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children's rights
'Save Our Children From This Hell': Messages from Families in Gaza
Palestinians in Gaza express fear for their children on a night of heavy bombing on April 13, 2025.
Apr 16, 2025
As darkness falls in one of the most densely populated strips of land in the world, residents of Gaza wish the night had never come. The deafening sound of fighter jets comes first. Then the bombs that detonate, igniting fires which often propel debris at high speeds onto tents or people sheltering in rubble and the few structures that remain.
"Save our children from this hell," writes Salma, a mother of two, as her daughter screams in terror, when another Israeli fighter jet flies overhead. "Do you know how painful it is to see your daughter cry in terror and have no way of protecting her?" she asks rhetorically.
Like every parent in Gaza I've come to know through GoFundMe efforts, Salma wants one thing and one thing only: for the war on her children to stop. For the constant bombing, fear, death, starvation, and displacement to end. Since Israel broke the cease-fire on March 18 and resumed its quixotic quest to root out Hamas, an estimated 1,630 more people have been killed and 4,302 wounded. The United Nations says 100 children have been killed or injured every day. On the day the cease-fire broke, 183 children were killed, according to Al Jazeera.
Mix constant displacement, the lack of permanent housing, schooling, and healthcare, and children in Gaza are being deprived of their childhood.
Salma, a widow, and her two children live in northern Gaza, but it's the same everywhere—for those living in tents in the al Mawasi refugee camp in southern Gaza and those living on the streets in Gaza City. On the same night Salma's daughter screamed in terror, Israel ordered people to evacuate neighborhoods in Khan Younis in the south. Mohammed Samir Elnabris, whose story I shared in December on these pages, writes:
I wish night had never come. A difficult night, just like the nights that preceded it, but this night the tension, anxiety, and anticipation are heightened due to the evacuation notices issued to the area surrounding us. Reconnaissance aircraft of all types are constantly in the sky, accompanied by warplanes at very low altitudes. It's pitch black, and terror and fear grip our hearts, along with the sounds of children crying, terrified by the sounds of bombs. People fleeing their homes, fearing bombardment, are crowding in after being forced to evacuate in cold, stormy weather in pitch darkness.
Another message comes in from someone I don't yet know:
The situation is very dangerous, beyond description, beyond all thought. People are living in a state of shock, {with} death, bombing, loss, hunger, crying, suffering, and misery. My daughters are still very scared from every bombing. Get the message across and talk about us to help us survive. Please don't leave {us} alone in this conflict that seems like it will only end with us all being killed and exterminated.
The U.N. human rights office warned late last week that "Israel's actions in Gaza are increasingly endangering the existence of Palestinians as a group."
"In light of the cumulative impact of Israeli forces conduct in Gaza," Ravina Shamdasani, the spokesperson for the office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, told reporters, "we are seriously concerned that Israel appears to be inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group."
In short, genocide, as U.N. experts and others began to accuse Israel of as early as November 2023. "Time is running out to prevent genocide and humanitarian catastrophe," the experts warned then. Except for a short cease-fire in late November of 2023 and another from approximately January 20 to March 18 of this year, the genocide continues while the U.N. takes note and the U.S. and most of the E.U. offer unconditional support.
But it's not just relentless bombing that parents face in trying to protect their children, it's also staving off infections when immune systems have been weakened by the lack of nutritious food. Israel resumed blocking all humanitarian aid on March 2. A week later they cut off electricity to the last operational desalination plant for drinking water.
The same night Salma and Mohamed and millions of other families were subject to another night of relentless bombing, Rasha, the mother of another family I've come to know through GoFundMe, sends out a "distress call" to all her contacts. Her one-year-old son, also named Mohammed, is running a fever. Doctors told her he had severe infections in his ear and throat and needed antibiotics. "But the cost is very high," she said, "because of the lack of medicine and closure of crossings."
"He needs healthy food," she added, "and all of this is very expensive. Please, my friends, my heart aches for him. Do not leave my child in this condition, he needs you."
Rasha and her family are again living in a tent in the densely packed al-Mawasi camp on the coast. They'd hoped to rebuild their home in Rafah, but Israel recently cut off the city from the rest of Gaza vowing to vigorously expand control of the territory. They don't know if they'll ever be allowed to return.
Mix constant displacement, the lack of permanent housing, schooling, and healthcare, and children in Gaza are being deprived of their childhood. Marz, a father of three, ages eight, five, and three, who once owned a clothing store in Gaza City, sends a devastating message on the same night of the bombing that impacted so many families. He says the family is now living on the street after their tent was destroyed. "Is there anyone who hears my family's voice? I am speaking to your human hearts to stand by us. We are now living a harsh journey of displacement without a permanent and real home. My children, Issam, Mohammed, and Jude, are living an indescribable catastrophe. Please help us. We are in urgent need of your kindness and humanity."
Over 200 people have donated to his family since the start of the genocide, but their collective good will is no match for a world unwilling to let Gaza's children have a childhood.
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Won’t DOGE Think of the Children?
Children are bearing the brunt of upheaval in Washington; the destruction of Head Start will harm even more.
Apr 10, 2025
Children have rarely been a national priority in the United States. Lawmakers have historically chosen to set aside the needs of children, families, and educators, with Head Start being one of the few examples of meaningful investment in children’s futures. But amid recent cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services, including layoffs at the Administration for Children and Families (which funds Head Start), the future of this program is uncertain.
Effectively destroying an essential program like Head Start and dismantling the Department of Education (DOE) and other federal agencies is cruel, irresponsible, and short-sighted. Childcare costs more than ever, and Head Start and Early Head Start, which provide access to high-quality early learning programs for children from low-income backgrounds, are lifelines. Without Head Start, hundreds of thousands of children will go without safe places to learn and grow. Parents, especially women, depend on it and other forms of childcare to stay in the workforce. Unless care is available, many are forced to cut hours or leave their jobs altogether, hurting household incomes and overall economic growth.
“It’s going to affect a lot of families that are already struggling,” Early Head Start educator Sandra Dill, who runs a family childcare program in Connecticut, said recently.
State-based solutions will help chip away at the vast problems facing the early childhood education sector, but wiping away Head Start and Early Head Start will set us back for years—possibly generations—to come.
At the same time, childcare providers, including family childcare educators who run small businesses in licensed, home-based settings, are facing exorbitant and rising prices for basic supplies that they need to keep their programs running. Without much-needed funding from the federal government, many of these programs—already existing on razor-thin margins—will be at risk of shutting their doors and leaving families without care options, worsening an already dire childcare shortage.
Amid the layoffs of thousands of government employees including Head Start administrators, there will certainly be chaos and confusion in the coming weeks among programs and the families who rely on them, with a lack of understanding of how already approved funds will be distributed. This will likely be similar to what ensued amid the federal funding freeze in January, with some programs temporarily closing their doors, unable to access funding for weeks, and families going without care.
Since the pandemic, the home-based childcare educators in All Our Kin’s networks have seen a significant surge in toddlers struggling with language and learning delays. Heath and Human Services and the DOE provide critically important early intervention services, including for children aged 0 to 3. Without these programs, fewer children will have a strong start in life. More will go without healthy meals, and fewer will have opportunities for social-emotional development or be prepared to succeed in kindergarten and beyond, and will have fewer opportunities for social and emotional development. Actions to shrink these departments in the name of cost cutting could overburden states and ultimately lead to far greater societal and economic consequences.
We are encouraged by bipartisan progress at the state level. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has proposed increased investments to help pay childcare providers competitive wages. In New York, there is a proposal from Gov. Kathy Hochul for additional funds to be set aside for family childcare providers to make renovations and repairs to their programs. And universal childcare has gained momentum in states like New York, Michigan, Oregon, Vermont, and New Mexico.
State-based solutions will help chip away at the vast problems facing the early childhood education sector, but wiping away Head Start and Early Head Start will set us back for years—possibly generations—to come.
Every child deserves a high-quality, affordable education, especially in the critical formative years of their lives. If we want a strong economy, we must save Head Start and protect the futures of the children and programs it supports.
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Dispatch From Gaza and the War That Never Ends
With the resumption of airstrikes and further degradation to what little infrastructure remains, the conditions of our existence are almost beyond description, though I will still try.
Mar 26, 2025
There is a fleeting moment, just before waking, when silence blankets the world. A moment where you are still held in sleep, shielded from the harshness of reality. But then, the silence is ripped away. The ground shakes beneath you. The sky erupts in light and fire. Walls tremble. Screams cut through the night. And suddenly, you are awake—not to the promise of a new day, but to devastation and fear.
This is Gaza’s reality—a war that never ends, a war that offers no respite, no mercy. On March 18, Israel resumed bombing Gaza, confirming that the so-called cease-fire, which began on January 19, was never more than a hollow promise. The bombings never really stopped. Gaza’s borders remained sealed. Humanitarian aid was blocked. Hunger deepened. Hospitals were pushed to the brink. Families were left to sleep in the ruins of their homes, or in overcrowded shelters without enough food or water. Even during Ramadan, the holiest month, Israel tightened its grip, ensuring that 2.1 million people were left without the essentials needed to survive.
This time, the war is taking an even darker turn. We had already been living without the basic necessities to survive… no housing, little food, fuel, or water. With the resumption of airstrikes and further degradation to what little infrastructure remains, the conditions of our existence are almost beyond description, though I will still try. Civilians are once again being killed indiscriminately. Journalists, children, and aid workers—those trying to document the truth and help the wounded, and those most vulnerable—are being targeted. At least 25 journalists have been killed since the latest round of attacks began. Some were killed while reporting from the ground, others targeted inside their homes. Khaled Abu Saif, a young journalist known for his fearless coverage of Gaza’s suffering, was killed when an Israeli airstrike hit the building where he lived. His camera was found next to his body, shattered by the same blast that killed him.
We were told the war had ended. We were told there was a cease-fire. But the bombs never stopped. The loss never ended. Now, we no longer ask when the war will end—we only ask how much more we can survive.
Children, as usual in Israel’s wars on us, have not been spared. On the first night of the resumed bombings, more than 130 children were killed. Some died in their sleep, buried beneath the rubble of their homes. Others were hit while playing outside. The youngest victims are too numerous to count. Families are digging through the ruins with their bare hands, trying to recover the bodies of their sons and daughters. They are not even given the dignity of a proper burial—the graveyards are full, and there is nowhere left to lay the dead to rest.
Aid workers are targets. Ambulances marked with the Red Crescent symbol are being bombed. Shelters clearly designated as humanitarian spaces are again targeted by Israeli missiles. Medical staff have been slaughtered while trying to reach the wounded. In one tragic case, three paramedics were killed when their ambulance was struck as they responded to an emergency call.
And now I must try to describe the horror that those of us still living must endure. There is no clean place left in Gaza. The streets are choked with the stench of rotting garbage and decaying bodies. Mountains of waste rise between collapsed buildings and broken roads. Flies swarm over the debris. Dogs sniff through the rubble and gnaw on human limbs and flesh. The air is thick with the sour smell of decay and smoke. Gaza, already suffocating under siege and war, is now drowning under its own waste.
Once again, tens of thousands of families have been forced to flee their homes in northern Gaza, seeking refuge in the already overcrowded central and southern areas. But there are no proper shelters left. Every school, mosque, and hospital that once offered refuge has been bombed or turned into a makeshift camp for the displaced. With nowhere else to go, many families have ended up on the edges of waste dumps—setting up tents or makeshift shelters among piles of garbage.
Children play barefoot in fields of trash. Families sleep next to rotting food, broken plastic, and the carcasses of dead animals. With the borders closed and humanitarian aid blocked, Gaza’s waste management system has collapsed. Garbage trucks no longer operate because there is no fuel. The sanitation system has completely broken down. Medical waste from overwhelmed hospitals and human waste from destroyed sewage systems now flow through the streets. Disease is spreading quickly—cases of cholera, dysentery, and skin infections are increasing daily.
“I wake up every day to the smell of rot,” says Abu Mohammed, a father of five who fled from Beit Hanoun to central Gaza. “We left our home because of the bombs, but now we are living among trash. My children are getting sick. There’s no clean water to wash them. We barely have food to eat. And the smell… it never goes away.”
In the few hospitals still functioning, doctors are warning of a major health crisis. Children are arriving with respiratory infections from breathing the polluted air. Cases of poisoning from contaminated food and water are on the rise. Infections from untreated wounds—often caused by the debris of collapsed buildings—are becoming more dangerous because antibiotics and medical supplies have run out.
“We are living like animals,” says Um Ayman, a mother of four sheltering near a waste dump in central Gaza. “I have to cover my children’s noses with pieces of cloth so they don’t breathe the poisoned air. We sleep surrounded by flies. My youngest child has a rash all over his body. There are no doctors left to treat him.”
If we were the “animals” that Israel says we are, would our suffering be any less? Even animals have their limits. We reached ours a long time ago, and still we keep going.
The humanitarian disaster is deepening, and the accumulation of waste is making an already desperate situation even worse. The people of Gaza cannot escape the bombs, but now they cannot even escape the rot beneath their feet. Clean water is running out. Food is scarce. Medical aid is blocked. And as the waste piles grow higher, so does the threat of disease and death.
There is no safety in Gaza. No one is spared. Journalists trying to tell the truth, children caught in the crossfire, and aid workers struggling to save lives—all are targets.
We were told the war had ended. We were told there was a cease-fire. But the bombs never stopped. The loss never ended. Now, we no longer ask when the war will end—we only ask how much more we can survive.
The world is watching Gaza slip further into devastation. The targeting of those who speak, those who heal, and those who are too young to understand why this is happening—this is not collateral damage. It is a deliberate effort to silence the truth and crush the human spirit. The world cannot remain silent any longer.
I say this: What is happening to us is beyond words and beyond the most wild and outrageous of imaginations. Those who support this genocide, those who look away, and those who remain silent for the sake of their comfortable lives will be judged and must be held accountable. Someday. I pray for that day, that day when the world finally sees us, that day when the world rises up to finally stop Israel and stop the mass murder of me and my people.
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