Deborah Doyle 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Today, a little girl was sitting among her classmates in a tent in northern Gaza. We call it a school, although it is only a tent. The schools have been destroyed, and for nearly three years these children have been denied the right to learn. Her teacher was explaining a lesson, and she was searching her schoolbag for a pen. And then she felt a pain in her foot. At first, she did not understand what had happened. Why should she? There was no fighting inside the tent, nothing to suggest that a bullet might reach her. Her classmates noticed the blood. The children screamed. A place where children had gathered to recover their stolen education became a place where everyone was trying to save her life. She arrived at Al-Rahma Clinic bleeding heavily. Our team treated her, and the doctor removed the bullet, but fragments remained close to an artery in her foot. An ambulance took her to the hospital, where she is undergoing surgery. She was the second person brought to our clinic today with a gunshot wound from the same area. And neither of them should have been there. Israeli soldiers stand along the outskirts of Gaza, firing toward areas where civilians live. Beyond their rifles are families in tents and children trying to learn. I think about the soldier who fired that bullet. I do not know what he was thinking when he pulled the trigger. But I know what happened at the other end of his rifle. A little girl left home to learn, and before the day was over, she was lying on an operating table. This thought is unbearable: that one human being may live an ordinary day while another’s life has been torn apart by his actions. And what makes it even harder to bear is how ordinary such suffering has become to the world. I wonder whether the world has grown so accustomed to our suffering that it no longer sees anything extraordinary in it. A girl shot during a lesson. A boy killed outside his tent. A father shot while searching for food. Another story. Another victim. And the world moves on. But these are not merely stories. Each contains an entire human life. And these are lives that have already endured more than any child should have to bear. For nearly three years, Gaza’s children have watched their homes disappear, their schools turn to ruins, and their families die. Still they try to learn. They sit inside tents, listen to teachers, and open their schoolbags. What more can anyone demand of these children? Must they stop playing? They already have. Must they leave their schools? Their schools have been destroyed. Must they hide inside tents? They already live in them. Where, then, are they supposed to go? And if even these tents cannot protect them, what will? I fear tomorrow there will be another child, another ambulance, another family waiting outside an operating room. Again, we will tell the story, and the world will move on. And yet my thoughts keep returning to the little girl before all of this happened. A girl sitting among her classmates, listening to her teacher, searching in her schoolbag. I wonder whether she ever found her pen. It seems a foolish question when there are so many terrible things to ask. Whether she will recover. Whether she will walk without pain. Whether she will ever feel safe in a classroom again. Yet I cannot stop thinking about it. Because before the blood, before the ambulance, before the operating room, she was a child who wanted to write down what her teacher was saying. She was not looking for death. She was looking for a pen. #SurvivalTestimony