"We are starving"
These three simple words are the headline to an article from the site +972 Magazine from the teacher and journalist Ruwaida Amer who is 30 years old and living in Gaza. She tells the story of the daily downward spiral, her family, trying to care for them and seeing those around them when she goes to take her mother to Nasser Hospital.
You can click and read the story. I'm sorry that I don't excerpt it. You can read about being too weak to walk more than a little distance. About collapsing while standing from being too weak. The crying children and the hopeless feeling of adults as they cannot help their children and sit and watch their health go down unable to maintain their own strength.
You can read what I haven't described or also click some links to other things Ruwaida included because she wanted us, the world outside of Gaza, to know about them. It is important to her that she continue to tell the story and it comes across in her writing.
Sometimes the simple things about people come to my mind and this article was one of those times. Ruwaida Amer. Trying so hard to tell us her story and yet I realized that most US citizens don't know the correct pronunciation of her name. It is "Roo Way Duh" and the last name is pronounced "Ah Mer". According to a name origins site: "The name "Ruwaida" is of Arabic origin and is commonly used for girls. It means "gentle," "kind," or "soft-spoken." It is a name that reflects qualities of tenderness, compassion, and a gentle nature." Here's another way to say the name:
The point in my talking about her name is that her continuation of life from day to day is tenuous and so by next week she may no longer be alive. But the least I could do is care enough to know about her name and respect it. We may not be able, as US citizens, to save her and her family but we can at least listen to her story, even if only for awhile, and respect her for telling it.
https://www.972mag.com/hunger-gaza-food-aid-siege-children/
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It breaks my heart. There is more suffering there than we can begin to grasp. Her testimony is just the tip of the iceberg of what goes on there, what they have endured, but it's as much as this priviledged white woman can stand.
'Today is better than tomorrow'
I can only imagine many in Gaza might feel the same way.
We complain about the price of eggs. There is a plague of obesity in this country. Most Americans couldn't even find Gaza on a map, much less care about what's happening there, where people, mostly children, are literally starving to death.
What is being perpetrated on these innocent people is criminal. Pure and simple. Maybe 1-2% are members of Hamas, or helping them? They don't have the strength or time to do any more than scavenge for anything to eat. I wonder if there are any animals left in the country at all.
I feel helpless. Outrage and empathy are not enough. I am not anti-semitic, but I hate what Israel is getting away with now. Any loyalty or support for them is superseded by the genocide in Gaza. So, what can we do? Sending money for food that never makes it into hungry stomachs is useless, especially as someone here said the other day, if the aid is being used as bait stations to shoot people.
The only solution I see is if the rest of the world comes together, especially the major powers, and leans on Bibi like a ton of bricks. STOP supporting genocide! The most recent articles I can find are from May, but they say trump is still full speed ahead on selling arms to Israel. He reversed a partial embargo that Pres. Biden had implemented. Bibi is not going to stop until he feels major economic pain, since condemnation doesn't seem to phase him. Obviously, the U.S. is no help in that regard. Other countries have to jump in with both feet immediately to stop the atrocities.
