced my fears, pursued my dreams, and fought against the injustice we’re forced to live through. And I’ve done it all with them by my side, these little girls who’ve lost so much yet continue to find ways to smile.

Elia, Fofa, Sila, and Jawad

As the youngest aunt, I’ve been the one to listen to their worries, their fears, and their dreams. I ignore my own because theirs matter more. I wish I could hold them close, keep them safe from the world, give them the life they deserve. But I can’t. And I fear they’ll grow up with scars so deep that no love could ever heal them. If I had the power, I’d erase every painful memory, leaving only the warmth, the laughter. But I don’t have that magic. So I sit with them, listening to their stories, stunned by their wisdom, the way they try to make sense of a world that makes no sense at all.

One night, little Sila, just five years old, looked up at the sky through a shattered window and whispered, "The drone is winking at me." She thought it was a star, blinking in the night. In her innocent mind, a flickering drone meant rain—rain that brought bombs, not life. How could I explain the truth to her? That the drone wasn’t winking at us with love, but with death. It wasn’t a friend; it was an enemy, watching us, waiting to strike. Sila believes her father is the strongest man in the world, that no harm can come to her as long as he’s near. She thinks her mother’s arms can shield her from everything, that if she hides well enough, the bombs won’t find her. She’s five, but she carries the weight of someone far older.

Then there’s Fofa. Her biggest mission in life is teaching every child she meets about the importance of boycotting. One day, while I was scrolling through my phone, an ad for a popular snack appeared, a luxury in times of scarcity. Fofa, who’s also five, understood something many adults can’t grasp—that these companies support the ones killing us. She told her friend, "We don’t eat Nutella or drink Coca-Cola because they help in killing us." Fofa, like thousands of other children, has lost her home. She didn’t even get to say goodbye to her playroom or take her favorite doll or pink butterfly dress. All she has left is the key to a door that no longer exists, a key that now symbolizes loss, displacement, and homelessness. She couldn’t save her doll, buried beneath the rubble, and the thought of it makes her cry every night. She keeps asking about her friends, wondering if they’re okay. We lie to her, telling her what we wish were true—that they’re safe. She also worries about her teacher, about the bus driver who used to take her to kindergarten, the school she had just started going to a month before the war reduced it to ashes.

Elia, Sila, Fofa, and Siba have invented a heartbreaking game. They bury water bottles in the sand. If the bottle stays intact when they dig it up, it represents a martyr. A damaged bottle means a martyr in pieces. The size of the bottle matters too—a small one is a child, a large one an adult. This is their childhood, a world filled with symbols of death, while children elsewhere run free in parks, untouched by the darkness we live in.

One day, Elia, who’s seven and sharp as a blade, asked me, "Is it the same plane that feeds us, killing us?" Minutes before we were forced to evacuate, she suggested we dismantle our house’s walls and carry them with us, so no matter where we went, we’d always have home. And the flowers... she begged us to take care of them, flowers my father planted just before the war started. But they withered, just like our spirits and our house that was brought to the ground.

Siba, my bright little star, was the first to ask my father what evacuation meant. Trying to shield her from the horror, he told her it was a journey to Mecca. She packed her bag, excited for a trip that wasn’t real, asking every day when we’d leave. Then there’s Jawad, our youngest, who will turn two next month. When the explosions hit, I could hear his little heart pounding in his chest. He called the sound of bombs "ghosts" and begged his sisters to protect him from the ghosts. All children deserve the simple right to live, to grow up without fear.

What did Tala, just ten years old, do to deserve being killed as she played with her pink roller skates? What crime did Hind commit to die alone, hungry, and scared? While children around the world start a new school year, happy and safe, Gazan children wait in long lines for food and water, their schools turned into shelters. Instead of singing and studying, they are learning how to survive.

One year later, we remain steadfast and committed to a free Palestine, and we know the only way to get there is to end U.S. military, financial, political, and cultural support for Israel and Zionism. Here in the belly of the beast we have a special role to play in disrupting that support from the inside. Let's remain creative in our tactics, committed to each other, and always remember who and what we are fighting for.

💚 STL-PSC

"We don’t eat Nutella or drink Coca-Cola because they help in killing us." Fofa, like thousands of other children, has lost her home.

Hend and Fofa

Fofa and the pink butterfly dress she couldn't save

Elia and Sila