‘It Was Like a Nightmare We Want To Wake Up From’
A personal story from Gaza
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On October 10, 2023, Timothy Snyder had the guts to write the following warning in his Thinking About substack column titled Terror and Counter-Terror:
“I want to share a thought about terror and counter-terror, prompted by the Hamas attacks and the dilemmas Israel faces…
“Terror can be a weapon of the weak, designed to get the strong to use their strength against themselves… When you have been terrorized, the argument that I am making seems absurd; the terrorists can seem to you to be raving beasts who just need punishment. Yet however horrible the crime, it usually does not bespeak a lack of planning. Usually part of the plan is to enrage.
“Americans have fallen for this. 9/11 was a successful terrorist attack because we made it so. Regardless of whether or not its planners and perpetrators lived to see this, it achieved its main goal: to weaken the United States. Without 9/11, the United States presumably would not have invaded Iraq, a decision which led to the death of tens of thousands of people, helped fund the rise of China, weakened international law, and undid American credibility. 9/11 was a contributing cause to American decisions that caused far more death than 9/11 itself did. But the point here is that 9/11 facilitated American decisions that hurt America far more than 9/11 itself did…
“My point is that it is always worth asking, in such situations, whether you are following the terrorist's script. If what you want to do is what your enemy wants you to do, someone is mistaken. It might be your enemy. But it also might be you.”—Timothy Snyder
I return to these words over and over again and layer them over world events. In addition to Snyder’s insights, we should also note that the US made tremendous strides in the post-9/11 era in creating the modern surveillance state. In undermining our own freedoms, we fulfilled Osama Bin Laden’s explicit plan.
And just yesterday, ICE — the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement — which was created in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — murdered someone in my old neighborhood.
As I lay awake unable to sleep thinking of the senseless death of this man and his family and reflecting on how long it’s been since I wrote How Many Is Enough?, I received a panicked call from a friend. She, too, could not sleep because a friend of hers in Gaza — who had been in a relatively safe location was now in grave danger. She asked if I would be willing to share her friend’s story with you, and here is that story.
‘It Was Like a Nightmare We Want To Wake Up From’
A personal story from Gaza
Heidi: Please tell our readers your name and a little about you and your family.
A.H: I prefer not to disclose my name — please call me by my nickname A.H. I have a daughter and a son, 3 sisters, my brother is mentally disabled since childhood in addition to having complete paralysis in the feet and muscle atrophy due to our displacement on 11/11/2023 from Gaza under fire and shelling to Khan Younis Governorate, and our need to walk on a road called (safe passage), and also due to the current conditions in the Gaza Strip, as well as the disruption of all aspects of life due to the bombing and destruction and the lack of necessary medicines for medical conditions such as my brother's, and also my father, whose health condition deteriorated during the war after he was in full health, he now suffers from many diseases, the last of which is Alzheimer's, and his state of denial makes our task more difficult and our inability to endure the situation any longer.
Heidi: What is your current situation, and how has it changed?
A.H: I was able to find a job when we arrived in the Mawasi area after our third displacement from (Gaza, Khan Younis, Rafah We were very affected by these successive displacements after we were living in a state of stability and in our home in Gaza City without lacking anything, each of our sisters had her own business, even our father had a job and a job despite his 68 years of age, after October 7, everything changed in the blink of an eye upside down, we became suffering, after each of us lost our job, and the damage of leaving our home and displacement reached to live in a tent for 8 months, we experienced the summer and winter season, it was like a nightmare we want to wake up from it.
Heidi: What was your life like prior to the war?
A.H: My daughter was going into her first year of college, I was working for a well-known company with a great salary, my son was excelling in his middle school studies, my sister, who is a year younger than me, owned her own law office that was destroyed and all her cases and files were lost under the rubble My sister, who is 4 years younger than me, was working as a doctor's assistant, and the youngest took care of my disabled brother at home while we were all out for work, we had our dreams and ambitions, planning for our future, including traveling to Egypt to obtain Egyptian citizenship, as my grandmother is Egyptian.
Heidi: What is most important for people to know about the Palestinian people?
A.H: That we were not aware of what happened on October 7 and that we all wish that this day had not come, we are simple people who love life like any ordinary people, living a good life, open to life and cultural exchange, educated and productive, no different from you.
Heidi: Do you see disinformation playing a leading role in obscuring the truth about the reality of the situation? The reality of journalists attacked?
A.H: Yes, it indeed plays a big and very important role, and because of its importance, the Israeli army was able to assassinate 238 journalists, and prevent it from bringing in any international journalists or photography to mute the truth and not show it to the world and to hide the crimes, genocide and massive destruction in the facilities and infrastructure of the Gaza Strip as well as the engineering of starvation practiced against us by the Israeli army.
Heidi: Even Israeli scholars describe this as a genocide. Is that your belief, and if so, how can we make it stop?
A.H: We can work in two directions, the general popular direction by supporting us and putting pressure on their governments, and the legal direction in international forums by working to bind Israel to international conventions and human rights, and obliging it to stop the war according to the seventh charter in the Security Council, and most importantly, the national internal agreement to work according to the interest of this people who have suffered and are still suffering to end their suffering.
Heidi: How can people help you?
A.H: The Gaza Strip now, unfortunately, is not suitable for living at all, as the destruction left by the war made it an unfit place that is consumed dead, from which the smell of death and destruction comes out of it from every unsafe place for another 10 years, I want me and my family to get out of the Gaza Strip, I want a decent, safe and stable life for me and my family, we want to live in peace, I want you to help me and my family get out and escape the killing machine and the starvation policy that you suffer from.
Heidi: What are the things you dream of beyond this time?
A.H: Stop the war, stop the killing machine, stop the war, please stop the war, we want to live in peace, we don't want to die, we still have dreams and ambitions that we want to fulfill.
A.H ended her interview with me by telling me she believes there are ‘many good Jewish people who know the truth and are against what is happening.’ She said she is grateful for their support and asks for our support.
If you wish to help A.H and her family, please go here.
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