In the center of the Gaza Strip is the morgue of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in Deir al-Balah. At the front of the unit, a woman holds a white, thin wrapper. Inside is the body of her daughter Zena Naser.The mother looks as if she will faint, head cocked to one side, eyes closed, a vein channeled in her right hand, her face wounded by a grief that crosses the barriers of any language or culture. The photographer captures for a press agency that heartbreaking moment of the farewell, that way in which a mother dies while still alive.The photo reaches the world's media. Google applies blurring through SafeSearch, under the warning that the image “may include explicit content”. No blood, no gore, but the devastation of a mother is a powerful message.It seems that in Gaza, one year after the beginning of this brutal escalation of Zionist extermination against the Palestinian people, the rest of humanity continues to see it unfocused. The usual double standards prefer not to listen well, to see less and to say nothing in the face of more than 16,500 children killed in just 12 months, the highest figure for armed conflicts in the last 18 years. It is only one of the nefarious aspects of Israeli crime, but certainly one of the most terrible.What other nonsense is needed to understand the horror of Leila Al Kafarna's story? Leila is Malek's mother. Malek is 13 years old. They were walking hand in hand when a bombing surprised them in the middle of the street. After waking up from the daze caused by the explosion, she broke into a run, shouting to her son to follow her, before more bombs fell.But Malek felt light, very light. When she turned to look, she understood that the only thing he was holding was his arm. Meters behind, his son wailed, mutilated.Read in an influential media outlet, and perhaps replicated in others, Leila's testimony adds one more tear to the world's conscience.Gaza is, right now, the land of despair. In addition to the exorbitant numbers of dead, wounded, missing and displaced, there is the destruction of homes and all kinds of civilian infrastructure, lack of resources, hunger, thirst, malnutrition.... We must return to the suffering of children again and again: in just one year the number of children in need of psychosocial and mental health support has doubled.We have to think of Gaza, of the fear without incentive, of the shock of losing everything, even the Homeland; of the doctors operating without anesthesia on kitchen tables; of those crushed by the rubble; of the impotence of being reduced to nothing, just because others covet your land, your home.Let us feel the loneliness of Gaza, the crying, the screaming, the sweat and the blood, with no other answer than more shells. May time not desensitize us. May its clamor pierce our senses, as long as there is fear, as long as the dawn hurts.
