Witnessing Gaza – Journal 5
Innocence Interrupted
In the beginning, the children appeared quietly - leaning into the frame, tugging on sleeves, showing toys. Sweet, gentle children who just wanted to live. They showed me the corners of rooms that still felt like theirs. Some climbed into laps just out of view.
Over those first days and weeks, as the children got used to me, they began showing up on livestreams more freely - smiling, waving, climbing into view. Their joy lifted everything. They played, laughed, even bickered with siblings - just being kids again. These moments reminded us what we were fighting to protect. These moments, too often, vanished as quickly as they came.
The fear would always arrive. It moved across their faces like a shadow. Not confusion - recognition. A three-year-old once asked, “Why aren’t you stopping this?” And all I could say was, “I’m so sorry.” Because I knew my tax dollars were doing this. I knew the world was lying. But I couldn’t put that weight on a child. So I gave them what I could.
As the bombs became closer, they would run under beds, behind dressers, sometimes toward nothing. Sometimes they just looked at the sky, trying to understand why it hated them.
A girl once tucked her drawing under her leg when the bombing started, like even in panic, she didn’t want to lose what she’d made. What hadn’t been taken yet.
One night, we watched a mother hold her four children while the walls shook. They looked lost. That kind of fear changes a child forever. No one should have to become fluent in grief before they’ve even learned how to read. No one should look that small, holding that much terror, in a room with no exit.
Yet even in the darkest moments, they reached for joy - a natural kind of resistance. They had patience and wisdom decades beyond their years.
These children drew flowers while their sky collapsed.
I no longer see children in peacetime without thinking of the ones who never got one.
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