Gaza Urgent Call: Support the Saba’s Journey.

My name is Maher Alhshweh, and I am supporting my cousin, Samer, to launch this fundraiser to help him and his family evacuate to safety amidst the current crisis in Gaza. Please read Samer’s story and join in supporting them to survive and start over their lives.

Dear friends, family and all the goodhearted people around the world, we are the Saba family. A small one of three and we humbly seek your assistance to help us evacuate to safety, settle down and start from scratch.

Our family:

My name is Samer; (49), a Palestinian Christian who is living in Gaza. I have a diploma degree in optics. I graduated in Kharkiv, Ukraine, where I met my other half, Alexandra. My wife (45) is a hairdresser, who has lived with us in Gaza for 26 years. We have three children; two daughters (Lily and Maryan) who are married and our youngest (Yazan) who is 15 years old. We lived a life of happiness and tranquility, surrounded by warmth and love that we created together.

Everything was going well before the war, but now, we are writing to you from a church that we are sheltering at with a heart full of despair. On October 9, 2023, we had no choice but to flee our home and head to our church to seek sanctuary and protection during this tremendously harsh time. We have been living in it for more than 160 days now, facing horrors and fear, staying at it still, even after it was targeted without any warning, causing the death of my son in-law, and putting my daughter in the hospital with severe injuries for a month and leaving me traumatized and helpless.

Hopes and Dreams:

We have lived many escalations before, but together and with hope, we were able to overcome them and restart again. This time, the war did not spare anything or anyone in its path, leaving us with nothing but the fragments of our former lives and crushing our hopes. It is unimaginable to live in Gaza now. We lost a lot and still are. We had the chance to go out once and check our memories-full home, only to find that the building was targeted from several sides, our flat door bombed open, and all of our furniture and belongings were either stolen or sabotaged. We left the place quietly and with merely any hope. We lost it all.

As a father, doing your best is really hard here, from the very beginning I kept trying my best every day to provide everything that my beloved family needed and wanted, and it breaks my heart to watch my family, my children, having their hopes and future crushed in front of them for reasons that they can’t control. We lost the sources of our income, my wife, Alexandra, lost her hair salon and talking about my son Yazan, who is an ambitiously skilled basketball player who dedicated himself to be a famous basketball player that’d one day play alongside his favorite basketball team, lost his sports club (YMCA Gaza) where he used to practice and play for the main team, and his scholastic study alongside. To them, life has become pointless and passionless. It is very hard to watch the people you love lose the light that once shone within them.

The North of Gaza -where we are located- faces starvation and lack of main life supplies as main food items, water sources, electricity, internet availability, and proper telecommunication. It would take years to get everything back. If the war has ended now, we still can’t leave the church. There is no markets and no life here. And with everything happening to us, we realized that we had no other choice but to leave our hometown, Gaza city. It is not a place where we can have a future for us and our children. We thought about leaving for Ukraine but the city itself is at war and we won’t stand a chance there, we are facing the hardest decisions in our life, but we know that we must evacuate. We’re a family who loves life, wants to live, and just can’t have it.

We’re a living a nightmare where we know, deep down, that any moment could be our last and this is why we came here to seek your help.

How your donation is going to help us

We were granted Australian visitor visas, and we plan on evacuating and leaving Gaza to save our family, and for doing so, we are required a lot of money that we do not possess.

The amount of money needed includes:

• Fees to cross to Egypt (6,500 USD per person and it keeps changing)

• Flight tickets, passports renewal, accommodation, and transportation.

• Once we get to Australia, we need to pay for essential expenses such as renting a home, monthly expenses including food, household bills, and furniture.

Every donation you give, regardless of its amount, will make a significant difference in our lives. Helping us one step of the way to regain hope for our future and for it, we thank you for your kindness, compassion, and unwavering support. May God bless you all.

In these terrible times, we are grateful for our friends and community for their support, because it gives us strength, and with your help, we will rebuild our lives again.

Samer and the family.

Maher has launched this fundraiser on my behalf, as he is based in the US and able to access this platform. He will transfer the funds to me, so I can use for these purposes listed above.