#Palestinian orphans

[sugas6thtooth]

AT LEAST, 17,000 children in the Gaza Strip are orphans. Imagine how many children have to be an adult and take care of their younger siblings because Israel killed their parents.

[news4dzhozhar]

[capybaracorn]

These children left Gaza but still suffer mental trauma from Israel’s war

Through art and bonding with each other, 68 children evacuated to Bethlehem are working through their pain.

19th of March 2024

Bethlehem, occupied West Bank – A group of children from Gaza are in an art workshop in Bethlehem’s SOS Children’s Village, 102km (63.4 miles) from Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip.

The children are working on depictions of the three-day journey they took from Rafah to Bethlehem, a convoluted journey to cover a distance that could be driven in an hour.

Like all Palestinians, their movement is constrained by the Israeli government, which severely limits the ability of Palestinians to move around in normal times, a situation made worse by the war Israel is waging on Gaza.

Sixty-eight children were evacuated this month from Rafah’s SOS Children’s Village to the charity’s facility in Bethlehem, accompanied by 11 caregivers who were looking after them in Gaza with the support of the German government.

Expressing pain and fear

For their comfort and privacy, the children – aged two to 14 – cannot be interviewed or photographed directly, but Al Jazeera was allowed to observe their workshop and interactions.

One girl was focused on cutting out the word “Rafah” and glueing it to a corner of her sheet with a sad, scared, frowning face glued sideways next to it.

From there, she wound bright yellow yarn down the page, wrapping it in a loose knot around an angry face, then winding it in big loops until it reached “Bethlehem”, which she had glued in the opposite corner.

[See embedded video in article]

Already close-knit because of how SOS Villages are structured, the children seem to have gotten even closer during their long journey to Bethlehem.

One boy leans over and patiently helps a younger boy figure out what to do with his sheet, explaining that the different faces were there for the little boy to express how he felt at different points in the journey and waiting for his younger friend to position them before explaining the glue stick.

At the other end of the room, a five-year-old boy has gotten tangled in his jacket because the sleeves are inside out. His 14-year-old buddy takes it off and sorts it out, putting it back on him and pulling him close to her for a big hug once he is ready to join the activity.

Dr Mutaz Lubad, an expert in art and psychological therapy, says this guided art session allows the children some release, to open up a space for them to express what is on their minds through their art.

The loose knots show points in their journey from Rafah to Bethlehem where the children were confused or scared, Dr Mutaz Lubad says [Monjed Jadou/Al Jazeera]

“Because children often find it difficult to express what they’re feeling verbally, we work on looking into their struggles through their art,” Lubad told Al Jazeera.

In guided art activities like this one where everyone is asked to produce the same thing, the children are able to choose their colours, the expressions on the faces they pick for different points in their journey and how convoluted they make the glued yarn to represent their three days of travel.

Asked about the significance of some children putting loose knots into their yarn journeys, Lubad said: “The knots represent points where the children were exposed to situations that confused or scared them, but the fact that they by and large used loose knots shows that these are things they feel they are able to overcome.

“One boy’s piece was especially expressive. When he was told he would be moved from Rafah, he feared the unknown, feared leaving his room and home. Then during the trip, he was worried and stressed by turn until, finally, he was relieved to be safe in Bethlehem. All that is shown in the expressions on the faces he chose.”

Protecting the children

The Rafah SOS Village is still open and receiving children whose families have died in the war or who have become separated from their relatives. There are several children who remained in the Rafah facility after their legal guardians refused their evacuation from Gaza.

[See embedded video in the article]

Maintaining contact with the children’s families – if they have any – is an important part of maintaining their community ties, but trying to find out which relatives have survived and which have died has been nearly impossible, Sami Ajur, programme manager at the Children’s Village Foundation in Gaza, tells Al Jazeera.

Despite the difficulties the foundation is facing during the war, it is continuing its work, he adds, pointing out that the Rafah facility is actually seeking support to expand its operations so it can receive more of the children being orphaned or separated from their families every day in Gaza.

The trauma the children are experiencing due to the war on Gaza manifests in many ways, including anxiety, incontinence, nightmares and insomnia, Ghada Harazallah, national director of the Children’s Villages in Palestine, says, adding that their mission – protecting the children – has not changed.

At sunset, the children from Gaza and the children who live in the Bethlehem Village will have a group iftar to break their  Ramadan fast.

The structure of SOS Children’s Villages worldwide encourages a family-style relationship among the children and between them and the adult staff. One staff member is assigned as a “parent” to each group of children, who are raised in “family” clusters where they can bond with each other.

[See embedded video in the article]

[taviamoth]

The baby girl Samira Qibt (7 months) is the only survivor of her family after the bombing of her family home in Beit Lahya, north of Gaza.

[melhindips]

25,000 children killed

30,000 children missing at least one limb

35,000 orphans

650,000 face polio

1 million starving children

[pinchan]

"i really wish i could adopt a palestinian child just to help 🥺🥺🥺" you can't even boycott starbucks

[smile-files]

oh yeah, i think it's important to differentiate between the ideas of a "jewish ethnostate" and a "jewish homeland", as a jew myself especially --

of course we deserve a place where we feel safe, a place that puts emphasis on caring for us and not treating us like dirt. but that is not the same as a place that allows ONLY us to be there. (and we are talking about a mass of land, not an affinity club or anything -- we're talking about somewhere people live. who gets to be a part of it is not something you should be policing on lines of race or religion.) we have no right to lay claim to land and force other people out of it. we have no right to a jewish ethnostate.

"oh but if there are any non-jews in our land they'll treat us badly like they always have!!!" no, that's just cynical nonsense. if anything, you're letting the antisemites win by agreeing with the omnipresence of their bigotry. yes, tons of people have been horrible to us. that won't get better by running away from them and hurting other people in the process.

also, it is very worthy of note that jews and their ancestors have lived in palestine, for a great portion of history in fact, but were conquered multiple times by multiple empires and expelled to the diaspora. of course jews want to live in palestine! of course! but palestinians are just as indigenous to the land as we are -- we have absolutely NO right to kill them and kick them out and say it isn't their home (which is exactly what so many empires did to us, in the same land no less).

endorsing zionism and anti-palestinian rhetoric, as a jew, is hypocritical, cruel, and wrong. let palestine be free, as they (and we) deserve to be. they are facing the same terrors we have; let us stand with them.

[neilamina]

An israeli woman screaming "terrorists , shame on you" to buses transporting palestinian orphans from gaza to bethelehm under the pressure of the German embassy.

Honestly besides the fact that we don't know what's gonna happen to these children , with israel selling palestinian children to israeli families ,oh sorry 'adopting' them, or organ trafficking..

It's nazi Germany, this is straight up nazi Germany I hope zionists get the same treatment in the end, I hope zionists a terrible life.

Imagine how cruel you have to be to scream such things to ORPHAN CHILDREN , who are being transported out of a GENOCIDE . Honestly they make me sick.

[toji-bunny-girl]

going thru my followings rn unfollowing big blogs who don’t use their platform to support Palestine

[ahmedtalia]

Be the safety for Ahmed... the helping hand to save him from this destruction... after he lost his father and I failed to protect him 💔.

Every moment, Ahmed tells me he's scared! How can I extinguish his fear when he has run many times to escape death? How can I tell him that everything is alright when he lives today in a place where even my own heart cannot bear to live... A terrifying place filled with rubble and missile remnants... full of ashes that, whenever you move through them, cover your face and body... A place so dreadful that if ghosts truly existed on Earth, they would refuse to live there... How can I, when all the options before us are death.. only death!

[rjalker]

"what do you mean adopting children out of oppressed communities is genocide" bitch this was something white men in 1885 understood and criticized as being fucking evil.

How can you fucking defend this shit in 2023 when you have the whole of all the knowledge on the internet at your disposal.

[agentfascinateur]

USA, have you had enough yet!?

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A post shared by سناء الجمل (@sana_aljamal82)

#not ham@s

[zingay]

Palestinians in Gaza are literally saying that Hamas is the only thing keeping them safe from the ground invasion, yes obviously the opinion of them varies from person to person but its a fact that they're the only thing preventing even more massacres because they're disabling tanks and forcing retreats.

Stop condemning them you will never fucking have the right.

[muncedes]

hamas hamas hamas do you condem hamas? no i love them actually

[littlelovelyspiderling]

How r you doing?

well i’m absolutely horrified by the state of our world right now and disgusted by the endlessly racist, heartless, inhumane atrocities being committed and abetted by the leaders of my country against palestine day in and day out with no end in sight…but other than that i’m great! 🥲

[la7ma-mafrooma]

"B-but Palestinians can get their freedom with peace not violence 🥺🥺" no. Screw your feelings. The armed resistance against colonizers and murderers is what will give Palestinians their freedom and what will eventually achieve real peace.

An enemy that bombs and uses white phosphorus against civilians doesn't know nor practice what your broken moral compass describes as "peace". Freedom was proven throughout history not to be achieved through kneeling and asking the oppressor to kindly stop. Freedom needs to be taken by force. Your little Utopian way of thinking doesn't work in the real world. Your feelings don't matter because you're not the one living under occupation. Your feelings don't matter because you're not one of the thousands of children who lost their limbs. You're not one of the children who became orphans due to this genocide. You're not the mother who lost her child to the carpet bombing. You're not the father carrying the remains of your child in plastic bags. You're not the newlywed woman who lost her husband. You're not the one at risk of either getting killed any second or losing your loved ones in the blink of an eye!

"Peace" is not really a thing you see during a live ethnic cleansing!