Witness to my people’s pain: Stories from the war on Gaza

By Ruwaida Amer

For more than two years, Palestinian journalist and teacher, Ruwaida Amer, has been documenting the everyday horror of living through relentless bombardments and displacement. In this piece, she describes why she will never stop speaking about Gaza

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It wasn’t chance that led me to become a writer and journalist. It was because I am a Palestinian who lives in a war zone. My experiences of displacement and homelessness started when I was eight years old.

In 2000, on the night of Eid al-Fitr, while we were celebrating the end of Ramadan, the Israeli army demolished my home with bulldozers and destroyed the entire neighbourhood.

The next morning, I went in my Eid clothes to check on the house. I had been told the army had demolished it, but I wanted to see for myself. There was nothing left. I sat on the rubble and looked around. I couldn’t see any trace of my house. I wanted to search for anything under the rubble, but I just sat there, unable to express my shock at the scene.

There were journalists around me, most of them foreigners speaking another language, and some journalists speaking Arabic. I was a silent, shocked child with a great sadness inside me for the childhood home where I lived beautiful moments with my grandmother, the only person I loved so much in this world.

I never forgot that tragic scene. When I grew up, I studied biology at university, but I was always drawn to writing. I wanted to be a voice for children who couldn’t express what was inside them. That’s why I chose to become a journalist - because of the difficult situation I experienced in my childhood under the Israeli occupation.

When the last war started on October 7, 2023, I had a feeling this would be different. My family were so afraid for my life that, previously, I hadn’t reported on any wars. When the October 7 war started, my colleagues asked me to cover it. This time, I said yes.

I am a journalist but I am also a citizen of Gaza. I live under the same conditions as the people I write about. My responsibilities are threefold: as a citizen, a journalist and as a teacher.

War is genocide. It has killed tens of thousands of civilians in horrific attacks. Families have gone. Children have become orphaned, burdened with responsibilities beyond their years. A severe famine brought us to our knees in Gaza, and the world watched, doing nothing but airdropping aid, which only increased the number of martyrs instead of providing a humane and dignified rescue for the children of Gaza.

The stories that have affected me most are the children’s stories. Through my own harsh experiences as a child, I vowed to be a voice for children and people in general. That’s why most of my stories are humanitarian and focus on children. All my work is very important to me, but the personal stories and videos I recorded were painful. I’m re-traumatised every time I look at them,

I consider famine an affront to human dignity – to wake up not knowing if we were going to eat that day, to be forced to search for bird and animal feed just to survive. This is a humiliating experience for humanity and, unfortunately, we were forced to live through it, but we resisted that period to survive.

We are still fighting for our lives. What Gaza is experiencing is a sham ceasefire. We must keep our eyes on Gaza; we must never be silent about Gaza. Our message is not over.

I am that child whose house was demolished 25 years ago. I became a journalist, speaking about that experience and witnessing nearly five wars, including a genocide. They demolished my house again during this last war, forcing me to relive that painful experience.

I will not stop speaking about Gaza. If I were invited to thousands of meetings and travelled around the world, I would tell what happened to me in my childhood, what I endured during the siege, and what I experienced during the October War.

Ultimately, words fail to describe what we have experienced.

Ruwaida has partnered with Australian not-for-profit book publisher Palaver to publish a collection of her news reports, written between October 2023 and September 2025 and originally published across major outlets including ABC News International, Slate Magazine and Al Jazeera. The book, ‘Stories from the war on Gaza’, is available as a free PDF or can be purchased as a physical book. All proceeds will go to Ruwaida, and will help to rebuild her and her family’s home.

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About the author

Ruwaida Amer

Ruwaida Amer is a teacher and journalist in Gaza. She comes from a refugee family displaced at the formation of Israel. Her family lived in a refugee camp in Khan Yunis in Gaza until Ruwaida was eight; they have been displaced several times and recently seen their home razed to the ground.. Ruwaida continues to teach and to publish her reports from Gaza in major international news outlets, including Al Jazeera, The Electronic Intifada, +972 Magazine, Slate Magazine, abc News International and Middle East Eye.