Lauren Booth – A Sisters Testimony
AI: Summary ©
The speaker describes their experience of a recent attack on their family and loss of family members. They express their fear and desire to go home, but also their desire to return to their family and rebuild their life. They also discuss their desire to have one last chance to live a happy life. The occupational occupation in the South is preventing people from traveling outside their area and leaving behind their loved ones.
AI: Summary ©
Do you blame October the 7th?
No, no, I don't blame them because you
are, I told you before, we are suffering
from them all our lives.
Did your family and did your neighbors think,
think that the West was going to come
and help you?
Was there a knight in shining armor called
the United Nations?
He hugged me at the dream, telling me
I'm good, I'm alive.
I told him that no, you are dead.
I saw you in the video where you
are killed.
Salaam alaikum.
I'm in Doha right now.
I'm here because I wanted to meet, to
listen to survivors of the Holocaust being inflicted
upon the people of Palestine and the genocide
upon the people of Gaza right now.
And so I'm meeting sisters who are survivors
and let's have a look at their stories
because the sister I'm meeting today is prime
example.
They can't give their names.
They don't feel comfortable sharing, and yet they're
being brave enough to share.
Salaam alaikum.
I'm going to call you Mariam, but your
name's not Mariam.
And I'm going to say that you look
like you're in a niqab, but you don't
normally wear niqab.
Yeah, because we have, we still have that
fear from this war and from those criminals,
people who attacked us everywhere.
Even, even if we are in Doha, we
still afraid about our relatives in Gaza and
Palestine.
We suffer a lot.
And so we still have this fear of
this experience.
Sister, it's important that we look at the
lives of our brothers and sisters in Gaza
as more than a scroll experience.
It's a very weird time, isn't it?
To be watching a genocide unfurl before our
eyes.
Yeah.
We are human being.
We have stories.
We have, we are like other human beings
on the world.
We have stories.
Each of, each one in Gaza have, have
his own story.
You just, they are not just photo and
numbers.
And you just score beyond these pictures.
They are not just pictures.
They are human being.
Each one have a family.
Each one have kids.
Each one have, each one of Palestinian people
have emotions and they are feed, they are
suffer, they are in sad mood all the
time.
This war was very, very, very harsh one
on each one, on each Palestinian.
I want to talk about, you named me
as a survivor, but I am a survivor
in just in flesh, in my body, without
soul, without health, without a real human being.
I'm now feel that I am very, very,
very sad and I can't continue my life,
but we should continue.
We should continue and struggle to be alive.
I was a wife to a real husband,
a perfect one, a great father for his
kids.
We were in deep love since the childhood.
And then we are married at the age
of university and we studied and work together.
We built our life.
We have children.
We love life.
We love our children.
He love his children more than himself.
He love me more than himself.
We love each other.
How did you know each other?
What age did you meet?
We are cousins living at the same building.
He was, my husband was one of my
relatives.
This war prevent me from my husband.
They killed him in this war.
Okay.
I was, I have that beautiful family with
my kids and him and a beautiful house.
We struggled to build this house.
Each, each, our money, we put all our
money on building this house to build, to
make a good future to our kids.
So that was my life before the war,
a wife with her husband, with her kids,
strong one, working and getting money to build
her future and to be happy with her
children and her husband.
We have entertainment.
We go to the sea with each other.
We look after our children very carefully.
We raised them in a very careful way.
Okay.
But in this war, at the sixth day
of this war, they attacked us.
We are civilians.
We didn't do anything to them.
We are civilian family who live and work,
living normal life.
We didn't do anything to them just because
we are Palestinians or garden citizens.
So you are our target.
Okay.
They attacked the house of our neighbor.
Tell us about the days leading up to
the attack.
What was it like on October the 7th?
What was the atmosphere in Gaza?
We wake up at the, at the October
7th, we wake up at the voices of
the muscles and bombing around us.
We didn't know what is the situation is.
We didn't know anything.
We are at home, sleeping, want to wake
up to go to school.
I want to go to school to deliver
my children to their school.
We are sleeping safe at our home.
We didn't do anything.
We are, as others, we got waked up,
founding muscles, bombing, something dangerous.
We realized that there is something dangerous happening,
but we didn't know why, what, what is
it?
Is it attacked from another attack from Israeli?
We don't know why, what is it?
What's this situation is?
We feel very, very, very frightened from this
situation.
My kids was screaming.
I was very nervous.
What's this?
What we can do?
Where to go still in our home or
where to go?
That was the situation.
And then they got electricity at the first
day.
On the first day?
Ah, there is no electricity.
So we have a lot of bad connection
of the internet.
They hit the ground.
So, so the streets were damaged at the
first days.
So you can't move to another place.
At the six days, after six days of
stress and fear, they attack our neighbor's home
or our neighbor house.
This muscle, this attack, they destroyed all the
neighborhood.
So our house destroyed.
I got injured at that moment.
What do you remember about the moments of
a missile?
Can you hear it from the sky?
Does it cut?
No, I feel that there is a very
big explosion.
And I saw a some fire, a little
fire around me.
Then I got in coma.
It was a very, very, very frightened moment.
I can't I up to now, I can't
forget that moment, the big explosion.
And then a saw the fire and stones,
little fire and stones around you.
And then I got in coma.
What about the rest of your family?
How are you sitting?
We are in the same place around us.
All of us got under the rubble.
Yeah, the our house damaged all of our
house damaged because of the attack on the
our neighborhood.
My kids wounded at that time.
How many children?
I have four children.
The fourth, what ages?
The first one is 11 years old.
The second is 10 years old.
The third is 40 years old.
And the youngest one is at that time,
she was six months.
Now she is a year.
At that moment, at that moment, this one,
the little baby is thrown from the hands
of her father.
Far from us, six meters.
Yeah, and she is there.
She is the head, the wall, and some
blood on her face.
That moment, we up to now, we can't
forget it.
It's very shocking moment.
I was in coma.
I am, I waked up at the screaming
of all my family, crying, screaming for help.
Please help, ambulance, ambulance, please help us.
We are under the rubble, please.
All of my family, screaming and crying, kids,
sisters, father, husband, all of us screaming.
But I am in some unconscious, unconscious, I
didn't realize what's happened because I got a
very serious injury.
After the, because there is no connection to
call the ambulance.
They cut the connection.
So you, to get the signal, you have
to try more than more than one time.
My husband, after a time, told me that
I called the ambulance for the first, second,
third.
There is no response because there is no
signal.
After a while, the ambulance came, evacuated me
alone and took me to the hospital.
My kids went to another hospital.
My, my kids went to another hospital.
My family, they got them to another hospital,
so we are separated.
When I wake up, I asking where my
kids, where my husband, where my father, and
get in a coma for another time.
It is repeated for more than one time
through the way to the Ashifa hospital.
When I arrived at Ashifa hospital, when I
arrived at Ashifa hospital, I waked up at
screaming of women, screaming of children, screaming of
wounded people.
All of them screaming, Oh, all my family
gone.
Yeah.
I am destroyed now.
And I, I have this feeling of fear,
but this voices and this crowded people who
all, many of them covered over blood.
They are from different places from, from Gaza
Strip.
You don't know them, but I'm crying about
them because they're screaming.
It's, they still in my mind up to
now, one of them is still, still screaming.
Oh, my kids, Lulu.
She's three years old, just three years old.
She asking her father, is it dead?
Really?
Is it dead?
Why they did kill this Lulu?
Why?
Why?
And another, I remember that another man came
screaming, all my family gone.
My wife gone.
My, are you serious?
Is it really that my kids dead?
My son's kid, my daughter's kid, all of
them, all of them kids, these, all the
voices around the hospital.
So I came to hospital to be recovered.
No, they, this was very damaging to me.
And I don't want, when I open my
eyes, I see, so blood around me, cutted
people without some parts of their body.
So I got, for another time from the
sisters in a coma and waiting for time
because there is no enough doctors there.
In the emergency, it's very, very terrible, very,
they don't have, we don't have in Palestine
many members to heal or to check every
patient to give his right of taking care
or treatment.
Okay.
After some minutes, they, I, when I was
in the coma, they took me to the
ICU.
And after waking up from the ICU, I
found that my husband came to the hospital.
I, he, he was very, he was crying
on me, frightening that he was afraid that
he lost me or I am died.
I still remember that he was shocked of
my injury.
And I was, he was afraid of me
because I am in the, in dangerous situation.
He is a man, he doesn't cry, but
in this difficult situation, look at him.
And I, I have a little voice and
I told him that I'm good.
How are my kids?
How are you?
I, all of his clothes were covered with
blood from me.
What were your injuries?
I had fractions in my spine in the
11th and second vertebrae.
And I have both shoulders are, it was
broken and the vertebra, the clavicle, the right
clavicle also, also broken.
And I have some injury here, here in
this, in my body.
I can't, at that time, I can't move.
I can't walk.
I can't raise my neck or head.
I can't move them nor left nor right.
I was on the bed without, can't move
anything of my body.
Just talking with little, little voice because I
can't breathe at that time.
Yeah.
So, because of the pressure, at the hospital
and the huge number of injuries and dead
people at that time, they didn't check me
well.
And they just said the, the fractions on
your, in your shoulders will be good after
two months.
So, she is stable now.
We manage her blood and her pressure.
She is stable, better than the others who
are bleeding, who are in continuous coma.
So, took her to home.
How, how, how can I go home?
I can't, I can't walk.
There is no one, no one to carry
me.
So, they, my husband call on his friend
from the hospital asking for ambulance.
So, they took me after two days to,
without taking any treatment, just a little medicine,
which doesn't make anything to my pain.
Tell me about, tell us about the pain.
I mean, it must have been.
It's very, very, I can't, I can't describe
this pain.
You feel that you will die after this
moment.
You can't handle, you can't, I can't cough.
I want to laugh or cough or speak.
I can't because of the fractions of my
shoulders.
I can't move.
I can't move myself just a little because
of my back.
The pain of my back, it is, it
is still up to now, but, but not
the same as the first moment when I
injured.
So, he took me to home, to another
home because our home is bombed, to my
sister's home.
He took me to my sister's home with
all my kids.
They were, they were shocked.
My little kids who, who is four years
old, shocked, doesn't speak for two days.
My little baby crying all the day for
four days.
Was it, how much do you think it
was pain?
She is throwing, she's throwing, far away, far
away for further, five, for five meters, maybe
because of this fall, some broken.
They were, they giving her some duclifen, duclifen
to, some duclifen to be, to be quiet
a little bit.
She was crying.
My sister holding her, taking her, taking care
of her because I can't do anything to
myself.
My sister feed me.
My sister, my sisters carry me to go
to the bathroom for three months.
Three months of suffering.
Can't walk, can't carry anything with my hands.
And at home, not just me, a lot
of people, injured people at home, just take
the first treatment and go home because there
is no enough place, nor bed at hospital.
It was disasters.
A lot of people injured.
A lot of people killed.
A lot of people missed their kids and
try to find them because we are separated.
The, the people come to help you, take
one, put this and this, and this and
this, and each one go to another hospital.
So what, I've always wondered what's, what, what
is the conversation like in the families at
this time about, you're considering it a war
at the time.
You know, what are people, what are you
watching TV?
Are people having, this is going to happen?
Is the political talk or is it just
panic?
What's it like?
We are in panic.
We are in panic all time.
Does it will repeat it again?
Does will they bomb us again?
Where to go?
What's the solution?
What we can do that we can't do
anything?
Regardless mentioning that there is no electricity, there
is no enough food, there is no enough
water, there is no enough comfortable zone to
yourself to be alone or to take care
of your children or to sleep.
We are crowded.
All families crowded at one place because there
is, there is no places left to us
to be.
They bombed all or most of the houses.
Not just me, all the families suffer from
this thing.
I wonder, did you think that after three
months, first of all, how was it, how
did you begin walking again?
And then did your family and did your
neighbors think, think that the West was going
to come and help you?
Was there a knight in shining armor called
the United Nations?
Were you thinking this is going to end
soon?
It must.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We think that the world will move for
us.
We are innocent.
They will watch our suffering.
They will move.
Each day we have the hope to end
this war.
They want to steal our land, steal our
homes.
This is our land.
They came from the Western and live in
this land.
So they want to kill, to kill all
of us, to steal our land.
Gaza war was beautiful.
What was your favorite place?
What has always been your favorite place in
Gaza?
A special place.
A special place in Gaza war, sitting in
front of the sea.
You, it's the most beautiful place in Gaza,
sitting in front of the sea or Rashid
street.
It was very, very beautiful.
Now they destroyed all this street, all the
places where we were sitting on the, on
the sea.
They destroyed all the beautiful places, all the
houses.
It's not Gaza.
You don't, maybe some people doesn't know Gaza.
They think that she is a destroyed place,
not beautiful.
No, it's the most beautiful place in the
world.
I love Gaza and I, when it will
be rebuilt, I will back to Gaza.
They think that we will go and won't
back to Gaza.
No, no.
We just came to Qatar to take a
treatment, not to leave Gaza to them.
We won't leave Gaza to them.
It's their dream, but we are strong and
will live in Gaza again and rebuild it
again.
Inshallah.
Inshallah.
Inshallah.
When you, I've often spoken to Palestinians about
there's something about the land.
There's something, is there a spirituality?
Is there, tell us about that.
Yeah, we have this connections to this land.
It's a beautiful, it's mentioned in the Holy
Quran.
It's a holy place.
We have a lot of goodness in it.
Their people are kind, beautiful, generous, love to
see people from around the world.
They are, they welcome all the people to
come and visit again.
All the people who visited Palestine and Gaza
come again and again because of the goodness
of Palestinians people.
Okay.
If I want to come back to my
story, also we have this experience again.
They are attacked us, attacked our neighbors again
and the rebels, the smoke, this bad experience,
the smell of the, I can't, up to
now, I can't forget the smell of this
smoke from the muscles.
You can't breathe, all the children cough, cough.
So we evacuated from our aunt at that
night, at the middle of the night, we
evacuated to the street.
We slept at the street at that night
and hearing all the airstrikes, the shells of
the tanks around us.
It was a very, very terrifying night.
Are you praying then?
Are you?
All the time praying God to save us,
please God save us, please save us, protect
us from these criminals all the night, up
to the, when the, at the day, at
the morning of that night, we went back
to our aunt house.
It was damaged, but we can live in
it.
So we clean, my family cleaned that house
and get back to it because there is
no another place to live.
This zionist army doesn't differentiate between kids, women,
innocent people.
The shells of the tanks didn't stop for
a moment, for a moment, from the 10
p.m., from the 10 p.m. up
to the 6 p.m., all the time,
boom, boom, boom.
And we didn't sleep at that night.
Oh, we holding each other, all the children
crying, nervous, stressed, panic.
So we made a decision, you should move,
we should move, we should have, we should
move from this place.
You see, I want to move, I want,
but they still attack, around you, around, so
you be forest to this place to another
place.
We are displaced from Gaza by forest, not
by volunteer or by ourselves or our nature.
When we're watching these atrocities, we're like, how
can human beings do this?
How is it possible to go home and
feed your baby and then off to work
the next day and hurt somebody else's baby?
Yeah, I don't know how they, how they
have these hearts, harsh hearts to harm people
and killing them and to live your life
with this criminal with you all the time.
I don't know how they live, how they
committed these crimes and go on in their
lives and laugh and taking shots and videos
on TikTok, laughing at our sufferings and our
blood.
We are in Palestine, care about others, have
responsibility about others and our actions.
We in Islam, Islam itself prevent you to
harm any animal.
Are you, do you blame October the 7th?
No, no, I don't blame them because you
are, I told you before, we are suffering
from them all our lives.
They prevent us to travel.
If we want, if we want to travel
to another place from Gaza, there's some procedures
you have to take there.
The Zionists present prevent.
Yeah, approval from them to travel.
It's our simple right to travel from Gaza
and have work.
Okay.
They prevent some, a lot of things from
us in Gaza.
We in Gaza live in a prison.
So you are living in a prison, suffering
a lot of your life.
Each four years you have a war from
them.
They started the war.
Each four years they started a war from
my childhood to being and other people.
And I suffer and see a lot of
blood and killed innocent people around me.
So you have this hate for this criminal
army.
So it's a self-defense.
It's a reply for the actions.
Many people have described that moment of coming
through Rafah crossing.
Even as a, even as a visitor myself,
I remember leaving and thinking, I want to
go back.
It's very difficult to leave just as a
visitor, but when it's your special place, when
it's your heart, when it is the lungs
of your body, every, every grain of sand
has one of your names on it.
Every wave on the beach praises Allah.
You know, every date tree and every part
of it.
Yes, it's our place from our heart.
We love it from our heart.
And we don't like any others to come
and destroy it.
We have the right to defend our, to
defend ourselves.
How long ago did you, were you evacuated?
I evacuated at, since December.
December.
Did you, were you taken by ambulance through?
Were you in Rafah already there?
Oh yeah.
I moved from the middle to the South.
We live in the South on Rafah, me
and my husband and my father and my
kids.
So I travel.
On your own?
No, I traveled to Egypt by ambulance.
They took me by ambulance, me and I
took my four kids and my sisters.
They prevent my husband to come with me.
Who prevented?
The clearance or the approval from the Zionist
or Jewish people.
Before you travel to Egypt or have the
name in the checklist of the injured people,
to have this name, you have to take
approval from them.
See, this is what occupation means.
This is what occupation means.
They prevent you from traveling.
They put these procedures to prevent anyone to
live.
They prevent any man, any injury man to
travel outside of Gaza.
Up to now, each male whose age under,
above 18 and under 60, this age, is
prevented up to now to go outside Gaza
and get treatment.
I don't understand how health officials can allow
this.
Where is the equality in treatment?
I don't know where their rule.
What's the rule?
Absence.
They are absent.
Don't care about us.
There is a lot of youth and male
people are injured in Gaza.
Up to now, still in Gaza, they didn't
take their treatment.
They didn't make any surgery because there is
no supplies and no equipment to make this
surgery.
The occupation is still preventing them to travel
outside Gaza.
You got to Qatar with your four children
and you're in a compound.
You're getting treatment.
Alhamdulillah.
Yeah.
When did you last speak to your husband?
At Ramadan, a month from now.
I was having a dinner with my family
and my sisters.
After the dinner, I took my phone, checking
the news.
I saw a message from his sister, who
is his sister, who is in the north,
still in the north.
His sister and family didn't see him since
six months.
My husband was in Rafa and his family
was in the north, from the people who
stand in the north and didn't evacuate.
His mom and father and his sister and
brother.
So I got a message from his sister,
telling me he is dead.
I read this message.
I was shocked.
What was she saying?
How was he killed?
I don't believe this message.
I think it's a lie.
I think it's a lie.
This is not true.
I don't believe this.
Maybe she is in the north and hear
wrong news.
I don't believe this.
I don't believe this.
My family, my dad, asking, checking, is he
dead?
Is it real?
My husband did?
How he did?
What he did?
How they kill him?
What he did?
Screaming.
My father told me, yes, he was on
the road, going to the mosque.
And he they bombed a group of people.
And he one of the people, four children
killed.
And one is 70 years old.
And my husband, seven, four kids, my husband
and another man.
He was walking to the mosque.
So and killed at the moment at the
end.
And he was dead in the street.
He was dead in the street.
I got on the coma.
I did in the coma, unconscious.
It's a very, very sad moment.
I can't forget this moment to lose your
husband to use to lose your love to
lose the father of your kids.
I was screaming, my husband, my love, my
son, all my kids around me crying upon
their father.
We thought that we are in Qatar, we
are safe, we will live until the world
ends and we will back to Gaza to
be together, me and my husband.
And I seek to travel him from Gaza
to Egypt, but the Egyptians prevent him to
travel.
So he still in Gaza.
It is a dream to continue your life
with your husband and kids to live a
comfortable, safe life, just to live with your
husband, no matter what you don't have your
house, your job, your money, but just to
live your husband, you and your husband, beloved
one, the most generous and the great father
for his kids to live without him is
very painful.
I can't I am I feel very sad
upon killing him.
I don't I hate all the world.
I hate all the world.
I hate all this life because it prevented
me from my soul.
He is who is my husband.
They prevent me to witness the moment he
will die and put him on the grave.
So up to now, I don't believe that
I lost him.
Up to now, I still reading his message
to me.
When I was in Qatar, each day, I
call him by video, me and my kids,
my my little kids, the who is one
years old.
She used to call her father.
So after his death, each day, she bring
the phone and told me, Dad, Dad, Baba,
Baba, call him.
What can I what can I answer to
her?
I show her I show her her picture,
his picture.
But she insists on to call she knows
that this is a picture.
This is not her father.
Maybe the world will end.
But our suffer, me and a lot of
women here and in Gaza who lost their
belongs, who lost their sons, who lost their
husband, who lost their dad and mom will
stay suffer up to we can't forget them.
We will suffer at the end of our
lives.
How we can recover how we can bring
them back.
We can't.
Some brothers and sisters have dreams about people
who passed in Gaza.
Yeah, I had that dreams.
I cry all the night upon him and
missed him.
So he came to me at the dream.
I was very happy to see him again.
And he hugged me at the dream, telling
me I'm good.
I'm alive.
I told him that No, you are dead.
I saw you in the video where you
are killed.
And I saw the blood on you and
they have injury in your neck and your
legs from this strike.
He told me No, no, I'm good.
I'm alive.
Now I am in a safe place now.
Be happy.
I am alive.
I said No.
I am in a dream.
I don't believe that.
He insisted that I am alive.
I am good.
And I feel relaxed after this dream.
And I feel relaxed in this dream.
But when I wake up, I shook.
Because I will live again without him.
And I shook.
It was dream.
No, no, no, I don't feel any.
I don't feel happy.
I don't smile.
I cry all the time.
I, I try to be strong in front
of my kids.
I tell I told him told my kids
that your father is a victim for this
war.
And he is alive in and Jenna in
paradise.
He is in a better place.
Better than us.
He is now safe and happy with God
to make them good and to let them
live their lives.
So a lot of first of all, I
just think that's such a beautiful dream.
I just Hamdulillah Hamdulillah made that made this
this truth in these dreams, you know, their
visions.
Yeah, he said the truth, that they are
that their souls are alive in God and
they may they feel of us.
Maybe maybe they feel of us.
I feel that he there is some connection
between us because because we are in deep
love or life.
We didn't have any problems.
He was the best husband to me.
If I will live all my life, I
won't find anyone like his manners.
Hamdulillah may may Allah bring you together again.
I wait for him to meet him in
Jen.
I mean, I mean, they give you strength.
I just want to have one last consideration
and that is that in your whole life
as a Palestinian in Gaza, the world has
been silent about the suffering of the Palestinian
people.
Yeah, all the time.
And now we see young people in universities
in the US being brave.
We are happy, very, very happy to hear
that.
And we witness and follow up their news
and we are encouraging them to continue because
their actions are heard.
We in Palestine very proud of them.
They are brave in that universities in the
Western and they can make effort and they
can they can make impact on their government
to stop this war.
We are happy of their actions and encouraging
them to continue.
Thank you so much for bravely sharing your
pain and your story and everybody, you know,
we're going to be making so much to
offer you.
Yeah, Allah may he give you full shifa
inshallah, your children ease and your heart ease
and give you strength in the future and
end this terrible situation.