Help get Nesma and her family out of Gaza

Hello everyone. My name is Habib, and I met Nesma in April 2012 during my travels to Gaza. Nesma is a wonderful soul, full of life and energy. She loves life, has a husband and two adorable children. She has spent many years on the ground doing charitable work and has personally worked with myself to make that happen. Nesma is a giver, and that ranges from providing essential resources to handing out smiles and comfort around Gaza.

Unfortunately, she like many others has been recently displaced. In order to support Nesma and her immediate family members, we are hoping to pay the exit coordination expenses using this fund-raising platform.

Here are some of Nesmas own words:

"I do not know how a person laments his entire life, his existence, how it is filled to the limit that is somehow limitless and then becomes completely empty. I do not know how a person is reduced to this degree of helplessness, how can a human heart bear all this sorrow and suffering.

My name is Nesma, I am 32 years old, and I will tell you the story of the night that turned our lives upside down. 

The night of the 22nd of January, the night that the Israeli military invaded Khan Younis city, started just like any other night, overwhelmed with sounds of shelling and gunfire. Then, the sound of tanks and bulldozers drew closer and closer, the 17 members of my family, gathered on the ground floor, laying down on the floor. The sounds continued to draw closer at a fast rate until it rested at the front door of our home. They bulldozed the roads crushing the parked cars along the way stopping at our doorstep. We were all gripped with fear by the whirring if the bulldozers as the devoured the neighbouring houses, demolishing them atop the people living inside. All along we can hear the tank chains moving back and forth. The tanks began firing at the houses nearby, so much so that we would crawl to reach the bathroom in fear of being struck in the crossfire. Then, intense airstrikes began bombarding the area around us. Our home was shaking violently, the home that was a refuge for more than 50 refugees for the past 3 months, the home that preserved their dignity, now can no longer keep them safe.  

At 2 am, we switched off all the lights including the flashlights of our mobile phones and laid on the ground without making a sound or a movement. I do not know if we were acting dead or wishing that we were already dead. We sincerely lived by the Quranic ayah “… and the hearts gaped up to the throats…” 33:10. I felt my heart exploding out of my chest from the sheer fear. I held tightly onto the hands of my two little daughters, my eyes sealed shut and praying with all my might. My other sister, tapping on the back of her 1-year-old son fearful that he will cry or make a sound that will trigger the soldiers standing on the other side of the door. What broke my heart the most, was the utter fear apparent on the faces of all the children. 

As for me, all the scenarios of death began running through my mind. What if they storm the house and execute us all? Who will witness whose death? What if they separate us from the men, then execute them in front of us and leave us to live? I prayed with all my heart that we would all die together at the same time so that none of us would have to grieve the other. 

I do not know how the hours passed by. At 6 am, we made an impromptu decision to leave the house. We carried the children and ran in the streets carrying nothing but the clothes on our backs to nowhere and to the unknown. 

We later found out from our neighbour, that an hour after we left the house, the soldiers stormed the house and set up a military post inside. They detonated the gate, bulldozed the kitchen and broke holes in the walls for their snipers. Then they gathered Palestinian men inside the house and held them hostage. The soldiers lived in our home for more than a month and caused extensive damage that ripped through our hearts. This home that we moved into last May and the home that was meant to witness my brothers wedding on the 26th of October 2023, is now completely destroyed.  

And now, two months after that night, the seventeen of us live in one space, we cannot look into each other’s eye knowing that we have no home to go back to.

Never in my life did I imagine that I would resort to these means. However, on behalf of myself and my family, I urge you to save what is left of us and help us evacuate out of Gaza, even if it is for a short period of time so that we can perhaps experience Ramadan in safety.

We want your support to have an opportunity to live for life and to worship, to provide a life for the innocent children who do not deserve to live in this deprivation and suffering. 

The funds raised from this campaign will go towards the evacuation fees which are currently $5000 per adult and $3000 per child. I has chosen to remain in Gaza to continue my work supporting the community and will support them financially once they are out, to the best of my abilities. 

We are happy to provide a list of names, ages and IDs to anyone who is requesting this"

We appreciate your help in advance in supporting Nesma and her family to leave Gaza. If you have any questions, please use the contact button below