Help A Gazan Language Teacher Rebuild His Home

"Gaza: Save a dismayed and despaired soul"

My name is Aleisa, I’m writing this on behalf of my friend Moutaz Muhammad, who is an Arabic & English language teacher from Gaza. I met Moutaz as he was teaching graduate students as a Fulbright scholar at Georgia Southern University in 2018. Through his educational pursuits, he was able to experience life outside the restrictive borders of his home country, which has been under an illegal blockade since 2007.

While sightseeing in NYC, we talked about how Palestinians in Gaza were denied freedom of movement, and how basic needs like electricity and medicine are cruelly, and systematically, withheld by the Israeli occupation.

Since the beginning of the war, Moutaz and his family evacuated many times from one place to another. He moved to Al Shati camp and stayed there for some time, believing he could find a safe place for his children. Yet after brutal airstrikes on Gazan residential neighborhoods, he was forced to leave Gaza City for Rafah a second time.

Once evacuated, he was devastated to learn that their family home was destroyed during the Israeli bombing campaign. Moutaz says he lost the last hope ever left to him. "My last place of comfort & warmth was leveled to the ground."

His parents' & mother-in-law's houses were also smashed to the ground, wiping out any future hope to revive.

As parents to young children ages 5 & 7 his family now needs what all hope to provide for their kids: access to a safe, healthy living environment.

Moutaz repeated that he can hardly explain to his small children why they are living in a tent, or when they will go back home: "The kids are literally crying on daily basis missing their homes and their toys as well," he says.

Indeed, as a 36-year old, my friend Moutaz has already lived through 5 devastating major assaults on Gaza. It breaks my heart to think about my friend experiencing the violence of war repeatedly while also hoping to shield his small children from experiencing the same.

"I saw with my own eyes dead bodies in the streets and the extreme economic situation that people are suffering from,"

Moutaz explains that the "deliberate killing of innocents, the mass destruction of homes," has shattered his soul, turned him into "a dismayed & despaired citizen."

Since the siege on Gaza began, what was already a crisis has become forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, weaponized starvation, mental torment, genocide.

In Rafah, a supposed “safe zone,” Moutaz's family are still under constant threat of death from bombing, but also at risk from exposure, lack of clean water, lack of food, & the devastating impossibility of safe medical care.

UN News: more than 350 attacks on healthcare since hostilities erupted

UN News

The New Humanitarian: “The situation in Rafah is getting worse by the day. What was once a place with 300,000 residents is now holding 1.2 million people, and we can feel it..” The New Humanitarian

As a teacher, Moutaz has witnessed the unimaginable: friends, faculty members, and irreplaceable students murdered, libraries and entire institutions cruelly leveled.

Israeli Damage to Archives, Libraries, and Museums in Gaza, October 2023–January 2024: A Preliminary Report

Librarians & Archivists From Palestine

This campaign is to help our friend Moutaz raise money to rebuild his family’s life. His young family have lost so much and endured months of terror and displacement. To make matters worse, inflation in Gaza has soared. Everyday items cost 3-4 times more than their normal prices. There’s very little food & aid getting in, despite massive global efforts to bring aid to the people.

By making a donation, your money will go directly to an educator in Gaza now, a good person who needs help with the basics & who hopes to rebuild a safe, stable life for his family.

I will personally be managing this campaign & overseeing the transfer of donations, & I will post updates here for those who want to follow the fundraiser’s progress.

Every word or gesture of support is appreciated, any amount you can give could help change this family’s life.