By Graciela Ramirez on October 22, 2023 from Havana
The child is holding back tears. His little body is trembling.
“Muhamad, what’s wrong? What happened? Were you sleeping?” asks the doctor. The child answers with a nod of his head.
“What was it, the bombing?”
Muhamad answers: “yes, the bombing.”
“It’s over, it’s over, don’t be afraid, now, now… I’m with you, don’t be afraid…” says the doctor who was also a child like Muhamad.
A Palestinian child trembling with fear and horror, embraced by a young doctor in their ravaged land. The eyes of both the child and the doctor challenge us all.
I was about to close my cell phone a few nights ago when the heartbreaking image posted by the website Palestine Today arrived on the social network X: @PalestineToday
I could not contain my emotion. I prayed to my mother, to what exists and what doesn’t exist. It’s just a child, in shock, trembling with his beautiful eyes, trying to draw strength from his shattered childhood, breaking into tears as if in relief, before the embrace, warmth and kisses of the young Palestinian doctor who also looks at us with his huge eyes from the suffering of his people.
A child trembling and a man hugging. There is no greater plea than these images that in just 45 seconds should stop once and for all the Holocaust committed by the Zionism of Israel against the Palestinian people, who are denied everything, from water to a truce, or a ceasefire.
Children in Gaza have now begun to write their names and ages on their own arms to facilitate their identification in case of death.
I wonder how the world has allowed this barbarism to come about where international legality is flouted, trampled and bombed and children have to self-identify at the imminent risk of their death.
The attacks continued on the civilian population as only 20 trucks carrying basic medicines and meager foodstuffs from Egypt entered the southern part of blockaded Gaza on Friday.
The eyes of the doctor who calms Muhamad with his embrace and kiss knows well the horror.
Heba Abu Nada
They are the Palestinian eyes that question and will make the world stand up. They are the eyes that looked at us from the poetic beauty, the committed and feminist literature of Heba Abu Nada, who died in a bombing. They are those of the visual artist Heba Zaqout crushed with her little son in the building where they lived.
They are the eyes of the more than 4,187 civilians up to Friday night, and those of the more than 13,162 wounded, 70% of whom are children.
They are also those of the 1,400 Gazans who are under the rubble, and the 720 children who, between life and death, are waiting to be rescued.
The massacre at the Baptist Hospital, the bombing of schools, buildings, homes and temples of prayer, the destruction of the third oldest church in the world (built in 1150), the St. Porphyrius Church that was destroyed in Gaza. This was detailed in the latest report that the resistance issued through the Central Information Office of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on this cruelty without limits.
Hundreds of Christians and Muslims whose homes had been destroyed were sheltering in the Church of St. Porphyrius. The number of dead is estimated at 500*, all with the same eyes with which the child Muhamad looks at us.
The world will not be able to deny or cover up the war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by Israeli Zionism against Palestine.
When a child trembles before the horror experienced, it will make the whole earth tremble.
* figures correspond to the latest report published by the PFLP at the time of writing.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – Cuba