The Child Witnesses of Gaza

The testimony of the murdered

I felt compelled to write this as I was accosted by a particularly vile Zionist apologist who denigrated the women of Gaza. With seething hatred, she spoke of the terribleness of Gazan women, that they were all Hamas’ mothers, wives, and daughters, and that they were sick and deranged for calling their children “martyrs” when they passed.

It must be noted, however, that she did not believe that she herself was deranged for thinking it acceptable to murder these children, only that their mothers were for calling them “shaheed” when they embraced their charred bodies for the final time.

Let me make one thing clear. The mothers of murdered and mutilated children have every right to call their children whatever names they please to make their grief bearable. They can call them “Ruh al ruh” – soul of their souls. They can call them the most precious, beautiful children as delicate as dolls, they can call them the light of their lives. And they can call them “shaheed” because one thing these children are, is shaheed.

“Shaheed” does not mean martyr as the ignorant, angry woman spat. It means “witness”. In the Qur’an, God himself describes himself as “Shaheed”, The Witness – the Omniscient, the One who sees everything. And the One who remembers all of what He sees.

The children of Gaza and Palestine are shaheed. They are shaheed to what is occurring. They are innocent, and if there is another life – as Muslims believe – they will be pure testifiers to what occurred: the genocide and murder of their families, their people, and themselves.

In Islam, God speaks about infanticide, the utter depravity of it. He speaks of how a murdered child buried alive, resurrected, will ask their murderer what their crime was.

“And when a baby girl, buried alive, is asked for what crime she was killed?”

(Quran 81:8-9)

The question is rhetorical, unanswerable; their murderer when confronted by the child he killed, knows instantly he is condemned to hell.

The children of Gaza, buried alive under rubble, their murderers condemned to Hell.

The brave journalists in Gaza are shuhada – plural of shaheed. They gave their lives to be shaheed. They opened their eyes for days, through hunger, through murder, through loss and grief, injury, and unimaginable pain to bear witness for us to the horrors around them; to document their own extinction. They are real-life heroes. Heroes we have never seen before, as the journalists of the West cower behind their computer screens, forever fearful of being ‘cancelled’ by genocide-toting bosses should they tell the truth of what we all see.

The people of Gaza are mostly Muslims and Christians, but all faith is inherently agnostic and without knowing there is a God as an intellectual certainty, there is always a possibility there is not one.

So, I beg for God to exist. I beg for Him to exist and for Divine Justice to be real and true. I beg that these children are playing in a Paradise somewhere. I hope that their oppressors have a punishment worse than they inflicted – and I cannot fathom what that could possibly be if Gaza is only the earth.

And I pray that these words in the Qur’an are true, and that the children of Gaza, the innocents of Gaza, the doctors and nurses and medics of Gaza, the journalists of Gaza, the whole entire shuhada of Gaza fall within their embrace:

“And those who have believed in Allah and His messengers - those are the supporters of truth and the shuhada, with their Lord. For them is their reward and their light.”

(Quran 57:19)

I can’t sleep. No-one I know can sleep. If the people of Gaza go quiet, it is not because they sleep, it is because they are dead; their witnessing finished, but their time of testifying to come. I close my eyes and see the images of babies laid out on blankets, like soft dolls, ready to be wrapped for their graves. My sisters – that is, other women I love and respect – they too cannot sleep. I see them, their eyes black from exhaustion, like raccoons. “I cannot sleep,” they say, “I watch and cannot do anything. I see Gaza all day and all night. I cannot sleep.”

In a way, we are all shuhada - witnesses to a massacre we have never seen before in our lives. Helpless to do anything. Knowing in some way we are complicit because we benefit in the lands of the monsters who do this. We could all leave; we could, however difficult. We could show our disgust and leave the states whose leaders order genocide and ban peace, and go somewhere else, anywhere else, where global subjugation and mass murder through war are not the norm.

But we don’t. We stick with the comfort. We stick in the status quo.

We do not know our collective power. We do not know our individual worth.

And on we continue, in the lands of such depravity, knowing that the bombing of Yemen and their blood reddening the sea will keep our costs down for the goods we will inevitably buy.

Sometimes I want to storm the prison gates of Gaza. Instead of millions of people protesting, we should just run headfirst into the bombs and be real human shields to those inside. I would give my life. Take it. I do not care for it if it means just one child grows up with both their legs. I would give my life if it meant one child is not an orphan.

I am still awake. My eyes are red; my soul, exhausted.

A sister is texting me, “Are you up? I cannot sleep.”

“Habibitee,” I reply, “I cannot sleep either.”