"Why Do They Bomb Us?"

Four-year-old Salma often wakes up late at night crying violently. She stares at the smoke of the bombing until it fades away and asks. "People died?"

- Raghad Abu Shammalah

NOVEMBER, 2023: On the 23rd day of the Palestinian holocaust, while my family and I were having lunch, our bread got spoiled with dust, glass and death.

Four rockets were fired at a target that surely threatened the “safety of Israel”—a wedding hall where hundreds of forcibly expelled families were seeking safety. It was only 40 metres away from us, and was yet another brutal massacre—a massacre justified by Israel’s “right to defend itself” and propelled by its goal to rid Gaza of “Arabs,” creating a second Nakba.

Wide-eyed horror filled the faces of my three nieces. Salma, the eldest, is four years old.  It wasn’t the first time I had watched life drain from her face. Two weeks earlier, our whole family had been forced to evacuate twice in five hours when the whole of our neighbourhood was targeted for bombing. We finally ran barefoot to an UNRWA school where we found thousands of people covered with dust, sweat and blood. Salma stayed in a corner, gazing at the scenes, but not reacting .