International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People: Nesma’s message

My name is Nesma, I grew up in the famous city of Gaza by Palestinian parents. I have been in Greece since the end of 2016. Palestine is my home, but a home where I never felt safe.

I was born in 1997 when the Israeli occupying army was in Gaza, in the early hours of 05/26/97, during military curfew time. It is difficult to be a child in Palestine, since you are little you have been sentenced to death, maybe because they knew that we are the roots of the big tree that they wanted to cut down.

I lived through many wars, in fact we shouldn’t call them wars, because wars happen between military forces, organized that belonging to a state. But in Palestine, after the Oslo agreement, we never had an army. I lived through the attacks of 2008, 2012, 2014 and I will never forget them. I will never forget the sound of the bombardments and the fear that any bomb could kill us. I remember in 2008 when I was 11 years old, shaking in my sleep. To this day when I hear a warplane flying I get exactly the same feelings.

Why do they do all this? Why do they think they should live on this land? Israel as a nation state is the only state that grants Israeli citizenship to every Jew in the world. driving out the indigenous peoples of Palestine. For years Israel has been carrying out ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians. The massacres that have taken place in all these decades are countless .

Solidarity with the Palestinian people is solidarity with the one who owns the land against the occupation, is solidarity with the wronged. I feel wronged because they deprived me of my homeland, they bombed the house that my grandfather built with his own hands stone by stone. They took away my beautiful garden, the flowers that my grandmother planted, the olive tree that was older than the state of Israel, they stole the smell of the jasmine that bloomed at the entrance, they killed my dog, who refused to leave when we were kicked out, so as not to be targeted as terrorists.

Did the dog know he would never come back if he left?

They bombed my school, my street and my neighborhood, they killed my friends on the grounds that they were terrorists.

We will never forget, we only wish for Peace, we want to live without war, without disasters, without hatred. They are not above us and we are not above them, but for there to be Peace there must be justice.

In the photo is my dad, on 10/10/2023 and in front of him is what is left of our neighborhood. My house is there. My family is still there. I am here. Fear is still everywhere.