Help Me Create a Future for My Family in Gaza.

Hello, and thank you for taking the time to visit this page. Undoubtedly, you already have a good idea of what has been occurring in my hometown of Gaza. Although I am not currently there, I am fortunate to have a large family in Gaza: four married sisters, two married brothers, and my beloved 70-year-old father - a widower who lost his wife, my mom, to cancer six years ago due to her medicine not arriving on time. I also have 19 amazing nieces and nephews, ages 1 through 16.

Since October 8th, each one of my 32 family members has been displaced from their homes. All their homes were either reduced to rubble or torched before their own eyes shortly after the ground invasion began. This left my family with neither shelter for the winter nor a place to hide from the raining bombs. Now, my siblings have the additional anguish of their children starving. The situation is currently more dire than ever. The lack of food, water, and shelter is pushing my family and the 2 million other people suffering the same fate in Gaza beyond human limits.

Although you all have certainly seen glimpses of the devastation on the news, it is difficult to describe what it is like to hear of this devastation directly from your immediate family. The most challenging part of my day has been waking up terrified to check my phone and find out if I’d lost any family members. The nightly voice messages, texts, and missed calls from my family, imploring for help to get them to safety. The messages are frequently interrupted by bombs in the background, and the explosions are so loud that the messengers often need to repeat the recordings. That was at the beginning; the ever-longer intervals of silence that ensued are almost worse than their distressed voices.

My siblings had to walk miles in a war zone, risking their lives to pick up a phone signal to send me these messages; I am their only source of hope, even though I live thousands of miles away.

So far, through relentless effort, perseverance, and significant financial cost, three of my sisters and a brother, along with their families, have escaped with their lives to Egypt. I now have exhausted all my financial resources and have no choice but to call upon the generosity of others to try and help my two remaining siblings, their seven children, and my father. Crossing the border to Egypt is a slow and expensive ordeal, and several of my family members require urgent medical treatment. With your support, I hope to rescue them before the imminent attack likely to occur in March.

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You have the right to know who you are helping, so I would like to tell you a bit more about my father, Mohammed, my sister Dalal, and my sister Samar.

My Father:

For more than four months, my father has been stuck in Northern Gaza, where the most intense bombardments and fighting have been taking place. On Christmas Day, he was taken out of his, by then unrecognizable, home, stripped naked, and loaded into a truck along with other men and children above the age of 13. We know from the Red Cross that the IDF detained him for a few days and that he was later released. He is now in the care of his neighbors. I haven’t been able to speak with him since, due to a lack of phone signal where he is.

He suffers from multiple chronic conditions: Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Primary Hypertension, congenital agenesis, Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), as well as Glaucoma. He has not received any medical treatment for these conditions for over four months. His health is deteriorating, leaving him even more vulnerable.

I have been in contact with the US embassy in Jerusalem and the Red Cross trying to evacuate him to Egypt. This is proving to be a lengthy and very frustrating process with little news and limited progress. I am also working with a US-based law firm to help expedite his evacuation. This is a race against the clock. Any funding received will finance the evacuation process and create a possibility of him receiving much-needed medical attention.

Samar:

My sister Samar has three wonderful daughters (seen in the picture below). They were among the unlucky ones who tried to evacuate to the south of Gaza on many occasions but were unable to, left trapped in the middle of a war zone with no place to escape. On December 25th, Samar lost her home. Her apartment was torched while she and her children watched helplessly. Her husband was detained moments before that, along with my father. Due to the cold and rain and desperate with fear from the continuous bombing, Samar and the children have been seeking shelter amidst the rubble of demolished homes in northern Gaza. They spend their days looking for food and grains in my other relatives' abandoned homes to feed the children, as seen in the only picture I have received from her in months (below). Aid trucks have not reached the north of Gaza, leaving them victims of starvation.

I am working with multiple agencies to evacuate Samar and her children out of Gaza temporarily, but as you already know, this comes at a high cost. Your support will help expedite their evacuation to Egypt, secure her family’s short-term shelter, and provide medical attention and therapy for them.

Dalal (Dede),

Just over four months ago, my eldest sister Dalal and her six children were celebrating her daughter’s admission to the University of Gaza to study English Literature. A few weeks later, instead of starting her studies, my niece sent me a video of pillars of smoke and fire rising from ten blocks away. At the time, they didn’t realize that they were looking at the missile strike that took the life of their 11-year-old brother, Nayef, who had been staying at his grandparents’ house. Tragically, Nayef was not the only person who died during that airstrike. His father’s entire family, consisting of 54 people, was extinguished from existence in a split second with a single bomb that didn’t discriminate among children, women, or the elderly. They were all buried without a final goodbye from their loved ones or even a funeral ceremony. In fact, it took 11 days to find Nayef’s body after the airstrike due to a lack of safety and resources to dig through the rubble.

Dalal and her remaining five children were able to leave Gaza, transported by an ambulance to one of Cairo’s hospitals seeking urgent treatment for her disabled daughter Lina. The family of six has been living in a tiny hospital room, prohibited from leaving. We have been warned that even this relative safety may be short-lived, as their hospital has neither the equipment nor expertise to help Lina. They will soon be returned to Gaza unless we can find another hospital for her treatment. With your help, I will be able to transport Lina to a hospital where she can be treated and, in the process, save the whole family from being forced back into the war zone.

Cost Breakdown:

Before seeking your help, I have exhausted all my options by depleting my savings and taking loans from friends. In the last four months, I have spent over USD 86,000, which covered the things below:

Here is a more detailed cost breakdown of what your support will enable me to pay for:

I sincerely thank you, and I hope you know that all the money you donate will have a crucial impact on providing my family with a chance at reestablishing their lives. Any excess will go towards legal fees, therapy for more family members, and a chance of temporary residency in another country. Please feel free to reach out with any questions regarding the cost breakdown.

With deep and everlasting gratitude to you for giving me hope and helping save my family,

Belal Baroud