Urgent Relief for My Children in Gaza

Hi, my name is Mohammed Y. Salha. I am desperately asking for your help to feed and care for my family.

I have 4 siblings in Gaza, each married with kids. Three have stayed with me in the rubble that was once our home in the Alzaitoun neighborhood of northern Gaza. The other managed to escape to Rafah amid the bombing and violence and has been living in a tent under squalid conditions.

I am the oldest sibling and carrying the burden of finding a way to keep the children fed. I am in severe pain and in need of hernia surgery, but my focus is the immediate survival of my children and their cousins. They are hungry, traumatized, and clinging to hope of for something better.

I was a designer working in a printing company that was completely destroyed at the beginning of the war. I spend every minute now trying to imagine how I will keep my children alive.

My children and their cousins are smart and beautiful and love learning. They are top students who want to be doctors and dentists, teachers and engineers. Most of all they want to live normal lives, have families, and live in peace.

Since the beginning of the war, they’ve known only death and disease and destruction. I weep at the things they have seen. They dodge explosions to get food. They watched their homes disappear before their eyes. But the agony somehow does not keep them from dreaming. Their schools were flattened, but still they study. Their hope and innocence keeps us moving in the misery and heartbreak.

Please help me however you can to give them a chance.

(Ryan Moore is a friend in Baltimore, USA who is posting this request on my behalf. We first met in 1997 when he was teaching English in Gaza's refugee camps. 100% of donations will be sent directly to my family via bank wire for basic expenses related to food, shelter, and medicine.)