'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.
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.
