I write you while crying because this is the only thing I am able to do now. I write you as a plea to save the innocent babies massacred in Gaza. They are only babies, I promise you. They are months old, a few years old, and they still breastfeed, with blurry visions, drunk-smiling in their sleep, searching for the scent of their mothers to feel at ease. Please save them.
They may not look like you; they may not have blonde hair and blue eyes and white skin, but they look like me. And I love life. I love waking up to the smell of my mum’s coffee and my sister running around to find her notebooks before school. I love wearing my favorite shirt and driving to work, blasting out music, and feeling the breeze of the thin air on my face. I love going out with friends at night, kissing my 4-month-old nephew good night, late-night talks, good cheezy pizzas, and dreaming of a time when I get to buy my own house near a river. I love life, and the people of Gaza love life too.
Excellency, I am on my knees pleading to do your best to help them, or resign to show your failure to achieve justice. The world can’t be this ugly, can it? I refuse to believe that we live in a world where children are massacred, and is justified. I understand the ruthless justifications of hypocritical world leaders that are too high on money and power to see light from darkness, but you are the world leader for human rights; you cannot possibly justify this, can you?
We are kept reminded that we are civil servants and we should act as one. And here I am, pleading as a UN personnel, as a civil servant, to protect the civil rights of children. I am asking you to do more than condemn a ghost and sleep in your thousands of dollars worth of mattress feeling satisfied.
You know, I knew I would be working with the United Nations ever since I was eight years old. I used to watch The Hunchback of Notredam and cry because of the mistreatment of Quasimodo, and then I saw a photo of a child eating from the garbage, and I pledged to help humanity restore fairness. I would say, “I will serve the people until the day I die. I will lead revolutions and feed the poor supper with my own hand. I will climb my way up to work with the United Nations because this is the biggest organization that works for humans, no matter what these humans are, who they are, where they are.”
Your Excellency, I have failed the humans of Gaza. My bones are aching as I write this, but it is true. I see the video of happy children playing around in the backyard of a hospital, how they were cleaning the garbage and laughing loud enough to deafen the sound of bombings, and then I see that these same children have been bombed. We can no longer hear their laughs. Turns out the sound of bombs is louder than the laughs of children.
I may have failed the humans of Gaza, because I am just a 25-year-old girl with delusional aspirations and unrealistic ambitions, but I count on your humanity, your expertise, your connections to do more than condemn a ghost enemy. I am asking you to rise above your interests, to take a look at the feeble bodies with their tiny fingers and bloody faces, and act as the world’s Security General of the United Nations and do more than what I am doing.
Your Excellency, forgive me for not using fancy UN jargon and not writing in the diplomatic language, but I am too broken to do so.
I come from Qana, a town village in the South of Lebanon. My father lived in this town his childhood, in a modest house where the corridor has no ceiling and instead has trees and greeneries with red flowers in the middle. It was a very old house, barely painted, but made ends meet in the sharpest days of winter.
My grandfather had a small bookshop right next to the house. Not a lot of people bought from his bookshop because he was labeled as the “crazy person” in the village because he had Schizophrenia (but no one knew then) and because he was shy. He was so happy when UNIFIL was deployed nearby because they bought from his bookshop. His living conditions improved.
In 1996, the bombing of the South escalated, and the people of Qana sought shelter at the Fiji UN Compound in the middle of the village. The compound sheltered hundreds of women and children and elderly. As my grandparents packed their bags to shelter at the UN Compound, my father decided it was safer if they came with him to Beirut, and so they did. Hours after, Israel shelled the compound, massacring 116 persons, most of whom were children, and four Fijian UN peacekeepers.
I visited the compound in 2022 and stood in the middle of the room where the children hid under the blankets, waiting for aggression to ease. A burnt blanket was still preserved, lying on the ground, with ashes of corpses lying underneath. Maybe we can preserve burnt blankets and rubbles of debris, but we cannot preserve the smiling faces of children thinking of what to wear tomorrow to school, only to die the night before.
Excellency, I plead on behalf of all those who have died before me, of all those who will die after. I may be too weak to do more than crying, but I trust you are strong enough to change the narrative of murder. I refuse to stop hoping for a better for children; I refuse to lose faith in the United Nations and its acclaimed leadership.
Please give justice to Palestine.
Please condemn Israel as a colonist state.
Please save my people from dying.
Please do something.