“It was beyond incredible. The vibes of the activity were beyond amazing.” I can hear the buzz of Israeli drones in the voice message Yousra sends back. There has been no respite from them for Gaza’s population. I flashback to my time there, the way the sound is just like a hammer to the brain, how the experience made me begin to understand what sound torture was all about.

This past week, speakers briefed the UN Security Council, warning that Gaza is at a total breaking point. Among those speaking Nickolay Mladenov, the Gaza envoy for Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace”. His rhetoric, while also calling on Hamas to fulfill its obligations has become sharply more critical of Israel. Mladenov pointed out Israel’s rejection of the Gaza roadmap which Hamas agreed to in late July, Israel’s ongoing bombardment which is not leading to demilitarization, and Israel’s restrictions on shelter and other items. Even the Times of Israel had this headline: Board of Peace envoy knocks Israel’s ‘unacceptable’ Gaza policy as disarmament plan stalls

I scroll through the July videos and photos Yousra sent over. I note how at the start, the girls footsteps are heavy, shoulders slumped, as if they are physically wading through the psychological weight of all they have been through. My eyes, as they always do, take in the shades of gray, piles of trash, the way that this level of wanton destruction just strips color from everything.

“It started from personal pain. Every time I passed by a destroyed car, my heart ached because my car was lost in that inferno, along with all my memories.” Kholod, one of INARA’s amazing MHPSS (Mental Health and Psychosocial Support) officers messaged me when I asked about how she came up with the idea.

“I thought: How long will we continue to look at destruction with such sorrow? Why don’t we change this reality with our own hands and prove that we are up to the challenge?” She wrote. “And that’s where the idea was born; to transform a symbol of destruction and pain into a work of art that renews hope within us.”

This activity around the car was specifically geared towards teenage girls. At first they seem to be uninterested, that combination of classic “what is this” teenage disdain coupled with the way that Gaza’s reality just crushes emotion. But then as it all begins, I watch how the girl’s posture changes.

They start to stand taller. Smiles break out. Conversations and laughter. There’s something here, something magical. I’ll be the first to admit that I did not understand the fuss about art therapy until I founded INARA and have seen art therapy’s transformative impact over the years. There’s something about those sorts of activities that give one a level of control, a way to alter their story or tell it on their own terms, even if its just for a fraction of time.

“Most importantly, when a girl sees a destroyed and neglected model transformed into something amazing by her hands, she receives an inner message: if we can change the reality of this car, we are capable of rebuilding ourselves from within and dazzling the world.” Kholood writes to me, explaining the transformation I was witnessing through the videos.

“We’re not going to keep waiting for hope to come to us. We are going to create our own hope from scratch” Amal, one of the teens says in a clip.

Awe and ache intertwine as I listen to her words. I’m acutely aware of how for me, it’s a scene. For them, it’s life. Not something scrolled by or sighed over, but everyday existence, an utterly unfair, unjust existence that demands superhuman strength.

Footage that day from the UN attack showed US soldiers shouting at people to stay back, cordoning off the area, twisted metal from the gaping hole in the side of the building, smoke blanketing the sky. I later met someone who survived by pure luck because she was up in Mosul.

“I came back to Baghdad and people thought I was a ghost.” She told me. “When I walked into the building I understood why. My workstation was gone. I would have been pulverized just like so many of my colleagues. There weren’t even any real remains to recover.”

It was the deadliest direct attack on the UN. 22 dead, among them the UN’s Special Representative in Iraq, Sergio de Mello. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the head of “Tawhid wa al-Jihad” and just itching for Al Qaeda’s approval, later took credit for the strike.

(Note: In 2004 post the battles for Falluja, Tawhid wa al-Jihad became Al Qaeda in Iraq which later morphed into the Islamic State of Iraq, then ISIS, and then broke with Al Qaeda in some surreal clash of the terrorist titans that played mostly out in Syria)

At the time of the attack on the UN in Baghdad, there was already a hefty price on journalists heads, with award money depending on if you were killed, injured or captured (bigger bucks) and nationality. Now it was also open season on the humanitarian sector as the US utterly lost control of the Iraq train. More blast walls went up, missions shrank and then grew with new security parameters.

Two months later a suicide bomber drove an ambulance packed with explosives into the International Red Cross HQ, part of a wave of seemingly coordinated attacks across the Iraqi capital that also targeted police stations. I was in Baghdad at the time and I remember standing outside the security cordon staring at a palm tree that had chunks of flesh smashed into its bark and thinking “The blast send human pieces flying this far? That used to be a person? Who were they?”

August 19th, World Humanitarian Day was designated by the UN General Assembly in 2008. Fast forward through the years and the threat posed to humanitarians is no longer majorly confined to non-state actors, ie terrorist and armed groups, but state actors themselves, ie nation states. It’s no longer an arena of suicide bombers, ambushes and ground attacks but one of bombs, drones, and air assaults. One could argue that we cannot control what terrorists and non-state actors are willing to do to kill, maim, damage and destroy, after all that is why we call them terrorists. But what is the argument for allowing state actors to exhibit the same behavior with utter impunity?

There was a point in time when world leaders did - it would seem - be willing to hold themselves accountable. In 2016 sparked by growing attacks on healthcare facilities in Syria by the now deposed regime Bashar al-Assad and the Russians, coupled with a US strike on an MSF facility in Afghanistan, the UN Security Council passed resolution 2286 calling for the protection of civilians, healthcare facilities and humanitarians in war zones.

The seriousness of the already rising trend was recognized back then, with the resolution “stressing” the need to fight against impunity and to ensure accountability for war crimes. Here is the kicker, the US voted yes and the resolution was co-sponsored by 84 member states including Israel.

(Note: The US would later investigate the MSF hospital bombing in Kunduz but say that it was a mistake. Fast forward to Gaza and among the many gallows humor jokes is the one that goes “I really don’t want to be an Israeli oopsie”)

As MSF stated earlier this year, on the 10 year anniversary of the passing of resolution 2286, “It carried a promise to match that outrage: that such attacks would never be accepted as a normal feature of war — and that when they did occur, states would take responsibility for stopping them and ensuring there were consequences.”

Gaza tops the list again for the third year in a row when it comes to the killing of humanitarians, deaths mostly caused by Israeli bombs and strikes, followed by Sudan where drone warfare has taken killings, among them humanitarian, to a new level. The majority of those have been carried out by the RSF which numerous investigations, like this one from Human Rights Watch indicate has ties to the UAE. The Emirates have consistently stated that its airbases and activities are strictly for humanitarian purposes. We cannot forget about Russia, where this year during just one week in May, Russia hit four humanitarian convoys in Ukraine. South Sudan has also been especially nasty with MSF reporting multiple attacks on its facilities. The list goes on.

And, as is always the case, it’s the local humanitarians that are being killed. Those who are willing to take bigger risks because it’s for their own people, those who get paid significantly less than their expat counterparts, those who don’t have a choice because its a job and they have to feed their children, those who don’t have the option of rotating out. In 2025 there are 350 recorded humanitarian deaths. 349 of those are local staff.

(Note: at my charity INARA we do not differentiate, everyone gets their salary based on their experience level and local scale not what passport they hold and all our country level staff is local to the country or part of the community we serve)

This year the World Central Kitchen on Aug 19th released a scathing statement about the IDF’s decision not to pursue criminal investigations into the killing of seven WCK staff in Gaza in Apr 2024. Those deaths sent a ripple of fear through the humanitarian community, not because of the deaths of expats but because the WCK was at the top of the list of organizations that had a - relatively speaking - decent relationship with COGAT (the Israeli military unit that coordinates all things relating to Palestine, be it Gaza or the West Bank). WCK was able to get approvals for movements and supplies into areas that rest of us were shut out of.

I arrived to the strip a few days after that Apr 2024 WCK strike with my charity INARA. A colleague from another organization warned me “Don’t do any TV interviews about the situation until you are out.”

I held out for two days without doing any interviews before popping up on my former employer. I cannot find the clip, but this is what CNN later wrote up in its live blog.

"To have that pit in your stomach of, 'Am I going to be targeted because I am part of an aid organization, or because this whole deconfliction process isn't working properly?'" said Arwa Damon, the founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief and Assistance (INARA). Damon, a former CNN correspondent, described the humanitarian situation as "inexplicably desperate" for the people of Gaza as organizations struggle to safely distribute aid.

I don’t know if it was paranoia, but sitting alone in the dark after that interview, listening to the drones outside that I swear sounded like they were getting closer and louder “This is absolutely batshit crazy.” I remember thinking to myself. “I’m used to being a target as a journalist, but I’m here as a humanitarian. I’m used to being scared of any number of terrorist, insurgent, armed groups and I’m sitting here terrified of Israel, a democratically elected nation state that is being backed by America because I’m doing humanitarian work?”

At that point in time we did not even know all the details. We had not yet seen the video that showed the clear WCK markings on the roof, how one strike sends survivors running into other vehicles and then there is a second strike that targets them there. It was a coordinated movement, meaning that COGAT gave them the green light to move along specifically pre-designated route.

“There has never been any excuse or justification for the attacks, and there is nothing in this account that does so. The decision is inconsistent with the full truth and deeply offensive.” The WCK statement released a few days ago reads.

The UK, Australia, and Canada whose citizens were among those killed have expressed “outrage” and called the decision by Israel not to open a criminal investigation “shameful.” I mean really, is that they best that the UK, Australia, and Canada can do?

Key leaders from the humanitarian community, the UN, various other groups have just about gone hoarse calling for world leaders and nations to abide by international law. It’s absolutely nuts when you think of it.

A scroll by headline, a shrug of the shoulders, a “oh isn’t that awful” comment. The immoral has become normal. And that’s a world that terrifies me.

It was the only thing that Farah’s mother specifically asked for: her daughters scent. Farah wore the same t-shirt for days. It’s the summer of 2022 and I’m in Afghanistan filming for my documentary “Seize the Summit”, the story of four young survivors of war from Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan who come together to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro to send a united message of “No to War.” It’s also the story of how taking on such a challenge pushes one’s physical and psychological boundaries. They say a mountain will have a lesson for each climber, and often its not what you think it will be. It’s worth a watch, I promise. You will laugh, cry, be inspired, the whole gamut of emotions. Plus proceeds go to my charity INARA.

I ended up at Farah’s house because she is the best friend of one of our climbers for the doc, Shaqayeq. The two lived together in Germany after meeting in a hospital where Shaqayeq was admitted for a mental break that left her mute and Farah had attempted suicide. The two saved each other.

Farah was raised as what’s known as a “bacha posh” - a girl who is raised/dresses as a boy, a practice that was not super common, but happens in families where there are either no sons or a lot of daughters. A German network had done a documentary on her which led to her receiving death threats and forcing her to flee.

Shaqayeq had fled Afghanistan in 2016 when she was 10 years old, after her mother Shakila Ebrahimkhil, a prominent journalist, was threatened and then nearly killed by the Taliban. Shaqayeq’s father was killed before the US led invasion. Shakila was her husbands second wife and tossed to the street. Shaqayeq was born on a kitchen floor as American bombs shook the building. Her mother would go on to get an education and become one of Afghanistans leading female journalists all while raising her children. It’s just one of many impressive examples of the power of Afghan women.

Farah and Shaqayeq would send part of their earnings to Farah’s family in Afghanistan, both to help support them, but also because the family supported the community, while we were there cooking up a massive meal and distributing it to the needy, all women. I remember talking to them, hearing about how yes before the Taliban life was hard but at least they had dignity and were not reduced to having to beg.

I nearly died laughing when Farah’s sister took a video of me and then sent it to me with a filter and not so subtle hint that i should wear more make up.

Farah’s grandmother had me in stitches talking about how bored she was of her husband while he was sitting right there. Oh and she was totally granny flirting with Cameron, which involved feeding him mangos which is apparently a secret “I’m interested” signal. Note: I haven’t found anyone else to verify that, it might have been a joke at my expense.

That trip I also met another of Shaqayeq’s friends. She should have been just starting university. They were a family of three girls. Her older sister was supposed to be graduating university with a degree in economics. The youngest was in high school, sobbing on the floor. What is there even to say? None of them even knew what life under the Taliban was like, they were all born after the US kicked the Taliban out of power. All of a sudden they were living the nightmare they had only heard about in stories from their parents.

The privilege I have of being able to cross borders, of not having to follow the Taliban’s rules on women and girls, of being able to hug the mother of a young woman I had just met, of sharing a family moment denied to a daughter, the injustice of it all is absolutely maddening.

I’ve been back to Afghanistan numerous times since with my charity INARA. Among the work we do is supporting widows to put their children in school, there are approximately 650,000 of them trying to raise their children alone in a country where the Taliban has utterly restricted female life and work opportunities.

There are extraordinary things being done in secret, behind closed doors. Daily acts of defiance and courage. There are secret schools, online education efforts, women only fancy cafe’s opening up, bustling family or women only spaces in restaurants. We hear about all of that and marvel at the courage and strength it all takes. It deserves our admiration, but at the same time I feel as if it makes us feel better about the disaster we allowed to happen to Afghanistan’s women and girls. And yes it is we, even though America is at the forefront of that, it is still we. Indifference is an enabler.

My last trip I flew Ariana airlines and ended up having the steward seat a young Afghan woman next to me because she was also traveling alone. We spoke a mix of french and english, she was living and studying in Paris, an opportunity she both cherished but one that tore her up. Her sister was getting married. Not because she wanted to, but pretty much because there was nothing else to do.

One mother, whose husband died of natural causes, told me through her tears that he had made her promise to educate their girls. They were still young, barely in primary school. But will she end up failing her husband when they grow past the 6th grade, the level that the Taliban has determined is enough education for a female? Or will we, by then, roughly another five years from now still be performatively wringing our hands over the fate of Afghanistan’s women and girls?

Everything just felt impossible. The unnecessary hurt, suffering, pain, confusion everywhere coupled with the sheer impossibility of even delivering the most basic of items was like a claw to the throat, a cannonball to the soul. I mean it was insane. We could not even get in soap, never mind enough tents. My INARA staff were all fielding frantic phone calls from people in the camps we worked in wanting to know where to go, what they should do. Our team was in turn calling everyone they knew with some sort of transport to help families from a truck to a donkey cart. We could not advise people where to go, there wasn’t anywhere to go. But we could at least try to get them out of a danger zone.

I felt sickened by the helplessness, the inability to even remotely come close to alleviating the misery. What made it all the more aching was the disproportionate level of gratitude even when we were not able to deliver anything. We had managed to secure 20 tents and were delivering them to the most vulnerable of families. Its a horrid calculation but boils down to: if you’re crammed in a relatives tent or concrete space (like you see in the video above) or whatever you don’t get a tent. They go to those who have ended up on the street. While we were out delivering those, a man came and asked us to see his brother, Wael, who had been injured at the start of the war and was still bedridden. They wanted to see if we could get them a tent since they were four families crammed into a tiny space. We couldn’t spare one of the ones we have. Other families were sleeping in the open, I explain, apologizing.

My heart cracked when Wael’s brother said “It’s OK, at least you made him smile.”

I wanted to scream. Scream at the injustice of it all. Scream because we do not deserve to be forgiven with such grace for failing.

But you don’t scream in Gaza, you don’t show your own sad because those around you have bigger screams, a deeper sad. One that they don’t get to “rotate out” from. One that they are not just responding to but living. One that they don’t even have the luxury of screaming or really being sad about because they somehow have to keep moving through the madness.

To this day, despite the so-called ceasefire, people in Gaza have not been afforded the ability to scream or really even begin to process their sad. They still can’t breathe, I mean like really breathe, the way that you do when you’ve gone through something horrendous but you can see the other side of it.

That August 2024 trip, shortly after meeting Wael, after seeing children in ICU unable to be removed from machines bc of missing medical equipment, after having to repeatedly apologize to people for not having any soap or all that much of anything to give them my brain was glitching to say the least.

So when I heard Mohammed call up the stairs of the Gaza guesthouse in a whisper-scream “Arwa, Arwa, come you have to help” and I ran down to see Caramella the cat pawing at a little pink thing my first thought was “you have to save it.”

He looked utterly distressed and terrified.

“Caramella killed a mama mouse and she’s pulling babies out from the couch.” He said. “What should we do?”

Caramella is Hanya’s cat. Hanya and I met in Gaza starting with my first trip there. She worked for GEM (Global Empowerment Mission) and I crashed in their guesthouse. GEM has been absolutely lovely with me and my charity INARA, and super supportive in any way they can. Hanya is hands down one of my favorite humans ever. She also lived in the guesthouse since she was forced to evacuate her apartment in Gaza early on in the war and then her family home in Rafah which is now a pile of rubble.

Now, I’m totally a cat person, but I can also say that Caramella, this fluffy squishy faced fancy breed creature is one of the nastiest cats I’ve met, unlike my three utterly ridiculously over-loving Turkish street rescues. Hanya had just had Caramella shaved so she looked utterly ridiculous with a pompom tail and paws, and i’m firmly convinced she was so mortified it made her even nastier. At least it gave us something to laugh about.

We had also evacuated the GEM guesthouse, which is how we ended up in the house with the gross couch where Caramella had just carried out her mama mouse murder and was now busily dragging out little babies. They were still all pink and squirmy, barely the size of my thumbnail. I don’t know what I was thinking, there was no way they were going to survive without their mother, and even if they had, then what?

I woke up every two hours that night to drip sugar water into their mouths using a tissue. I used a Q-tip to tickle their bellies like their mama would have licked. (I googled what to do). Hanya and I were sharing a room and she was fluctuating somewhere between “Arwa you’re disgusting and I can’t believe you’re making me sleep with rodents” grossed out and both of us totally cracking up, utterly bemused by my efforts.

In the morning I handed them over to a friend to take to an animal rescue org. That evening, when I got back from another miserable day in the field, I asked about the babies. I was told they died. I mean I don’t really think they even made it all the way there, they probably got tossed or flushed.

I remember excusing myself to go to the bathroom, just waves of this toxic suffocating tsunami of anger, infuriation, frustration. I remember wanting to punch the wall and then thinking it would be really stupid to break my hand. It was not about the mice. It was about everything else.

Little could anyone have known that that first summer of the war would end up later being referred to as “the good times”, little could anyone have known that Israel would totally shut Gaza’s borders for months, deliberately starve the population, all the while bombing them to smithereens.

Even mice had a different connotation back then. Sure gross and no one really wants to see one, but now? Have you seen the video of the kid with the skin infection and the mouse in the background? Have you read the stories of children showing up at medical facilities, their tiny fingers chewed by rats? More than 80% of makeshift shelter sites in Gaza are infested with rodents.

Today’s headline is that Israel has rejected Trump’s Gaza plan, the one that Hamas accepted.

And people in Gaza still can’t scream, can’t cry, can’t breathe. And yet they still exhibit such grace.

When it comes to kidney disease medications so much is lacking that many patients who would require dialysis now require blood transfusions, but there is too big of a strain on already limited blood supplies and hospital capacity. This is largely due to the fact that, according to the iNGO Health Cluster, therapeutic erythropoietin which is critical to the production of red blood cells has been out of stock since Sept 2025. Yes, for nearly a year.

The only part of Aqsa’s courtyard and the surrounding area that is not packed with tents is the ambulance entrance. Imagine being in one of those tents you see around the crater. Imagine the fear, the screams of the children.

Al-Aqsa is one of the few semi-functioning hospitals in all of Gaza, among a handful offering dialysis to it’s patients. These Israeli strikes also destroyed intravenous fluids, medicines and supplies used not just in dialysis but also in intensive care, according to what the hospital’s spokesperson, Khalil al-Daqran, told the Anadolu news agency.

I’ve been to Al-Aqsa many times over the course of my four trips to Gaza with my charity INARA in 2024 whether to do a broadcast on the humanitarian conditions or to try to deliver supplies and meet with doctors and injured children.

I find myself thinking about those I’ve met, the little children that ran up to me, often barefoot, when I would be there doing a broadcast.

Or those who were being kept alive by the bleeping machines in the ICU. Or those who cried for parents they did not yet know were dead. Or those who lay on hospital beds or on the floor in the corridors because there just was not enough space.

I see their faces, I remember their stories. I know that the hospital is packed with children and adults who saw their desperately needed medications and treatments obliterated when Saturday’s Israeli bombs fell on the hospital’s warehouses, fully damaging two out of four of them. I think about those struggling through various kidney diseases or who needed insulin who just had their lifeline blown away. Having just spent days with my Dad in hospital for a fractured hip, I’m imaging those in Gaza watching their parents suffer. In my mind there is a daughter in Gaza who took her Dad to the hospital not in an ambulance but on a donkey cart for his dialysis treatment, only that doesn’t exist anymore.

Israel, according to what CNN reported, said that Hamas was using the warehouses as a hideout. Israel has not provided any evidence to back that claim and regardless of that doesn’t a ceasefire mean that you don’t strike at your enemy? Al-Aqsa is not close to any Israeli troop positions, even though Israel now controls close to 70% of Gaza. Reminder, at the start of the ceasefire Israel controlled 50% but has been pushing its “yellow line”.

These strikes happened two days after President Trump announced what he called a major breakthrough in his Gaza peace deal, where he said that Hamas had agreed to full disarmament.

It provided a sliver of hope for the people of Gaza that maybe, just maybe it would be the start of moving towards something better than the hell they are living now. But hope is a cruel beast.

Israel has remained rather silent on this development, at least in terms of statements made. Then again, as many are pointing out, the bombings were it’s response.

There’s a young doctor who worked in the ICU I became friends with. Once, he told me, he had to tell a mother that her child with pneumonia could not be admitted into the facility. It was an insane calculations that doctors had to make, the whole triage process that forced upon them a calculation of, for example, a child with pneumonia needing an ICU bed for 2-3 weeks, whereas that bed could be used in that timeframe to save 6-7 lives.

“In the hospital you have to turn off your heart but when we go home we cry”. Dr Mohammed had said when I asked him how he coped with the heartless madness of it all.

Trying to survive in Gaza is still madness.

Prologue: Israel denied me entry to Gaza in 2025. I am not the only person to be denied entry. I have an active case to appeal that in Israeli court. INARA’s work in Gaza has not been impacted by my denial of entry. Our staff there are phenomenal and exemplary humans.

I see the disparities everywhere. Images of Gaza juxtapose themselves over what is in front of my eyes. We were picked up by an ambulance. In Gaza the injured - be it by bombings or by accident, ie like the one my Dad had - are transported to barely functioning hospitals on the back of donkey carts. Sourcing the pins/rods my Dad now has in his hip and leg were not an issue. We have our own room, plenty of painkillers as needed. I fill Dad’s water bottle regularly. I think about those in Gaza whose pain is not taken away, whose thirst is not quenched, who crave things those that love them cannot even provide.

There’s one moment my mind keeps going back to, one that was generated after I bought a backgammon set to stem off the monotony of a hospital days.

It’s of little Aseel who I met in al Aqsa hospital in Nov of 2024. Her “hospital bed” was in the corridor. Her entire family was piled on it. I had promised I would do her nails black like mine. I just wanted to make her smile. I just wanted to give her a moment that would break up her day. Plus we had managed to find the creams she, her sister, and father needed for their burns.

Across from them was another little girl who had been injured 24 hours earlier in an Israeli strike and had not uttered a word since. On the day when I first met Aseel I had dropped off more pediatric tracheostomy tubes (ie children sizes, used mostly to decrease dependency on ventilators, without which often children don’t stabilize enough to be taken off the machines in the ICU). One little girl was fighting for her life. But if she survived, she would wake up to find out she was orphaned. One little boy had to have a piece of his skull removed, I could see his brain pulsing under the area where his skin was stitched together. There wasn’t enough soap for medical staff to keep up proper hygiene.

All these images come rushing back to me, along with present day reality. Not mine, but Gaza’s. How the nightmare for the people of Gaza is far from over. How little attention is paid to Gaza these days. How there is still a severe shortage in medicine, medical supplies, imaging capabilities, everything that you can imagine.

On July 20th, two days before my Dad’s accident, Israel hit a car just outside my charity INARA’s primary care clinic in Gaza City.

Our team was thankfully all OK and able to respond to the injured, among them many children. Mohammed, our physical therapist, messaged me with this video later and a brief message.

“The hardest thing I witnessed was while I was providing first aid to a baby no older than four months.” Mohammed wrote. “He had no idea what was happening—only blood, crying, and shock.”

One of our doctors, Dr Lara, commented that despite how terrifying and heartbreaking it all was, their instinct to help was stronger than any fear.

“In those moments, humanity took over, and all we could think about was reaching those in need.” She wrote.

None of us on the outside, even those of us like myself who have been there, can really understand what it’s like. People tend to look at how things have gotten “better”, but the baseline is starvation. According to the latest IPC report 1.4 million people are expected to face high levels of acute food insecurity through December 2026. That is a number that has gone up from the 1.2 million it was at in the mid-April–June period.

The daily death toll is less yes, but people are still dying regularly in bombings, being shot for accidentally crossing Israel’s barely demarcated and constantly shifting yellow line as Israel snatches more territory. You may remember Netanyahu proudly boasting that he ordered the IDF to take control of 70% of Gaza and that it is “just the start”.

People are dying from illnesses and diseases that would normally not be life threatening. Despite this so-called “ceasefire” it is all still so incomprehensibly relentless, the psychological toll is so immense it crushes the mind and soul with a force we cannot comprehend.

The day after my Dad’s surgery my phone was with him and I hear him say “God bless them this is real humanity. Life’s meaning is in what they are doing, caring for people in the worst conditions.”

I look up and realize he still has my phone.

“Dad are you reading my phone?” I ask laughing.

“No.”

“Yes you are.”

“Oh, this is your phone.”

My parents and I aren’t great with boundaries, which won’t come as a surprise to those of you who read about my mother calling CNN to get me off air during a breaking news firefight.

The messages my Dad had - allegedly - accidentally read were from a couple hours earlier in INARA’s senior staff group chat. Our clinic was damaged again. Yousra, our Gaza program coordinator, had sent over a series of videos with the message. “The Gaza center got affected by nearby heavy bombardment last night.”

“Is everyone OK?”

“Yes all is okay, thank God, but was an intense night while today Gaza is celebrating the annual high school graduation, tawjihi.”

High school annual graduation.

The team did the necessary repairs, cleaned up the space and opened.

I message Mohammad to check in on him, especially after that message about treating the baby and now this. He tells me that his brother graduated high school among the top of his class and asks how my Dad is doing.

“We’re used to in Gaza having to scrounge around for things, hopefully where you are are easier.” He says in a voicenote. “And if you need anything, like a bit more information about anything, just let me know. Remember after a surgery like that physical therapy is very important. We wish him a speedy recovery”.

I’m again, as I always and constantly am, blown away by the people of Gaza’s ability to show such compassion and care.

Prologue: Note to those who are new here: I went to Gaza four times with my charity INARA and then Israel denied me entry. We still have an ongoing court appeal to reverse that decision.

Dad was discharged. We got home. I think about all those in Gaza who leave the hospitals to go back to a tent, a flimsy mattress, the beating heat of summer, not enough water to drink, no ability to cool down. I look at the bag of medicine that I’m holding, the walker I was able to easily buy.

Dad told me he also was constantly thinking about what it was like to go through everything he went through with nothing.

I just saw a post from someone in Gaza whose father is in intensive care needs a pacemaker. He’s waiting for permission to leave Gaza. He just wants to save his father’s life. My eyes are burning. I keep thinking about him and all the others who are just watching those they love suffer without the ability to do anything about it.

It is all just so wrong. The way we treat each other is so wrong. What we allow to happen to others is so wrong.

Most of the families had well cleared out of the area, but we met one that had been living underground for four months. The Kudiye family of five had run out of their home as bombs shook buildings and shrapnel fell around them, sheltering in a carpenters underground workshop. They only left every two weeks to shower. Their home was just five doors down.

“Sometimes its so close this space fills with dust” Zahra, one of the sisters, says as a couple of explosions echo down into the darkness. “We just want to leave. I want to feel the sun, smell fresh air.”

Their father refuses, he’s a proud man and doesn’t want to be at the mercy of others. Here he can send his son out to scrape around for odd jobs and make some money to buy food.

They insist on making us tea. I try to say no thank you, we’re good, you’re so kind. But it’s already served and I notice that they only pour a glass for their father. There isn’t enough for all of them and us.

It’s the end of Nov 2012, and my CNN team and I are in Aleppo. Every corner, every person you meet has a story that shreds your soul. A young man who risked his life to save a stranger shot by a sniper. A mother who has nightmares her children are dead. The muazzin (the person who recites the call to prayer) who uses a low archway in the old city to bounce his voice because his mosque, minaret, and speakers have been destroyed.

There are signs that things might be starting to shift. Led by the Nusra front, a coalition of rebel brigades are assaulting a key Assad military base. As I as described in Part 1 of this series, Nusra’s men were largely former fighters in the Iraq battle space; Syrians who had gone to Iraq, some who joined al Qaeda. Suffice to say, they had plenty of knowledge on how to utilize unconventional tactics coupled with sophisticated military maneuvers.

We had asked about going along on the assault itself, were but in the end were told no, it was too dangerous. I do have a high risk threshold, but I like to think that I’m not entirely reckless. And no, I’m not an adrenaline junkie. Barrel bombs and snipers are enough for me, thank you. I wasn’t all that fussed about not being a part of the “tip of the spear” when I’m with the side that has second hand weapons, no proper comms, and no air assets.

A few days in, we’re given access to one of the units that is holding up the siege on Syrian government forces at the base. Fighting did keep breaking out, especially when a chopper with resupply for the trapped troops would try to drop a load, although they often missed and the rebels would end up with all the food and ammo.

My thighs were already burning from sprinting across an open space littered glass, debris, and spent bullet casings before ducking into the shelter of a small building on the military base. We had hoped that we would get the opportunity to talk to one of the Nusra Front commanders, but in the end that was also a no-go. They were still less than media friendly to say the least.

But we did get a full briefing from one of the other rebel commanders, standing over a printout of a satellite map of the base. The Nusra Front had mapped out the military strategy, collaborating with three other rebel units to launch a multi-prongued attack that left analysts commenting on how sophisticated the assault was and on how Nusra was shifting the battlefield, even though at the time they were estimated to make up roughly 10% of Syria’s medley of rebel units.

The young rebel commander who was briefing us was receptive to the questioning of Nusra’s ultimate goal for Syria and how that fit into other more moderate rebel units broader objectives. The answer was straightforward.

“The U.S. and the West in general have given us next to no help while we’ve witnessed thousands die at the hands of Bashar al-Assad’s heavy weaponry and dominance of the skies.” The commander explained.

“We need them. We have different visions for Syria, but we need their organizational and battlefield experience.”

Having spent time with other rebel units on their frontlines in the city, that need was clear. One unit I was with had a homemade rocket, a rocket launcher that was basically a plastic tube and no sandbags to stabilize it, so it all might as well have been a door weight. They used a sledgehammer to punch holes through the walls of Aleppo’s historic beautiful homes, to create crawlspaces that would allow them to avoid the streets and snipers line of sight.

When America designated Nusra a terrorist organization many people were furious.

“America is calling Nusra a terrorist but not Bashar?”

Roughly 12 years later, the Assad regime would fall and the man who established the Nusra Front, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, would become the President of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa. Over the course of those 12 years, Nusra would fight and lose against ISIS, cut ties with al-Qaeda, re-brand itself numerous times, each time building on the lessons learned from its previous incarnations.

And the man who was once called a terrorist would get perfume from President Trump in one of the oddest interactions I’ve witnessed to date, share a stage with General Petraeus whose forces hunted and imprisoned him in Iraq, and shake European and other world leaders hands.

I pulled them out of their plastic wrapping. Both were embellished with silver sparkles. Mr. ex-AQ watched while I stuffed my neck through the bonnet and tucked away any offending hair. His mother adjusted the scarf over it.

“See you look so much more beautiful now” Mr. ex-AQ exclaimed.

I laughed.

“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose? I mean if a headscarf makes me more beautiful then I should take it off so I’m uglier and not subjecting anyone to more temptation.”

He laughed. I kept it on while I was in his family home. His mother served us some cracked wheat, tomatoes, cucumber, and hummus, apologizing for not having more. Its not like it was her fault, it was hard to find anything.

It’s November 2012 and I’m in Aleppo, the rebel controlled part. I met Mr. ex-AQ, as I called him to myself, at the activist safe house we (my CNN crew and I) were crashing in. A whole medley of characters, all who went by pseudonyms, made their way through. Activists, citizen journalists, fighters and members of the local coordination committees. The regulars who I ended up spending the most time speaking with were a fighter who loved fashion and wanted to be a women’s clothing designer, an activist who blatantly stated that there would need to be a revolution against the revolution given the rise of radical Islamist groups, and Mr. ex-AQ.

That night I went to meet his mother, Mr. ex-AQ pointed to a corner of the couch and said “That’s where Zarqawi sat when he was here recovering from his injuries.”

He was talking about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda in Iraq’s founder. While Zarqawi is believed to have been injured then, most US intelligence points to him being treated in Iraq although there are rumors he crossed into Syria. I had no way of knowing if what he claimed was true.

The name alone sends me back to the first beheadings that we witnessed in Iraq in 2004. And to the kidnapping and killing of British-Iraq-Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan, who had spent decades helping Iraqis. And to the countless bombings that AQI had taken responsibility for that left flesh flung on buildings, limbs strewn across streets, Iraqi’s sobbing in despair over loved ones.

“Do you want to sit on that cushion, I’ll take your picture.” Mr. ex-AQ asked me.

“No thank you.”

If you’re wondering why I even went to his home, its because I believe in trying to understand the “why” that results in a person’s evolution, especially when that evolution is towards violence, and extreme violence. And no, wanting to understand, understanding is not condoning.

Mr. ex-AQ had said he was incensed after seeing repeated videos of of children in Iraq and Afghanistan pulled out from under the rubble of US bombs. He told me he went to Iraq to join al-Qaeda as a fighter, but they rejected him because of his eyesight and clear inability to hold, nevermind fire, a gun. The man wore the thickest pair of glasses I’ve ever seen. So he ended up sticking around there doing admin work. He told the story like a stand up comedian. He also told a hilarious story of falling in love with a woman he saw on a balcony who would wave at him every morning. He could not believe that a woman was expressing interest in him, given he was regularly rejected. When he went to ask the family for her hand in marriage he found out that she was intellectually disabled and waved at everyone from the balcony.

The mind does struggle to reconcile the contradictions. The way that someone who once joined a group like Al Qaeda can simultaneously be someone who also tells you a funny love story and jokes about their appearance. But I also find that those contradictions, those moments that surprise you in an interaction, are what make us human. I also do not believe in dehumanizing even those who at one point would have wanted to see me dead. Do not mistake this for sympathy.

Mr. ex-AQ claimed he did not last all that long with them. He claims he was not aware of just how brutal and horrendous al Qaeda was before he arrived in Iraq. At one point he joked that things would have turned out different for me if we had met there.

“Things are different now, I am different.”

He says when he saw the way AQ terrorized even the Sunni Muslim population it was not all that different to the oppression he was against in Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. For him it was about fighting the American occupiers, not oppressing fellow Sunni Muslims. Or so he said.

The other safe house regulars were friendly with Mr. ex-AQ but we were all wary. All sorts of people and fighting groups were coming out of the woodwork. What I called the radicalization of the revolution earlier that year with all its warning signs was materializing very clearly. And that January of 2012 the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria was established by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani who you might know as Syria’s current President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

By the time I got there that winter, Nusra had established itself with a number of bases that we steered well clear of. They weren’t patrolling the streets, they weren’t trying to rule. Rumor was that they had learned the lessons of Al Qaeda in Iraq’s brutality and realized that they could not afford to utterly alienate the population. Al-Jolani/Sharaa back then was a mysterious figure, a ghost. We did not know what he looked like.

Watch one of my reports from Nov 2012 on the rise of Islamist groups and families returning to rubble

Families who had fled were returning to utterly decimated neighborhoods. Civilians were regularly killed. The old city of Aleppo was in ruins, its historic streets turned into sniper alleys. Food was in short supply. Volunteers tried to do what they can, but most of the time the little they were able to cook up was not enough. Children fought over remaining burnt clumps of cracked wheat.

People were getting angry at the other rebel groups hoarding the limited bread and flour supplies. At one point, while I was there, Nusra took over bread distribution at the bakeries. This was interesting because it was one of the ways that they ingratiated themselves to the population. Nusra distributed equally.

The other major and more important aspect of Nusra’s presence was that they knew how to fight. They knew military strategy, how to launch a multi-pronged assault, design ambushes and create kill zones. A good chunk of their members, including al-Jolani himself, were jailed in Iraq. Some had been jailed upon their return to Syria only to be later released by Bashar al-Assad in the summer of 2011. Assad was more than happy to let Syrians cross into Iraq and to have Syria be the main transit point for foreign fighters into Iraq. But when the US and the Iraqis regained control over most of the country, Assad did not want to have those battle-hardened men turn on him. That is, until he needed them to make his lie a truth. Remember Assad used to say that the demonstrators in Syria were not peaceful, that they were terrorists. It was a very Machiavellian move.

Nusra’s capabilities were having their impact on the battleground. The resources of the other rebel fighters were rudimentary at best. On our drive to Aleppo we had stopped at a bomb makers house. He incidentally was not trained in Iraq, he had trained in Libya and fought with Palestinian groups against Israel. He had also been jailed twice by the Israelis. He described them as being more merciful than the Assad regime.

He had all his fingers which was reassuring. That his assistant was killed a few years ago when he was, as he said, less experienced was not. He was stirring sugar combined with I don’t know what sort of noxious chemical in the middle of his living room. His kids were running around. There were all sorts of bits and pieces of ordinance he would cobble together and use the sugar concoction and somehow turn it into rockets and grenades. One rebel group took us to see a 2m/6ft massive slingshot they would use to hurl the grenades at Assad’s army.

We heard that rebel units along with the Nusra Front were going to launch an offensive against an Assad military base. We were asked if we wanted to go.

Ever since he took power, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has either been viewed as the former al-Qaeda fighter who has transformed into a statesman or as a terrorist in a suit. This 2-part mini series looks at my time in Aleppo in Nov 2012, 10 months after al-Sharaa, going by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, formed his first group, the Nusra Front, that was Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch.

PART TWO COMING JULY 19

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Trash piles are already taller than most of the people forced to scavenge through them, all sorts of diseases are spreading like Hepatitis A (its horrid, I’ve had it), diarrhea (the number one killer of children under the age of 5), and any number of skin and other infections.

I had visited one of the wards in Nassir hospital that was stuffed with beds and flimsy mattresses on the floor, where children covered in this horrific skin disease called impetigo howled as their blisters pussed and oozed. Impetigo is relatively easy to treat. Wash with soap, apply a topical cream. Neither was available.

Snipper of a video from that Aug 2024 trip:

People were mixing salt with a few drops of lemon and sand from the beach to do dishes and try to clean off.

I remember thinking back then that Israel did not need to drop anymore bombs to kill people, the conditions they had imposed on Gaza, the sheer deprivation would exterminate the population on its own. Slowly, painfully and methodically.

Watch my interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour during that time where I state as much:

After I left Gaza, I got on a call with some members of the Biden administration’s Gaza team. I figured if we can simplify it all down to a bar of soap maybe the needle would move. Maybe they would be willing to get the Israelis to just let in soap. I have to say I have never in my life briefed people less interested in what I had to say. Not even the perfunctory grunt of “oh that’s terrible.”

The sense was, and still is, that the US is not even willing to yield a modicum of the pressure it can put on Israel. Not even for something as simple as a bar of soap.

The UN independent commission of inquiry found that Israel is deliberately targeting children in ongoing genocide against Palestinians. The report was released last week, and it’s a really tough read. Of the many testimonies shared is a story of a five year old boy who was treated by a doctor who had to reinsert his intestines by using diapers and tape.

I found myself thinking back on all the ways that children die or suffer needlessly due to deprivation. A little girl I met that was lying in the ICU. The hospital, Aqsa, did not have any pediatric tracheostomy tubes. I won’t go into the details of how, but I got three in. THREE. When, if, this little girl woke up she was going to find out that she was an orphan.

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I also find myself thinking about all the different ways that deprivation kills, especially the young whose bodies are still growing, who cannot fight the infection or disease.

Last year there was a spike in what’s called Guillan Barre Syndrome. Its terrifying, you wake up basically paralyzed, unable to move your legs and then it spreads to your arms and in extreme cases even further.

GBS is when your immune system attacks the nerves, usually following a bacterial or viral infection. It starts off with the voluntary nervous system – ie the muscles you move on your own and can turn deadly if it attacks your involuntary ones for example your diaphragm. We had a boy, Souhaib in our INARA clinic who came in with GBS. He had been discharged from the hospital after weeks with no improvement. After months of physical therapy, by some miracle, he was able to walk again. Many cases remain with partial paralysis. GBS is treatable if medication is administered within a month of symptoms. In Gaza there was no medication.

Deprivation is a crushing weapon, killing slower than the bombs, killing not just physically but psychologically. There are still not enough hygiene items. Trash and filth is piled as high as a one to two story building. There is a rat and mouse infestation spreading even more disease. There’s still a severe shortage in medicine, medical equipment, everything.

I was just messaging with Yousra, INARA’s Gaza program coordinator. We’re already seeing an increase in heat rashes and skin infections at our clinic and, as she pointed out, the next two months are going to be much worse as temperatures rise. Life hasn’t gotten “better” in Gaza.

“Everyone around me is suffering.” Yousra messaged. “Our life is impossible to explain. No one can understand it, no one can understand how hard it is.”

“We don’t need a heat wave to suffer” she writes.

Prologue: After four trips into Gaza in 2024, Israel denied me entry five times in a row. I still have an ongoing appeal to reverse that.

I was recently discussing Gaza, the UN report, and more along side Dr , one of the most extraordinary humans I have met; pediatrician, humanitarian, beautiful writer and INARA board member on another equally brilliant foreign policy analyst and former Pentagon Middle East advisor, Jasmine el-Gamal’s podcast. You can listen to our conversation with

THE ESSENCE OF CHILDHOOD HAS BEEN DESTROYED

Episode Description:

What does it look like when a childhood is stolen?

A new UN report accuses Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, documenting what it describes as the destruction of childhood through death, injury, displacement and psychological trauma. The report has already become deeply politicised, with supporters and critics fiercely debating its findings.

But beyond the politics are the children themselves.

In this episode of The View From Here, Jasmine El-Gamal speaks with humanitarian Arwa Damon, founder of INARA, and pediatrician Dr. Seema Jilani, two women who have spent years caring for children in war zones, including Gaza.

Together they discuss what they witnessed on the ground, how Gaza compares with other conflicts they’ve worked in, what prolonged war does to childhood, and why so many people have become desensitized to images of suffering. They also reflect on the challenge of bearing witness, whether testimony can still change minds, and what they wish every policymaker—and every one of us—could understand about the daily lives of children living through war.

By 2013 a decade of reporting from Iraq coupled with the first few years of Syria had turned me into a hot mess ball of angry. I was angry at people not caring about the suffering of others. I was angry at world leaders, decision makes, those who perpetuated the narrative of dehumanization, of “otherizing”. And I was angry at my own industry, journalism. Oh yes, even back then we were already failing ourselves.

Syria was a sledgehammer to the psyche. Many of us covering it were from the old Iraq gang. We could see it, predict the worse case scenario. It had been nicknamed the youtube revolution, an army of young brave media activists risking their lives every day to prove to the world that yes, the Assad regime was killing demonstrators. We watched hope rise as the US would make comments about red lines only to have those crushed. We filed reports on what was at risk if the US did not take decisive action, did not protect those demanding freedom and democracy. Nothing changed. I can feel that rage, that helpless rage as I write this. No matter how many of those brave souls who we generally spoke to on Skype (yes it was Skype back then) were killed or disappeared getting the story out, no matter that once the death toll hit 200,000 the UN stopped counting, no matter that we could see the radicalization, the ties between Iraq and Syria, the rise of extremism.

Watch: My journey from CNN to INARA

I was angry at me. I felt as if I must have failed as a journalist. For surely if my reporting had properly depicted the pain of all the people who had bared their souls people should have cared on a basic human level. Surely if I had properly explained all that was at risk, world leaders, namely the US would realize that it was in American’s security interests to end Assad’s massacres of his own people. Surely if I had done my job properly, something should have changed. The rational part of my mind realizes it’s irrational but my inner monologue to myself was all sorts of nasty, its favorite phrase being “not good enough” (If I ever do write an autobiography that will be the title).

I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. I had this visceral, primal need to do something and see the impact of it, as if that would somehow justify my failure as a journalist, justify the failure of journalism. I sank into that abyss, but if anything my brain does have a fantastic ability to do this percolating thing. I am really good at digging metaphorical tunnels if doors shut. The story of how I got to be a journalist, covering Iraq from the get-go with zero journalism experience and then to CNN is a lesson in that, but that’s a story for another day.

Somehow in the middle of that mental cesspool, by the end of 2013 an idea started to crystallize, pulled from the threads of my experiences. The 2007 story of this little boy named Youssif who had masked men pour gasoline on his head and set him on fire when he was just five years old. When we reported the story, it was at the height of the bloodletting in Iraq, a point in time when those of us in the CNN Baghdad bureau kept hearing “no one wants to hear about Iraq anymore.” And yet the response was massive, global and Youssif and his family ended up going to America for his treatments all funded by donations from CNN viewers. The thread: there are good people out there willing to give, find them.

We did a piece on three year old Safa, also out of Iraq, who looked like Violet from Charlie and the Chocolate factory, the growth in his belly was so big. An organization in the US initially came forward after our report, but then backed out when they saw his medical records. We, in the CNN bureau, ended up contacting the King Hussein Cancer Center, finding a donor. The surgery was given a 2% chance of success. Today, he’s living his life, totally fine. The thread: you can figure this out, make the needed connections, pull it all together.

But the reality is that both of those stories are rarities. The reality is that we did plenty of stories where no organization came forward. The reality is that you cannot do a piece on every child you meet. The reality is that there are countless children whose life story can be changed, to whom I do believe we owe that change. The thread: Do something about it. Build that organization that is going to get kids the surgeries they need who other organizations are not helping.

So I did. And it was both the best and most self-destructive idea I’ve ever come up with. For anyone thinking of starting a charity, let me tell you this: it’s a nightmare. I cannot even count the number of times I wanted to curl up in the fetal position, that I have cursed me for being me, and just gone “f*ck this”.

In fact, I got the word “INARA”, which in Arabic means “ray of light”, tattoo’ed on my wrist in Arabic. I did that before we even officially launched so that if I did decide to throw in the towel at any point in time, I’d have a permanent reminder of my failure. I know, psycho-analyze that.

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Like much of what I do, I went into it like a bull in a china shop. I had zero patience or experience for what actually building a sustainable charity looked like, what the foundation needed to be. In some ways I was just this silly girl tunnel vision focused on getting kids into surgery. I emptied my savings. I was trying to do it all on my own.

I got a kid whose face had practically melted off and could barely breathe into surgery. I sent a friend to his dentist to lobby for free dental prosthesis for a girl that had her jaw blown off. I was reporting from the field getting shot at and trying to coordinate transport for a mother to take her kids to physical therapy post-op on their hands.

And when I started meeting those first kids INARA was treating, I started to breathe a little. Journalism’s failures still had a bitter bite, but at least I was doing something else for people as well. I could justify my existence. I had an outlet for my angry, where I could turn the angry into action.

Prologue: While yes, INARA has given me an outlet for my angry, it also exacerbated it. Nothing about getting INARA to where it is today was easy. I’d need to write a book if I wanted to get into the betrayals, broken promises, how utterly disheartening it is to see just how hard it is to do the right thing, to do right by others. During the bulk of those early years, up until a few years ago, I was rowing the metaphorical boat mostly alone, gripped by this terror that I was about to lose what I had built and with that lose myself. INARA has become my “raison d’etre”, my reason for being.

CNN was extremely supportive of me starting INARA. The first thing I did when I started having to manage people - which by the way is the WORST - was to call my CNN boss and apologize because I had no idea how hard it was to manage people.

None of what you see INARA doing today is thanks to me. Sure, it was my idea, but INARA’s real growth has come in the last few years. Don’t worry, INARA is run and managed by those who know what they are doing, has expanded its programs beyond anything I could have imagined, and has a solid foundation.

I don’t “work” for INARA. I am its founder and board president. I do not, did not, and never have taken a salary from INARA. It is my passion project, not my job.

My own mental health journey, that whole “working on yourself” utterly annoying process would take years and a couple more hitting pretty close to “rock bottom” to get me to where I am today and is still a work in progress.

I left CNN in 2022 for multiple reasons, which yes included wanting to focus on INARA, but more to explore different forms of storytelling. I directed my first documentary that tells the story of four survivors of war from Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan who come together to summit Mt Kilimanjaro, to unite in demanding an end to war. It was another project that my brain would not let me ignore, and so I left CNN and did it, draining that good old bank account again. All proceeds from “Seize the Summit” are going to INARA.

Click here for where you can watch "Seize the Summit"

I cannot wait for the day, and we are very close if not already there, where I can be confident that INARA will survive past me. Yes it morbid, but my goal is always “is INARA strong enough to keep going if I die, can it stand on its own, hold together, if Arwa is no longer there”.

I’ve often questioned why I built my own personal hell. Why I, someone who is fiercely independent who does not want to be attached to anything, would construct her own ball and chain. I’m laughing as I write that sentence. I’m laughing at myself.

No matter how many times I have cursed the day I started a charity (which happens significantly less now) there is always that voice that goes “but if you hadn’t …” and then i remember all the faces, stories, the way that the spark of life comes back into a child’s eye and the rest of it doesn’t matter.

“C4, like the explosive?”

“Yes, they thought it was cheese. They found it along with some bottles of water and Pepsi.”

It’s towards the end of Nov 2024 and I’m in Gaza City. The IDF had recently withdrawn from the area this family lived in. The family had briefly returned.

Survival requires this type of foraging, the doctor explained.

“Starvation can do anything.” the doctor said.

This family had divided up the C4 and put it in some bread. They came into the ICU vomiting and convulsing. Most of them recovered, but one 13 year old girl was still connected to a mechanical ventilator.

At the time, in Gaza City there was a shortage of everything except for flour. On the way to the hospital, my charity INARA’s physical therapist, Mohammed, had pulled up a picture of a steaming roasted chicken lying on a bed of rice. It had been months since he’d had a proper meal, nevermind a chicken.

“I dream of chicken” he had joked. “Sometimes I just look at this picture and pretend I’m eating it.”

The pediatrics ward for malnutrition is packed. Children whose wounds aren’t healing because their bodies don’t have the nutrients they need. Babies who are too weak to cry.

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Back then the Gaza Strip was split by what was called the Netzarim corridor. Crossing for aid organizations required permission from COGAT (the Israeli unit that is meant so faciliate coordination), but we were only allowed to move personnel, not products through it.

Most of the population had been forcibly displaced further south, crammed into the central part of Gaza. One of Israels tactics to obstruct aid was to prevent its movement within the Gaza Strip itself. There are countless examples of this, but I’ll explain using the example of flour, specific to that point in time. In south and central Gaza there was a massive flour shortage. (Note: when I say shortage is does not mean that there were ever the needed levels. Its like shortage on top of shortage.)

There were even a couple instances where people were crushed to death at bakeries. We, the humanitarians, were screaming about the flour shortage. Israel was like no, the humanitarians are lying there is flour and broadcast images of flour moving into Gaza.

It’s true, flour was moving into Gaza. But what Israel did not talk about, and what governments and much of the mainstream media did not bother to look into was this inconvenient part of the story: Israel was allowing flour to move into the NORTHERN part of Gaza. We, aid organizations, were not permitted by Israel to move that flour through Netzarim to central and south Gaza where the majority of the population was and where the shortage of flour existed.

Conversely we were not allowed to move hygiene kits, food and so on from south/central to the north. This resulted in the flour shortage in south/central and the shortage of everything else in Gaza City/the north.

It was one of the evil genius ways that Israel used a half-truths and turned that into an accepted truth for the rest of the world, especially it’s supporters, aka the United States and Europe. And Israel could happily call humanitarians liars and everyone else just gobbled up that story.

I remember back then thinking to myself “Israel doesn’t need to bomb Gaza. It can just keep up the status quo and everyone will die.”

Fast forward to present day. Fast forward through Israel deliberately shutting off all aid entry in 2025, the abomination called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” that was a horrendous real life Squid Games only the players were starving Palestinians forced to make a death run towards food as Israeli soldiers fired on them, through the famine the UN declared, the farce of President Trump’s “Board of Peace” and the ceasefire deal that isn’t being implemented by any stretch of the imagination. The US/Israel say that Hamas is refusing to disarm, Hamas says it cannot even consider that as long as Israel continues to bomb and push its “yellow line” further into Gaza. Reminder: Netanyahu recently said that “70% is just the start”.

(Read this for an update on those negotiations.)

I despise the question of “are things better than they were?”, often responding “better than what? the baseline has moved into the depths of a nightmare none of us can understand.

On that Nov 2024 trip of mine to Gaza City I met a little boy named Osama in the same hospital. He moved his mouth to speak but no sound came out. Osama was playing marbles in the street with other kids when the Israeli strike happened. His parents cannot grasp this reality of theirs. He was just playing marbles outside they say over and over again. Marbles.

The nurse pumps an ambu bag, allowing Osama to squeak out a couple sentences. He says he’s hot but actually he doesn’t know if he is or not, he cant feel anything. There is shrapnel high up in his spine, he’s paralyzed.

He says he wants to go home, he wants to ride his bike. And he says “I want to travel”. He means outside of the Gaza Strip, for medical treatment, but already back then the list was thousands long.

Today that list is closer to 16,500 people who need medical evacuation despite the “partial re-opening” of the Rafah crossing. The so-called “ceasefire deal” that was meant to see a regular flow of medical evacuations and Palestinians being permitted to return to Gaza, but its more like a drop trying to squeeze itself out of a tap. In fact at this rate of medical evacuations, it will take years for all those who need urgent treatment to actually get out, ie they will die or be permanently disabled. Responsibility for that does not just lie with Israel. Countries are not coming forward and offering to take cases.

Add to that the litany of “games” that Israel plays to obstruct the access of aid, ranging from new regulations that mean that many of the largest aid organizations cannot bring their own items in, the rejection of items like baby incubators, reconstruction materials, medicine and so on. Sound familiar? Sound like I could be writing about 2024 or any timeframe over the last nearly three years now?

To go even further, aid organizations face funding shortages and soaring prices that are forcing humanitarian partners to, as is stated in the UN’s report from early June, to scale down or suspend certain critical services. Back in May the World Central Kitchen cut its hot meal distributions in Gaza by half, stating “This decision is driven entirely by financial pressure. It does not reflect any reduction in need on the ground”

I’m often asked what scares me the most when it comes to Gaza. There is a lot. But the shortest answer is “That the current conditions become the accepted norm. That much in the way many lamented Palestine and specifically the open air prison of Gaza pre-Oct 7th but did little to try to change that, the level of suffering now will turn into something that we just lament before going on to drink our lattes and sit in our air conditioning.”

Prologue: I last left Gaza in Dec 2024. I tried to re-enter in Feb/Mar 2025 and was denied four times in a row. I am still denied entry & going through the process of trying to appeal that through Israeli courts. It is moving like molasses. My charity INARA’s Gaza team does incredible work, I am in constant awe of them, not just in terms of the way that they selflessly serve their own people, but the way that they have held onto their dignity and humanity through it all.

If you want a funny but not funny back story of the absurd, read this earlier Substack piece of mine “Israeli soldiers swabbed my breast implants for explosives”

For the “but Hamas” or the “but Hamas was/is stealing the aid” gang, here is some more reading:

A piece I wrote for the Atlantic Council “I can barely stand or make it through the day’: First-hand views of Gaza’s starvation”

Sky news was the first “mainstream” media outlet to investigate the gangs that the Isreali government armed that were in reality responsible for the majority of the looting. This was not really picked up and/or properly looked into by other outlets.

When I was in Damascus for a few days last week, I could feel the air was thicker, the euphoria of the fall of Assad not entirely gone, not by a stretch but settling into a “al 3alam ta3bana”. It directly translates to “the people are tired” but in Arabic it means so much more than that. It’s the sort of exhaustion that settles into your bones, drags you down, brings about a sort of lethargy. It’s the exhaustion of the soul, of the essence of life.

It’s hardly surprising given what the country and its people have been through not just over the last 15 years but more like the last 50 plus. I was invited to moderate a panel at a conference organize by the Syria Peace Initiative and there are a million and one things to discuss and share. But my starting point is the whole “are you optimistic about Syria”. This attitude that demands a yes or no, that is one of the first things that needs to shift when we talk about the prism through which we view Syria.

My response is always “that’s irrelevant”, much to the frustration and at times irritation of those asking the question. People tend to want a clean answer around which they can base their decision of if they should invest, support, donate etc etc. I find that it also lends itself to the wrong framework for action, which is what Syria needs right now. The better question to ask of oneself – be that a government, investor, donor is: what sort of a Syria do you want to see?

And if we can agree on the baseline of: we want a Syria that is stable, where its citizens can live with the rights so many died and sacrificed for then the framework shifts towards what role can you play to make that happen. How do we give Syria and Syrians the best fighting chance?

Very little of the money pledged to Syria has actually materialized, investors still find it “too risky”, humanitarian efforts, including those of my own charity INARA, remain grossly underfunded. Everyone is waiting for the ideal conditions which are literally impossible to accomplish without those same people/entities working to create those ideal conditions. It’s a ridiculous guaranteed to fail “chicken or the egg” scenario.

“Syria is the posterchild for the consequences of inaction.” Martin Griffiths, former Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator of the United Nations, who was on my panel said.

I struggled to concentrate on the conversation I was moderating in that moment. My mind rolodexing back to all the consequences of inaction in Syria that I witnessed over the years. The young media activists who would become so much more than sources on the ground, and the bonds built over long hours on Skype (yes it was Skype back then, we’re talking 2011/2012) before the majority would invariably go silent, killed or disappeared by the Assad regime. The early morning chats in safe houses I was smuggled to, as artillery fell around us and dark jokes that led to utterly inappropriate yet necessary for the survival of the soul laughter. The way that tents mushroomed into massive displacement camps, the tears of the mothers, the parent sifting through rubble for their dead children’s clothing just to have something to hug, the barely breathing bodies in makeshift clinics. The desperate questions I could not answer without causing the person more pain “Will America stop this now now?”, “How can the world let this happen to us?”, “Why doesn’t anyone care?” …

So world, what is it going to be this time around? Another round of paralytic inaction that results in the worst-case scenario? Or will you give Syria and Syrians a fighting chance this time?

Postscript:

There is a lot more to dissect when we talk about international support which I will get into in later pieces. How international support cannot and should not be conditional. How it’s not just about investment, but proper investment. How the Syrian people’s needs cannot be sidelined and “Syrian led” cannot just just be a phrase that is batted around. How support is not just financial but also supporting Syria’s sovereignty – ie pushing back against Israel’s land grab.

My friend says I shouldn’t use the word “rolodexing” or “mental rolodex” because no one knows what a rolodex is anymore. I still use it all the time.

Just days earlier we had found Steven’s diary in the smoke blackened bedroom of the consulate. We did not skirt any security perimeter or sneak into the consulate. There was no security. It was open season for anyone who wanted to wander around. Plenty of looters had already been through. The diary had a hard black cover, camouflaging it from the looters. It was mostly work notes. Its last words written in what looked to be frantic barely legible writing were “never ending security threats …”

Watch: Our first report from Benghazi

Long story short it kind of blew apart the State Department narrative that Stevens wasn’t aware of the security threats since he’s constantly talking about them in the pages and writing about his growing concerns for Libya. This would later set off a whole investigation into how far up the chain did his concerns go, what happened to his requests for additional security measures and was a big part of the Hillary Clinton Benghazi fiasco into security lapses.

The State Department took CNN to town over our reporting on the contents of the diary. Vogue ended up doing a whole piece on it.

Read: Vogue article

It was not a decision that CNN took lightly. We first had to verify that the diary was in fact his by cross checking some of the dates in it with publicly known meetings and travel. I transcribed it. CNN notified the State Department that we had his diary and they asked us to hand it over to the Italians. By the way, the Italians then promptly gave Italian journalists access to its contents.

The details which we reported were very specific ONLY to his concerns about security and about how he feared that he was on a hit list. The decision was made that this was newsworthy, especially since it was a clear contradiction of the State Department’s narrative.

But back to this doctor. Remember it’s just days after the attack. Benghazi is on edge. Security is super dodgy. The CIA was both onsite at the embassy and operating out of an annex nearby. That night the annex was also attacked. It was a very badly kept secret.

I take my seat across from the doctor, ready to start the interview. He is shaking and sweating buckets. He then jumps up and bolts out of the room, running through the lobby screaming that we are CIA trying to kill him. Our security consultant (yes we had those, no they were not armed) and Libyan producer chase after him. I am chasing after them thinking “the last thing we need is everyone at this hotel thinking we are CIA”. The doctor runs through cars in the parking lot and hides behind one. I scream at our security guy to stop chasing he man who is scared of the CIA since, like many security types, he looks like he walked out of the pages of the CIA fact book.

Hilarious yes. But also speaks volumes.

Once our Libyan producer got him to calm down, reassured him that we were in fact journalists, the doctor confessed that he thought that we had some sort of a spray that would shoot out of the camera lens and kill him once the camera switched on. He was convinced we were an American team of assassins. As for why we would want to kill him? Stevens was rescued from the flames of the consulate by Libyans who had rushed to the scene once the gunfire died down. He was pulled out of the building alive, but barely. By the time he arrived to the hospital and the doctor’s care he was already dead. The doctor was terrified that the Americans would blame him for Steven’s death and assassinate him as revenge.

Prologue: We would on that trip interview Libyan guards at the compound, Libyan security forces and others whose testimonies to us continued to poke holes in the State Department narrative.

In the week after Steven’s death protestors took to the streets of Benghazi to demonstrate against the attack and declare their love and appreciation for all that Chris Stevens had done for their country. They wanted the world to know that they did not condone the attack.

We returned to Benghazi later and did an in-depth investigation into the attack, which included an interview with Ahmed Abu Khatallah, a key suspect, who was wanted by the US. The interview was audio only and took place in a hotel lobby. Suffice to say both the State Department and the CIA were super pissed that CNN interviewed a guy they were looking for.

Watch: Our interview with Abu Khatallah

Sarmad and I won the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for our coverage, along with the rest of the CNN team.

Sarmad, may he rest in peace, died suddenly of natural causes two years later. He was one of the most talented cameramen I’ve ever worked with. His images were utterly ethereal. He was also one of the funniest people you’ll ever meet.

Ahmed Abu Khatallah was captured in June of 2014 and brought to the US for trial. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison. In 2024 he was sentenced to another 28 years.

I felt a chill of horror, my mind created the visuals of what that really meant, scenes I witnessed in person during my four trips to Gaza post Oct 7^th with my charity INARA before Israel denied me entry with no reason given. Visuals we have all seen on our social media feeds or in the news. Little limp lifeless bodies carried out of the rubble. The primal cries of the agony of loss. The heavy exhausted steps of a population who cannot carry the weight of what is being demanded of them just to stay alive, the haunted look in people’s eyes.

Netanyahu’s demeanor is that of a man who knows that there will be no consequences for his rhetoric or his actions. He is utterly relaxed, smiling as he talks about how at the start of the so-called peace plan in October 2025 Israel occupied 50% of Gaza, then took 60% and now this directive to take even more.

The media did pick up on this, headlines all over talking about this directive to take 70%, but there’s a crucial point in Netanyahu’s smirking declaration. The words “LETS START WITH THAT.”

There are some who are analyzing this as Netanyahu playing to his specific audience, he was talking at a conference at a settlement in the occupied West Bank, and their calls for Israel to fully take occupy Gaza and re-establish settlements there.

The concept of pandering to your base is one thing, politicians and world leaders do it all the time, as is the use of rhetoric to pressure an opponent or party at a negotiating table. But to dismiss this merely as pre-election political blah blah or a pressure tactic is rather naïve against the backdrop of Israel’s actions since Oct 7^th.

These are not comments made in a vacuum. Outside of Gaza, Israel has expanded its occupation of the West Bank, of Lebanon, of Syria. From the onset Israeli leaders have specifically expressed their ultimate goal. Just one example is last year when Netanyahu expressed his support for “Greater Israel”, comments which caused condemnation and an outcry across the region, not that is made much of a difference.

Unsurprisingly there has been, as of this writing, no reaction from the Board of Peace. Barely a hiccup from Europe. Deafening silence from Arab countries. Then again that has pretty much been par for the course. What can change any of this? The quick fix answer to that is the same as it has always been: The United States of America. Be it the Trump administration or the Biden one, America knows this as well.

But to lay this fully squarely on the US is to allow others to abdicate responsability. Arab countries, namely Gulf countries, if we lived in a world where the concept of Arab unity existed as anything but a concept, do have power. Perhaps not to pressure Israel as much as to pressure the US. But that would take a level of courage that no nation whether in the region or out of it as exhibited to date.

Europe has sanctioned some Israeli leaders, some agreements have been suspended, there has been a small degree of economic isolation, but most of it has been performative and hardly carries the weight of what Europe and others can actually really do.

I flash back to one encounter I had in Gaza. A mother had grabbed my arm after hearing that part of the work we do was with mental health for children.

“My son he’s 7.” She said. “Every night he screams and convulses. He’s been doing this ever since he saw his younger sister’s head fly off when the bomb hit our house.”

“Where were you?” I had asked.

“I was there too” she had responded.

In that moment, I had felt like my brain froze. It wasn’t just the horror of what she was describing, it was her tone of voice. Utterly monotone as if she was commenting on the weather.

It hits me just how deep she’s had to bury her own emotions, how much she has to fight everyday to make sure they don’t surface, that they don’t break her. It’s as if she’s reading my mind because then she says “I know, but I have other children who are still alive. They need me.”

To try to frame Netanyahu’s comments as anything but what they are – a declaration that 70% is JUST THE START – is, at this stage unconscionably naïve.

“I feel the weight of all the black bags. So many black bags. Did you see the black bags?” M mutters when her voice returns, curled up in a corner of my couch with my cat Burrito happily purring away in her lap. I’m grateful in that moment that my cats are little cheaters and non-selective in their cuddles.

M is a journalist who just got out of Iran and has been crashing at my place. She’s referring to the black bags of the dead, zipped, unzipped, sobs and wails as people searched for those they loved.

“What do you know about the people of Iran!” She explodes at the TV set we have on in the background. It’s an old white man, of course, on a talk show on a major network. I know him from my Iraq years and suffice to say he understood Iraq as well as I understand technology (just in case it’s not clear I don’t understand technology).

Her anger is more than justified. I also carry a version of it, the version that’s a byproduct of my own life and experiences, the disgust at how a people’s story, perspective, diversity gets hijacked by the media, governments, armchair pundits.

M has a list in her phone that she shares with me. Short choppy sentences.

The ways IRGC massacred Iranians in January:

The finishing shot (forehead shot at close range)

They shot people in the head, leaving their brains splattered across the asphalt.

There were trucks full of bodies

Using axes for killing

Shot from behind

Killed those who their hands were tied

Taking Money for bullets from families of killed people.

Using Poison gas and toxic pellets

Execution without trial

Killing the wounded in hospitals

Throat-slitting

Attack on a mourning ceremony

Arrest of family members of those have been killed.

There is no mention of this amid all the blaring headlines of a potential deal between the US and Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices, the global economy. It is all unsurprisingly, appallingly brushed under the proverbial carpet.

“They (the Iranian regime) just bought themselves another 10 years.” M comments.

“If not more” I respond.

The Iranian regime massacred at least 30,000 of its own people in January in the span of just 48 hours, as the country was under an internet blackout, one that still continues today.

How many deaths can a people endure? Physical killing, psychological killing. And as if that was not wretched enough, we kill their voice either by negating it, refusing to recognize it’s diversity, wanting to shove it into a neat little monochrome soundbite box to be regurgitated over and over.

M wrote the list at the time in January to have a record, to have something to do, because what does a person do when their brain wants to explode, when the eyes witness when the mind cannot comprehend?

“No one knows, no one understands these brutal evil murders. No one understand what we have been through.” She says. It’s true. We don’t. We can’t. I wonder if we realize how lucky we are that most of us don’t.

“I love my country, but my country doesn’t love me.”

M kept the list in her phone, refusing to delete it and any other potentially incriminating content as she crossed from Iran to Turkey. She acknowledges the recklessness of that, she personally knows the consequences of being imprisoned, but in some way it was her parting act of defiance, her own way of saying “F*ck you. I might be leaving for my and my family’s safety, but you will not fully break me.”

“Do people know all this? Did they care? Did it make a difference in anything?” she asks. It’s not a rhetorical question. She did not know what was being reported in the news. That’s what an internet and communications blackout does.

Yes, it was reported on, as the bits and pieces came out I tell her. Did they care? I suppose it depends on who they are, I say. What is “caring” these days? A reshare on social media, a box of “oh I did something” ticked? A “oh did you see what’s been happening in Iran, it’s so horrible” over morning coffee? Writing about it like I’m doing now?

Or is truly “caring” something bigger? Something that requires a certain level of self-sacrifice from those of us on the “outside”? Something that is supposed to be a power so strong it can course correct history?

Did it make a difference? The answer to that is no.

PROLOGUE: M’s identity is being kept anonymous for the obvious reason. Her family is still There is a lot more to M’s story as you can imagine. That is for her to share, when she is ready and how she chooses to do so. This piece is written with her approval.

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Journalism can be damn depressing, aggravating, infuriating, a whole hot mess of really just nasty emotions, especially if like me you spend most of your time in the bowels of the aftermath of grotesque human behavior – ie war. It’s probably why so many of us have a pretty well-honed dark cynical sense of humor (at least we like to think we do).

I do have to say though it is among those who have lost everything that I’ve seen the most generosity, kindness, and compassion. A person with nothing will give you their last cup of coffee. A person with more wealth than they know what to do with won’t even donate a dollar even though you’ve made them cry.

By 2018 I decided that I wanted something at home to make me laugh. A human was a total non-starter. A dog was out of the question, I travel too much. I decided to get rescue kittens, and if you know Istanbul you know that it’s the city of cats. Of course, me being me, I don’t know how to do anything in moderation.

I trot off to the shelter, a kitten climbs the cage and meows at me so I’m like ok that’s my kitten. Then I feel guilty and take his sister and brother. From no cats to three cats. I very quickly learned that I don’t like responsability, I don’t like anything “pulling” me, I don’t like missing something. But it was too late. I fell in love with those furry creatures. They all had diarrhea and would track little poo paw prints all over my place. I walked around with disinfectant spray and a wad of paper towels. It was gross. My Lord of the Rings collection ended up in the trash. (They do have an Instagram page Poo Paws Adventures )

Bear with me, I’m getting to the part about my mama.

At the time I lived in a fifth-floor walkup with a spectacular view over the Galata tower and the mouth of the Golden Horn that spills into the Bosphorus. I had a balcony that I put wire meshing on so that the kittens didn’t fall. When they got older they would sit at the edge of the wire mesh and meow down to all of Istanbul’s street cats galivanting freely around the rooftops.

I had a horrible realization that I had created kitty Gaza. You can see the world out there but you can’t go. And so we moved into my current place, a house with a garden and the cats became indoor/outdoor. Early on when I was letting them out, Burrito didn’t come home. I lost it. I was walking the streets nonstop looking for him, putting up posters (it really doesn’t help to be looking for a tabby in Istanbul, they are everywhere).

I was obsessed, where was he, where was he sleeping, what was he eating. And in that moment I understood why my mama would drive me crazy asking me those questions. I don’t know if it’s just an Arab thing or not but right after “hi mami” it’s “Arwa are you sleeping, are you eating?”

I called my mama sobbing “I’m so sorry I never understood, I didn’t get it, I’m so sorry for all the worry I caused you. Walla (I swear) I’m so sorry.”

“Yee Arwa, after all these years why now? What happened”

“Mami Burrito is lost!” I wailed.

She hung up on me.

I cried and cried. Not for me, not for Burrito but for the well of understanding and of understanding how little I actually understand about the pain of the loss of a child.

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Prologue: I found Burrito the next day, day 4 of his misadventure. Idiot somehow got into a locked up abandoned house a block away and appeared howling his head off at a window I had walked past probably a dozen times calling for him. Who knows how he got in here, the owner was shocked when I tracked him down and said “my cat is in your house.”

If I had known how much I would love those little morons with their stupid faces and paws I would not have gotten them.

For those of you worried about them being alone: They have a cat door that opens on their microchips. There is no litter box in the house, they go outside. Their feeder is automatic. They have a self-cleaning water fountain with 5 liters in it. They get checked on regularly. When I’m gone for long stretches I get someone to stay with them, they don’t need anything done, just a human to cuddle with. I know ridiculous, they are cats. My neighborhood grannies snitch on them to me all the time. “Arwa we saw your cats eating the street cat food.”

On any given day one of our CNN Iraqi staff would arrive to the bureau with a story of someone they knew who was killed. There was one about a relative whose head was cut off and a dog’s head sown on in its place.

For years the American military and diplomats had berated the press for reporting “bad news” (aka the relentless bombings, slaughter, pain and loss) and tried to feed the public a diet of “things are going great” (i.e a school was painted). That is, until things got so bad the Bush administration had to face reality. A troop surge was coming.

The battle to recapture Haifa Street started off with the forces moving forward hugging the buildings, signaling through hand gestures. The unit we’re with starts clearing an apartment building, aka smashing down doors, guns pointed.

There are these tiny purple sequined flip flops outside of one apartment door, lined up next to other larger children’s shoes and adult ones. Breakfast is half-eaten on the table in the kitchen. It’s a story that can only be told in what’s left behind. They left in a hurry. They had kids, one was a little girl that loved sparkly things.

A couple hours in and it’s all in full swing. The platoon we’re with is pinned down on a rooftop by gunmen on a higher building. The roof was encircled by a low wall that we were all lined up against. The bullets were pinging in the middle, so if you didn’t move towards the center, you were OK.

I had been calling in phoners (when you report on the phone) all morning for CNN. it was big breaking news. You could see the smoke rising, the Apache choppers swooping and firing, and hear the gunfire from the CNN Baghdad bureau. The network had that shot up and my voice from the thick of it.

At one point I call in for my next report and the International Desk tells me that they are under instructions from Baghdad Bureau Chief, Cal Perry, not to put me on air until I call my mother. Oh yes.

Mama had obviously caught the breaking news or maybe as often happened someone called to tell her to turn on the TV and that her daughter was doing something crazy again. Either way, the conversation between my mama and Cal had gone something like this:

“Get my daughter out of there.”

“Mrs. Damon, I can’t. She’s in a firefight. And even if I could she probably wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Get my daughter out of there because you do not want to be talking to me to tell me that she’s injured or dead.”

Arab Mama lioness coupled with guilt trip. Works every time. He was totally freaked out. I mean fair enough, no one ever wants to make that call or really think about it.

I threw my own tantrum and got back on air.

While that was the first time, it would not be the only time that my mama has called my managers or bosses to demand that they extract me or disclose my whereabouts. Her response when I try to tell her that it’s not appropriate, that I’m an adult and it’s a major network, is always something along the lines of “C-N-N, Fiiii-N-N, YOU THINK BECAUSE YOU ARE ON TV WITH CNN YOU ARE SOMETHING NOW? I BIRTHED YOU! YOU CAME FROM MY LOINS! I HAVE A RIGHT TO CALL ANYONE AT ANYTIME TO KNOW WHERE MY DAUGHTER IS!”

For those of you who don’t know, my mama is Syrian, I grew up bilingual. So, if you are at all familiar with Arabic, translate that to yourself, it’s way funnier. Suffice to say my mama was legendary when I was at CNN. The people at the desk used to play hot potato with the phone whenever she called.

POSTSCRIPT:

I tried to find that same apartment building, ask about the little girl with the purple sequined flip flops. I never found her. I carry those stories with me, the stories that I can’t properly tell, the stories of the owners of the little shoes that litter battlefields.

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This was mostly a success story, of how the Zakouma national park in Chad, under the management of African Parks, managed to get poaching under control although the potential threat from poachers was getting more sophisticated. We saw baby elephants, and I died from cuteness.

More importantly, it was a big deal because the elephant population had been so traumatized by all the poachers hunting them down, they had not had babies for five years.

One day, we’re puttering around with the park director, Rian Labuschagne and one of the rangers and we see two guys on horseback who are not supposed to be there. Now the park did have a mounted patrol, we’d gone out with them.

This was not them. All I was thinking was “poachers!” along with “why can’t we just have a chill shoot”.

We chase after them in a 4x4, but these horses are flying. They are going to fast we can’t catch up and they disappear into the brush. Then we find a camel (stay with me it’s going to make sense). Ahhhh, maybe they aren’t poachers, maybe they are from the local community, looking for their lost camel. Regardless, they are still not supposed to come into the park on their own, they are supposed to notify and then come blah blah. So Rian leaves the ranger with the camel and the radio so he can communicate with park HQ.

We decide to drive around and see if we can find these intruders. Suddenly we spot one and the 4x4 takes off again. Before you know it, we’re in muck that just gets deeper. The horse is stuck; the rider jumps off and runs away. Rian tries to chase him, but this tall white man has no chance of catching up with the lithe and nimble local.

So, there we are. We have a stuck vehicle we unsuccessfully try to dig out. No radio because it’s with the ranger with the camel. We do, however, have a horse. Me and my big mouth pipe up with “I know how to ride, I’ll just ride back to HQ and get help.”

Now, mind you, unlike the patrol horses, this horse does not have a saddle. And it’s really skinny. And the bridle is just a rope. I mean I’m a really good rider, I once was floating the idea of going pro. I’ve ridden bareback loads of times before, no dramas. I’m hoisted on the back of this poor creature, I give it a gentle cluck and tap with my legs and it just bolts. And I mean bolts. Remember when I said the 4x4 couldn’t catch up? Yeah.

I’m doing everything I know to slow it down. Pulling on the reins is useless. I try to turn it (if you ride a horse into a circle it will slow down), the horse trips and suddenly I’m hanging off its neck, I can see the ground and the stones whizzing past and I’m having to make that split second calculation of “do I let go and risk getting hurt but there’s no one around or do I try to find superhuman strength and scramble back up.” I went with option two, eventually ride it into a bunch of bushes and phew we’re back to a manageable walk.

I head back to where I left the crew who were walking in my general direction totally freaking out that they were going to find me in a heap. I hop down and realize my ass really hurts. It’s getting dark, lions are out, we can hear them roar and we’re basically walking along with their dinner. Not good.

Eventually we make it back and my ass is killing me. I try to use a mirror to see what’s going on. Can’t tell. In the shower I put my hand between my butt cheeks, and it comes out bloody and pussy. Someone must look for me. I have two choices, producer Brent Swails or cameraman Ben Adams. They were having beers when I rocked up.

“Guys someone has to look in my ass.”

“What?”

“It’s all bloody and pussy in there and I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Brent it’s you.” There is no way Adam was doing that and well, Brent at the time was junior to the both of us. The curse of youth.

Ah Brentie. Brent was one of the best producers at the network based out of CNN’s Johannesburg bureau. I did all my Africa stuff with him, we were super close, and really good friends, the kind that just look at each other and burst into giggles.

Still, I mean you never want to end up face down on a bed with a colleague having to spread your butt cheeks to see what’s going on. I couldn’t stop laughing. Brent was mortified and legit traumatized. It was disgusting. My butt cheeks must have cracked open over the skinny horse’s spine during our mad gallop and my even crazier attempt to stay on. I had massive oozing bloody blisters all up in there close to my butt hole. Poor Brent had to clean and bandage them for me twice a day. Me being me, I was telling everyone the story and one of the pilots said I should use Vaseline. Brent got spared, I could handle that on my own. But let me tell you, it sucks to be running around in that heat, sweating buckets and then have that sweat mix in with Vaseline and run down your legs. And I couldn’t sit down properly. I was miserable.

Postscript: I find this whole story utterly hilarious. Brent doesn’t understand why I tell everyone because its so mortifying. There is a male horse in Zakouma named Arwa. Brent got nicknamed Butt Boy by his manager.

Here is some of the coverage we did.

Chad elephant poaching article

Chad elephant poaching video report

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Coming next: That time when my mama blocked my live coverage from a firefight

The battle for Samarra in October 2004 was my first real embedded offensive. Prior to that I had covered the fighting between the US military and the Shi’a militant group, the Mehdi Militia, in Kufa but we were staying on a base, going on quick operations, and often the fighting came to us since the base was regularly attacked. I had also done other smaller missions with the Americans; going out on whatever menu the US had to offer ranging from patrols in markets to under cover of darkness HVT (high value target) capture missions.

I was a perma-lance (what freelancers that were regularly hired by a network were called) producer for CNN back then, crammed into the back of an APC (Armored Personnel Carrier) with correspondent Jane Arraf, cameraman Neil Hallsworth, and anywhere between 8-12 American soldiers. We were parked outside of Samarra, part of the military’s “hurry up and wait” which essentially is like getting woken up by someone barking “CNN LET’S GO” and then waiting for hours for something to start.

Practically speaking it’s getting all the military’s various units into position under cover of darkness and waiting for daybreak. Either way, I really had to pee. I mean REALLY had to pee. Each time the troops cracked the back of the APC to try to let me out, RPG’s (rocket propelled grenades) would fly in. The males could piss out of the back by just barely cracking it open, ie RPG safe. Me, not so much. Neil comes up with the ingenious idea of cutting the top off a one-liter water bottle for me to pee into. And so yes, smushed between two soldiers, I drop my pants, squirm around, and do my business. It was pitch black in there, and only later did I remember that all the soldiers had night vision goggles, but frankly in circumstances like that who cares.

(Note to readers: The vast majority of my stories have an element of a desperate need for a toilet or a female related disaster. That’s just the reality of it.)

President George W. Bush had declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq 17 months earlier, and the Americans were in total denial that their Iraq project was unravelling and victory was a total farce. In fact it was such a farce that the press pretty much had to cover anything happening outside of Baghdad by being embedded. Far from ideal, but it was the only way to get around the country and cover what was happening, and for me since I am an Arabic speaker, it provided the opportunity to speak to people. Even in Baghdad by then it was super risky, though little did we know that it would get much much worse.

When it came to Samarra, Sunni insurgents had taken over the city, the areas around it had turned into no-go zones for the US military and the fledgling Iraqi security forces, ie they got attacked or blown up. The US had disbanded Saddam Hussein’s army upon taking over Iraq and in one fell swoop created loads of pissed off unemployed men, ie the insurgency. Over time their ranks would grow and elements of them would become more extreme.

This fledgling army, which the Americans started from scratch was nicknamed by us in the press as the “flip flop” soldiers, for no reason other than they were so poorly equipped most did not have proper boots, so were literally in flip flops. They had practically zero fighting experience, and the training exercises we covered were a joke. (Note: all this would change over years as the ISF gained real on the ground experience fighting for the next two decades).

As such, at the time, there would be the obligatory Iraqis attached to the Americans because the US really wanted to promote “joint operations”. I think that the US unit I was with had two of them.

I remember the sun rising casting its pink-orange glow over a sleeping city, or at least one that appeared to be sleeping. I remember wondering if Samarra’s civilians had any idea what was to come. I remember the first gunshots, cracking in the distance, echoing through the silence of Samarra’s streets and the crescendo as it grew into a full-fledged battle. I remember how the soldiers we were with would lay down suppressive fire; basically shooting down alleyways and streets so that the rest of the troops could cross.

I was so tired that each time we would pause I’d fall asleep, couldn’t have been for more than a few seconds at a time, redefining and later in my career perfecting my ability to sleep anywhere for any amount of time. At one point I totally passed out only to open my eyes and see that I was sleeping next to a small pile of fly covered rotting meat. It was not a high point.

And then there is that one memory, the one that always emerges whenever I’m asked about war, the one that clenched and twisted my guts.

The guns had settled, the Americans had declared victory, and we were driving to the morgue where Samarra’s civilians were permitted to identify and collect the bodies of the dead. I looked out through the filth covered thick bullet proof glass of the backseat of the Humvee. A woman was stumbling through a field of dirt, her steps so thick, it was as if she did not want to reach where she was going. I remember her falling to her knees, her black head covering falling off, dark chestnut hair tumbling out.

And then she wailed. “WHHHYYYYYYYYYY”

Or at least that’s what it sounded like. It was a sound so primal, so visceral, so deep, that as a write I can still feel that now familiar tentacle of another’s pain grip my own throat. It was a sound I did not know then a human could emit.

Postscript: We didn’t see any civilians until we got to the morgue after two days of fighting. We never got that woman’s name, but someone told me it was her brother who had been killed. The whole scene at the morgue was layers of sad and angry. The rhetoric of war whitewashes pain, all that is lost. The Americans constantly and consistently declared victory, be it in Samarra, later in Falluja, and later in all of Iraq. By Americans I don’t mean those who were on the ground, on the day to day missions, they quickly saw through it all. They lived the reality. But by the time the reports went up through each level of the chain of command “its a disaster” eventually turned into “things are going great”. The top military and government/diplomatic officials just wanted to be able to quickly scream “we won”. Their failures and inability to understand the dynamics of Iraq either deliberately or through willful ignorance, would a decade later be a major factor in the rise of ISIS.

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The young female IDF soldier looks rather sheepish as she waves her hands over my chest and asks “Silicon?”

I startle.

“Yes, they look great, don’t they?” I respond in a slightly joking, slightly sarcastic tone. “I didn’t know you could see this in the scanner.”

The female soldier signals at me to wait. I don’t think she speaks English.

It’s December 2024 and I am exiting Gaza, having just spent a month there with my charity INARA.

My bladder is about to explode since the convoy took four hours to get to the crossing. Nothing is permitted to move through Israel’s so called “red zone” without permission. The red zone areas are areas under IDF control where a mouse farting will have a bomb land on its head. They are not demarcated.

Any movement through these areas requires coordination with the IDF. Once that comes through, the vehicles move to a “holding point” that is designated by Israel and waits for the “green light” to proceed forward through a pre-designated route. It’s still all rather nerve wracking as there have been a bunch of times where the IDF fired on vehicles whose movements were approved. Remember the triple tap on the World Central Kitchen convoy in Apr 2024 that killed seven of their staff? That’s the one that made the biggest splash in the news, but there have been loads of others.

That morning those of us rotating out met at the usual spot to catch the convoy. The road there, like all in Gaza dilapidated and potholed, lined with the rubble and wreckage of where life used to be. It had rained; my eye catches a little girl with no shoes on standing in the mud. Just as we’re about to reach the “holding point” we pass a man on a bicycle, his son on the back. He waves with the brightest smile. I smile and wave back, but I’m breaking inside. I’m breaking over it all, and I’m breaking over this man who still has the grace to smile at us even though we’ve failed them.

(Video from my last trip out of Gaza. December 2024)

It’s all rather surreal, but then again everything about Gaza is. Dystopian. Apocalyptic. Catastrophic. How do you describe something that is beyond the limits of existing words? This is my fourth trip into Gaza since Oct 7^th and there is no “getting used to it”. The mind continues to be unable to process what the eyes see.

We were stopped at the holding point for hours. I was cursing the three coffees I had chugged earlier. At one point a tank fired into a building a few dozen yards to our left and then when we finally moved, I saw a quadcopter drop a bomb on something out of the corner of my eye as we sped down the road.

When we finally arrive to the Karam Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom as you’ll hear it referred to more often) crossing, we ask the soldiers if us women can go through first. There are loads of men in our group and only a handful of us females, and we all need to pee. Plus, coincidentally we’re all middle aged and menopausal and well, bladder control isn’t what it used to be.

But no. The men are to go through first.

By the time I’m pulled aside after the body scanner (the ones where you put your arms up), I’m doing the cross your legs over each other please don’t let me piss my pants dance. I’m in a small concrete bunker with a fisheye camera and I’m sure that the soldiers watching me through it are having a field day.

The female comes back with a wand, waves it over my chest and signals again at me to wait.

She returns again and this time swabs my chest. You know when at security they will swab your hands and electronics with that piece of paper? Yeah, she swabs my breasts with that. She actually looks rather embarrassed.

“You know if I was smuggling some sort of explosive out of Gaza in my boobs I would have gone for a double D and not a B cup.” I crack sarcastically, but its wasted. She has no idea what I’m saying or she has a really good poker face. I beeline for the toilet.

Postscript:

When I tried to return to Gaza a few months later, in Feb and March I was denied entry by Israel. I am still denied entry & going through the process of trying to appeal that. My charity INARA is still working inside with our incredibly dedicated team.

Follow INARA on instagram

Learn more about INARA's work in Gaza

Here is one of the interviews I did from Gaza for CNN during that last Nov/Dec trip:

Amanpour CNN Interview

For additional clarification: Journalists are not and have not been permitted entry into Gaza to report independently. I left CNN in 2022 and since then have been focused on my charity INARA, other projects and all sorts of bits and pieces. Also to add, I do not take a salary from INARA.

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Coming next: That time when I really heard the sound of pain for the first time.