The Wars Within the War on Gaza w/ Maram Humaid

For episodes 195 and 196, Elia Ayoub and israa’ are joined by Gaza-based journalist Maram Humaid to talk about the many layers of Israel’s genocide, the everyday of those trying to survive it.

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Credits

Elia Ayoub (host, producer, episode design), israa’ (host), Ayman Makarem (producer, sound editor), ⁠⁠Rap and Revenge⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (Music), ⁠⁠Wenyi Geng⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (TFTT theme design), ⁠⁠Hisham Rifai⁠⁠⁠⁠ (FTP theme design) and ⁠⁠Molly Crabapple⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (FTP team profile pics). pics).

Transcript prepared by Lizartistry and Antidote Zine:

Every day coming is not a new chance. It’s a new challenge. It’s a new circle of inventing solutions for everything.

Elia J. Ayoub: Welcome to another episode of The Fire These Times. We have a special episode today. We interviewed Maram Humaid, who is a journalist from and based in Gaza. How would you describe this episode, Israa’?

Israa’: The thing I’ve been sitting with is the humanity backing what we’ve been witnessing. There’s a different telling of the story that’s happening here: it’s the day-to-day lived experience, it’s the survival, it’s the facing death non-stop and still trying to cultivate life in the face of constant death.

Something that kept coming up for me during the episode was the aura of resiliency and how strong Palestinians are. But also, it’s collective devastation and suffering—resiliency at this point feels like an insult to me. It’s a way of separating, distancing, idolizing and putting it on a pedestal, and making it okay for the rest of us to be okay with what’s happening.

EA: I agree. The details of our every day, the past few months, the past couple of years almost, that’s what got to me the most. The headlines are what they are at this point. Most people who are informed are as informed as they can be. What Maram offered was telling us the difficulty of the mundane. How do you maintain an education for your kid? How do you get basic food? Stuff like that. She clearly had a lot to say. As we say in Arabic, fasshit khele’—Let it out.

We were both very grateful for the time she put in, given everything that’s happening. In the episode itself there was an airstrike not too far from where she was. It’s these things. She’s only been eating lentils and pasta for a long time now—when her kids are watching YouTube videos, they have to pay attention to whether there’s certain foods that appear that are not available in Gaza that her kids will then ask, Why don’t we have that? These are the things that really stuck out for me and made it really meaningful again.

I: It had me reflecting about comrades and friends in Gaza. When I asked the question, How are you?, what does that actually mean? A lot of what she said is repeated over and over again. It’s unbearable. It’s getting worse by the day. The people need support. There is no way to fully capture what’s happening there, and the reality is: that is part of the war. One of the things that came up in the conversation is the war within wars, and one of those wars is trying to convince people that it is beyond anything you could actually imagine or think.

EA: The metaphor she used of wars within wars really stuck with me. There is no way of explaining perfectly what happened, but the entire episode is as good an approximation as it gets. She has so much she needs to share and so much to tell us. You even get the sense that as deep as the story goes, there’s always another layer that she doesn’t have time to get into. She does a good job as a storyteller.

As someone who’s not in Gaza, and same for you, it felt like this is as close an approximation as humanly possible without actually being there.

I: It also became very apparent for me: the failures of journalism and how much it strips down, because We want to focus on the facts—but it’s stripping the humanity of what’s actually happening, and so it’s diluting the experience. It’s generalized statements, facts, and numbers, and it’s too big for most of us to hold or understand, or comprehend what that means. Listening to her talk really brought the people back into the picture. This is what it means to be going through genocide. This is the experience of genocide.

EA: There’s a kitchen in Gaza you’re involved with. Do you want to tell us a bit about it?

I: This is a community kitchen I’ve been working with for over a year and a half now. We’ve operated basically everywhere—the north, the central, the south. Beyond the community kitchen there’s free water distribution. Yesterday we did both the kitchen and water distribution, and baby formula distribution. We’re individuals coming together and doing what we can. We’re solely funded by people’s solidarity and support.

We’ll put the link in the show notes, but it’s gazamutualaid.org/aid. Spread the word out. Give what you can. This is literally a lifeline. You’ll hear in the episode Maram talking about her privilege in being able to access, and how many other people don’t have access, and this is who we’re trying to reach with the community kitchens, the ones who have no access.

EA: Here’s the episode everyone. Thank you for listening.

Maram Humaid: This is Maram Humaid. I’m a journalist from Gaza. I work with Al Jazeera English Digital—I’m their correspondent on the ground in Gaza for six years. This is my second year covering the war in Gaza.

EA: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. We were trying to record this about a month ago but the situation forced us to delay everything. We’re grateful that you managed in the end. The first question—I feel ridiculous asking it, but how are you and how are you coping? What can you tell us? Whatever you want to share.

MH: How are you in Gaza? I hate this question, actually. I’m so sorry. Every time someone asks me, How are you feeling, how are you? I can’t find the appropriate words to describe the situation going on. Every time I receive messages from my friends and colleagues checking on me—when I get back to the messages asking me, How are you? it would be one answer: The situation is getting worse and it’s unbearable, unbearable, unbearable.

Here I’m living the worst stage and the worst phase of the war in Gaza. And yet, I was answering the same: unbearable, unbearable. I was giving these answers before. It’s so insane. It’s so sad that the situation in Gaza only gets worse. It gets unbearable for every one of us. For myself, I find every day coming is not a new chance. It’s a new challenge.

It’s a new circle of inventing solutions for everything, starting from the food for my kids, then charging my batteries and charging my mobile, then finding a space to work on some pieces with a desk, and then go back to wash the laundry by hand for the kids, and plan out what we would prepare for lunch for the kids. And hearing the constant bombing and shelling around us—this is a forgettable layer of our constant struggle: it’s not only about bombardments. It’s not only about bombing. It’s not only about the continuing of this genocide. No. There are layers of suffering that make the life under this genocide impossible for everyone. This is the answer for How are you?.

EA: It’s not a good question. I completely understand why you would hate it at this point.

We wanted to record about a month ago. How much has changed in the last month? What can you tell us about how much worse things are getting?

MH: Today is day eighty-two of the continuation of the borders that were shut down around three months ago. During those three months, the first question and the first concern for everyone in Gaza was about food—the food crisis. Every one of us is out of stock. We are just consuming what is remaining. It’s so funny. It’s so sad that the first question that occupies any chat here and any phone call is How are you? What are you doing with the flour? What are you doing with food? Did you try making bread with the pasta and the lentils? I am sharing experiences and they share their experiences: Let you add a cup of flour, let you add a cup of lentils, just mix the pasta with the flour. This wouldn’t consume the amount of flour that you have. This will help you save more flour for the upcoming days.

And they would share how they prepare kebab out of lentils. They sent me the recipe to make kebab out of lentils—this is the everyday chats. I feel that we are immersed in endless suffering and it just became our daily life. In our chats and when we do family gatherings, we sit around each other talking about who has died, who was killed, who survived, what happened when we were displaced, and that moment when we ran away because of the nearby bombing, and our plans because we have the last remaining bag of flour.

This is the concern during those months: the bag of flour. How can we get an extra bag of flour? I was calling my sister just a few minutes before this call, and she was telling me that their home is the only home inside the building that they live in who still has flour. She celebrated this news to me. We are the ones now who still have the flour! They are just exhausted and concerned to find other ways of how to prepare food.

The past three weeks, as you can see in the news, Israel heavily escalated their military operations in Gaza. While you are concerned for food, you feel the non-stop airstrikes around you. The non-stop bombing and shelling, the news of threats that Israel will escalate their operations in Gaza. Imagine that people are hungry, concerned for food. They have no energy to stand even, and to practice their lives easily. They are facing this unbelievable way of dealing with displacement, dealing with atrocities and brutality, with the Israeli genocide around them.

The start of this week was miserable for me, because the building just before us is a six story building and they told me (because I’m living on the ground floor) they could see the tanks out of the building. I’m living in Deir al Balah and Israel deployed more of their forces on the eastern borders of Deir al Balah. I’m living near the eastern borders, and people in the building told me that they could see the tanks. Someone who started the day hearing this news—it was very frustrating, very devastating. What should I do? How can I plan? What should I plan? What is the plan?

We (me and my husband) went to the top of our house, looking to the borders, planning out, and talking about If the tanks would come through here they would come from that gate. I was thinking, What are we talking about? We are mere civilians, people who used to live freely, not plan for the military and how we could evacuate, how we could jump out of this place to another place in order to escape the shelling. This happened while the artillery shelling was hitting, with horrible sounds around us.

This has been the situation for the last two weeks—precisely, ten days. You could see now how people are being kicked out of the north of Gaza, of Beit Lahia and Jabalia and also from Khan Younis, from the east of Deir al Balah. Rafah as well was occupied a long time ago. People are being pushed into unknown areas. We are living in the central area but we still don’t know if this is the meant area—people are being bombed in the central area, in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, the south of Gaza, the north of Gaza. Every single area in Gaza is being bombed, targeted.

There is no safe place. We’re just waiting. I’m just waiting for the unknown. I don’t know. I’m sure when the zero hour came, I would take my children and run away. I will leave everything behind me, and this has been the case for many people who were displaced under fire at a random hour. At a random moment you would hear the crazy bombing around you, and the only idea you would think about is how to survive this and how to run away completely with your children, with your family. This is the biggest dream at that moment.

I: We see all these headlines, these numbers of X amount martyred or displaced, or this many people are starving, and what you’re bringing in right now is the daily lived experience of these numbers and the actual struggle of what it means to survive a genocide, a mass starvation.

MH: I’m one of the few luckiest ones in Gaza who are living in a home, who still have internet access, electricity somehow through solar panels. But the vast majority of people don’t enjoy these privileges I get—after I paid a huge amount of money in order to secure it. Still I’m suffering. I’m hugely suffering. I’m suffering because it’s not a normal life.

Let alone the people on the ground who are living in tents, in the streets—just total displacement. This is not my home. I rented this home five months ago. My home was destroyed back in the north of Gaza. I was displaced in Deir al Balah. It’s my second year of being displaced after my home was bombed back in Gaza, and also my family’s home, my in-laws’ home. When people returned to the north, I wasn’t able to return because there was no plan, no place. So I stayed in the place I rented, which is now in Deir al Balah.

After this long circle of trying to find solutions for every step—every step here is struggle. You end up facing hunger, facing starvation, facing famine. Facing the huge appetite for killing. They need just to kill, kill as much as they can. Yesterday I did a “suicide attempt” because I went to the market. Stepping out of your home is a huge risk these days, but I was forced to yesterday because I needed to buy something from the market and I went there. The moment I arrived, there was a bombing in the market. People were trying to buy groceries and some of their needs, and there are people who were in chaos and they were shouting, Open the way! Open the road! And I found myself picking a thing and trying to get home as quick as I can.

My husband told me, You see? You went to the market and I told you that it’s very dangerous to go out! I’m alive. I’m alive. It was so unbearable. Unbelievable. Those words aren’t enough for me to describe the situation. Every time when you try to practice and grab a glimpse of your life, that life of getting dressed and going to the market to buy something you need, this is a risk. This equals a huge risk that you may lose your life.

But still, it was so common, on the way to the market that you see people who are standing by the road holding white shrouds of their beloved ones killed, and asking drivers to take them to the cemetery in order to bury them. You could end up in a car in a seat next to the driver and in the backseat there are three people holding shrouds, and it’s a normal life. People are just picking cars to go to the cemetery like it’s an ordinary life. It’s an ordinary scene of life. You are going to shop, and those people are also going to the cemetery like it’s a usual thing they are doing.

There is an error here, implanted in our minds, how life in Gaza had developed and reached to this point. It’s the silence. We were left to face this death, we are abandoned and live in misery, trapped in this situation with no end. It’s an endless suffering, and everyone adapted with it. That’s it. We are not adapted, but this is life. This is how you survive this life, how you can plan it out with yourself.

Khalas! I’m not a normal person. I’m not thinking like the default system of this world. I’m out of the default system of this world. That’s it. As someone who’s living in Gaza, I’m excluded from the whole system running this universe. There is another total normality and reality in Gaza.

EA: I watched some of the interviews you’ve done for Al Jazeera and I’m thinking of some of the people you’ve interviewed who would say things like, “Badi amoot bi dari”—I will die in my house, I want to be there. The video I’m thinking of was a few months ago during the brief ceasefire. How are people thinking about the recent developments? Is this more, We’ve already been abandoned so this is more of the same, just worse and worse, or is there a sense that now things are different?

MH: There are always those people who are stuck to the idea of staying in their country—We won’t leave no matter what happens—especially those people who are in their fifties and sixties, elderly people. They stick with their lands. And there are also some of the youths—but in general when you talk to the people in their twenties and thirties you will hear, frankly, that they want to leave. They want to go out. The spring of their lives shouldn’t be spent in this suffering. They share that they will leave no matter what is the method or the means—if it’s an Israeli one, if it’s being kicked out by Trump, if they open the borders officially for the people.

They want to leave, and I can’t hide that I’m one of those who are thinking of this now. I can’t continue my life like this, especially because I have kids. My daughter is nine years old and my kid will turn two years next July. He spent the first two years in his childhood living this situation. For the sake of their future, I would like to search for another place.

This is a luxury! The huge problem for the people of Gaza is that the self-determination is taken out of them. We don’t have this pleasure, this luxury, of deciding what we want to do. We are trapped, and the crossings are shut down in front of people. They are being bombed, starved, humiliated by all means. We are trapped. In all the crisis that has swept the whole world—Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine—the borders were open in front of people to flee. This should be the least demand for any human beings.

Okay, you will fight against Hamas, you want to erase Hamas, you want to eliminate Hamas bases in Gaza? Khalas! Open the borders for the people to leave. That’s it. Even this is not available for the people, and we are being killed. Everyone could see the number of civilians, kids, women, and innocents who were killed during this genocide.

I spent the whole eighteen months of this genocide reporting from a hospital. Every day I was standing in front of an emergency department, and I was seeing the bodies of people who were killed and evacuated from the bombed places. Most are women, most are kids—shrouded in white, kids shredded into pieces. In every attack to a home, without being notified or alarmed that it would be bombed, twenty-five to thirty people. And there are people who were displaced to the south, so you have crowded homes, with people who were displaced to their relatives, to their friends’ homes, where they were living together. So when it was bombed, the number would be doubled and tripled with the people living in these homes.

You cannot imagine the situation of punishing the people of Gaza this way. I’m totally convinced it’s a genocide. It’s meant to erase those people from the ground—with a green light from all countries, from all people! Arab, Islamic, European countries, the US. Everyone gives the green light to erase the people of Gaza.

It shouldn’t be…you see—I think this one is near.

EA: For those listening, because they may not get it on Zoom: you’re saying there was an airstrike nearby.

MH: Yeah, it’s a near strike, an airstrike nearby. I think it’s in the central area because the sound shook the home.

EA: I saw the home shaking.

MH: This has been the case throughout the past days. Still, this is a calm day, by the way, because the past three days—nonstop. Literally nonstop, every two minutes, every three minutes. It was really tense, bombing everywhere.

EA: I listened to the episode your daughter did with This American Life last year.

MH: I will give you some of Banias and Iyas’s life, my children. I rented a home and I spent all my savings in order to secure some solar panels and buy a screen to create a small escape for them, to watch TV and have access to internet. I did many attempts in order to have internet access back—three months of struggles with the telecommunications company. Now they sit in front of the TV watching YouTube channels and videos. There was a surprising point I didn’t think about, which is that the only meals I can give to my family now are pasta with tomato sauce and lentils. This is the only thing. People outside are not even able to provide this for their families.

One day I was cooking. I prepared pasta with tomato sauce. I was serving this to Iyas and Banias who were watching a video, and it was calling, Are you hungry? Yes, I am. And there was watermelon, strawberry, all these candies and sweets on the screen. I was like, Oh my gosh. It was like the world is moving on one side and we are living on another side. All over the world, kids are watching these videos as this is the normal way—kids are interested in watching these things. This is the common curriculum for kids to watch. And for the people of Gaza, the kids of Gaza, this is a totally other experience.

Banias was telling me, Mama, you see? Even the dolls are eating strawberries and bananas and apples! The point here is that no matter how hard I tried to escape from the atmosphere of war and to create an atmosphere for my kids, every step or every scene will chase me to remind me: You are not living a normal situation. It was my kids who were eating pasta with tomato sauce for maybe the thirtieth, fortieth, fiftieth time (there is no count!) during the past three months. No eggs. No good nutrition for them. No chocolate, no candies, none of these things that children love—and when it comes to watching TV, they could see these things in videos. As a mother, I could only stand in front of them numb. I couldn’t do anything.

One time I was reading a book for my kids, and there was a scene: the character of the story left their home and went to a place, and they erected a tent in order to have a warm, calm moment away from the chaos of the city. He was talking about how it’s lovely to live in a tent and be away to do some camping. Oh my god, people in Gaza are camping throughout the whole two years! How could I convince my son to implant this idea that living in a tent is interesting? No, it’s not interesting. For me in Gaza, it’s not interesting. Camping is forbidden. This idea is totally the opposite.

I’m not a normal person anymore, khalas! I’m not a normal person. I’m not thinking like the default system of this world. I’m out of the default system of this world. That’s it. As someone who’s living in Gaza, I’m excluded from the whole system running this universe. There is another total normality and reality in Gaza. How people are establishing things, the rules that are running the whole universe around us are totally different. What I’m watching, what I’m reading—these are things that should link the whole of people around the world together: the food they are eating, the things that children are interested in, these tiny ideas of reading books. But when it comes to the details, I feel I’m different. I’m someone who is excluded from these pleasures of life and these privileges out there.

I: In the article you wrote for Al Jazeera, in your dedication to your mother—Allah yirhama u yibarek feeha—you said, “Mama, we, the tormented in this land, are in a free-for-all festival of death.” That line keeps running through as I’m listening to you talk. There’s the fighting for normalcy, for life, to cultivate some kind of life, but death permeating everything. Like you’re saying, no matter where you go, no matter where you turn, it’s there. It’s facing you. Every single action you’re taking throughout the day, this is something that you’re encountering.

MH: When my mother died, it was another layer of feeling that you are more oppressed, you are more alone. The way she lived through the war and then left to Egypt for treatment, and died back in Egypt—the story that was hiding between these details and how we were chasing time just to call her! There wasn’t even internet at the time to call her. Even when it wasn’t with the typical communications company, it was a normal act of punishment that Israel would cut the whole telecommunications, the whole internet. We are out of coverage, and people are connected through e-sim. I was trying to walk miles and long distances in order to reach a place that I would be able to connect from an e-sim and send to my sister with my mother that we are okay, that we are doing well.

I was thinking of her. Her health wasn’t good, her psychology. She would be very worried now about us. We were disconnected, and for her in Egypt, she would think that we may be bombed or killed or something happening. So I would take this long journey in order to send her this text message.

Since my mother died, they closed the borders. It was the last day when they had invaded Rafah—Rafah crossing, the only crossing for the people of Gaza to travel outside Gaza. The crossing of Rafah was open for the first seven months of the war, and then it was closed totally. It was open in front of the individual movement but the thing that everyone should know was that it wasn’t open for free. Everyone that should leave Gaza has to pay five thousand dollars in order to leave. It wasn’t a reasonable amount. You have to pay a huge amount of money in order to leave.

My brother paid this amount of money. He paid twelve thousand dollars in order to leave. Once he arrived in Egypt he told me, We paid the price of our lives. My life cost five thousand dollars, so I paid for my life and for the life of my wife and kid. And this is how we evacuated Gaza and left.

Since then, life has become darker for me. Somehow you live depressed and immersed in more and more crises. But somehow I wasn’t feeling alone. I would assure myself that Maram, you are standing every day in front of shrouds, in front of people crying for beloved ones. This is the festival I meant: the free death festival—because it was really a festival, every time I was entering the hospital. I remember the first time I entered the hospital, I saw around forty bodies shrouded and white in front of me. I was shocked, and my body was trembling with fear. It’s the huge loss, what we call the “hayba,” the huge fear of death, the huge size of death, that occupied my body.

Then, after that, day by day, it became a totally ordinary scene for me. I wouldn’t be shy to say that I started to drink coffee while seeing people praying al-Janāzah, shouting and crying, and seeing the chaos of the ambulances evacuating, more people killed. It became an ordinary scene. I see on my laptop, working on a piece, and Oh, okay, there was an airstrike in Deir al-Balah, oh my god. It seems like five people were killed. Okay. And then I would continue my life.

When my mother died—no one can replace the mother’s place and it’s a huge loss. But they say, “Almoot ma aljamaa rahma” [“Death in a group is a mercy”]. I was lucky because my mother died—for many of my friends and my colleagues, they lost their whole families. I know many of them, they stand alone. No sisters, no brothers, no relatives. They are alone. They lost all the members of their family with one bomb, one strike on their homes. Now they stand alone.

I would remember those tiny, little kids whom I worked on their stories. I feel shy to even mention that I am sad for my mother’s death, because those children are just a few months old. Some of them just two, three years, under five years, and they’ve lost both mother and dad, both of their parents during the war. Adding to that, I met many kids who didn’t only lose their families, their parents, they also lost parts of their bodies. Their legs were amputated—both of their legs were amputated. Some of them have triple amputations.

Living and spending time in the hospital, I feel this is the biggest thing that helped me to feel a little comfort after my mother died. I imagine if she died before the war or in another situation, I would have felt crazy. But during the war, there was huge grief. There was huge suffering, but somehow it was comforted by the huge amount of atrocities and the free meaning of death happening and going around us at the time.

I: Something that I hear a lot is that there is no time to grieve.

MH: It’s a luxury to sit and cry. There is no time for grief. I would add to this point: when my mother died, we cried and it was a total moment of feeling devastated. And then [came] the moment they declared they would invade Rafah and people were coming to evacuate from Rafah to Deir al-Balah. My aunt was crying. She was very sad with my mother’s loss—she’s in Rafah, and saying Forgive me, I can’t come today. We are packing our stuff and we’ll be searching for a place in Deir al-Balah. I offered her a space; my mother died three hours ago and I was offering my auntie space. We have extra space in our home and you can come to stay with us. And she said, We are fifteen members. We can’t come! We are already forty people living in the same place so we cannot come.

We were chatting about what we should do and she was telling me about how it’s difficult to secure a car or a vehicle to move her belongings from Rafah to Deir al-Balah. It was totally chaotic in the streets that day. People were evacuating. When you go to the street you would see people packing their stuff and their belongings on the carts dragged by animals, and tuktuks and trucks holding people with their stuff and belongings, and people erecting new tents in their place. It was totally chaotic. There was no time to grieve.

We were directly occupied by the scenes and the situation around us, and many of our family members were offering their condolences over the phone and saying, We are evacuating from Rafah. We could see you after we come and organize our stuff in Deir al-Balah. And we would say, No, no, we don’t blame any one of you. Allah yirhamha [god have mercy on her], it’s totally fine, and Allah yieen alnas [may god ease people’s suffering]. This is how people are assuring each other. Everyone is totally busy with his own concerns, his own endless suffering that kept unfolding throughout the genocide.

People were experiencing displacement and evacuation more than fifteen, thirty, forty times. You have endless stories of those people. So yeah, no moment—no time to grieve. People were burying their beloved ones at the hospital, in the cemetery, and after a mother would calm herself down because the home was bombed, now there was another task of pulling out their belongings from under the rubble and going to search for another place to stay. If there are some injured people in the family, they will take care of those injured people, and if some of them need medical treatment outside Gaza they would run in order to secure some medical evacuations for those injured.

No time to breathe. It’s suffering that you cannot even feel balanced to absorb what is going on. No time for anything. Sometimes if you thought about it, it would feel that those who died, those who were just killed, are enjoying comfort and rest, but those who stayed alive are suffering, and they are trapped in this endless misery around us.

Part II

I am fighting. The war has a lot of hidden wars inside the war—the war of keeping your family alive and fed with food, the search for an escape for your children.

EA: I have a kid. She’s going to turn two in October. She was born a week after the genocide started. She had a very difficult first few months of life: she was born very prematurely, she had to be in the incubator, all of that stuff. But throughout the entire thing, even at the end of 2023, I still remember those stories; there was the hospital that was bombed that also had incubators in it. I was very worried for her, but she was getting all the care that was humanly imaginable. It was very difficult—on the one hand I’m very worried, and on the other hand, alhamdulillah, we have everything we need. Things are okay and stable.

I listened to your kid talk on that podcast, still having a childhood of some kind, and you still being able to keep them busy and stimulated—I don’t know what to say other than yaatikeh el aaffyeh [I’m grateful for your work].

MH: I am fighting. The war has a lot of hidden wars inside the war—the war of keeping your family alive and fed with food, the search for an escape for your children, especially for my daughter because she’s aware of what’s going on.

It has two shapes, because Banias herself has been a positive girl and her life before the war was interesting and filled with activities. I enrolled her in a private school; it was one of the modern schools in Gaza, and she was enrolled and trained in swimming, horse riding courses, memorizing Qur’an. She was also enrolled in a music institution and learning how to use a piano, and participating in chorus. Her life was busy. Her room was packed with books. She was reading. Screen time and mobile was forbidden in my home. I was giving only two hours after her schoolday time, and that’s it. The whole day she was busy with those activities, especially reading books.

I could remember her in her room busy with reading books, and spending time—especially the time before sleep—reading books. That’s reflected in her personality, character, and her way of thinking. Sometimes she would surprise me in how she responds, and this was totally reflected in the American Life episode. I myself was surprised by the way she responded to the presenter. I know my daughter, but I knew her more through this episode. It was totally different for me, the way she was dealing with the situation.

This is what surprised and saddened me: because I was busy with reporting and my work, I didn’t realize that my daughter was creating an escape from what was going on. In front of me, she was showing her sadness and frustration and being worried of the situation, especially when the tanks were near us back in last August and July. The tanks were nearing us, and we were trying to find a place to evacuate—my family was also living with us—and she was crying and crying. When she called the presenter, she was like, Everything is okay. Nothing is happening. I’m not afraid. Nothing is happening! I was surprised, like, What is going on?

That day I discovered that that call with that presenter during months of the war was like her escape bubble of the situation. This presenter lives in the US; she’s not living with us, so [Banias] could see tisrah feeha ala keifha [she could roam as she pleases]: everything she wants, her imaginary life, her pinkish world, and giving some spices of the war going around us. Every time Chana was asking about the war, Banias felt dizzy and Okay, it’s time to sleep. Khalas, it’s over. I won’t continue this convo anymore. Chana was her escape during the war.

Out of this conversation, I decided to focus more on this escape zone and to create as much as I can, and plan. That’s why I bought the screen, I rented a home in a place that is in a garden, in agricultural land in Deir al-Balah. Once we came here, she’s busy discovering the bugs and the insects. Every time she would come to me holding a flower: Mama, I discovered this flower and this bug! Now she’s having this—this is called muthaqaraat alshakhsiya alyawmiya la yuslah al itilaa min ghair ithin [my daily diaries that no one can look at without permission]: she’s writing her daily remarks. I tried to help her, now she’s calling herself a naturalist and she’s discovering nature.

Every time, her phone is packed with videos: running behind the cats and the bugs. This is a ladybug. Mama, see, this is a snail! I try as much as I can to encourage her, to be focused with such things. I taught her how to use Google photos in order to take pictures of the things she’s discovering, in order to read more through the internet.

It was about striving to create another world for our kids, liberating us from this harsh and brutal world we are living in. This is my first target, my first goal every day. That’s why I felt very frustrated and crazy when I saw that “I am hungry” song. I felt like, Oh my god, what should I do? What in the hell is going on?

Today she was happy, because we finished our second year online. She’s studying online, and that’s why I insisted on the internet connection, to let her continue her education online. For the children of Gaza, they missed the second school year being under the war. But for myself, it was a matter of life. I worked as much as I can with my sister back in Egypt, because there was a program launched by the Palestinian embassy in Egypt in order to help children and students who left to Egypt to continue their education online.

My sister, my mother, and I at the time did tazwir [forgery]; it was an unlawful way of bringing Banias a crossing stamp that shows she is in Egypt. We submitted it to the Palestinian embassy, and that’s how we enrolled her name inside the lists of students in the Palestinian embassy. I did a big fight in order to have the internet back in my home, and I paid a bribe to someone in the telecommunications company. Every time she would sit in front of the computer or the mobile taking her online classes, if there was a drone or the sound of bombing or airplanes around us, I would tell her to mute the mobile and don’t answer. You can just say anything, that there is a problem in the internet. It was a secret education process.

The first year ended up with her being accredited, and we received a certificate that she officially finished her third class. Now she’s in the fourth grade, and today she celebrated that her name is again accredited for those who would receive the fourth grade certificate. For the second year we achieved success, and this means a lot to me as a mother: that I put all my efforts for my kid not to miss a school year, not to miss anything. I keep encouraging her all the time that education is our tool for everything, and we should keep our minds occupied with useful things as much as we can, and you should feel lucky that you have this chance.

Imagine a child living in this situation of the war, being deprived of everything—food, school, friends, colleagues, just enjoying time alone. She’s totally deprived of the normal life. Sitting in front of the internet and attending online classes is such a big challenge, but I don’t put pressure on her to be the skillful one. I tell her always that you need to attend and absorb and focus as much as you can. Sometimes it works and sometimes she would protest, No, I won’t attend and that’s it! But at the end we succeeded, and inshallah within a month we would be finishing the fourth grade and receiving another certificate.

EA: What I’m hearing is a mother who is very proud of her kids.

I: And fighting against hell itself, against empire itself, to offer everything.

MH: Survival management. This is the mechanism I’m following these days. These years are being taken out of our lifetime. Nothing will compensate us for these years. For myself, I’m a grownup—I had my childhood, I continued my education. But it was unbelievable to witness that the life and education of your kid is being taken away, and your plan for him is being stolen in front of yourself and you’re not able to do anything.

The plan being set for Banias before the war was just a talented kid immersed in knowledge and self-development. Even languages: she speaks English and French, and she was trying to learn some Russian. She was open to learn herself. I wasn’t forgiving anything around me that would stop this little project. I see her: This is my future project. I was not forgiving any attempt to destroy her future. That’s why I tried to seek this unlawful way of enrolling her in official education, in order to continue her education.

I feel very sorry about how kids in Gaza missed the second year of education. For me, this is a disaster. I can’t even stand seeing my kid just sitting, busy with filling water and standing in lines for food and for takiyas [community kitchens]. This is how life for kids here in Gaza looks. It was an attempt somehow.

I: We hear about the destruction of academics and you hear about university students not being able to continue their education, but we don’t hear about the children who are just starting their education journey and what it means for them to not have opportunities to even build the foundations. Like you’re saying, for every child that gets a chance in this disaster, in this death-permeating space, there are thousands upon thousands who don’t have an opportunity to even try. We don’t hear from them. Those are the silent voices.

MH: This is my biggest problem, actually, and what drives me crazy the most.

One time I went to a camp, and I brought some candies (when the borders were open) from a child—she was maybe ten years old. I was surprised by the way she was calculating: she was a talented math student, it looked like. I told her, You are talented in math, right? And she told me directly: I was at the top of my class. And she was selling some candies and sitting in front of a tent. I felt very sorry for her. I couldn’t feel how her mother feels now for her. Your child is at the top of his class and he’s talented in math and science, he’s had this talented mindset, and now he’s sitting and selling candies to make a living for the family and to afford the family’s needs.

It’s a disappointing, catastrophic situation, and we could see the impact of this problem after more years. Destroying the mentality of going to schools, going to education, and keeping the people of Gaza busy with how to secure and transfer food and water—step by step this will implant the culture of not going to schools and abandoning education. This wouldn’t be a basic thing for us, because people are just focused on the survival process. That’s it.

Everyone in the family, even the elderlies, everyone! I could see in the camps: when the water truck would come to a camp, and maybe this camp didn’t see water throughout the past week, so people would go with their jugs to the truck and you would the grandmothers, the grandfathers, the little kids, the mothers, the fathers, the sisters, all the family holding their jugs to fill the water. This is a survival process implanted in every family member. Everyone feels the responsibility that we need to act directly in order to keep ourselves alive and have our needs completed.

The father would go to work or to sell something; the little kid would go with his little sister to stand in queues in order to fill water while the mother and the sister would go to fill their pots with food from the takiyas. This is how the ordinary day looks like for the vast majority of people here. This is up to ninety-five percent of the families here in Gaza, this is their ordinary life. It’s about lines and queues and how to secure food and water.

Water is another huge concern for many families here. I entered many places and tents, and they don’t even have a bathroom. They don’t have a place to shower. Sometimes initiatives supported by NGOs and local organizations distribute water trucks between places and tents, but the need is huge. They move from a place or camp to another. You would see a camp that is left without water for more than a week. Imagine yourself without water, drinking water, water to shower—now we’ve entered summer so it’s horrible. The situation looks like hell.

People would tell me how, in the time when they don’t have water, they go fetch water. They walk long distances to find water, and sometimes they have to pay money in order to fill water. Sometimes they go to hospitals or mosques in order to fill water. It’s totally about jahim—it’s about hell. This is hell. The least thing around this is the genocide and the targeting of the tents and people in the safe zones, chasing people with death with all means—starvation, thirst. All means.

I’m out of any words that could describe the situation happening on the ground. The reporting itself became a torture more than a job.

I: I’ve been working with a team in Gaza since January of last year, for over a year and half now, doing takiyas—community kitchens—and clean water distribution. We document our work. We’re not a big NGO. We’re a group of people working together, fundraising outside, and getting the funds in to run these takiyas and water distribution. Baby formula is the other big one. There’s no access; it’s incredibly expensive, and everyone needs baby formula now because everyone’s malnourished and mothers don’t have what they need to produce milk.

Alhamdulillah, we’re serving about fifteen hundred people a day in the takiyas, and what’s not captured is always the thousands that are turned away empty-handed. And you’re right: if you look at any of the videos or images, it’s all children. It’s mothers, grandmothers. Predominately children—and really young children too. Everyone is there trying to get what they need to try and survive.

The level of death—like you’re saying, it’s a parallel reality that’s happening in Gaza. Those who aren’t directly experiencing this, or are new to understanding what genocide and mass destruction and the violence of empire is—the understanding of the reality is not fully grasped. I say this because I’ve had experiences where people doubt the work that we’re doing because to them it’s like, You’re feeding them the same thing; the images all look the same. We’re sourcing what’s available in the market, and when there’s nothing available and all there is is pasta and lentils, guess what? All we’re going to be serving is pasta and lentils every single day.

I’m sorry that they don’t have new clothes to change every day to show you it’s a different thing. Our response was to have the people serving the food start wearing the dates on their clothes to show Look, no, it’s a new date. It’s crazy. It’s not reality. Watching people outside of that trying to make sense of it but not being able to hold that, and the response being to doubt! That in itself is crazy-making. This is not something that you could make up.

MH: That’s why we insist that we should have this nawawi as soon as possible—to be bombed by this nuclear bomb as soon as possible, because it’s really complicated. The ways we’re dealing with things are really complicated. It’s layers of layers of dealing with the situation. As much as we could explain it to the people living outside Gaza, it remains unexplained. People would judge you sometimes. Sometimes they would give their fascinating interpretation of the situation.

I have no words, actually, to describe how it is going. I felt many times that I am exhausted enough as a journalist to deal with the situation. Since I wrote my last piece about my mother, I wasn’t able to contribute, I wasn’t able to do anything. I’m in touch with my desk and they are totally understanding the situation. In our meetings I always complain—I feel like I’m out of any words that could describe the situation happening on the ground.

The reporting itself became a torture more than a job. It became a torment for myself. A torment on the physical side, a torment on the journey itself to go to report on places. This is risky, but this is the default system. And also on the mental side, that you are living the same thing and you are hearing the same stories with repeated faces and with new faces as well.

When you are watching how people and the world are reacting to and interacting with the situation, you feel more helpless. There is a missing point, a missing angle, of our work. And seeing how many journalists on the ground are being targeted and killed day after day with no one standing for the rights of journalists and protecting them—it makes me question myself day after day. Am I ready to pay this price at the expense of my kids who could continue their life without me? Without their mother? Is it worth it for me to pay my life in exchange for telling the truth?

But the truth for myself, it’s blatant. It’s clear for everyone. No words needed, no more lives to be taken away to show you the truth. But again, there is no determination from the world and the political powers to solve the problem of Gaza. It looks like they signed onto the mass killings of Palestinians in Gaza by trapping them in this genocide, this killing without any mercy. Forgotten and abandoned. We are in God’s hands, that’s it. How can I describe the situation we are in? We are in God’s eyes and hands and that’s it.

I: I feel that deeply. I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent trying to figure out the right words in order to get more attention to a fundraiser to be able to raise more money. Then the images start being the same, and the numbers. I’ve tried every combination, and what more? You need to just understand at this point that you need to give and do everything you can, because there’s nothing else to say. There’s nothing else to see.

MH: The problem always is that the world gave the opportunity for this genocide to last this long. You are talking about nineteen months of the ongoing genocide. We could see how people reacted in the first months of the war: many people were getting into protests, maybe a few people were following with full emotions and attention to what was going on. Then Israel played this game of prolonging the bombing and exceeding all the limits, all the red lines, by bombing the hospitals, the mosques, the shelters, the schools, the tents, the safe zones. This turned to be the normal situation.

The first time when they bombed Al-Ahli hospital back in October 2023 in the first month of the war, people reacted when more than two hundred people were killed in one blow. But all the powers were satisfied, and it was sufficient for them to issue some statements and condemnation and that’s it. So this was repeated more than one time.

Today as we are talking, there’s a focus on how they distribute the aid in Gaza, and this humiliation of people here in Gaza in the south, while in the north they are attacking Al-Awda hospital. Yesterday they bombed the third floor there, and today they are bombing the hospital again. They bombed the medications store. They are besieging the Kamal Adwan hospital. It became normal news, because the world allowed this from the beginning. There was no real stand to stop it.

That’s why I don’t place blame on the governments only. I also place blame on the people who chose just to watch. We don’t have anything! We pray and that’s it. What could we do? No, you can do anything, many things! From the start of this war, if the world and the people—especially the Arab people and the Islamic countries, and also the European countries—if they chose to stop their lives and have everyone stand in the street or in front of his home (I just need to start my role, I need to do this mass protest) for only one week, it would have stopped from the beginning. As life has stopped in Gaza, they also have to stop in order to prevent this genocide from going on.

But now we have reached this point of not only losing the sympathy of people around us, we are being blamed! Now we reached a point of people feeling upset at us and feeling bored of seeing us this way. We are being called in comments and places to die in silence! Every time there’s a voice from Gaza asking people to intervene, to move, to protest, do anything: What should we do? You would see these choirs online and the discussion would end up with people blaming Palestinians in Gaza and saying that you deserve what is going on.

We turned out from being a trend in the beginning that people could join to sympathize with us, and now we are at a trend that has gone and people are bored from seeing the same scenes of displacement. It’s very boring for them. We saw this before! They saw how we were massacred, and they saw how hospitals were targeted, and everything became normal for them. Nothing new is happening, so they continued their lives. But they didn’t think for a moment that if you are adapted to this, or if this is something happening every day, that doesn’t mean that this is a normal thing!

Being displaced more than one time, being killed, being bombed and being targeted more than one time, being starved to death, seeing the famine spiraling among the population—this won’t make this normal! This has been repeated. For us who have been living under this situation, every time we face displacement we feel that it’s the first time. Every time we face the bombing we feel it’s the first time. Every time we face the life of being starved, experiencing this famine, for us it’s like the first time.

There is no human being that could adapt to this situation. None of us could adapt to this abnormal situation. This should be implanted in the minds of people in the world who are watching us: this shouldn’t be a normal situation, that’s it. They have to restore their humanity back. They have to think about how there is no dignity of the world without supporting the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Last night I wasn’t able to sleep for a moment because of the scenes that circulated from that bakery when people were fighting for the bread. After eighty days of starvation of people, the country is bleeding for Israel to allow aid, and when they allowed aid, they allowed this humiliating situation. When I saw the people running for bread and the WFP asking people If you want bread, you should go to these places—Why? We used to be normal people going to the groceries, the markets, the malls, to buy whatever we can. We didn’t used to think about the bread or the bag of flour. We were going to buy all that we need, the yogurt, the cheese, the candies, whatever we can. Why are you now putting all of our food needs with bread only? Not even a bag of flour.

The mechanism should distribute a bag of flour for each family, but now they are insisting on the bread being distributed to the people in the most humiliating way. Food, for god’s sake! We used to buy everything we have. How can people outside Gaza accept this happening? The food that’s been allowed into Gaza since the aid trucks were allowed—it’s only bread and baby supplements, which is a combination of peanut butter, it’s filled with nutrients for the babies. We didn’t even used to eat these things! What is going on? You are punishing us with food? You are depriving and starving people, and when you allow anything you are only allow bread for them. How are people accepting them?

Today is Friday, and all people in Arab and Muslim countries are sitting today to eat fancy meals and celebrate family gatherings while we in Gaza are sitting without anything—literally anything. Even rice, even beans. I won’t tell you what I had for breakfast today, for someone who’s able to buy anything. But there’s nothing in the markets so I served some white beans. I crushed them with some seeds for my family, for my kids, and I fed them these white beans. I didn’t even imagine that I would have this for breakfast, and now for lunch we don’t have anything. My husband will try. This became our situation throughout the past months.

Seeing that when the international pressure was exerted on Israel, and when they did all the attempts to convince Netanyahu to allow some trucks, it was only bags of flour—and the bags of flour were not distributed to the people. They were only given to the bakeries, and the bakeries shouldn’t sell them to the people. The WFP would take these bags of bread to be distributed to the people in the tents without any organized system. It’s totally like the takiyas, when people gather in the crowd and fight with each other to receive food—it’s also the case when receiving bread.

What the hell is going on? We are being punished by food! The biggest problem is celebrating this in the media: Yeah, Israel allowed food in Gaza! It’s only bread, and it’s being given to people with the worst means ever. People are fighting over this bread because they are starved. I know that more than ninety percent of people, the vast majority of people, don’t have flour. It’s normal that they would fight over this—the organizations should find a solution. But I know Israel tries as much as they can to humiliate people and weaponize hunger as much as they can, in order to impose their policies by bringing up this American food company to distribute the food for families in an Israeli-policy way.

We are being punished by food! I was only thinking throughout the night of this. What is going on? People cannot even have the pleasure of receiving a bag of flour. What if I want to make a cake for my family, for example? I want to prepare bread for them. I want to make some pastries for them. It’s only bread, and it’s being distributed in the most humiliating way, dropping food on the people’s heads like the takiyas. It’s so sad. I can’t even find the words.

That’s why every time I report on anything, I feel like nothing’s worth it, no one listens, and we’ve reached a point that we are living in a world without dignity. When I saw these images, I feel that we are living in a disgraceful world, a world stripped of dignity in every sense of the word. Watching us being starved for over twenty-two days, and now watching us being humiliated by every possible means, for nothing more than a piece of bread! I feel that we will never forgive for as long as we live, and may this entire world—I’m so sorry—taste what Gaza has endured. Because they allowed this. They allowed people to be punished by a bite of bread.

EA: How can I disagree with that? I completely agree.

Maram, is there anything you wanted us to get into but we didn’t have time to or we didn’t expand as much?

MH: Many things. You are talking about a long genocide. But I think we summarized as much as we can of what is going on. As Israa’ has said: people see the headlines, the news, the media, but in order to dive into the details you have to talk to the civilians and the people present on the ground, because it’s totally a different matter on the ground.

Everyone should stay in touch with at least one person in Gaza in order to understand how the situation looks on the ground, and try as much as you can to help with whatever means. Solidarity and support are very important components of the current situation. We feel abandoned, but this wouldn’t spare me from taking this call to all free people around the world to continue their support, and not to forget the people of Gaza. Israel has exceeded all the limits because they know we are totally alone, and the lives of Gazans do not matter. But we should raise the slogan that the lives of Gazans matter, again and again.

Maybe there could be another chapter of this conversation. I would tell you more about the life of women under the genocide. If I started talking about this it would be another three hours, at least, of talking about the reality that women are experiencing under this genocide. Because I’m a female journalist, I have access to how women are enduring this suffering, especially those living in tents and open areas. Because of the sensitive nature of the women and girls, it adds a complicated layer of their suffering under the war.

I: That would be great. There’s definitely a lot more for us to talk about, and the various experiences and how different people are surviving this. One of the things coming up in our conversation right now is the little things people are doing to continue to try to cultivate life in any way, and fight against death in all possible ways.

The reality is, you’re right: Gaza cannot be forgotten, and we already see that because what’s happening in Gaza is being exported everywhere else in every possible way. I remember there was a point when [attacking] hospitals and mosques became normalized to happen in Gaza, and then I started to see the news about the same thing happening in Sudan and all these other places. Gaza is critical in this moment, and what’s happening there will happen everywhere else. If we don’t stand up now, then it’s too late for all of us. It’s a fight of the people against the governments, and at this point the people need to come together.

EA: We would be happy to do another episode focused more on women.

Maram, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for taking the time, and for everything you do as well, your writing. We’ll include all of the links in the show notes as we always do, and we look forward to having you on again.

MH: Thank you so much for having me. This is a space to discharge mentally what is going on. I hope this would help raise the awareness of what is going on and get more understanding of the reality on the ground.

I want to show you this article, because you told me about your baby that was born premature. I wrote it last December, and it was about two mothers who gave birth to premature babies in Al-Shifa hospital, and recording their emotional journey of separation and not knowing their fate. I wanted to share it with you.

EA: For listeners, the title of the article is “Emaciated but alive: Gaza mothers, premature babies reunited in Egypt.” It was published in December 2023 and we’ll include it in the show notes as well.

Maram, thank you so much for your time.

MH: Thank you. Thank you Israa’ as well.

I: It’s been an honor to be here with you.

2 responses to “The Wars Within the War on Gaza w/ Maram Humaid”

James

June 6, 2025 at 12:57 am

… liked this!

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The Rise of End Times Fascism w/ Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor – The Fire These Times

July 10, 2025 at 6:33 pm

[…] political temporalities at the same time. It isn’t easy, but it needs to be done. The conversation I had with Maram Humaid, a journalist in Gaza, is an extreme example—but it’s also not. Right now, her day-to-day […]

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