Iran Turned Heads. Israel Turned Out to Be a Paper Tiger.
They cut the lines. We don’t die quiet. The world’s shouting, Free Palestine!
My aunt made these for my daughters. Two tiny fighters sewn from scraps—love stitched with survival.
June 15, 6:58 AM – Dublin, Ireland
The sunlight in Dublin always feels too clean. Almost surreal. It’s morning. Rain taps against the windows in that soft way I’ve grown to love. I roll over in bed and check my phone.
Five messages—three from friends, one from my neighbor, one from my mom. All with the same anxious undertone. The one that only shows up when there’s been too much silence from Gaza.
I call my aunt.
The line crackles. Fails.
Her phone’s screen broke during a nearby airstrike. The replacement phone died—she’d been charging it through a street vendor’s solar panel setup, one of the few lifelines left in a city flattened by genocide.
I try again.
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June 15, 7:03 AM – Dublin / 9:03 AM – Gaza
Her voice finally comes through. Shaky. Drained.
“I’ve missed hearing your voice,” she says. That cuts deeper than any I love you ever could.
My aunt isn’t sentimental. This is the same woman who sewed dolls out of rags and crocheted tiny jackets for them—meticulously, beautifully—just for my kids. She fed a football team’s worth of people every Friday. Her love language was loud, practical, fierce. She used to nudge my homebody mom to pack cheese sandwiches, hummus, and pastries for weekend picnics at the park. She walked for miles without ever looking tired.
Now her voice is smaller. She’s lost over 60 pounds—no diabetic meds, no blood pressure pills. Just hunger. Dehydration. Grief.
She doesn’t say I love you anymore. She says:
“You’re doing good work.”
“I’m glad to hear your voice.”
That terrifies me.
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June 6 – Istanbul Airport, 2:17 AM local time
I was in transit when the line first failed. Sitting at Istanbul airport, heading back to Dublin. Staring at my phone like it owed me answers. I knew something was wrong. I just didn’t know how bad.
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June 11 – Gaza Blackout
That’s when Israel bombed the last functioning communication cable into Gaza. Not by mistake. Deliberately.
Just like they’ve targeted bakeries. Ambulances. Journalists. Schools.
That cable wasn’t military infrastructure. It was how aid workers coordinated. How families checked in. How I knew if the people I love were still breathing.
Cutting Gaza off isn’t collateral damage. It’s policy.
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June 13 – The Occupied Gaza Strip, Palestine
Over 300 Palestinians killed in less than 48 hours. Many of them children. Many of them bleeding out next to sacks of flour they waited days to receive—bags heavier than their malnourished bodies.
This isn’t war. It’s a mass experiment in how far starvation, silence, and siege can be pushed before the world even flinches.
They’ve been starving us for two years. And still, we try to live.
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June 14 – Israel killed more.
Meanwhile, Iran fired back.
Hundreds of drones and missiles aimed at the Israeli regime after it bombed residential buildings in Iran—killing scientists and their children while they slept.
Netanyahu had the audacity to say they spilled the blood of Iranian families to prevent a war.
The same war the zionist regime wanted.
Begged for.
Started.
The first casualty reported?
A child, pulled lifeless from the rubble.
That image? It’s familiar.
Palestinians know it. So do families in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria.
The pain’s not new. But you never get used to it.
Israel didn’t just spill more blood, it had the nerve to demand backup.
From the U.S., from Europe, from anyone still clinging to the myth.
Turns out, all that “mighty army” talk falls apart when someone fights back.
Paper. Tiger.
This isn’t gloating.
I’m Palestinian. I’ve buried too many to celebrate anyone’s death.
But when resistance hits from more than one direction, the apartheid state folds.
When the world stops pretending the oppressor is the victim, the mask slips.
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Back to Dublin, back to now
I call again and the line rings, I’m on cloud nine, because dopamine in my brain is now connected to knowing my loved ones are still alive.
My aunt answers, she is frustrated with the line, it’s choppy. I don’t want to bombard her with questions, so I listen but don’t hear children in the background anymore. Her house used to sound like a zoo, everyone is screaming, laughing, singing, living. Now? Nothing.
I ask, “Are they okay?”
She sighs.
I regret asking. But how could I not?
How do they survive what I can barely process from thousands of miles away?
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Reminder: This is not new
I used to obsess over electricity and water. My partner would tease me for it.
But how do you explain that I’ve lived the meaning of not having it? That water rationed by occupation tastes like punishment? That power outages become part of your psyche?
Zionists say, “Israel has the right to defend itself.”
Defend what?
The ethnic cleansing it’s been perfecting for 77 years?
The stolen land? The caged humans? The babies shot reaching for bread?
My ancestors shared land with Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. That’s history.
But the settler colonial state that rose after? That was built on our bones.
Even some Palestinian Jewish families who stayed refused to accept this as Judaism. Because it’s not Judaism—it’s militarized apartheid.
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Right now, in the streets
I’ve covered protests. Uprisings. Riots. Liberation marches.
But this? This is different.
It’s not just the usual students and activists anymore.
It’s doctors, kids, parents, teachers, baristas, tattoo artists, vets, nurses, union workers, cashiers, EMTs, janitors… and yeah, even a few decent politicians sneaking in.It’s people with nine-to-fives and people with nothing left to lose.
This isn’t a trend. It’s a transformation.
A movement they can’t bomb, censor, or bankrupt.
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They walk proud, a global community keeping the promise of the global intifada, telling cowardly leaders and their racist systems straight up:
If you try to silence us, we’ll turn up louder.
If you try to divide us, we’ll stand tighter.
If you try to weaponize our trauma, we’ll heal with rage and purpose.
Watching someone burn and cheering on the arsonist? That’s complicity.
We don’t need perfection. We need raw, brutal honesty.
If you weren’t free, own it.
If you were scared, say it — loud or quiet.
But don’t you dare call this “complicated.”
Genocide is simple. It’s murder.
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There’s mercy in the shock. It helps numb the pain
But losing every one I love slow, live, right now?
That’s death by a thousand blades.
Still, we survive.
Still, we fight.
Still, we clutch our rusty keys, waiting to return.