Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Gaza

The Sameer Project

Hi Everyone— This is something I have never done before, but I’m sending out a post by my friend, the anthropologist

Maura Finkelstein

, who is using her Substack to raise mutual aid for Gaza. The essay below highlights the work of the Sameer Project, and includes links to their work and ways to donate money to help bring desperately needed aid to Gaza.

As someone who primarily does literary criticism of a handful of dead poets, I have felt myself struggling to write about this ongoing genocide, which is unlike anything I have seen in my lifetime. I feel intense shame and rage at America. I want to scream or crawl into a hole. But I can’t, because through sheer chance, I live in a beautiful home and my children sleep safely every night. That means the literal least I can do is raise my voice as loudly and as often as I can. So, please read the following, please follow Maura on Substack, please share this with as many people as you possibly can, and please, if you can, donate anything to this or any other project raising mutual aid for Palestinians.

Here’s Maura’s essay.

Right now, Gaza is experiencing a complete blackout. Twitter is so quiet. It’s devastating and deadly. I just got off the phone with Lena, one of the co-founders of The Sameer Project (and the reason this Substack exists). She told me that she suspects that one of the reasons for the blackout is Israel’s intention to bomb Nasser Hospital in Khan Younnis. Nasser Hospital is one of the only (somewhat) functioning hospitals in Gaza and the only one with a pediatric ICU. It is the second largest hospital in Gaza and draws thousands of patients, as there are currently no hospitals functioning in the north of Gaza.

As early readers of this Substack know, I started this as a way to raise money for The Sameer Project. Now, after talking with Lena, I’m going to also use it to get stories out that folks at The Sameer Project think are important and not getting enough attention. These stories will be hard to read (this post will be hard to read). Please read anyway. We have to keep bearing witness to this genocide and then we have to keep using this witnessing as continued motivation to act. One of those ways we can act is by supporting The Sameer Project and other mutual aid campaigns. And if you can’t afford to contribute financially (and even if you can), please send these campaigns to everyone you know and post them on social media and keep talking about Palestine, no matter how tired you get or how scary it is.

One of those stories is about the health and medical crisis in Gaza right now. In this post, I’m going to sketch a larger picture of the scope of the health care crisis in Gaza because of Israel’s ongoing genocide. In the weeks to come I’ll use this space to highlight individual and family stories (with permission) and subjects that are not getting lot of coverage elsewhere. And other things as well, so stay tuned. All of this information will be available to everyone but please do become a paid subscriber if you want your yearly/monthly payment to go directly to The Sameer Project. You can also just send them money directly, there’s a way to set up an ongoing payment if that’s something that works for your budget. Just to be clear - I am not making any money here. This is all for mutual aid.

First, a bit about The Sameer Project - there have been some good write ups here and here and I urge you to read about them. For me, I appreciate that they are truly a mutual aid organization and not an NGO. Not only does their project address communities and community needs, it also helps folks on the ground in Gaza get the support they need to do the work they are doing. There are individual campaigns that I support but the act of choosing who deserves support and who doesn’t is devastating. Supporting The Sameer Project means supporting communities and the work they are doing to care for each other through quite possibly the worst human-led atrocity in history.

Like many people, a lot of my attention these past few weeks has been preoccupied with forced starvation. How do we get food and water to Palestinians in Gaza, who are literally being starved to death by Israel as part of their ongoing genocidal project? But speaking with Lena highlighted the absolute destruction of health and medical care in Gaza, especially for the most vulnerable (which, to be honest, is almost everyone now). The level of devastation is actually unimaginable for me and yet may of us are also seeing these images and videos everyday - people (including babies) with amputated limbs, bodies that have been torn apart, people suffering from scabies, malnutrition, infections. Lena told me a lot of stories today, Here are a few that stuck with me.

Right now in Gaza, babies around the age of one to one a half years old (born during the genocide) are experiencing major delays or absent developmental milestones. This is likely in large part due to their being born in tents, without enough access of oxygen to their brain. These babies are showing signs of viral infections, brain atrophy, delayed or absent speech development, and an inability to crawl and walk. Additionally, the rates of cerebral palsy have skyrocketed since 2014, as Israel’s bombardments of Gaza escalated. This is likely due to Israel’s use of chemical weapons. People in Gaza have no or almost no access to seizure medication. Doctors - who are forced to perform hundreds of amputations - do not have access to bleach or pain medication. Then, these patients who have just had major surgeries, including amputations, are sent “home” to their tents because there is not enough space for them in the few hospitals that remain. This means that people with open surgical and amputation wounds are back in these tents without access to the materials they need to keep these wounds clean. No antibiotics, no pain medication. Patients with amputated feet end up needing amputated legs because of infection.

Then there’s the escalating mental health crisis as a result of living through genocide, watching your friends and family be murdered, experiencing starvation and health crises, and living in escalated and chronic fear. Lena told me the story of a young girl who, before the genocide, was happy and healthy. Now she has had both her legs amputated (and one leg received two amputations) and, as, result, is experiencing psychosis, scratching and biting herself, and saying nothing other than she wants to die (another post on mental health in Gaza forthcoming).

It’s important to stress: Israel, in addition to having murdered close to a million people and actively starving over two million people, is also bombing hospitals, blocking medications from entering Gaza, prohibiting field hospitals and international medical teams from entering Gaza, and restricting how and who can get access to emergency medical evacuations (there will be another post forthcoming on how evacuations do and do not work).

As I write this, the question I keep asking myself is - what care and support do I need to stay alive? What care and support do the people I love need in order to stay alive? What medications keep me and my community healthy and functioning? What medical support help me and my community live with cancer, chronic injury and disease, infection? What if all of this was taken away? And in the midst of that deprivation, my community was also under constant genocidal attack? Beyond the absolute horrors of genocide that result in grave and life threatening injury, most people in Gaza do not have access to any of the health care they need to survive. Menstruating people do not have access to period care. Cancer patients are not receiving treatment. Kidney patients don’t have access to dialysis. Sepsis and heart attacks are an increasingly common. Nursing parents suffering from malnutrition do not have access to baby formula. And people who are injured or ill but marked “stable” are dying a slow death, as they do not have access to the care and materials they need to stay alive.

The Sameer Project is doing a lot of work in the face of this overwhelming horror - they are involved with initiatives that help with wound care programs and help get doctors into circulation at tent encampments, as well as regular medical programs that are necessary for everyday life beyond immediate crisis. I’ll be sharing their stories and the stories they have been collecting here. Again, they will be hard to read. Please read them and circulate them. We cannot look away.