Just days before Ramadan officially begins under the gaze of the crescent moon, my friend Amjad*, an experienced Gazan nurse and father to eight children, leaves a recorded voice message.
“This is very kind of you.” His voice is gravelly, exhausted. “Thank you. And thank everybody for their concern and love.” It is the first time any of our colleagues have heard from him in 133 days. “So far, we are still alive. But we are very hungry.”
When Amjad last wrote, in late October, the concerns were different. “I am still trying to hang on. We cannot breathe due to the explosions and dust. It is so scary to keep hearing bombs all night.” After that, Amjad stopped messaging.
Usually around this time of year, Facebook and WhatsApp feeds are flooded with vibrant memes. Last March, on International Women’s Day, Amjad sent me an image of a bright-red rose encircling a card with cursive script, “Happy Women’s Day”.
Palestinian colleagues normally mark the commencement of this holy season with e-cards of flowers, coffee cups and medjool dates, and celebratory words such as “Ramadan Mubarak” (blessed Ramadan) or “Ramadan Kareem” (may Ramadan be generous to you). It is a month of deep faith, a time to focus on charity and compassion, and a period of joy.
“Terrible times I am going through,” writes Mahmoud*, a language professor who is a friend and a father to four young children. “It aches me really to see this happening, and for this very long time, six months of non-stop fear, agony, displacement and devastation.”
He sends videos from his extended family home in Gaza, which he has risked his life to return to visit. It has been stormed, ravaged and set fire to by the Israeli army. He can be heard choking back tears behind the camera. “I know this time will pass, but I need all the patience and resilience of the world to withstand this genocidal storm.”
My friend Khamis, a neurorehabilitation and pain medicine doctor, rang this month, the first time I have heard his voice since early October. For weeks, Khamis has had to walk two kilometres through unsafe roads in Gaza to get mobile phone reception after the Israeli army cut the telecommunication lines.
“It now costs US$35 for one kilo of flour. This is not even enough to feed our family one serving of bread. We need three kilos at least.” Our conversation is interrupted briefly by his cough. “We haven’t received a salary all these months to buy flour.”
Khamis was once cheerily busy — deftly moving from hospital work, to university teaching, to running international conferences, to tending to his five children. He has friends all over the world. We FaceTimed during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 as his youngest children bounced and danced on couches and Khamis gently scolded through giggles, attempts at home-schooling and online lectures to his medical students.
As Ramadan breaks across the Middle East, Khamis shares a message on Facebook. “The blessed month of Ramadan … came to our afflicted people in the Gaza Strip, where most of the houses, towers, factories, shops, streets and infrastructure are completely destroyed. How can I say to my people like every year that passed, Happy New Year?”
As army bombs still devastate what is left of homes and snipers are still a threat, attention has turned to the famine. We watch unnerving World War II-like footage of slate-coloured US parachutes crashing aid pallets of packaged food into the Mediterranean Sea. Messages have moved on from seeking safety from war and instead ask, “Have you found anything to eat today?”
Mahmoud’s words are weary. “I will hang on … just keep sending my positive energy travelling through the oceans and landscapes and landing here in this beleaguered land”.
On my 2020 visit to his hospital in Gaza City, Amjad said of Palestinians, “We were not born with a golden teaspoon in our mouths. I was working when I was eight years old, selling biscuits. Our childhood has an important impact on us. I am self-motivated and I try to motivate others. Our background is very rich, one of the major things that keeps people going”.
“I have lost 16 kilograms”, Amjad writes on Ramadan’s eve. “Please give my sincerest regards to my Australian friends…”
*names have been changed to protect identities.
Thanks for reporting on this Rachel.
Greens leader Adam Bandt moved to suspend standing orders in the House this morning to speak to the Gaza catastrophe. He called for the Australian Government to end its support for the State of Israel’s invasion of Gaza and listed the reasons for this motion, which included the current ICJ referral.
The motion was lost – the ALP and LNP voted against the motion. 63 – 6
Utterly disgusted.
Where were the other 81 members who should have been there to vote?
It socked and angered me that Australian government would be so unfeeling as to continue its support of Israel. I guess if you have money ro buy weapons and parts for weapons, that the Gazans are not allowed to have for their self-defence from invaders then the politicians of this country do not care – like the US politicians do not care since it doesn’t affect them at home.
Albanese showed his true colours when he cruelly cancelled visas of women and children who were mid -transit for ^security^ reasons. Yeah, right, sing me another one Joe.
It has been clear for some time, to me at least, that Netanyahu’s strategy is to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable. He couldn’t exterminate the Palestinians, although some of his extremist right wing coalition partners have effectively called for that by saying every Palestinian is an enemy or potential enemy. So, instead, his strategy is to exterminate all the infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, rendering it impossible to live there.
Another national leader in another time, referred to the strategy as “lebensraum” – making more space for his people to live.
It is what is happening in the West Bank, where 700,000 Israelis have invaded and colonised, effectively stealing, the land of Palestinians who have been there for many generations. The Law of Return, entitling any Jew to migrate to Israel and be granted citizenship, has led to a population explosion and the need for more land. Note that 1,300,000 Jews, ie 15% of Israelis, speak Russian as their first language. The numbers of settlers with American accents is also very clear when the media goes vox popping in the West Bank.
Could it be that Netanyahu has worked out that his army could save ammunition and endangering his conscripts by starving the Palestinians instead?
Why is the world not outraged?
It’s a peculiar thing, Henk. After looking away from what was happening in Germany 1933-45, the countries (mostly Western) of the world, provoked by shame, guilt and embarrassment, decided that Jews needed their own land and nation where they could be safe, secure and in control of their own destinies.
I’m wondering what happens if the countries of the world, provoked by shame, guilt and embarrassment at once again looking away, might feel duty bound to decide that the Palestinians need their own land where they can be safe, secure and in control of their own destinies. And in the unlikely event of that happening, where will that land be?
I like the idea that a large portion of Israel is ceded to the Palestinians. After all, Israel is historically Palestinian land. Perhaps Palestine-in-Israel will be propped up by the USA, as a counter to Zionist extremism.
Historically there never was an Israel as land, only a man loved by God apparently and that love has been turned into a promised land that never was. God actually took away any promise to the Jews because it was predecated on their never breaking His laws, which they apparently did and were made to wander homeless until they returned to keeping those laws. I very much doubt that Israelis are obeying His laws now.
The Israeli Zionists have broken and continue to break every one of the Ten Commandments
If only…
When the carve happened the people of Palestine were promised their own part of that land – 76 years later and Israel is still stealing land that rightfully belongs to those locked away in Gaza and the West Bank. The divide so far is totally ridiculous, should it even be considered as enough.
I would love to see (hoping against hope probably) the return of a historical Palestine, from the River to the Sea, a non-apartheit land where Jews and Palestinians have equal rights and live in harmony.
That is the huge question, why not? Though the people seem to be furious, it’s the politicians who don’t care.
Australia has now lost any moral authority it might have once had to critisise any country over human rights. Our sovreignty is now in the hands of the US. History will be very unkind to this Govt.
And in the meantime, after 6 months of indiscriminate bombing and huge losses of men and equipment, Israel has achieved none of its military goals in Gaza, Hamas remains strong, and cannot be defeated – so by any measure Israelis losing its one-sided war against a poorly armed opponent.
And chief genocide backer, the USA, is also copping a military hiding everywhere it goes.
Why the hell does Australia remained aligned with these genocidal losers?
Genocide is defined as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.