Blog posts, presentations carry stories of eight families displaced in Northern Gaza.
Majd Alkurd was at the beginning of his teaching career at the Islamic University of Gaza when, in October 2023, every day became a fight to survive.
In the 19 months following, he lost over 120 family members, their names among the over 53,000 people who have been killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in which about 1,200 people died and over 250 were taken as hostages.
Left without a source of income, Alkurd is hoping to receive enough donations to cover the cost of food and medications for his family members, as well as to help them flee Northern Gaza, where Israeli attacks have been particularly intense and indiscriminate.
Last Friday, over 6,000 miles away, Bellingham resident Clarissa Mansfield anxiously waited for updates from Alkurd, who has been unresponsive since a series of attacks on May 15 as the Israel Defense Forces prepared to launch “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” the mobilization of thousands of troops into Gaza with the goal of taking territory, moving civilians to the south, freeing hostages and defeating Hamas. Since the launch of this ground offensive, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, as reported by Al Jazeera.
Knowing that his phone was broken and that he had been having trouble getting his laptop to work, she prayed he simply was unable to get a message to her and that he was OK. It wasn’t until Sunday morning that she learned from a friend of a friend that they had heard he was alive and that technological issues caused his silence.
For Mansfield, waiting for a sign that her friends overseas are alive has become a regular occurrence. And while she has been in touch with many people in Gaza, she developed a particularly close relationship with eight families, including Alkurd’s, whom she connected with through social media as well as through other Palestinian families in Gaza and the U.S. that she met online.
“With these families in particular, I have a personal commitment for the rest of my life,” she said. “They are like my families now, too.”
Sharing the stories
Through her blog, “Vegan in Bellingham,” Mansfield has been sharing information and updates on the humanitarian crisis, as well as resources for people to learn more and support civilians stuck in Gaza.
This past winter, she stepped out of her comfort zone to give in-person presentations as part of her effort “Eight Families in Gaza — Amplifying their Voices,” introducing the eight families to community members in Whatcom County, and on Whidbey Island. Her next presentation and Q&A session will take place from 2 to 3:30 p.m. May 31 at the Bellingham Central Library in the downstairs lecture room.
Along with her husband, Doug Panek, she can also be seen sitting at parks, community events and banner drops hosted by the Whatcom Coalition for Palestine, sharing information and seeking donations to help keep the families alive.
The reactions, she said, have mainly been positive, with people thanking her for what she does and sharing hugs. On some rare occasions, people quietly walk by, avoiding any eye contact.
Being disabled, Mansfield has relied for years on online communities to connect with other disabled people, as the internet is more accessible than in-person spaces. While frequenting these spaces after October 2023, she came across organizations and individuals advocating for a peaceful and independent Palestine and, as she witnessed the violence and forced starvation and displacement, she felt a duty to take action, connecting with local organizations and community members to gather support.
Since then, she has sold her record collection and books and gives whatever money she can whenever she gets paid.
In an effort to amplify the voices of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Mansfield completely changed the focus of her old vegan-lifestyle blog, deleting every recipe and food-related post as she found them to be inappropriate when advocating for a population that has been starving.
Awaiting aid
From March 2 to May 19, Israel blocked all humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages and accusing the group of stealing aid, which Hamas denied.
Five trucks of aid were finally allowed into Gaza on May 19, a decision Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was made following pressure from allies like the United States. After Israel announced it would allow minimal quantities of food to cross the border, leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Canada released a joint statement demanding that the Israeli government allow humanitarian aid to enter the enclave, stop its military operations in Gaza and halt the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, or face sanctions. At the same time, the statement called on Hamas to release all the remaining hostages.
By Thursday, after three days of delay at the Kerem Shalom crossing, more than 90 lorry loads of humanitarian aid were collected inside Gaza.
For 11 weeks, thousands of trucks with food, fuel, medical aid and vaccines have sat outside of the border, leaving 2.1 million people — including 1.1 million children — at greater risk of starvation and illness. As supplies run out, a bag of flour, often contaminated, can cost the equivalent of hundreds of dollars.
According to a report from the World Health Organization, a quarter of the population is experiencing food deprivation at “emergency” or “catastrophic” levels, which are the worst two levels of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’s scale.
The lack of food and medical aid has been particularly affecting the youngest. As of May 12, 57 children have died from the effects of malnutrition since the siege began, according to data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health that was cited in the WHO report.
Many of the children don’t remember or never knew life before the war, including Aboud’s son Bassam, who fled northern Gaza with his family at only 3 months old, relocating multiple times since. Due to the poor hygienic conditions and overcrowding, Bassam has been very sick, forcing his father to walk long distances to find medications, putting his own life at greater risk.
Similarly, many other parents risk their lives to find food, desperate to keep their children alive. Just a day before Mansfield’s interview with Salish Current on May 7, Israeli forces bombed a market and makeshift internet café. One of Mansfield’s friends, who was there to find food for her baby, barely escaped death.
“I suffer with every breath when my child does not get his milk, diapers and his most basic rights, like the rest of the children,” Yanis Hamad wrote in his fundraiser page. His son Mahdi suffers from a congenital heart defect and needs special care.
Without access to water to drink, cook or bathe, Hamad was initially planning to dig a well next to his family’s tent in Beit Hanoun, a city in Northeast Gaza. After losing his barber shop, he was hoping to raise funds to buy a solar panel to produce electricity and an oven to bake food. But after being displaced again in March, the funds will be solely dedicated to basic survival needs as they live on the streets, Mansfield told Salish Current Saturday morning.
Seeking normalcy
Mansfield said many parents are trying hard to give their children a sense of normalcy when possible.
Hamad, who refers to Mahdi as “the accent of my heart,” told Mansfield that he had been looking forward to surprising his son with a treat he was able to buy, but the bombing was so intense that Mahdi spent the night holding his father’s hand and throwing up.
“The parents are in this position of knowing that they cannot protect their children,” she said. “They can just be with them. Now they’re in this position that they can’t protect them and they don’t know if they can even feed them.”
All of the eight families have been displaced multiple times, Mansfield said. When Ashraf Hamad was finally able to return to his home and store in Northern Gaza with his family during the recent ceasefire, it had all crumbled. Left without a home and a job, he relies on donations to buy things like food, baby milk, diapers and medicine.
Hamad walks for miles to find a signal to let Mansfield know he is OK, though the bombing and the lack of internet make it hard for him to reach out more than every few days, she said. Recently, a medical clinic was blown up shortly before he was supposed to arrive with his ailing parents.
As the bombs keep falling and his loved ones die of starvation, Alkurd said he finds some solace in working whenever he can.
In between searching for food, water and shelter, he tries to make time to connect via Facebook and Moodle to many of his students who once attended the Islamic University of Gaza, one of the largest universities in the Gaza strip that is now destroyed and has been turned into a shelter, as reported by Al Jazeera.
Despite the university’s inability to pay him, Alkurd firmly believes his students have the right to continue learning, “no matter how dire the situation is,” the 25-year-old wrote in a message.
“It gives my gray days some light and meaning, although I have been withering like a half-dead rose,” he wrote. “It reminds me that I am still a productive individual, even during this time of stagnation.”
Mansfield, who works as a communications manager at Western Washington University’s library, referred to him as a friend and professional colleague.
Speaking on behalf of herself and not of the university, she expressed her disappointment over what she called a lack of a coordinated institutional response from Western and other schools around the country, which she believes should show their solidarity to Palestinian professionals who have been killed or deprived of their work as a result of the war.
Mansfield said she is confident in her beliefs and is unafraid of the potential for backlash. Seeing what her friends overseas are going through, she feels like she owes them her best shot, an opportunity she sees as a privilege.
“I hear consistently people saying ‘we love life, we want to live’,” she said. “That is it. They want a chance to live their lives and not have to worry about their children being killed and not have to worry about starving to death and watching their loved ones be murdered by a drone attack before their eyes,” she said.
Alkurd ended his message to Salish Current with a message addressed to the readers.
“What I — and we — do here in this cursed strip of land is not heroism, nor is it some supernatural resilience. It’s simply because we’ve never had a choice.”
— By Luisa Loi
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Students, experts delve into U.S. foreign policy one year after Gaza conflict,” Oct. 17, 2024
• “Commentary: After the conventions: go back or go forward?” Aug. 27, 2024
• “Commentary: A tale of two student uprisings,” June 26, 2024
• “Commentary: Campus protests over Gaza part of a proud tradition,” May 15, 2024