“If We Stayed Alive” Said 7-year-old Nana
World BEYOND War

(October 21, 2024) —While in her father’s arms during a night of violent bombing, seven-year-old Palestinian Nanawished for seemingly simple pleasures: a house, a garden, a warm meal, a sweet sun, and a clear sky. “If we stayed alive,” she said. She talks of visiting her aunt and grandparents but doesn’t know that her aunt’s house has been eviscerated and her grandfather’s house is a pile of rubble — stripped of memories and family artifacts.

The smell of gunpowder and blood hangs in horrifying darkness. And bodies burn alive under a flame cover in a hospital targeted by US-manufactured missiles. Nana assures her father that she isn’t scared, just nervous. A nuanced distinction she can now recognize: she is anxious. She is just seven years old, and knows the difference.

But what she might not know is that her 13-year-old neighbor, Osama, who dreamed of being a professional soccer star, lost his leg, cousins, and own aunt while playing soccer earlier that day when bombs unexpectedly rained down. [1]

Or, that another neighbor, Medo, a 19-year-old social media influencer, with a global reach and an unparalleled positivity in the midst of such horror, regenerated life through gardening in his tent camp only to be killed when the camp was bombed. [2]

Or, that 20-year-old Shaaban Ahmad, who had been in university studying software engineering, was burned alive in a makeshift hospital while attached to an IV recovering from an injury sustained during an earlier bombing of a mosque in which he had been seeking shelter.

“The nights, especially, are merciless — cold, unforgiving, filled with the anguished cries of children who know only fear and uncertainty,” he said. “I used to have big dreams, but the war has ruined them. It’s taken a toll on me, making me physically and mentally sick. I suffer from depression and hair loss because of the constant trauma we face.” [3]

And she cannot possibly yet comprehend that the weapons used to kill 40 other Palestinans when the United Nations-run al-Sardi school in central Gaza was bombed earlier this year had been manufactured by Honeywell, just one of the handful of US companies profiting from the slaughter and destruction of her people, culture, and way of life, depriving her of both her family’s past and her own future. [4]

We are witnessing a genocide with an alarming degree of escalation each day. It is considered “plausibly” a genocide by the International Court of Justice, a US federal court, and dozens of U.N. experts and legal scholars. But it doesn’t take a legal system, scholar, or expert to see that this is the case. The stories and footage are there. And it’s children who are paying the highest price and will continue to: it was reported that four out of five children in Gaza lived with depression, grief, or fear, even prior to the past year’s attacks. [5]

Since October 7, 2023, the US government has spent $22.76 billion on weapons for Israel. [6] Now it has announced plans to send US troops and a new missile system to Israel. With this unwavering support, the Israeli government has killed well over 100,000 people in Gaza, most of them unarmed civilians. [7] The vast majority of the survivors have been displaced — lives, memories, family artifacts all destroyed — stuck in an occupied territory with food and water scarcities, aid being intentionally blocked, and the US-made and gifted bombs still coming.

Yet, many of us go on with business as usual while others of us feel helpless and don’t know what we can do to help. To stop it. 

This is where World BEYOND War comes in. 

We are exposing the atrocities, uplifting stories that mainstream media does not, and connecting the dots for Americans, all while providing resources, networks, communities, and pathways for divestment, organizing, and educating on the horror and imperialist positioning of actors that are furthering this and other global conflicts.

We make intersectional connections between war and human rights, economies, climate, religious persecution, and more, and are organizing globally to stop the war machine once and for all.

You Can Help End Genocide!
You can share the video of our event this past Saturday, tell the world’s governments to act at the United Nations, tell the US government to cease sending weapons, educate others with these reports, and join one of our chapters taking offline action around the world.

But we can’t continue to do this work without the support of our donors. 

We are up against the Military Industrial Congressional Intelligence Media Academic Think Tank Complex (MICIMATT) that is extremely well funded by the US government and governments around the world. We do not accept money from governments, and get little from foundations — many of which are tied up in conflicting investments or find our work and position too risky or political (we even lost the opportunity for charitable tax status in Canada because the Canada Revenue Agency deemed our peacebuilding work to be “too biased”).

Our work and ability to expand our outreach are dependent on donations from ordinary people who care about ending all war and creating a just peace. 

Thank you for all you do and for considering making a donation to World BEYOND War NOW so that we can stop the war machine from creating such horrifying devastation in Gaza and beyond.

Thank you for everything you do for peace!
—The World BEYOND War team

Footnotes:
1. NBC: “In Gaza, children who survive Israel’s assault face a lifetime of trauma”
2. BBC: “Blogger who documented life in Gaza killed in alleged Israeli strike”
3. Aljazeera: “Shaban al-Dalou: The Palestinian teen burned to death in Israeli bombing”
4. Aljazeera: “US weapons parts used in Israeli attack on Gaza school”
5. Aljazeers: “80% of Gaza children suffer depression after 15 years of blockade”
6. Costs of War Project
7. World BEYOND War: “Undercounting Deaths in Gaza”

World BEYOND War is a global network of volunteers, chapters, and affiliated organizations advocating for the abolition of the institution of war.