During the torture, one of the soldiers raped me. He shoved a wooden stick up my anus, left it there for about a minute, and pulled it out. Then he shoved it back in, even harder, and I screamed at the top of my lungs. After a minute, he pulled the stick out again, told me to open my mouth, pushed the stick into my mouth and forced me to lick it. I was flooded with feelings of injustice and humiliation.

At Sde Teiman, I went through the hardest days of my life. I’m still suffering from severe trauma. They held me naked, and soldiers set dogs on me that attacked me. They beat me on the penis, tied it with a plastic cord and caused swelling and bleeding. One detainee lost a testicle as a result of the torture. […] About 200 people, myself included, got scabies and scratched ourselves until we bled. When we asked for treatment, they told us: “You haven’t seen anything yet.” […] the doctor also beat us. There were also cases in which prisoners’ teeth were broken.

There were an officer and a soldier there, and they ordered me to take off all my clothes and put on a diaper. Then, they tied my hands behind my back, blindfolded me and hung me up on a Blanco hoist, the kind butchers use to lift sheep after they’re slaughtered. They left me hanging there for almost 10 hours in a row. My shoulders and wrists hurt badly. They hung another guy I know next to me, in the same way. They hit us while we were hanging there, mainly in the chest area. Every blow made me feel like my soul was leaving my body, it was so painful.

They tried to scare us and break our spirits all the time. Twice a week, they carried out suppression operations: they threw stun grenades into the cells, injured detainees, forced us to kneel with our hands on our heads, and swore at us. The soldiers made me a “shawish,” in charge of the other detainees, and ordered me to slap them. They told me, “If you don’t beat the detainees, we’ll beat you.” When I slapped the detainees, I apologized to them. The soldiers beat me and cursed me anyway. Those were the hardest days of my life. They showed no mercy or compassion towards any of us.

The soldiers tied my hands behind my back and blindfolded me and several other detainees, and then they put us in a pit. Inside the pit, the soldiers beat us with their weapons and swore at us. We thought we were going to die in that pit. Then I heard jeeps moving. We were about 30 detainees, and they threw us into two military jeeps. That was when the torture began. During the whole drive, they beat us badly until we reached Karam Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) Crossing. When we got there, we were surprised to see, in addition to the soldiers, Israelis in civilian clothes. They took us out of the jeeps and kicked us while they did so. They opened the zipper of our coveralls and threw us on the ground face down, with our bellies exposed, and then beat and cursed us.

Then they ordered me to take off my boxer shorts, and I was left completely naked in front of the female soldiers. They searched me very thoroughly using a scanning device. [...] They blindfolded me again, tied my hands and took me somewhere else; I didn’t understand where we were. There, they beat me with batons or sticks for a long time. Out of desperation, I tried to push the blows away and fight back at the soldier, but I couldn’t. Just then, they gave me a heavy blow and I felt one of my ribs break. From there they transferred me to another place, this time in an armored vehicle. I understood the place was called “al-Kalabat”: they threw me on the ground and dogs started stepping on me and attacking some of the other detainees.

Around 5:00 P.M., the three of us moved forward. There were many people, and trucks arrived with flour sacks. Each of us got one. On the way back, Bilal took a path alone and Ahmad and I walked together. The gunfire was heavy and direct. Suddenly Ahmad was hit and fell. I tried to save him. I took off my shirt and pressed it against the wound, but realized he’d died immediately. He was shot directly in the heart. His body was covered in blood.

My life is ruined. I’d rather die here than move south. Even if we could afford it, my wife couldn’t survive in a tent with no basic conditions and a newborn baby who is underweight. When we left home, we took nothing, only clothes. I knew it was the last time. I said goodbye to our house and our neighborhood. Being displaced feels like my soul has left my body. [...] We are now displaced, without hope, under bombardment and destruction. There is no safe place or humanitarian zone in the Gaza Strip. Every place is attacked.

[...] while I was on the phone with my parents telling them we were under attack, a shell landed right on our storage room. I was hit and blacked out. I must have lost a lot of blood and was taken to Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital. When I came to, in the hospital, I found my hands gone. My life was ruined in that instant. Both my arms were cut off above the elbows, and I was also badly injured in my left leg. I had third-degree burns all over my body. I was in shock. It felt like my arms were still there, or would grow back one day.

That was the fate of my son Ahmad in this life, a fate that could have been prevented if only we had been able to get food for him. Many nights, Ahmad went to bed hungry. He told me that even when he was asleep, he ached with hunger, and I couldn’t do anything for him. That helplessness still tears away at my heart […] A young boy with his whole life ahead of him, who anywhere else could have lived a long and good life, died of starvation and malnutrition, displacement, filth, and lack of proper medical care.

[...] Maryam was discharged from a two-day stay at the hospital. When we got home, she told her father she wanted to eat halawa. Muhammad smiled and told her, “Tomorrow I’ll look everywhere, and I won’t come back without halawa.” The next day, Monday, 18 August 2025, he went to the humanitarian aid distribution center in the Morag area of northern Rafah, hoping to find halawa in one of the aid packages. He left home at 1:00 P.M. Hours went by and he didn’t return. Around 5:00 P.M., his sister Ni‘mah, 35, from Khan Yunis, called and told me that Muhammad had been shot and taken to the hospital, where he died of his wounds.

As we tried to escape, the school was bombed again, and Sila was hit in the head by shrapnel. Her head was covered in blood. I hugged her and screamed for help. My son Muhammad took off his shirt and tried to bandage Sila’s head to stop the bleeding. I shouted for an ambulance, but no one paid attention. […] Sila is still hospitalized […]. Her wounds are infected, and the hospital doesn’t have the antibiotics she needs. […] She needs more head surgeries to prevent fluid from leaking through her nose or eye socket. The doctors say her condition is serious and complicated, and that she needs treatment outside Gaza […].

I was in the schoolyard and my father, Bassam al-Jarjawi, 57, and my brothers ‘Omar and Mahmoud were in a tent in the yard. Suddenly, the military fired two missiles that struck the part of the yard with the tents, near the cafeteria. The yard was full of people at the time. […] I was injured in the leg by shrapnel and fell. I saw rubble and thick dust everywhere, and body parts and wounded people lying on the ground. […] [at the hospital] I identified the bodies of my father and my brother ‘Omar. It took several hours to identify my brother Mahmoud, as only parts of his body were found in the schoolyard.

On 21 December 2024, we ran out of drinking water. Because I was injured, I wasn’t able to go get water, Amneh (10) asked us to let her go. She went to fill water at the hospital, and on her way back, an Israeli missile hit her directly. When we found out, we screamed and cried. For three days we couldn’t bury her because it was too dangerous. After three days, we buried her under the ruins of a house […] I keep remembering my last conversation with Amneh. I can’t understand, can’t grasp how the military kills a child who was only going to get water.

On the way to the aid distribution center, Ghazal stuck her head out of the window to feel the wind and said to me, “Mom, I’m brave and strong.” She was proud of herself. When we arrived, there were thousands of people there, and every time the crowd moved forward, the Israeli military opened fire. We lay down next to a destroyed house by the roadside. When the shooting died down, someone shouted that the center was open and everyone started running toward it. As we ran, the soldiers opened fire again. I lost Ghazal and began shouting her name. I heard her answer, “Yes, Mom, I’m here,” but I couldn’t see her through the dense crowd. After that, I didn’t hear her again.

On my way back, I heard people saying the al-Mashtal area had been bombed, that there was a massacre in the tents there. I started running toward our tent, where my children were waiting for me. [...]I saw ambulances evacuating dead and wounded children. The sight was horrifying. All the tents were bombed and the area destroyed. [...] Suddenly, I heard Farah calling out to me from inside an ambulance. She said, “Mom, they bombed us, Sila was killed and Sanad is injured!”

Sham was born after nine years of trying to have another child, and her father and I were overjoyed at her arrival. She was born healthy, and her weight was normal. During the war, when she received vaccinations at clinics, we discovered she was not gaining weight. From the age of six months, she got steadily worse. She is now diagnosed with severe malnutrition. At her age, she should weigh 12 kilograms, but she weighs only 4.5.

I saw [my brother ‘Adel] wasting away, his body becoming emaciated, his bones protruding. […] I was the one who cared for ‘Adel, and he was very attached to me. He slept next to me in the tent. At the end of his life, he could hardly speak because of his condition. But the night before he died, he called to me in a faint voice, as if he wanted to say goodbye. That night, I heard him groaning in pain, and I had no way to help him. I said to him: “Sleep, ya ‘Adel. I’m right here with you.”

[…] Zeinab vomited brown-colored fluid, and her eyes looked tired. My husband and I decided to take her back to Nasser Hospital. I ran through the street with her in my arms […]. When we arrived, the doctors examined her and told us she had died before we got there. […] Every minute and every second, we remember our beautiful baby. […] Her siblings ask where Zeinab went, and that is the hardest question of all. Two days ago, the World Health Organization called us about arranging her treatment abroad, and my husband told them that Zeinab had died. Before she fell ill, Zeinab weighed 5 kilograms, and by the time she died, she weighed about two kilograms.

We were trapped there for over half an hour under heavy fire from all directions. The whole time, I kept thinking, “God, just let me get home safely. I don’t want flour, I just want to get back to my family.” I think everyone trapped there with me, waiting for the second convoy, felt the same. It was a very tough half hour, maybe the hardest of my life. Next to me, a father and son and a woman of about 35 were killed. About 20 people were killed there, and many were injured.

[...] Israeli fighter jets bombed our house. In an instant, everything collapsed on us. We had some relatives displaced from the north and east of Gaza staying with us. Sixteen of them – my uncles and cousins – were killed and buried under the rubble. [...] I was in shock when I saw Hassan and Rima – they were lying on the ground screaming with their legs cut off. I fell to the ground and couldn’t get up. [...] We rushed them to al-Awda Hospital in Tal a-Za’tar. The place was extremely crowded, full of wounded people and without electricity, medications and surgical tools. [...] The operating rooms were flooded with blood. The doctors said there was nothing they could do except apply iodine and bandages.

People take risks and go towards the entrance because whoever gets in first has a higher chance of getting the aid. Sometimes the army allows us to get close and then starts shooting. [...] One night, I went there and waited as usual. I started advancing together with other people because we thought it was allowed, and then everyone started running together. Suddenly, there was a barrage of heavy fire from tanks stationed a few hundred meters from us and from drones. I lay down on the ground behind a dirt embankment, crawled and got away. That night, more than 30 people were killed [...].  I’ve walked kilometers, crawled, run, pushed in among thousands of people, all while risking my life. And in the end, I come back with nothing.

At the hospital, they clean his wounds once a day in the operating room, under anesthesia. His pelvic area is at risk of infection all the time because it's so close to the rectum and urethra. He had another operation on his abdomen and now he has a stoma. He's in a very serious condition. He urgently needs treatment outside the Strip because the hospital can't give him proper care, because there's no medicine or painkillers.