Gaza Kids Quotes

How come a Palestinian child does not live like an Israeli child? Why do Palestinian children have to toil at any manner of hard jobs just to be able to go to school? How is it that when we are sick. we can't get the medical help the Israeli kids take for granted?

The houses were not Hamas. The kids were not Hamas. Their clothes and toys were not Hamas. The neighborhood was not Hamas. The air was not Hamas. Our ears were not Hamas. Our eyes were not Hamas. The one who ordered the killing, the one who pressed the button thought only of Hamas.

I watch footage of people bringing their kids to a party of sorts. Only it’s not a party, it’s a blockade. The people are here to stop aid trucks from entering Gaza. But the atmosphere is festive. Someone on the other side of these walls is going to starve to death or be operated on without proper medical equipment because this aid won’t pass, but there is something festive here. Ten years earlier, when I watch footage of settlers with folding chairs up on the hillside, viewing the bombing of Gaza as one would view a summer blockbuster, again there is a celebratory air. I am reminded of what the actor Helen Mirren said of her time in Israel in 1967: “I saw Arabs being thrown out of their houses in Jerusalem. But it was just the extraordinary magical energy of a country just beginning to put its roots in the ground. It was an amazing time to be here.

felt dizzied by a sudden sweeping understanding of our collective grief—kids ripped from their homes in Palestine, kids shot in the streets of Gaza and Houston and Rio, the greed, the oil, and guns—it was the same struggle everywhere.

She once said, "When I grow up and become a mother, I want my kids to live in a reality where the word rocket is just another name for a space shuttle.

A Hamas leader named Nizar Rayyan was killed. He was buried under the rubble of his house with fifteen of his family, mostly his children, the youngest aged 2. On TV, I watched when a man pulled out a headless child, another with no arm or leg. So small I couldn’t tell if boy or girl. Hate ignores such details. The houses were not Hamas. The kids were not Hamas. Their clothes and toys were not Hamas. The neighborhood was not Hamas. The air was not Hamas. Our ears were not Hamas. Our eyes were not Hamas. The one who ordered the killing, the one who pressed the button thought only of Hamas. My brother Hudayfah was born deaf and mute.

At night, when I tucked my kids into bed, my heart would sink and I would pray that the hours to come would be safe and sound. When morning arose, I’d feel temporary relief that the darkness was gone.

Some kids have invented a new, clever way of making sure their story is told, or at least recorded, even after they’ve been torn to pieces by an Israeli missile. To make sure their bodies are recognised they have taken to writing their names, with markers, on their hands and legs. They are sharing this practice on social media. Some are even writing their family’s mobile numbers so they can be called and informed of their death. It is almost impossible to think about the world carrying on after we die, but these kids are doing it: putting their loved ones first, hoping to lessen their suffering by saving them from the purgatory of not knowing. They do it also, I think, for themselves: the idea of dying and not being mourned by anyone is unbearable.

On TV, I watched when a man pulled out a headless child, another with no arm or leg. So small I couldn’t tell if boy or girl. Hate ignores such details. The houses were not Hamas. The kids were not Hamas. Their clothes and toys were not Hamas. The neighborhood was not Hamas. The air was not Hamas.

I watch footage of people bringing their kids to a party of sorts. Only it’s not a party, it’s a blockade. The people are here to stop aid trucks from entering Gaza. But the atmosphere is festive. Someone on the other side of these walls is going to starve to death or be operated on without proper medical equipment because this aid won’t pass,

Near the grave of Muhammad Abu Khdeir was that of another murdered family member. In 2009, a Jewish Israeli murdered Amjad Abu Khdeir in a random racist attack. According to family members, the killer was also allowed to file an insanity plea that let him off with the lightest possible sentence. “It’s not just our family that’s at risk. Every family here in the occupied areas has lost someone,” Hussein Abu Khdeir said. Just days before I met the Abu Khdeirs, two of their friends from nearby Beit Hanina, twenty-year-olds Amir Shweiki and Sameer Mahfouz, were beaten by a mob of pipe and baseball bat–wielding settlers in central Jerusalem. Ten young Jewish nationalists were said to have beaten the young men nearly to death, but none have been sentenced at the time of this writing. “Everyone’s scared to let their kids out because at any moment a settler can take your kids and just keep going,” Thawra Abu Khdeir said.

And there is also that feeling of tightness in the chest, tears stuck in your throat unwilling to come out. It’s always there. It’s the default. All the stuff around you—that’s what keeps changing. Sometimes you’re about to miss a deadline, sometimes you drink your coffee with regular milk because they’re out of oat milk, sometimes your kid comes up to you out of nowhere and gives you a hug. And every single thing makes you want to cry, but nothing actually ends up turning into tears. Like an end to the war in Gaza: it’s always close, and it always doesn’t happen.

The people here are civilians. They are doctors, teachers, businessmen—they're the best of society. So why else destroy this tower but for the savagery and barbarism of the Israelis that target everything on this land: humans, stones and plants? Why else but to plant terror and fear and kick people out of their land?" Israeli violence had become such a consistent feature of Gazan life that few of Barawi's neighbors were terribly shocked by the destruction of their homes. "We actually got used to all the explosions," he reflected. "Everyone was prepared for their ceilings to collapse on them so they sat in their apartments and played with their kids and did what they normally do. We prepared while watching TV or doing mundane things just to move from this world into the next.