A Message to the World from Gaza City - please read and share widely
From:
"Susan Kuehn smkuehn@PROTECTED [Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition]" <peacelist@PROTECTED>
Date:
August 9th 2025
A message to the world from Gaza City
Please share.
"To whom it may concern,
I am not a threat. I am just a young woman watching her life collapse.
This is a letter from a woman watching her life fall apart – not because of reckless teenage choices, not because I chased thrills or surrendered to youthful desires. The truth is, I never had the chance to live a normal adolescence or carefree twenties. Now, as I edge closer to thirty, I am expected to be mature – yet I was never allowed the space to be anything else.
I am not reckless. I am not lost. I am simply a young woman born into the wrong side of power.
I have become a spectator in a life I’m supposed to be living, a puppet tied to strings pulled by men in suits who reshape my fate according to their interests, their moods, their political agendas.
One day they wake up content, the next filled with bitterness. Their shifting alliances, their traumas, their need for dominance—we pay for it all with our bodies and futures. And there’s no one standing between us and that storm.
I find myself—alongside millions of others in Gaza—imagining food rather than eating it. Watching it on screens, swiping through images of meals we may never taste. Much like the world swipes past our lives—scene by scene—between coffee breaks and commutes.
Meanwhile, Israeli ministers sharpen their cruelty into policy. After approving limited aid, Itamar Ben Gvir declared: “Sending aid to Gaza is moral bankruptcy. What should be sent is bombs, airstrikes, and occupation. We should encourage them to emigrate.” You can rest assured, Mr. Ben Gvir, your bombs have never stopped. Not even during your so-called “humanitarian pauses.”
And now, last week, the Israeli cabinet approved military plans to reoccupy Gaza City. Where do they plan to put us? Have they finally decided to kill us all?
Maybe death would be easier. Because this—this daily erosion of hope—is a slower, crueler end.
Gaza is no longer familiar. It doesn’t look like the place I grew up in. Everything is strange now—its destruction, its hunger, its fear.
And I hate the part of me that wants to flee—not because I don’t love my homeland, but because I want to live. But if I am destined to die, let it be here, in Gaza, buried in its sand beside its sea.
Still—I am human. I want to live.
I want to exist as a free Palestinian in my homeland, not a pawn moved around by foreign governments that twist law and humanity into tools of control. I want a home I don’t only remember in pictures. I want a country I can contribute to—not just beg within.
I want to help others, as your nations help each other. I want to live a life worth living—not a performance scripted by war and politics.
I am not a threat. I am not a tragedy. I am not a puppet.
I am a person. And I deserve to live."
Nour AbuShammala
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