To be a humanitarian worker in a place like Gaza

To be a humanitarian worker in a place like Gaza is to wake each morning knowing your heart will be splintered anew. When I first began this work, I was filled with hope, a quiet joy in knowing I could help, that I could be part of a change, however small. There was comfort in the gratitude of others, in the knowledge that I was doing something good. But as time went on, and I became more deeply rooted in the community, gaining more knowledge about rights, dignity, and laws, the cracks beneath the surface became impossible to ignore. I began to see the vast gap between what people received and what they deserved, what every human being is entitled to by the mere fact of existing. The devastation crept in quietly, then all at once. Questions began to rise, not only in my thoughts, but even in my dreams. I remembered once reading Edward Said’s words: "Name things by their names, so they can be as we want them to be." And I found myself wondering: how do we name the daily weight of injustice, the quiet despair, the resilience born of necessity? How do we speak truth in a world so accustomed to silence?
We live in a world that speaks endlessly of human rights, a world that has built laws, treaties, and institutions to uphold and defend those rights. Bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and others were established to ensure that civilians are protected, that aid reaches those in need, and that the deliberate targeting of children, homes, and hospitals is treated as a war crime. International law is clear: our deaths are not unfortunate; they are crimes. Our hunger is not inevitable; it is a violation.
Yet here we are. In Gaza, nothing changes. We, too, are part of this world. We are innocent human beings, entitled, like everyone else, to protection, dignity, and justice. But Gaza is not like the rest of the world. Here, death is daily. The injured lie untreated. Children go to bed hungry. The elderly are forced to flee again and again, each time leaving behind a home, a memory, a piece of their life. In Gaza, human rights are not just denied, they are erased.
And while we bury our children with our own hands and dig through rubble in search of medicine, the world sits around conference tables, carefully choosing words. Statements are drafted, edited, and softened to avoid offense, while lives are lost in real time. This is not merely a failure of diplomacy; it is the collapse of moral responsibility. It is a betrayal of the very principles that international institutions claim to uphold. Every moment of hesitation, every watered-down resolution, costs lives. 
Even the evidence of our suffering is questioned. The World does not believe in our Ministry of Health, it does not believe in videos and media showing our bodies shattered into pieces, our children burned alive, our injured people waiting, sometimes to death, for treatments. We hold the last rope to give us justice by waiting for newsletters of UN agencies to talk about our suffering, to become our voice as if we do not have one.
Day by day, UN agencies and international organizations reveal numbers and statistics of suffering. Yet, we have more than that; we could say more than numbers and statistics, we have stories. We have voices. Is there anyone willing to listen? Is there anyone left who believes in us? 
If we are to speak in numbers, a language the world often prefers, then the figures are staggering. Over 60,000 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the war, with an average of 130 deaths per day in the first ten months. More than 40,000 children have been orphaned, many having lost not just a parent, but their entire families. Among the dead are at least 16,000 children, whose lives ended before they ever truly began. Hundreds have been killed at aid distribution sites alone, where desperation and starvation meet indiscriminate violence. Meanwhile, nearly 2M people have been displaced. 
However, if we shift to stories, the language of humanity, just two days ago, we were devastated to learn that three orphaned siblings, aged between six and thirteen, had been killed, leaving no one to receive the food parcels prepared for them that very morning. Their names were on our distribution list, and just a few more hours could have eased their hunger. But hunger moved fast, and death moved faster. They were gone before help could reach them. 
If we are to name things by their names, then this is not merely a tragedy. It is a crime. It is a violation. It is injustice in its rawest form. Consider how many human rights were crushed in that single story: these children had already lost their father in the same war. They were hungry. They were unprotected. And above all, they were children.
How does the world learn to live with this?  The truth is it doesn’t. It turns away. Because justice, for us, remains a promise spoken loudly to the world, yet never once delivered here. As Elie Wiesel reminded the world: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference… and the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
Long ago, we understood the truth: Gazans speak for themselves, not for the world’s approval. We write to hold each other up, not to win sympathy. We grieve for our children, our youth, and our elders, not to gain attention, but simply because we must. We carry that sorrow in silence and speech, because it is part of who we are. I, like many others, go to work each day not just to serve, but to listen to people who are more than statistics, people who carry stories heavy with loss and hope. We still wish, if only once a day, to hear a different story, one not marked by pain. And still, we continue to name things by their names. Because truth matters, even when it is buried. Because our lives matter, even when the world looks away. And because one day, someone will listen. And when they do, they will not just find numbers or broken buildings, they will find voices that never stopped speaking, even when no one was listening.