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"The people of Gaza have lived through days of fear, hunger, and loss. The pain of separation passed like heavy clouds across the sky, but the sun of the next day washed it away. This resilience is not due to a lack of heart, but because the constant stream of painful events hardens you, forcing you to suppress your feelings and breaking your pride, leaving you to weep."

Letters From Gaza: A Collection By the People is the most devastating book I’ve read in years; a raw, unflinching chronicle of life under genocide. Edited by Mahmoud Alshaer and Mohammed Al-Zaqzooq, this anthology gathers letters penned by Gazan writers in the aftermath of October 2023, as Israel’s brutal assault ravaged their homes, families, and futures. These pages are a gut-punch. The authors, many now martyred, document unimaginable horrors: children drafting their own obituaries, mothers whispering apologies to unborn babies they know will not survive, and entire lineages erased in seconds. One passage haunts me: “I am searching for the meaning of our lives—of life—in war. Nothing has any meaning except imagining what will happen to us and our bodies when the bombs fall. How will we die? In one piece, two pieces…three? Will we be just body parts? Where will our blood splatter?�� This existential dread permeates every page. Children draft their own obituaries; mothers cradle newborns they know will not survive; families scavenge for limbs in rubble. A contributor recounts: “I climbed over the rubble... looking for [my family’s] remains. But a cat arrived before me and devoured a piece of flesh. I wasn’t sure if it was my cousin’s wife. His children?��

The letters force you to inhabit Gazans�� terror, their sleepless nights under bombardment, their grief as they bury neighbors with bare hands, their grotesque calculus of survival. The intimacy of their voices (often cut short by death) shatters the dehumanizing rhetoric of headlines. You don’t just read about starvation; you feel a father’s shame as he fails to find bread for his daughter. You don’t just see statistics of dead children; you hear a 10-year-old calmly describe preparing her “death bag.�� The letters reveal how survival itself becomes a paradox. One passage captures the numbing repetition of trauma: “Four seasons have passed, and you are in a place that doesn’t know you... We question our ability to hold on, but war tightens its grip even more. We live the same day with the same set of feelings: ‘How did the people of Gaza endure all this pain?’��

The book forces audiences to reckon with complicity. Israel’s siege weaponizes even basic needs: "Even then, the Occupation targeted bread, water, and fuel lines. To think of eating became a crime, a transgression for which children, women, and even the defeated elderly paid the toll.�� These are firsthand accounts from Palestinians living, and dying, under Israel’s genocidal, savage and inhumane assault post-October 2023. These letters, many penned by authors who were later killed, are not mere narratives; they are visceral screams against oblivion.« Tonight, I will fall asleep telling myself that the noise outside is fireworks, a celebration and nothing more. That the frightened screams of children are the gleeful terror of suspense before something long-awaited, like Eid. »

Letters From Gaza is a counter-archive against historical amnesia. It echoes Kanafani’s Letter from Gaza (1956), where a wounded niece’s amputated leg becomes a metaphor for collective steadfastness. Again, this is the most devastating and painful book I’ve read in years. It left me sobbing, furious, and irrevocably changed. As one letter pleads: “Come back, my friend! We are waiting for you,�� a call to global solidarity."