The Price of Bearing Witness and Beyond

Honoring Anas Al-Sharif and every Palestinian parent fighting for their children's future.

Photo credit: seastersjones

In just a few weeks, my younger daughter, Cyra, will turn two. Since both my children were born, I have been keeping journals for them—writing about their little lives, about the world they're growing up in. When Cyra was less than two months old, I started journaling about Palestine and the babies in Gaza, her global peers, who never got to hit the same milestones she has.

I write to her how as I breastfed her in the middle of the night, babies and children were dug out of rubble, their limbs torn apart, the light in their little eyes dimmed.

When Cyra learned to sit up for the first time, the assault on children in Gaza continued. When she started running freely through our living room, I thought of the children in Gaza whose days are marked not by play but by sirens and destruction. When she squeals with joy at tasting something new, I think of the children whose bodies have been so starved that their bones stretch painfully beneath their skin.

And as she be…