The Ghosts That Haunts Us

The ceasefire can't come soon enough. What people don’t understand, however, is that the hurt and the terrors don’t just leave. They linger, haunting the living long after the bombs stop falling.

I’ve worked with Palestinians in Gaza for over 400 days, and the horrors that I've witnessed remain deep. The ceasefire, declared on a Wednesday, was supposed to bring relief. Yet, in the days that followed, Israel continued its bombardment, killing over 113 people including Dr. Saeed Nabhan, a healer whose only crime was serving his people.

The atrocities are too many to count, but they are impossible to forget:

1. October 17, 2023: I remember the terror when I first heard of a hospital being targeted in Gaza. The Baptist Hospital was bombed. Seeing the photos—piles upon piles of bodies, many of them children, it just doesn't leave you.
2. November 24, 2023: I remember the carnage when Israel used the final hours before a humanitarian pause to bring as much damage as possible. I can still hear the screams of people being burned alive.
3. December 18, 2023: When everyone was preparing for Christmas and Hanukkah, Motaz posted a photo of four children, no older than three, bombed to death. They follow me to sleep ever since.
4. December 27, 2023: By this point, I was tired of seeing mass graves. It felt like nothing shocked me anymore, and that realization scared me the most.
5. December 28, 2023: Motaz posted a photo of a kid who had lost his knee and was screaming in agony. Around that time, we also knew that there were no painkillers left in Gaza. Thankfully, he’s now safe in Canada. But wait, the horrors did persist.
6. January 20, 2024: I watched videos of Palestinian prisoners released in diapers to freezing temperatures. They couldn’t speak. The Scream from Edvard Munch looks easy now.
7. January 25, 2024: An Israeli sniper shot a teenage boy. His brother, trying to save him, was killed moments later. I can still see their bodies on top of each other, frozen in time.
8. February 18, 2024: I learned what white phosphorus does to a child’s face—it melts and scales the skin. That same day, five-month-old Jamal Mahmoud Kafarna got bombed to death by the IDF.
9. February 29, 2024: I will never forget the sight of starving people, desperate for flour, being gunned down by the IDF. It is weird to see blood mixed with flour in the mud.
10. March 11, 2024: I met a boy who couldn’t have been older than four. He told us how Israel shot his seven-month-pregnant mom in the belly and his dad in the head in front of him and he watched them both die. We did die a bit with him also.
11. March 26, 2024: I learned how the IDF ran and crushed over Palestinians alive outside Al-Shifa Hospital. Months later, I found out one of the soldiers involved, Eliran Mizrahi, took his own life. These horrors don't choose a side, no one can escape them.
12. April 29, 2024: Refaat Alareer, the poet who wrote "If I must die" for his daughter, got reunited with Shaimaa. Israel's army bombed Shaimaa and her kids to death.
13. May 4, 2024: I discovered personally one of the worst horrors of all. Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh was tortured, raped, and left to bleed to death by IDF soldiers. You don't want to know how someone can bleed to death from being raped - but now I know. The same torture chambers run by Israel have been withholding contact with Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya for over 2 weeks now.
14. May 27, 2024: I saw Rafah burn. “All eyes on Rafah” feels like a joke now. I heard the screams of a father holding his decapitated baby for the first time—but not the last. I saw babies who still had their heads but were nevertheless dead. Sometimes, I don’t know which is worse. The image of their mouths half-open, frozen in death, is something I can’t put into words.
15. June 5, 2024: I learned that the beheaded baby in Rafah was 18-month-old Ahmed al-Najjar. He had two brothers, Mohammed, 13, and Yamen, who survived. The horrors and the horrors that persist.
16. June 8, 2024: The Nuseirat Camp massacre. It was the second, third, or perhaps the tenth time I saw parents holding their dead children—decapitated or not—murdered by an Israeli and American operation disguised as medical personnel. That’s a war crime, by the way.
17. June 25, 2024: I saw and heard sick people being burned alive by Israeli bombs as they lay helpless in their hospital beds.
18. August 16, 2024: I saw what kids look like when they get shot in the head by Israeli snipers. I had to talk with the adults who recorded the video because the world wouldn’t believe them. What can you even say?
19. August 22, 2024: I learned that children were being tortured by Israeli soldiers in detention centers. Their innocence was destroyed in ways I can’t describe.
20. October 21, 2024: My friend Yousef’s body was brought to me before his death was confirmed. His only crime was creating gardens and farms to feed his starving people through the Thamara Project. Donate now: Thamara Project - GoFundMe.
21. The last one, because I don’t know if I have the heart to go on: On November 8, 2024, I finally understood why children between five and nine years old make up the largest casualty group in Gaza. They are too heavy to be carried out of danger by an adult but too slow to run.

The horrors and ghosts are many and I could go on to the thousands and not finish. Those are some of the images that run in my mind almost daily.

So yes, the announcement of a ceasefire is a step forward, but it is far from the end of the horrors. These atrocities leave scars that persist in the hearts and minds of Palestinians—and in all of us who bear witness to their suffering.

The horrors persist, but so do the Palestinians. And so must we.