Israel is Inflicting a Holocaust on Gaza

Ruwaida Amer 

The Electronic Intifada 

30 October 2023

One of numerous buildings that Israel has attacked in Khan Younis.  Mohammed Talatene DPA via ZUMA Press

Thousands of stories are being told in Gaza.

Every martyr has a story.

Every destroyed home has a story.

Everyone who has been displaced has a story.

The supply of water, food and electricity has been cut. How can the people of Gaza live without these basic needs?

There is a massive siege. The entire situation is unjust.

As Israel has halted the supply of water, everyone is dependent on a group of wells, from which water is pumped once a week.

There is no equipment to deliver water to the tanks on the roofs of houses. So people have to fill water tanks using buckets, lifted with ropes.

This task takes about two hours to complete. Under “normal” circumstances, it would take less than 30 minutes.

Without electricity, people cannot charge phones and other electronic devices. Maintaining contact with people inside and outside Gaza is extremely difficult.

Israel does not issue warnings before bombing people’s homes. It often drops missiles while people are asleep.

A large number of Gaza’s martyrs are children.

Orphans

Entire families have been wiped out from the civil registry. In other families, only a child is left.

Those children will have to grow up as orphans.

Odeh Abu Akar, 7, is one such child. He is from al-Fukhari, an area near the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

One recent morning, al-Fukhari woke up to the sound of Israel’s bombs at 6:30 AM.

The bombing hit an apartment building. Seven members of one family were killed, along with two other people.

Odeh lost his family through that attack. He survived with moderate injuries and is beginning to recover physically.

But how can he recover from the trauma? He does not understand that his mother and father have been killed and keeps asking where they are.

Relatives try to support and console him. But he does not want to sleep or eat without his mother by his side.

On 13 October, Israel ordered more than 1 million people in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, to flee southwards. Those who fled to the homes of relatives and friends, or to hospitals and schools, did not know what conditions they would live in.

Ahmad Nimer, 30, fled Gaza City. He left a home into which he had only moved a few months ago.

He came to the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis. He was unable to find anywhere else where he could shelter.

“I have no friends here,” he said. “All my family live in Gaza City. Here, I find it very difficult to get food and water. I sleep in the hospital’s garden. Keeping in touch with my family is very difficult. I try to tell them that I am fine and I want to check on them.”

Isolation

Reem Salem, 40, comes from Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.

After Israel launched its war she left her home for a school in Gaza City. She quit that school when a nearby area was bombed and leaflets were dropped telling people to evacuate.

Reem is now staying at a school run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) in al-Fukhari with her five children.

“I went into one of the classrooms with my children,” she said. “And some residents of the area helped by giving us blankets and mattresses so that we don’t have to sleep on the floor.”

On Friday 27 October, a total communications blackout was imposed on Gaza.

The isolation was ugly. People in Gaza thought there was a deliberate plan to kill Palestinians without the world seeing.

The next two days passed with great difficulty. There were sounds of explosions around us.

We did not know where missiles fell.

We listened to the radio to find out if the world knew that Gaza had no internet. Did anyone know anything about us?

The news channels were indeed still broadcasting live and they were telling the world about us.

Just an hour before the internet was completely cut off, there was news about a truce being negotiated.

Yet when the internet went off, we heard very intense bombing around us. We could not tell what was happening.

Was the news about the truce a hoax?

As we followed the news on radio, we heard that the intense bombing was preparation for an Israeli ground invasion.

We are praying night and day for God to save us from the holocaust that Israel is carrying out in Gaza.

Ruwaida Amer is a journalist based in Gaza.