I haven’t been able to write for a while. My heart is shattered by the continued assault on the people of Gaza by the government of Israel, supported by my own US government. If you follow this page, you know that I have chronic illnesses that keep me unable to go out to demonstrations or vigils or do much of anything. All I have been able to do is to bear witness, to keep looking for news, to keep posting on Facebook photos and stories of the devastation. Every day more devastation. Every day, bearing witness and sharing.

I want to tell you about Lama Jamous, a nine year old child in Gaza who is documenting and interviewing and posting on Instagram–she has become the youngest journalist in Gaza.

You can follow her here on Instagram. (I first found her on Facebook, but now I am not sure if that was a real account or a copycat account. Still, it led me to know about her.) In another post she writes:

My name is Lama Jamous and I was born on November 24, 2014. I have a sister Aya and two brothers Mohmmed and Kareem. I’m the youngest of the family. I am a great student in school and I have lots of friends. I enjoy working as a group with my classmates, participating in activities. My favorite subject is Arabic. Every weekend I would go visit my grandma in Khan Younes. Then we were going to see our farm by the beach. We were going on picnics too. Our apartment on the roofs in Gaza was magnificent.
Then came October 7, 2023 and our lives changed 180 degrees. No more school, no more education, no more picnic… Very difficult to live as situation. We went to Rafah to live in a tent. From now on, we have nothing of the basic of living well like no privacy for the toilet. My whole family live right beside us.
My aunt Sana was killed along with 14 yr old Malk, 11 yr old Brea, 16 yr old Malek and 10 yr old Salam. They were civilians, my friends, my family… I have suffered tremendously from this situation and being evacuated from one place to another. So I decided to be a journalist to show the world what’s happening.
We love our country very much and would like to stay but the reality is that we are facing genocide against civilians… Many witnesses told horrible things that happened or are happening. Media is not covering this.
It’s very expensive to evacuate a family… every person needs $5,000 to $7,000 but it depends. We hope to be safe soon and we will come back when the war is over. I want the war to stop so we can get back to normal life. So many of my friends and classmates are missing and we don’t know what happened to them… Everything has gotten worse than before. This war needs to be stopped.
Lama Jamous

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3CTcxeM-bs/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Lama Jamous is a child, my friends. She is now in Rafah, which was to be the safe evacuation zone, but is under attack.

I first heard about Lama through the work of Motaz Azaiza, a photo journalist who has been documenting the atrocities. He was recently evacuated from Gaza, and was interviewed in the Guardian. He expresses it so eloquently:

“To be clear, this is not a war against Hamas,” says Azaiza. “This is and has always been a war against the Palestinian people. Israel’s plan is to bury us or push us out – as we have just seen with the Rafah bombing. There is literally nowhere else for us to go.”

Azaiza urges the world not to look away. “As humans, we all have a responsibility to bear witness to what is happening in Gaza,” he says. “I tried my best to show the world our reality, now the world needs to show where it stands. It is ordinary people, men and women, who have the power to save what remains of Palestine. Our plea is simple – we just want to live.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/16/motaz-azaiza-interview-gaza-ghosts-photojournalist

Please bear witness with me. Please do whatever you can to stop this genocide.