BSST – Emergency Trauma Appeal for Gaza
Please support the British Shalom-Salaam Trust’s trauma appeal for Gaza
Gaza City's al-Rimal district, October 10, 2023. Credit: Mohammed Zaanoun
“Every parent I know has written a goodbye letter”
Sahar, a parent in Gaza, Electronic Intifada
BSST supports many community projects in Gaza which work with children, toddlers to teenagers, traumatised by bombing, and with mothers who need specialised help responding to their childrens’ mental and emotional needs.
BSST also supports many small projects trying to hold at bay the trauma of settler violence currently sweeping across the West Bank, and driving Palestinians from their homes.
The situation is desperate. Help us respond to this catastrophe. Please give as much as you can to BSST’s Emergency Trauma Appeal.
A bit of background to the BSST appeal.
Almost as soon as Israel’s bombing started, I wrote to the groups that the British Shalom Salaam Trust supports in Gaza. Two very brief responses only, and then, today, astonishingly, this long one. We had given up hope of hearing from anyone else – either they wouldn’t have charged phones or internet, or they would be to busy surviving, or . . . . OR they would no longer be with us. But then came a long email from Ali, the director of a group based in the centre of Gaza in Nuseirat Refugee Camp.
There is nothing to buy for any of the traumatised children and their families now – no food, no water, no therapy, no nothing. But as soon as it becomes possible, we want to be able to spring into action and provide at least some help, some joy, some love.
FROM ALI
” 10 am October 15, 2023
I am writing these words and I cannot believe that I am alive. There are many words inside me. I find it difficult to describe everything. There is a lot of pain inside me, but silence is the master of the situation. I try to be brave as for my children. I search for an answer to all their questions and I find nothing but to lie. They say that we are fine, that tomorrow is better, and that tomorrow we will return to our homes. I hide my eyes from them and promise them the best. I do not want them to see the lie in my eyes. I try to support them and smile in their faces, but unfortunately inside me there is much the opposite.
We are in a humanitarian catastrophe like no other. Everything here is over,
[cut to our limit of 300 words – admin]