‘Hearts are crying and bodies are bleeding’: Gazans describe their daily struggle to survive

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. The show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and I need you all to be brave and strong for today’s episode. As we speak. Israel’s military is invading and obliterating what remains of Gaza City. After 700 days of genocidal bombing, shooting four starvation, the systematic destruction of schools, hospitals, farms, refugee camps, roads, houses, the entire infrastructure of civilian life. The Palestinians who are still clinging to life in Gaza City are now being exterminated while others run or limp for their lives with nowhere safe in Gaza to go.

As the world continues to watch and scream and utter horror, Israel continues its monstrous efforts to prevent us from seeing the truth of what it is doing deliberately and criminally targeting and killing my colleagues, fellow journalists and media workers. As Al Jazeera English reports, quote, the Israeli military bombed Nasser Hospital in Kunis on Monday, August 25th, killing five journalists including Al Jazeera photographer Muhammad Salama. In total, 21 people were killed in a double tap strike, one missile hitting first. Then another moments later as rescue workers and journalists arrived on Southern Gaza’s main medical facility, the attack comes as Israel has intensified its offensive to disease. Gaza City, the main urban center in the enclave of 2.3 million people. Despite a famine being declared last week, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the attack was a tragic mishap and four more. Al Jazeera journalists were killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza City just earlier in August.

And among them was 28-year-old correspondent Anas Al Sharif, who had been reporting continuously on the war since the beginning. And Al Jazeera said that three others were killed in that attack. Among them were freelance cameraman, Moen ua and freelance journalist Muhammad Aldi. Israel even tried to say that Sharif was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell, but has produced little evidence to support that Al Jazeera wrote, and we actually republished the text of Anal Sharif’s final message to the world over at The Real News and we will link to that in the show notes for this episode. But that’s not enough. Interviews like this one that you’re going to hear today are not enough documentary reports from Gaza in the West Bank, like the dozens that we’ve published in the last two years alone, it never feels like enough. Nothing will ever feel like enough because by definition, by results, it wasn’t enough to stop the inhumane slaughter that we borne witness to in Gaza these past 700 days. Nothing will ever feel like enough now or in retrospect because we can never get back the stolen souls of all our Palestinian brothers and sisters who have been murdered. The survivors can never recover who and what they have lost, and we can never get back what humanity has lost by allowing this to happen.

I feel this so deeply every day and saying I’m sorry will never ever be enough. And still we keep fighting. We fight for life itself for peace, for justice, for truth. As our fellow journalists and truth tellers confront evil, industrial slaughter and cruelty beyond measure and still somehow keep reporting until their dying breath, we must honor them and their sacrifice and we must honor our duty to humanity by lifting up their voices and carrying on their work to lift up the voices, stories and struggles of others as best as we can. We must do that and that is what we are doing here today. What you’re about to hear is my conversation recorded over a shaky zoom connection with Muhammad Abbot, a former English teacher and his nephew Abdul Rahman, a would-be college student. Both of them are Palestinians in Gaza right now and we talk about their daily reality fighting to live in the midst of a genocide that’s lasted for the past 700 days in the middle of a 22 mile open air killing field.

We also talk about the incredible vital and dangerous operation that they have developed to secure and transport clean water to people around Gaza who are clinging to life and have no other access to water to drink. You can see exactly what this operation looks like by following Mohammed’s Instagram, which we’ve linked to in the show notes. They use crowdsourced money that people donate online to rent trucks and buy fuel, which is extremely expensive and in short supply in Gaza, and then they deliver treated water to fellow Gazen who desperately need it. And I actually learned about Muhammad and this remarkable mutual aid work thanks to brother Brian Totman and I just wanted to give Brian a huge thanks for connecting us with Muhammad and Abdurrahman. When we recorded this episode on Friday, August 29th, only Mohammed was able to maintain a good enough connection to record this conversation with me live, but Abdul Rahman was able to record his responses to my questions and send them to us.

So we’ve stitched everything together here in this episode. Again, I beg you to be brave and strong here. I beg you to listen to every word that they have to say. I beg you to help us get their story and their struggles heard and I beg you to keep fighting to save their lives and to stop this slaughter. Thank you. Well, Muhammad, thank you Abdulrahman. My heart is absolutely broken knowing what you, your family, and your people are going through. And I just want you to know that all of us here at The Real News and all of our listeners and viewers are with you and sending our love and solidarity to you, I want to ask if we can start by giving people an understanding of what is happening in Gaza right now. Israeli forces are in invading your home of Gaza City as we speak. To start us off, could you both give our listeners an on the ground account of what is happening in Gaza right now as we record this on Friday, August 29th,

Mohamed Abu Tawila:

I am Mohamed from Gaza, especially in the North Gaza city. But now I am evacuation from the south with my family because my area and our neighbor was completely driven by Israeli occupation war like 2 million other deer. We have been suffering a row with genocide for over 6,091 day children. I verified when still screaming and sound of bombing. We live hour by hour but I never knowing if we will survive the next day. What makes it worse? It’s no safe shelter, no electricity, no clean water, no healthcare family are forced to sleep in intense or under plastic sheets and over crowded camps exposed to disease and hungry hung. And the situation here is very difficult here in Gaza and our house was destroyed in the Shiia area

And we now in the south in with my family. We live in a crowd dead room right now it’s fear and evacuation all the time and movement from one place to another. We hear drones all the time, schilling and bombing all the time, especially at night. People keep evacuating from one area to another, carrying children and a few bags. The roads are broken, the phone cut in and out and hospital and shelters are over pulling. And here every things is very expensive because the is closed crossings doing with the draw, the money, the commission, it costs very high. This is everything here is very hard. I hope to live safe and dignity and without of sounds of bombing. Everything here Is very difficult.

Abdul Rahman:

Firstly, I want to thank you for this interview that we have. It’ll spread our sound to the world. I’m Abdul Rahman Muhammad. I am 19 years old. I am in high school and there is no world. I’d be in my first year at university, but we have lost all our rights and life for me. I’m going to answer your questions and four points. First of all, I want to tell you about our life before this war to you can compare life before the war and life. Now for me as Abdurahman, I was supposed to have achieved my dreams of joining the college of medicine and surgery. My life was pride. Before this war, I was shining star in science and mathematics competitions and I had friends house, a garden and I have my beds. Before the war, I lost everything. I lost my friends, my relations. I lost my house, my garden, my beds. Until now we have been in high school for two years and the ministry has not been able to hold exams due to the lack of capabilities and places. The second point is displacement. It’s the hardest moment in the world. The moment of clearing the memories of the place, the moment of disputing death, bumping everywhere you are under bumping, you are harmless, you are hungry, you are angry.

Hearts are crying and bodies are bleeding. Sudden evacuated prices, ex exacerbative prices for transportation. Then you sleep and the street tell you find a tent or a place contains basic stables of life. The third point is getting food and the famine. This part shows that food sometimes is more expensive than human life and the famine people kill each other to get food. Merchants and American center cations kill people by hunger and shouting them and aid distributing centers. Thousands of children suffer from mal maturation, mal maturation, lack of food, young men, old men and women, Paul and in the streets from hunger. This is a diabetic patient and this is heart patient, kidney patient, pal. People hunger children, poor patients, exorbitant prices, soap papers and their parents left the life hang. The fourth point is medicine and medical tools and equipment. My grandfather, my dad’s father, left us before a few months he was patient and there was no medicine.

My other grandfather is Mohamed’s father. As a cancer patient, he has not in God health. Now here is no health, healthy food or medicine or medical health. And here is injured people and bombings. Every day there is other than 70 injured people and bombings. And in a centers there is many injured people and children. Doctors here in Gaza cannot or do not have ties to do operations because of the lack and medical tools. The most dangerous thing now is a dangerous illness spreaded in Gaza. Right now it’s GBS virus. It makes people unable to move at end with death of if there is no medicine. One of our relations is of this illness since a month and that medicine isn’t found till now. The occupation do not allow medical equipment to enter orgasm. My message to the world is that the dream of every family in Gaza now is to live this life together without seeing anyone or the family live and burn or to live this hand life without harmless and placement. Without hunger to live and home and free Palestine,

Maximillian Alvarez:

I know it’s truly impossible to communicate what life is like in the middle of a genocide, but I want our listeners to understand what you are going through as much as possible. Can you tell us what your daily life in Gaza has been like in these last few weeks?

Mohamed Abu Tawila:

Each days start with water and the bridge. We wait in long line. We check for safe and we lock for medicine and phone charging. We need in crowded room ready to move. If with a bomb come laws, every small things clean water can then call from family feels like a victory and when provide water, many family under the sun for a long hour and many children and many women come water. So this nation and destination and long lines is very hard. And the situation very hard here in Gaza.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And I mean people are starving and dying all around you. Correct?

Mohamed Abu Tawila:

That’s it. Yes.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I want people to also remember that this violence of occupation, this genocidal violence did not start on October 7th, 2023. Can you remind our listeners what life was like for you and your fellow Palestinians in Gaza before October 7th?

Mohamed Abu Tawila:

Life was hard, but it was life. We had long power and little war, but we had the school, the see family visit and the dreams be able to study, opened small jobs, go to marriage and tired to bend a future. We wanted the same, same things. Everyone wants safety, dignity, and it shines Before the seven October, I am English teacher and I am study many children in their school. But now everything has changed, it is completely changed. And our life is a change. It’s hard. No work, no school, every school is completely destroyed and every children. So the street to provide water, to sleep. The tents very hard situation.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Like you said, life was hard before but it was life. And now it sounds like every day is just a struggle to survive. And part of that survival is finding clean water for people to drink while they’re being starved. And you are trying to get people clean water in Gaza. Can you talk to us about your efforts to get people in Gaza clean water?

Mohamed Abu Tawila:

I came because in the place we were blessed too. There was no waters at all. We struggled being need to even a small amount or drinking or wishing. Then we thought of the other displaced people across the same or forest. I connected friends aboard and for their donation we bought water tanks and distributed them for free. Two families who had Gandhi day without the clean water, some children were drinking unsafe water causing illness. That when I realized water was not just a need, it was a mother of water, is life without cannot talk at or stay.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And can you tell listeners why there is no clean water in Gaza?

Mohamed Abu Tawila:

In Gaza there are no clean water because the Occupation destroyed the main facilities, and the fuel is very expensive here. And many tracks here cannot go to water because the diesel is very expensive and the cost of water tanks is very expensive. So many people cannot provide water and many water tanks cannot go to the camps and tens because the roads is bombing and many roads is bombings.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And so for our listeners, what Muhammad is saying is that under the Israeli occupation, bombardment and blockade, water systems have been destroyed. Water treatment plants have been destroyed, roads have been destroyed. So people can’t get water to refugee camps. This is what is happening in Gaza right now. I know I have to let you both go, but with the last few minutes I have you. This show is about workers by workers and four workers working people around North America and around the world are going to listen to this conversation. What final messages do you have for them? What do you want to say to them from Gaza? What can working people do to stop this horror?

Mohamed Abu Tawila:

I asking everyone, give us the in your eyes, use your voice, share the truth. Call for protection of civilians, and support… families getting food, water, medicine, shelter. We want life, safety, and a chance to live. And don’t forget us.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Thank you Mohamed. We will not forget you and we won’t stop fighting for you and everyone in Gaza until this horror stops. I am so, so sorry that the world has let you down, and my heart is with you. Thank you brother. I’m sending love and solidarity from Baltimore.

Mohamed Abu Tawila:

Thank you for the time.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Mohammed. Did you see the videos I sent of the Microsoft workers?

Mohamed Abu Tawila:

Yes, I have video. I see this video. We feel we are not alone.

Maximillian Alvarez:

You are not alone. Solidarity brother. Thank you.

Mohamed Abu Tawila:

Thank you.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well that is going to wrap things up for us this week everyone. Once again, I want to thank our guests from Gaza, Mohamed Abbo Tola and his nephew Abdul. You can follow Mohammed on Instagram and you can learn more about and support their efforts to get people clean water in Gaza by clicking on the links in the show notes for this episode. And of course I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then please go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network. We do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. And we have lifted up so many voices and stories from Gaza and the West Bank. But we need your help to get people to hear them and see them. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you never miss stories like this. And help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. It really makes a difference. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and may God help us all solidarity forever.