Visualizing Palestine’s Post

Every Palestinian child in Gaza has a story of exposure to unimaginable Israeli military violence, including killings, traumatic injuries, mass displacement, hunger, destruction of whole neighborhoods, and separation from family members, which leaves lasting scars and trauma. No child should have to endure such burdens. According to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), every child in Gaza--approximately one million children--will require mental health and psychosocial support.  We must persist in demanding an immediate #ceasefirenow. #StoptheGenocide.

What would you do if someone stole your house and livelihood, killed some of your family members in the process, left the rest of you with nothing, and forced you to live in the squalor of a refugee camp? That is what Israel did to over 750,000 Palestinian in 1948, over 300,000 in 1967, and over 250,000 since then, and more every year. Most of the families in Gaza owned homes and farms where Israeli cities and towns now stand, which Israel literally stole from them. Many still even have the keys, and some homes still stand with Jewish immigrants living in them now. I also cry for the 36 innocent Israeli children killed on October 7th, but this horrible conflict did NOT start on that day. The proof is the nearly 2300 Palestinian children Israeli soldiers and settlers killed between the year 2000 and October 2023, including 43 children during the 9 months just before October 7th (all names & details documented on BTselem.org). Not to mention Israel’s brutal 57 year occupation/apartheid, and the blockade of Gaza since 2005 — both illegal under international law, and simply immoral and inhumane.. And now Israel is committing genocide and our government is helping them do it. Israel has killed over 12,000 Palestinian children in under 5 months, has orphaned over 25,000 more children, and has made over 900,000 children homeless during winter. And Israel is still blocking international aid to these children, increasingly killing them with starvation, dehydration, and disease, in addition to killing them with U.S. supplied bombs and ammunition. They’ve literally been amputating children’s legs without anesthesia. Can you imagine if that happened to your child? Aid agencies have even had to come up with a new acronym: WCNSF, which stands for Wounded Child No Surviving Family. Do you really think Hamas will need to teach the children who survive this hell to hate Israel, or is Israel’s indiscriminate brutality doing it for them, as it has for 75 years? PLEASE WRITE & CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES & the White House to demand that they stop helping Israel kill and starve children, commit war crimes, and maintain its brutal and racist apartheid, with our tax dollars. Our government has the power to end this unimaginable cruelty by simply refusing to send more weapons and ammunition to Israel, and by also not vetoing any more UN Security Council resolutions for a ceasefire. This genocide will be a permanent stain on our country’s reputation if we continue enabling this madness. The entire world is watching and outraged, and you should be too. And if you care about Israel, then you should also want to help it end its genocide and apartheid before Israel’s reputation is unsalvageable.

🔴𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐀𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐚🔴 📢This video shares the heartbreaking story of a child in Gaza, showing his life before and after the genocide that took his family members. It is a powerful reminder of the unimaginable suffering children in Gaza are enduring—losing their families, homes, and futures. 📢In Gaza, the systematic targeting and killing of children has reached devastating levels, with the UN reporting that 42,010 𝐏𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬, 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 11,355 𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐧 (27%), 6,297 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 2,955 𝐞𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐲. 📢Children in Gaza are facing unimaginable violence—losing their lives, families, and homes. The psychological trauma they endure will leave deep scars, shaping not only their futures but also the future of their communities. #Gaza #HumanRights #ProtectChildren #StopTheViolence #SaveTheChildren, #ChildrenInConflict, #ProtectChildren , #ChildrensRights #EndChildSuffering , #NoLostGeneration, #StopViolenceAgainstChildren #ocha #un #ProtectChildrenInWar #ChildProtection #WarChild #ChildrenDeservePeace #HumanitarianAidForChildren #StandWithChildren

Happening this Saturday! - Anar: Addressing Childhood Trauma in Occupied Palestine - **Last chance to register through the link** https://lnkd.in/dJ9H7Sdr An online event to showcase Anar’s work, history, vision and challenges in providing psychosocial support to children who live and witness the genocide in Gaza and political violence in the West Bank. The speakers are members of Anar’s team: 1) Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, the president of Anar’s board of trustees, who will discuss the political context, settler colonialism, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and how Anar’s work responds to the needs of the oppressed communities. 2) The second speaker will be Rami Khader, the founder and executive director of Anar, who will highlight human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza, such as child detention, settler violence, military violence and access difficulties, including the reality of “Un-Childing practices.” Rami will also explain Anar’s programs and methodology, and the mental health and psychosocial impacts of occupation and oppression on Palestinian children. 3) The last speaker will be Dara Rafeedie, the Psychosocial Support Coordinator at Anar, who will share updates and challenges from the field. The event will start at 8 PM Palestine Time (10:00 AM - 11:30 AM PST) via Microsoft Teams. #ِanar #psychosocialsupport #healingtohope #childhoodtrauma #palestine

The current bombardment of Rafah—a city of displaced persons, over 600,000 of whom are children—is only the latest and most severe evidence that children in Gaza and the West Bank are systematically deprived of their right to have a childhood. An estimated 15,000 children have not survived the genocide so far—an incomprehensible number. The children that do will deeply and forever be impacted by the trauma of violently losing limbs, parents, siblings, friends, neighbors, teachers, personal belongings, homes, and adequate water and nutrition. This cycle of trauma playing on repeat in Gaza and the West Bank is not new. Since Israel’s (and Egypt’s) blockade started in Gaza 17 years ago, “a generation has grown up knowing nothing but cyclical escalation, a dire lack of public services, and next to no freedom of movement.” What this means is that for Palestinian children, there is no “post” traumatic stress. There is, instead, what Dr. Samah Jabr calls “chronic stress disorder,” a result of the constant, cumulative impact of checkpoints, detentions, imprisonment, calorie restriction, surveillance, and physical violence, amongst other racist and dehumanizing experiences. We must recognize, visibilize, talk about, understand, and address the systematic violence against Palestinian children. Nelson Mandela believed “there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats its children.” We have a lot of soul searching to do because we are only as humane as our treatment of children and people who are suffering the most. https://lnkd.in/g6XFiGc2 #ceasefireingazanow #gazagenocide #savegazachildren #alleyesonRafah #gaza #westbank #Palestine

Anar: Addressing Childhood Trauma in Occupied Palestine - March 9th, 2024 An online event to showcase Anar’s work, history, vision and challenges in providing psychosocial support to children who live and witness the genocide in Gaza and political violence in the West Bank. The speakers are members of Anar’s team: -Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac the president of Anar’s board of trustees, who will discuss the political context, settler colonialism, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and how Anar’s work responds to the needs of the oppressed communities. -The second speaker will be Rami Khader, the founder and executive director of Anar, who will highlight human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza, such as child detention, settler violence, military violence and access difficulties, including the reality of “Un-Childing practices.” Rami will also explain Anar’s programs and methodology, and the mental health and psychosocial impacts of occupation and oppression on Palestinian children. -The last speaker will be Ms. Dara Rafeedie, the Psychosocial Support Coordinator at Anar, who will share updates and challenges from the field. The event will take place on Saturday, March 9, 2024, at 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM PST (8PM Palestine Time) via Microsoft Teams. You can register for the event by clicking on this link: https://lnkd.in/dJ9H7Sdr We look forward to having you attend the event! #anarpalestine #psychosocialsupport #healingtohope #childhoodtrauma

Five months of violence, displacement, starvation and disease compounded by nearly 17 years of blockade in #Gaza have caused relentless mental harm to children. Save the Children's latest report highlights that almost all of Gaza's 1.2 million children require mental health and psychosocial support. "While dodging bombs and bullets, fleeing through streets littered with debris and corpses, being forced to sleep in the open air and going without the basic food and clean water they need to survive, children in Gaza are going through a period of mass-scale shock and grief." “There is still hope that, with adequate support, this can be reversed. Throughout childhood, there are critical windows of opportunity to address the impact of conflict. But none of this is possible without an immediate, definitive #ceasefireNOW and safe, unfettered aid access so that humanitarians can provide the critical support needed,” - Jason Lee, Save the Children’s Country Director for the occupied Palestinian territory. https://lnkd.in/eqikbVbx

"We opened our temporary centre in #Rafah in February, but since yesterday no one is safe, no one is able to go to work. We need to maintain medical support to kids there. But it's chaos." Dr Yasser Abu Jamei, Director General of the #Gaza Community #MentalHealth Programme (GCMHP) 👉 www.gcmhp.org joined the virtual meeting of IRCT's Executive Committee last week. With his wife and children, Dr Yasser recently escaped #Israel's war on Gaza for the safety of #Egypt, from where he can now coordinate between his staff of 60 and international organisations. His priorities for organisations looking to support #Gaza? 👉 Advocate internationally for the #MentalHealth needs of people in Gaza. 👉 Help Palestinian organisations like GCMHP secure psychotropic medicines. 👉 Ten central points (tents or compounds) for mental health interventions. Currently there are none. 👉 A ceasefire now that leads to a durable peace. 👉 An end to Israel's torture of Palestinians in detention. In a recent statement (see attached) IRCT member, the Center for Victims of Torture 👉 www.cvt.org, based in the United States, called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, but also recognition that "those suffering the pain and grief of this conflict will likely carry those wounds for a lifetime, and the effects will persist for generations." "In the immediate term, a ceasefire is critical," said CVT. "In the long term, any transition to post-conflict resolution must include recognising the breadth and depth of the conflict’s traumatic impacts and provide opportunities for individual, family and collective healing to address the cycles of generational and collective trauma." To learn more about intergenerational trauma from an IRCT expert watch our Q&A series here 👉 https://lnkd.in/gN4sRxUW To learn more about the work of IRCT's members in Palestine 👉 https://lnkd.in/gHuidahQ #UnitedAgainstTorture

Thousands of Palestinian children lost one or more limbs, left with permanent disabilities and trauma scars for life, as a result of occupation’s indiscriminate bombardment in the past 6 months. Since the occupation genocide began: - 15370 Palestinian children are killed according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor - 25,000 Palestinian children are unaccompanied or separated - Every day, 10 children lose their legs according to UNICEF - ⁠Dozens of Palestinian children have died due to malnutirion & dehydration. - More than 440 schools are completely destroyed or damaged, among them several UNRWA schools. - ⁠Every child in Gaza needs mental health and psyhcological support. - Every child has been deprived from Educaiton.