Gaza’s Mental Health Crisis: Israel’s One Million Child Prison
We focus on the impact of Israel's latest bombardment of Gaza, as well as the 15 years of siege and destruction Israel has imposed on Palestinian children in particular.
At least 49 Palestinians have been killed, including 17 children, in Israel’s latest aggression.
Half of Gaza's two million population are children living under siege in one of the world's most densely populated places.
Hosted by Ahmed Alnaouq, a Palestinian journalist from Gaza whose story was the inspiration behind the formation of We Are Not Numbers, we're live with:
Dr. Yasser Abu Jamei – Director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program. Hind Wihaidi, A 17-year-old Palestinian musician and writer with We Are Not Numbers living in Gaza. Rana Shubair, Palestinian mother of three children and author of two books, "My lover is a Freedom Righter", and "In Gaza, I Dare to Dream".
LISTEN 🎙️ | Gaza is a Children's Prison: Exposing Gaza's Mental Health Crisis. @AlnaouqA hosts:
— Palestine Deep Dive (@PDeepdive) August 16, 2022
•Dr Yasser Abu Jamei, Director of Gaza Community Mental Health Programme
•@Ranashubair, author & mother of 3 children
•@hindwihaidi, writer @WeAreNotNumbershttps://t.co/XylMWoTDbS
Full transcript:
Ahmed Alnaouq: Hello and welcome back to our 59th show. I'm delighted today to be joined by Dr. Yasser Abu Jamei, a Palestinian clinical neuropsychiatrist living in Gaza who trained in 2012 in Birmingham. He is the director of the Gaza Mental Health Programme, a leading mental health provider in Palestine. I'm also joined by Rana Shubair, a Palestinian writer from Gaza. She's a published author of two books. My Lover is a Freedom Fighter, and In Gaza I Dare to Dream.
Her writings also appear Mondoweiss, We Are Not Numbers, and other publications. She's also a mother of three children. I am also honored to be joined by Hind Wihaidi a 17-year-old Palestinian musician and writer from Gaza. Unfortunately, Mark Seddon, our usual host for Palestine Deep Dive cannot be with us today, so I'm filling in his place. I am Ahmed Alnaouq, Director of We Are Not Numbers, an advocacy and outreach officer of the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
I am speaking to you from London today. However, I grew up in Gaza where our panelists join us from today. I endured three of Israel's as deadly aggressions. As always, we are keen to hear from you. Send us your questions and let us know where you are. Our live show today comes in a critical time for Gaza as it just reached a truce with Israel after bloody and violent Israeli aggression and struggle. Like many other wars and offensives, civilians in Gaza have to pay the highest price.
More than 46 Palestinians including 16 children were brutally killed and more than 250 injured. In this escalation, we have seen tragic images of children torn into pieces due to the constant Israeli bombardments. For example, in Jabalia Camp, Israel targeted as a group of children killing 5 and injuring 30 others and in Bureij, Israel killed a father and his three children. Here we have a selection of videos that will help you see what life’s really on the ground in Gaza.
[video playing]
Female Speaker: Right now, there's tons of bombs all over. We're at Raed Rajab's and girls are crying. Children are very scared. The situation is very tense still. We're full of-- . We can hear bombs drop in, a panic in Raed Rajab's house. They're reliving the trauma of yesterday. They were sitting at home, they were praying, and then bombs were dropping over them. Look at the children. What breaks me the most are the children.
[video playing]
Ahmed: We know that this footage can be distressing for some, but this is what life is like in, in Gaza, not only in Gaza. Yesterday, in the western city of Nablus, Israeli forces shot dead and killed two 16-year-old boys in the West Bank during this so-called truce. Official Palestinian statistics say that the number of children killed by Israel since the start of the Second Intifada in 2000 to this year has risen to over 2230, with over 1000 of them killed in the last five wars in Gaza.
Of course, today we are not focusing simply on the numbers of children killed or injured but rather on the lasting impact on a children's mental health in Gaza due to these Israeli continuous aggressions and the ongoing 15-year blockade. I wonder if I can begin with asking you, Dr. Yasser about a review of the children's mental health in Gaza even before this aggression, not only in this aggression. Before this aggression, Save the Children organization issued a report in this year saying that 80% of Gaza children now suffer from depression.
This is to say that almost 1 million Palestinian children suffer from depression, sadness, and symptoms of severe mental health problems. Dr. Yasser, this is a very, very big percentage, maybe one of the highest in the world, but is this figure accurate? How many children are there in Gaza today? What percentage do they make up of the population, and how can these children really suffer, or do children really suffer to this extent in Gaza?
Dr. Yasser Abu Jamei: Well, thank you for raising this very important questions. Let me begin by thanking the organizers for the opportunity to shed light on how the current conditions impact the lives of children and the population in Gaza Strip. To begin with, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 47% of the population in Gaza Strip are children. If we speak about 2.2 million people, inhabitants in Gaza Strip, we speak about 1 million people who are really children of the living people in Gaza.
The question about the impact, let me get back to the point that you raised when you spoke about the Save the Children report. I think that always the most important – let me say, finding, that the report speaks about in my opinion is that of the feeling of safety among children. When you speak about 15 years of blockade, when you speak about decades of occupation, when we speak about four, now five big offensives on Gaza Strip since the year 2008, I think the biggest question is do you feel really safe when you live in Gaza Strip?
One of the key findings is that 90% of the children living in Gaza Strip, they don't feel or they feel less safe when they are away from their parents. The figure was 60% in 2018 and now, it became 90%, which was few months just before the recent attacks. Emotional distress is 80% as you mentioned and on top of that is depression. The other hand if we look at the caregivers or at the parents who are the backbone or the cornerstone it comes to offering support to children, we see another staggering really figure which is that 96% of the parents report feeling unhappy and constantly anxious.
If you look into what could be the possibility or the reason for that anxiety or for being unhappy, you find that two thirds, 63% of caregivers feel that they are not useful, or they are not able to overcome the difficulties. Why is that? Two main reason. One is that parents are not really capable of offering safety and security in times of attacks because we don't have shelters, we don't have means of feeling safe and secure.
The other point when you speak about 53% or more than 50% of the population live under the poverty line. Then, you speak about the difficulties that parents face in just providing simple needs of their children, children who go to schools. 53%, that means more than 500,000 children and families living under poverty line. Can those parents really offer good stationary, for example, good clothing for their children's clothing, schooling et cetera, et cetera.
In GCMHP, we made a research in 2021, about five or six months after the May 2021 attacks. One of the findings was not really far from the findings of the Save the Children report. About 83% of the children had anxiety issues. 78.7% of children had problems with attention. 74.5% of children had symptoms of depression. 71.7% has sleep problems. You hear about a mixture of really symptoms that are related to the ongoing chronicity of the difficulties, depression, anxiety, etc, etc. You have some other children who resemble some kind of trauma-related issues, like sleeping problems, like problems with attention, with concentration, etx, etc.
These were the conditions of the children prior to the last few days attacks. You can imagine how these symptoms have exacerbated. Sometimes, people question the notion of 80%, that is the highest. Yes, it's the highest in the world. I'm really not that pessimistic that the percentage is such a high one, but let's go back to 2014 when the UNICEF said that about 370,000 children, or one third of the children living in Gaza Strip, they are in need for some psychological intervention. That figure really continued to be there. I think in 2018, we were talking about one quarter or one in four children is in need for some psychological intervention. Of course, the needs increase and continue to be high.
Let's keep in mind that we talk about symptoms. We do not talk about, let me say, disorders. Disorders is a different issue. You need to have a clinical setting in order to make the psychological assessment for assessment of the children in order to reach a diagnosis. Even if you are not talking about enabled children or a disabling disease, we are continuing to speak about the suffering of those children and the families who host the children.
Again, during the last three or four attacks-- sorry, three days or four days when we had recent attacks, again, the figures show that again, about one quarter of the casualties are really children with adults who were killed or injured about one third to one quarter. That's the continuing staggering figure. More than 120 children, I think, were injured. More than 15 children were killed. Many of those children were cousins. They were members of the same family. Some of them passed away, got killed with one of their parents.
The overall issue is that 15 years of blockade, for example, any child who is now 18 years old or 17 years old was exposed to three to four large-scale operations. Between those operations, you do not really have a period or a time of safety. As of now, for example, the ceasefire is there, but actually, the drones are still in the sky. The threat is still going. We see what happens in the West Bank yesterday. What happened in Nablus, for example. It's all something that doesn't really bring a feeling of safety and security. It's something that keeps reminding people of the traumatic event and keeps natural healing processes on hold, make our intervention in working with the children, with the victims also a difficult one.
Ahmed: Speaking about your intervention, Dr. Yasser, we know, given all these figures that you have mentioned, these are staggering figures. Can you tell us a little bit about the Gaza Mental Health Community Programme, and how you are dealing with these children who are more than a million Palestinian children who need mental health assistance? What functions does it carry out, your organization, and what are the major challenges you face in the Gaza Mental Health Programme?
Dr. Yasser: Well, clearly, in one hand, there isn't any, I think, health system or mental health system in any country that will be able to deal with such, let me say, challenging conditions with these challenging impact or expected psychological impact of what happens in Gaza and on the population. This is even not with the beginning of the blockade. We were established in the year 1990 by our late renowned psychiatrist and human rights activist, Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj. He started the idea in the late '80s during the first intifada when he noticed, and then there was only one place to offer mental health services, which was the psychiatric hospital.
He was seeing so many parents, so many children who were suffering from the impact of the Israeli aggression during the first intifada, which is somehow in a way similar to what happens now in the West Bank, night raids, arresting parents in front of their children. Sometimes, beating up parents. Sometimes, harassing children, taking them into detention, etc, etc.
It was clear that the psychiatric hospital isn't the best place to deal with those issues, so he started the first ever in Gaza Strip community mental health center, which is composed of a multidisciplinary team that a medical person is important, a physician or psychiatrist, but also there is need for a psychologist, for a social worker, and a nurse. The idea was a combination of a biopsychosocial model rather than just the strictly medical model.
We have multidisciplinary teams nowadays. We have three community centers. We operate also through five community-based organizations where we send our staff to operate from there in order to make our services accessible and available to marginalized neighborhoods and areas. The idea is to offer comprehensive mental health service when it comes to children. For example, we offer play therapy, we offer art therapy, psychodrama for the children.
On top of all of this, we involve parents in our intervention. We stay with the children maybe a couple of hours per week, a couple of sessions per week, maybe less, maybe more, but at the end of the day, the involvement of parents is really critical and really of vast importance. It's a sort of combination of therapy plus the involvement of parents.
Then, in order to make our service more reachable, more accessible, we operate also through schools. We work from kindergartens. We work with sport clubs because all the time, the work at the level of primary prevention is really very important, and it's better not to wait until the symptoms really deteriorate and the children become incapable of doing their daily routine life and become really severely symptomatic and sick and then come to our community centers. Let's also, one more word, which is the stigma is really still in the society. Stigma, by the way, part of mental health services everywhere in the world, but it's really more in our region.
A lot of people would really talk about the traumatic events, how they are coping with it. They would speak during the morning houses. They would talk about what happened, but when it comes to someone who is like a child or a woman, or a young girl who is symptomatic, who's having nightmares, who's having bedwetting, they would really think twice before reaching out to a mental health therapist. That's why we try to operate from their communities, from the places that they are available, like a sport club, like a school, or a kindergarten.
Ahmed: Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Yasser. I would love to emphasize on a point that you have mentioned that this is actually not the fifth war in Gaza. Since the year 2003, Israel launched more than 29 aggressions and military aggressions against the Palestinians in Gaza. It's like a vicious circuit that never ends, aggressions, then truce, then aggressions, truce, and then aggressions. The Palestinians never had rest or peace of mind.
Thank you very much, Dr. Yasser. Now let's move to Hind. Hind, you are only 17 years old, and yet you managed to make it through. You have lived a 15-year-old siege in Gaza. This is your entire life. About that, you've experienced five wars, at least and many aggressions. Hind, we have titled this show as Gaza is a Children's Prison. Do you think this is a fair title just based on your experience?
Hind Wihaidi: First, I'd like to thank you for hosting all of us today. I just want to highlight one thing when it comes to maybe naming “wars” and “aggressions”. War is something or a word that I would try and avoid using because it usually indicates that both sides have equal powers while it's not the same in our case. I'd like to call them more of aggressions. Regarding your question, the title of this live today Gaza is a Children's Prison, it is a title that really indicates the open-air prison that we've been living in as you just said for 15 years, almost my whole life.
Maybe it's not a physical one, we can go out and it's not an actual prison but living under siege, yes, it is considered a children's prison, especially for those who were born after 2007. They really did not get the chance to experience anything before that, but to also look at the bright side of all of that is that even though it's called a prison, even though there are many things that we're not allowed to do like traveling, like maybe trying to study abroad, go on vacation, even to get a treatment for something is very hard for Gazans and specifically Gazan children to get out of Gaza.
If we look at the bright side, these people are doing their best. These children, these youth are doing their best in order to try and make connections online or via social media platforms to actually make sure that this prison is not preventing them from achieving their dreams. Although, it's going to be harder for them to conduct all of that virtually, but they're doing their best. As I said, I always love to emphasize that positive side of us living in an open-air prison. We're doing our best in here. As I said, we don't have a lot of opportunities, but on the other side, we're trying to create those opportunities out of all the rubble that we've been living in for more than 15 years.
Ahmed: It's very lovely, Hind, to hear your positive vibes here. I'm very happy to hear that you're coping with that. Can you tell us, Hind, about your life, how was it like during the past week in Gaza, and how it compares to what you have experienced in the past?
Hind: The past three days when the aggression happened were really tragic for me. It got me a lot of flashbacks of those aggressions that we've lived before. I only got back to Gaza less than two weeks ago. I didn't even get the chance to readapt to everything and readapt to where I am. Literally, with no time everything was going one after the other. I did not get the chance to reflect on anything.
In addition to that, it got me thinking a lot about where I'm actually living, the prison that I'm actually in, me knowing that I might die literally any second while I'm talking to anyone, while I'm sitting, while I'm watching TV, while I'm thinking about something because this is what happened with other children and the other Gazans that were killed during this aggression and during the previous aggressions as well. As I said, the older I am, the more I'm thinking about these things. Maybe when I was younger, I used to be scared of all these things that are happening around me.
Right now, while I'm growing up, I'm trying to actually make a move and use that voice that I have for those voiceless people that do not get the chance to talk that much about their feelings. This is something I've been doing since the 2021 aggression that happened last year. This is my goal, for now, is just to keep moving and just to actually be the voice for those who cannot talk that much.
Ahmed: Well, thank you very much. It's actually lovely to hear that you're setting yourself a goal and that you want to speak for those who can't express themselves well in the news. Thank you very much. Rana, thank you much for waiting patiently. During the latest aggression in Gaza, I have been in contact with my family and friends in Gaza, and many of them are parents. I have noticed an unprecedented frustration among mothers, an unimaginable fear, not only for themselves but also for their children.
One of my friends, whom I met in London a few years ago, and she returned to Gaza told me that her biggest regret is that she returned to Gaza now because she can't bear life for her two-year-old child enduring Israel's attack. I can only imagine that it is indeed not an easy job to be a mother for itself, let alone being a mother in Gaza. Rana, can you please tell us what is it like raising your children in Gaza, and how have managed to cope with this past week?
Rana Shubair: Yes, well, thank you for having me on this show. Well, every woman's dream is to be a mother and when you think, you have this romantic idea of having your babies and raising them so peacefully and watching them grow up and all of that, but when my kids were babies, there was rounds of sonic booms and aerial shelling. There were military attacks on Gaza. I always just try to reassure myself that by the time they grew up that all of this would just go away, and it couldn't possibly last for years, but here they are. They are Hind's age now. They're 17, and they have witnessed every aggression. As a mother, I've tried to deal, during every aggression, with them according to their age.
I remember when they were very young, they would ask so many questions, and I tried to avoid answering some of their questions, and I tried to protect them from seeing images on TV, but the environment that our children live in is uncensored, meaning wherever they go, they will see pictures of martyrs. They will hear people talking, even adults in their own house. I watched my children grow up and absorb all this war terminology and the images and living through all these attacks. It has been a very testing time for me and for mothers here because you want your child to grow up with a healthy mental well-being, but this isn't easy to achieve here amongst these very precarious life conditions here.
For example, if you want me to talk about the last attack, it was only three days, but compared to other attacks, I guess, because my children are teenagers now, it wasn't about panic, it was more about devastation and frustration, this vicious cycle of on and off attacks. I can't tell you how much this disrupts our lives. Even when they're at school, sometimes, attacks would happen when they're at school. Then, I would just run to pick them up.
This happened in 2008 when the first attack was launched suddenly and kids were at school. It was actually the time of the day when the two shifts of school switched. The morning shift was going home and the afternoon shift was going to school. It happened during that time and while kids were in the street. There's no discrimination as we have seen between kids or women or adults. This has led to so many emotional problems for my kids, for other kids, like Dr. Yasser has mentioned. As a parent, I've tried to deal with these problems in my own way. Maybe, I can talk about this if you want to learn about that.
Ahmed: Rana, I would like to ask you a very important question in this regard, during each aggression, have you noticed any emotional change in your children, and have they recovered even from the last war in Gaza in May 2021, and after any attack by Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza?
Rana: The May 2021 attack was a very ugly and vicious one because it was in my neighborhood. I live in Al-Rimal neighborhood and Wehda Street where, let's say, the onslaught happened and the massacre where over 42 people were killed. This was after 1:00 AM. Suddenly, we heard about this very loud shelling and these blasts. Instantly, in every aggression, parents, and children they each have a backpack where they put just their essentials so they can just be ready to run if there's an attack nearby. This is what we did. We run down out of our building and all the nearby buildings also ran out in the street because, I guess, everybody thought that their building was being attacked.
We were running in the streets, and I was looking at people running in the streets. People were going in different directions. I don't think they really knew where they were going. It was like a Nakba all over again. I heard people screaming, screaming for help as we were running in the street. This was very traumatic for all of us. I don't think we were ever the same again after that attack because it was very close to us. What I have tried to do is to talk to my children about what happened. It's very important that they'll give the chance to express their feelings.
My daughters, for example, they like to paint, they like to draw a lot, and they're always buying colors and paper and stuff like that. I encourage them to do any recreational activities like horseback riding. They love to do this, I mean, anything that would get their minds off of what's going on because at one point, after the 2014 aggression, when they were just nine years old, it was a very hard time for me. One of my daughters was constantly panicked, and she was always having nightmares and crying. She was always imagining that we're going to die, and we're just waiting for death because they saw people who they knew getting killed.
In the last aggression, one of my daughter's friends, who was in their school, got killed. I don't think my daughters ever really got over her because one of them tells me that she always sees her in her dreams, and it's very hard for them to just grasp the concept or the notion of death and all of that. All children here in Gaza, they're very heroic, let's say, because they have grown above their age and have been forced to absorb things that children in other parts of the world know nothing about.
Ask any child here, they'll tell you what kind of plane is hovering above, whether it's a drone or an F-16. They know all of this war terminology, but as parents, we try to find, I guess the right ways to deal with our children's trauma. I also urge parents and myself to seek professional help like Dr. Yasser said because in some cases, these aggressions have a very long-term effect on the children.
Ahmed: I'm very sorry to hear your children had to go through all of this, Rana. What about you as a mother? I know every mother worries a lot about her children, but how does it feel to be a mother in Gaza? Is it worrying constant? Do you ever get a rest?
Rana: No, there's no break. Actually, the Israeli don't give us a break here. I just want to emphasize that when aggressions are over, when these attacks finish, we're still living a smaller kind of aggression, which is the siege because this blockade, like Hind said, has taken up their whole-- A 17-year-old has only lived under a blockade. This is also a very traumatic experience where children feel entrapment.
As a mother, I already feel that I'm trapped on this tiny piece of land where I'm banned from moving, banned from traveling. Even sometimes, I have these fanciful dreams about attending a writer's conference somewhere. That's something normal for people outside, or sometimes, I just want to buy a book off Amazon, and I want it delivered to me, and that never happens.
The sense of entrapment here for kids is also very hard because during their elementary school years, they have a subject called national studies where they study about Palestinian cities and 1948 Palestine and the West Bank. They've never seen these cities. Just imagine anybody from the outside world can come and visit my country, but my kids can't go and visit their own country. This has caused a lot of confusion for them.
A very famous story written in one of my books is that when my two daughters were arguing one day, one of them said, "We live in Gaza," and the other said, "No, we live in Palestine." One of them comes to me and said, "Mom, do we live in Gaza or Palestine?" I really held my tears because I'm like, "Here are my kids learning things at school, but they don't know anything about their country because they're not allowed to visit it, and it's only a few miles away, these Palestinian cities." I went to one of the teachers one day and I told her, "Can you please show them some documentary films about Palestine?" She was like, "No, they have the textbook, the pictures in the textbook," which are very dull and they just memorize it.
This sense of entrapment where they know nothing about their country. They can't travel. They don't have the luxury of traveling and seeing other places around the world. I think it's a very suffocating feeling and that's why I have found that it has led to children as young as 16 years old falling into depression because they see other children like them who have graduated, let's say, from school or college and they haven't found any jobs and they can't travel. They picture themselves like, "This is my future. This is what's going to happen to me, so why should I study? Why should I care about finishing school if I'm just going to be unemployed in the future?"
As parents, we're just always trying to motivate them. I keep telling them things are going to change inshallah. I believe that faith in our community plays a very large role for many families about having strong faith in God and that strong faith in our cause and that we can change this, but we just have to be patient. Yes, I think it's a day-to-day challenge, but we have no other choice.
Ahmed: Thank you, Rana. It's not only confusing for children to know if they are from Palestine or in Gaza because also for us as adults, I'm at 28 years old and the first time I ever met a Palestinian from the West Bank or from Palestine '48 was in the UK here in London three years ago. I never had the chance to meet with anyone from the Palestinians in the West Bank. I always, when I would meet someone from the West Bank, I would seize the chance to ask them about Palestine, to ask them about the Palestinian cities in the West Bank because we have never been there.
It would be even more funnier when I meet with the British people and Americans who have been to Palestine so many times, and I am a Palestinian, I am denied from going to the West Bank or Jerusalem or Palestine '48. Well, thank you very much, Rana. I will get back to you Dr. Yasser. Before that, I would like to remind our audience that in 1991, Israel ratified that UN's convention on the right of a child, which stipulates that all children have the fundamental rights to life, survival, development, protection from violence and an education that enables them to fulfill their potential.
Clearly, Israel violates this convention day after day, year after year, not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. We know for instance that in Israel itself, Palestinian or Arab schools often receive almost six times less funding per child than schools for Jewish students, as they are illegible for funding from Zionist institution. They go on to face discrimination in job markets and also subject to Israel's 65 racist laws.
In addition, over 5 million Palestinian refugees must rely on the UNRWA for aid living in the West Bank, in Gaza, in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan with over 1 million children requiring humanitarian assistance. In the West Bank, Israel's apartheid subjects Palestinian children to discriminatory laws and practices. They are routinely denied the right to education when forced to wait at checkpoints, their classes can be disrupted by Israeli military at any time.
According to the Defense for Children International in Palestine each year, approximately 500 to 700 Palestinian children, some of them as young as 12 years old are detained and prosecuted in Israeli military ecosystem. The common charge against them is stone throwing. Dr. Yasser, we often hear about the PTSD, the post-traumatic stress disorder, that it doesn't really apply properly for Palestinians in Gaza as the trauma is continuous. It's not ending. Is that true?
Dr. Yasser: This is a very important question and it all the time brings very nice discussion among mental health professionals, especially my colleagues, whether in Gaza, West Bank, or Palestine '48. Again, as I said a little bit earlier, we don't have that traditional, let me say, condition that you live in peace, your life is a lovely one, you are enjoying growing up, enjoying work, and suddenly, a traumatic event happens that make your life difficult for a couple of days, or you feel the threat to be injured yourself or people around you. Then, there is an end to that disaster with a natural or human-made, and then help and support comes in from everywhere. Then, your main task is to get back to, how to say, to normal life.
Well, those three things are not happening in Gaza. First, the pre-traumatic event is not an easy, smooth-going life, et cetera, et cetera. No, we speak of blockade, we speak of occupation, we speak of more than 2/3 of the population in Gaza are refugees themselves, so we speak about decades. This doesn't go only to '67, but it goes also to '48.
Then, not only that, but you live under blockade, not only that, but within that blockade, you are exposed to, we say for large scale operations, but as you said, at least 29, and despite that, you hear all the time that cues, things that remind you of the traumatic events that are happening around you. You listen to the news, you see how things are on the heat. You look at the skies, you continuously hear the loud sounds of the drones and they all bring you the bad memories.
Then, in the aftermath or in the after the disaster, then there isn't really return to normal life. It's again life as usual under occupation, under the drones, under the blockade, et cetera, et cetera. The traditional Western notion of post-traumatic stress disorder, I wouldn't say it doesn't apply to a place like Gaza State, but I would say that the situation in Gaza State is deeper than that. We cannot really just describe it as a PTSD in its simple notion. No, it's far beyond that.
Then in the other hand, PTSD is a disabling disorder, but in order to be able, for example, to say that this person is disabled, you have to have something that you are doing or working the first place in order to stop doing it and then you become disabled. When you speak about 50%, 53% of the population unemployed, then I say it's becoming a challenge to show what does disability mean.
Then when you look, for example, at children the first day after, for example, they May 2021 attacks, which were, I think the most severe, devastating attacks that happened among the five different attacks, the first few days after the cease-fire, the ministry of education announced that, and they announced and into the academic year, of course it was COVID, it came on top of COVID, not the pandemic, but on top of a COVID wave that was in early April and then May 2021, and guess what happened? Children had to go to pick their, what we call certificates, in that year. Guess what happened? They were all very well dressed. Why they were very well dressed? Because they were putting on the Eid clothes, the end of Ramadan feast was within the attacks time.
The children haven't had the chance to wear those clothes. Parents had bought them. They were capable of buying. They already bought them, but there was no chance because we didn't have the Eid celebration because we were under attacks. They put those clothes on when it was time to go to get the certificate. It was very ironic combination. You drive your car or you walk the street, you see in one hand the debris and the destruction and the destroyed houses, and on the other hand, you see very well-dressed children are moving across those debris trying to go to the schools and get their certificates and come back home.
Can we speak that and say that those children are traumatized? It's a big question. It's a lot more than that. How do they feel when they're reminded of trauma? Of course, it's deep pain. It's a lot of things that would go into their minds. When they go to sleep what happens? When they wake up in the morning, are they wetting their beds or not? There are many things that happen in the background, but still, I think there is a very strong will in the Palestinian people to challenge the living conditions and to live, to go on with their lives.
Not only that we live under occupation and that's it, no, we are challenging the current challenges and we want to go on with our lives. We want to invest in our children future as parents. We want the best education for them, and we try to push them all the time to perform well at schools and they respond to that. They are very happy when they get high marks and they try their best to get high marks. PTSD as a term, yes, I apply it in my community center, in my work. We put that diagnosis. We use the DSM-5 category diagnosis, but it's not enough really to describe what happens to the population in a place like Palestine.
Ahmed: Yes. I also agree with you that the Palestinian people will have the strongest and the stamina and determination. It's really unparalleled. I haven't seen it anywhere in the world. That's something that's really inspiring for all of us. Back to Save the Children report, it said that more than half of Gaza's children thought about suicide and that three out of five of self-harm. This is so alarming. Dr. Yasser, what do you think is the international communities' duty regarding these alarming reports? Do we have enough support to mitigate these circumstances? Gaza children in need of help, can you tell us what kind of help are we seeking?
Dr. Yasser: Look, Ahmed, in one hand, those children and we adults, we parents, and we mental health professionals have our good days and bad days, have our ups and downs, you cannot be a child who is exposed for the third time in your life, that you really understand what happens around you or maybe fourth time and you see how much worries are there, how much difficult things are, and you just go on with your life without having some wounds. There are psychological wounds that we have in our minds and our psyche that come to the surface every now and then, although we do not have a diagnosis, but this is part of the suffering. That's why we might see those alarming figures. That's one issue.
The other issue, we speak about an occupation. We speak about aggressions. We speak about offensives that among perhaps the mostly documented events that happen internationally, and they grew for the last seven or eight decades. It's very well documented what happens. It's very well documented, the aggressions. It's very well-documented, implications. It's not only through media agencies, it's now through social media. Everyone can report what happens, et cetera, et cetera. What is needed is a reaction from the international community, a reaction that is up to the challenge, that is up to the question.
Why the international community is silence until now for an occupation that continues to happen for decades? Why it's silence until now for all the killings of the children, Palestinian children? They'll tell you one thing, we our children, Palestinian children, we have the same right as all the children in any other place in the world, all the human rights declarations since the first one in 1948, going with a child declarations, human rights declarations, and all the various declarations-- By the way, the state of Palestine have signed most of those declarations in the year 2015, but you have our rights that we are not a second, let me say, level citizens on this globe.
We have the right, our children have the right to grow up in a safe place, in a secure place to go to a good education. We as Palestinians believe that we have enough resources, perhaps not to live as a rich country but to live as a good country. We have the resources, we have the capacity, we have the human, let me say, manpower, which is the most important thing. We have the intellectuals. I think we are the most educated people in the Middle East, but we need the chance. In order to get the chance, we need to just live in a dignified way. We need to live in peace, and we need to enjoy our freedom.
We are not requesting anything more than our rights, and the international community should respond in a dignified manner. The question mark is not to Palestine people, but the question mark is to the silence of the international community, while in some other places we see how much the international community is responding. Let's not draw parallels, but everyone knows what I am talking about.
Ahmed: Yes, that's very eloquently put. Dr. Yasser, thank you very much. That actually brings the question that came to us in the comments from Gary in Scotland. He said, "How can it be that children are not even eligible to vote in an election are the primary victims of a politically masterminded humanitarian nightmare? Why does the world sit in silence, and what can we do to make more noise about it?" I think, Rana, you can answer this question. Rana, are you there? We can't hear you, Rana.
Rana: Oh, I didn't hear your question. Could you repeat?
Ahmed: Gary from Scotland asks, "How can it be that the children who are not even eligible to vote in an election are the primary victims of a politically masterminded humanitarian nightmare? Why does the world sit in silence, and what can we do to make more noise about it?"
Rana: Well, why are they the targets of the Israeli occupation warplanes? Because the occupation has a very sick mentality that they want, for example, in the last attack to prepare his election campaign. The interim prime minister is trying to boost his election campaign. I guess the more blood he has on his hands, the more chance he has in winning. That's the only explanation I have because it has happened over and over when politicians want to make some, I guess, development in their political life, that's what they do. They just attack innocent civilians.
They do this because they know they've never been held accountable for it. The world watches, the international community watches children getting killed and, as you've mentioned, children getting arrested, children as young as 12 years old. Israel keeps getting away with these crimes. I guess what ordinary people can do is that I believe in the power of popular resistance and popular movements. They should do what they can to protest against this bloodbath that keeps happening. They should also call for disarming the Israeli Occupation, to stop sending arms.
British and America how much do they send every year in money or in weapons to the Israeli Occupation so they can test these weapons on us, their lab rats here in Gaza? Then, without being held accountable, they test these internationally banned weapons on us with every attack. Every attack, we hear a new kind of bomb or weapon being used on us. There should be high-level protests to disarm and stop sending these weapons to Israel. For Americans, their tax money goes to the Israeli army also.
I think these massive civil movements are very important. They should try to keep momentum. Change is not going to happen very fast. It might take years, but I think that every step counts. It's a very long road, but I think we've been patient here for 74 years. I think that they should also just not give up.
Ahmed: Thank you, Rana. We have lots of questions in the comment section in our show. Unfortunately, we can't take all of them, but we have a question here from Debora in Newcastle. She asks you, Hind, "What dreams do young Palestinians in Gaza have or has Israel crushed those too?
Hind: Thank you so much for this question, Debora. Palestinian children and specifically Palestinian children in Gaza have a lot of dreams that vary from whatever careers you can ever think of. Some things or some majors or fields of study are available to study here in Gaza, while a lot of them are not. Maybe if I want to talk about my dream of becoming a biomedical engineer and probably be more involved in the genetics and genomic field. This is something that is very, very hard to do as a Palestinian living in Gaza because of the lack of resources that are needed for you to study this major here in college.
In addition to the other children that have a lot of dreams of becoming doctors, dentists maybe just something that they've seen in journalists, book authors, and many other things as well, I'd like to say that Israel hasn't crushed them in the same way or literally, but the things that happen with us the obstacles that we face when we want to travel or we want to actually start and achieve our dreams, this is something Israel have been working on, preventing us from having this basic right of achieving our dreams.
While on the other hand, I'd like to say that there is always at least one good thing behind every tragedy that we live. Those tragedies, those aggressions that we survived, they motivated us in some way or another to actually be that change that we wish to see in the world, to be that change that other children can easily achieve or other people can easily get while on the other hand, we can't. We want to create that change instead of waiting for someone else to create it. I just want to say that Gaza children or their dreams, they literally have no limits. No matter how small is the prison that we live in, or no matter how long we stay in this prison, they literally have no limits.
Ahmed: Thank you so much, Hind for saying that. Unfortunately, we are running out of time. I want to ask you, Dr. Yasser, one last question. In a previous show, for Palestine Deep Dive we hosted Dr. Bahzad Alakhras, a friend of mine, and he's a specialist in child mental health in the Gaza Program for Mental Health, and you're his boss, of course. He said something that I can't really forget, and it's very hard to hear. He said that Gaza children are not living, they're surviving. To what extent do you agree with him? What does it mean that they are not living, they are surviving?
Dr. Yasser: To live means that life is something that you enjoy, and a big part of what you really enjoy is achievement. It's, by the way, part of the definition of mental health, well-being, which means that you are capable of achieving something but also coping with the challenges, but also feeling that you are very well psychologically or mentally. Children, what are their tasks? They are supposed to have fun. They are supposed to play. They are supposed to grow up in a very healthy environment, to eat well, and to enjoy being a child. Your whole discussions, your whole talks will be about what happened at school, what marks that you received, and then what you dream to become in the future.
That's life for the children. Now, in Gaza, first of all, children used to play during the first and second intifada in the streets, the game that we call [Arabic language], which is Arabs and Jews, which is basically resembling the Israeli soldiers who were running behind the children who were throwing stones or their parents who were just running from here to there, which is mimicking, or a play that resembles their daily life.
If you bring a child now in Gaza to our community center and you take them into the playroom, the play therapy room, the play therapy room is full of toys, whatever it could come to your mind. For example, animal structures, house structures, toys that resemble parents, but they would go and try to play with tanks, with those things that resemble what happens to them, and they will start to tell their story. This is of course, part of healing, part of therapy.
Again, that's what the children live, that's what the children see. When they grow up to become adolescents, then they see that their elderly, for example, elder siblings, for example, or their parents unemployed. They don't have a chance to live a dignified life. They are under blockade. They see all the difficulties. That's why it's not normal living conditions for a child to grow. What kind of life is that? I'm sure when I, as a father, travel abroad, I just look at the children of other places and I wonder why my children are not living the same happy life, why they all the time have to worry, why every week or two, they will hear some bombardment and then they will think, again, what's going to happen tomorrow?
That's why they survive. They continue to live. They challenge the reality. They perform well at schools despite all of those realities, they challenge the concept of PTSD. They go on with their life. They are the true heroes and true survivors so that's why their challenge is to survive. They are doing their best and our biggest, as parents, duty today towards our children is just to help them go on with their lives or to help them basically survive. That's how I could explain what Bahzad said.
Ahmed: That's very well explained. Thank you so much. I think we lost Hind. I noticed that she lost power in Gaza and then she lost connection. Hopefully, she will join us soon. Unfortunately, we have exceeded our time limit. In one minute or two minutes, I would love to ask each of our dear speakers to leave a message to the world. What is it that you want to tell the world as a concluding message, Dr. Yasser?
Dr. Yasser: I would say, live for your moral issues. Stay on the right side of history. Call for justice for Palestinians. Thank you.
Ahmed: Thank you very much. Rana?
Rana: Yes. I echo Dr. Yasser as well and I urge people listening and people out there to listen to our stories because our stories are not mentioned in mainstream media. You have to look for them. Maybe, this broadcasting that you have here is one of the ones that tell the stories of the Palestinians as well as other media outlets. Please, listen to our stories. Don't listen to the twisted facts or the Israeli narrative. As a mother, I want my children to live in peace. I just want them to play safely, to wake up to the sound of birds not bombs, and to just have an ordinary life like children in other parts of the world.
Ahmed: Thank you very much, Rana. Hind, we lost you for a moment. I think you lost power or WiFi. Anyway, as we are exceeding our time limit, I was asking our dear speakers to give a concluding message to the world to people who are hearing us today. What would like you to say?
Hind: I just want to encourage people to do their research regarding our Palestinian cause. As Rana has just mentioned that our stories are not mainly mentioned on mainstream media, so try and do your research. Don't let just mainstream media brainwash you. Try asking questions, ask us questions, ask other Palestine that you know questions about where they live, what difficulties they face, or obstacles that they encounter during their day-to-day routine.
I'm pretty sure that after doing all that research, you're only going to find one right and true side to this story, which is ours. Just keep that in mind and try to spread awareness about our cause. It's not that known in the Western world or the Western media but being or having a lot of voices talking about one thing at the same time, this is what's going to get us to many people outside there, so thank you.
Ahmed: Thank you very, very much, Hind, and thank you, Dr. Yasser. Thank you very much, Rana. I enjoyed talking to you, and all of your points were very informative and illuminating. This is it from us today. Thank you very much, all of our guests, and thank you Palestine Deep Dive team behind the scenes who have made all this possible. Until the next time, thank you for watching.
