Seeing Gaza from Berlin

“Now you have a big family that is always by your side,” my Palestinian friend Nathmi Abushedeq wrote to me in September after I helped him with a personal matter.

On October 26, almost half of my new “big Palestinian family” in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, fell victim to Israeli bombs. Twenty-eight people were recovered dead, and many remained under the rubble.

The distant suffering feels close

I had met the Abushedeqs for the first time in March, after crying incessantly for months over the dystopian news and images from Gaza. To help alleviate my feelings of helplessness, I volunteered to collect medical supplies for Nathmi in Berlin, which he would later transport to Gaza.

I met Nathmi’s brother Ashraf and his cousin Weam, who had been living in Berlin for eight months. Compared to their calmness, my despair felt almost ridiculous. They are from northern Gaza, I learned from Weam.

Images from social media and international media flooded my mind: a sea of white body bags, mutilated bodies, blocked aid deliveries, hunger – people drinking salt water, eating animal feed and grass. Dogs eating human corpses. Starved children emaciated to the bone.

Weam told me that his family, including his wife and three small children, were sheltering in a school in Beit Lahiya. I felt helpless, searching for words of comfort. Weam smiled gently and said, “Alhamdulillah for everything”—praise be to God for everything.

Alhamdulillah – this phrase concluded most of our conversations throughout the day. As Muslims, we believe that everything comes from God and has a purpose, even if we don’t understand it at the moment. God plans for the long term and always for our benefit.

We got to work, joking from time to time. My heart felt a bit lighter. I sensed the resilience often attributed to Palestinians, and I allowed myself to be uplifted by it.

The Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah wrote:

“We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky. We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls, after the last skies … We Palestinians wake up every morning to teach the rest of the world life, sir!”

Into the late evening hours, we transported donations through the city and talked. Our mood resembled a roller coaster – with loops. Weam spoke about life in Gaza and here in Germany, and we joked repeatedly, supporting each other. He and Ashraf showed me photos of their wives and children, bombed houses, and exhausted relatives.

Ashraf had a phone call with his wife and small children, who had taken refuge in Rafah. It sounded painfully normal – as if Dad was just on a business trip. Living under bombs had become a norm in Gaza. The men had endured six wars in their lifetimes.

Ashraf told me that his children had chicken that day— for the first time since the beginning of this aggression. My heart sank again. Was it their only meal of the day? Were they also living on just 200 calories a day like so many people in Gaza? Were they cold at night? How many dead and mutilated people had they already seen?

“Alhamdulillah. May they always have enough to eat,” I said.

Weam talked a lot about his father, a man who had built a business in Gaza. When he said goodbye to him before going to Europe, he saw him cry for the first time. Yet his father, sad and at the same time determined, sent him through Greece to Germany. Life in Gaza had become too difficult – they agreed on that. Neither father nor son suspected at the time how much hostility and repression Palestinians would experience in Germany after October 7.

Two months passed after our first meeting. One day, I stopped by Nathmi’s, where I found him and his relatives preparing food. Weam greeted me somewhat reservedly. “They got his father,” Nathmi explained.

He had been killed three days earlier. I stammered a few words that seemed inadequate.

“Alhamdulillah,” replied Weam, tears in his eyes. The family wanted to spend the day together.

In the car, I also burst into tears. Nathmi had already told me earlier that they had lost many family members. How did they endure all of this? What had they done to deserve all this apocalyptic suffering?

Police violence against Palestinians

For months now, police brutality against Palestinians and solidarity activists has gone unchecked. German society has largely ignored it, just like it has the reasons for the protests.

I have attended only authorised demonstrations and adhered to all known regulations. Nevertheless, I have constantly feared for my safety. Where could I put my grief and anger? Was there any space for it in this country?

I have repeatedly observed at demonstrations how the police would violently storm the crowd. Sometimes it would be because some people had shouted prohibited slogans, like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

Other times, there would be no reason. The police would pull people from the crowd and later let them go, unable to prove that they had committed a criminal act.

At none of the protests I have attended have I witnessed violence coming from the demonstrators. It particularly pains me to see police officers brutally attacking Palestinians while they peacefully express their despair over the horrors in Gaza. How many of them were also mourning killed family members at the protests?

Amnesty Germany has repeatedly drawn attention to the disproportionate and racist police violence against peaceful Palestine solidarity demonstrators and demanded independent investigations. “Peaceful demonstrators of Muslim and Arab descent and their supporters are subjected to disproportionate police measures,” one statement warns.

The countless disturbing experiences I have had with the police at demonstrations – along with the ongoing blanket criminalisation of all demonstrators – ultimately led me to seek other forms of solidarity, away from the streets.

Alienation and new belonging

The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 was traumatic for Israeli society. Innocent lives were lost, and they are rightly mourned here, in Germany.

The Israeli war on Gaza has now been ongoing for 14 months, killing and maiming indiscriminately and erasing Gaza before our eyes. But German society has looked away, with few exceptions. Throughout my life, I had predominantly ethnic German friends. Today, there are very few. Even before October 7, 2023, the disregard for Palestinian suffering – the displacement, the disenfranchisement, the racism, the apartheid – hurt me.

With the onset of the war on Gaza, I distanced myself from all those who wanted to lecture me from the traditionally one-sided German perspective. I did not have the strength to fight against this position in my personal environment.

I was born in Bosnia, and the trauma of the ignored genocide against my people runs deep. Gaza pushed me to the limit of what I can endure and comprehend. I see history repeating itself, with a far greater intensity. It is now being livestreamed on our phones and yet it is still being ignored.

Our federal government has actively supported the destruction of Palestinian lives with arms shipments. And I myself have to fear that every word I say against this will be interpreted or even condemned as anti-Semitic or incitement to hatred.

Artists have been cancelled and numerous journalists have lost their jobs. Academics, politicians, employees— anyone who shows solidarity with Palestinians risks their reputation, livelihood, and even a criminal record.

One member of the Bundestag or parliament, Aydan Ozoguz, had to apologise last month for sharing a post from Jewish Voice for Peace that featured an image of the Israeli bombing of Al-Aqsa Hospital compound in which at least five people were killed and 70 injured.

The post had caused outrage in Germany.

But where was the outrage for the Palestinians who burned alive in this fire? Nineteen-year-old Shaban died in the flames still hooked up to an IV, but Germany chose to persecute those who tried to draw attention to his horrific death.

It is not just me who is staying away from ethnic Germans. A friend, who has been ostracised by her circle for speaking up for Gaza, has recently learned that her daughter’s teacher was told the girl needs special attention because the mother was supposedly “very unstable” at the moment.

These are just a few of countless examples that have psychologically paralysed me over the past year. And at this point – 14 months into what genocide scholars, human rights organisations and the United Nations all describe as genocide – it doesn’t matter whether the great silence in Germany arises from fear, convenience, or ignorance. Anyone who had gaps in their education has had enough time to inform themselves. In light of the unprecedented destruction and dehumanisation in Gaza, excuses, any selective humanity, and any cowardice are unacceptable.

I saw a video of the funeral of the Abushedeq family members. Their bodies, wrapped in blankets, were hastily placed in a mass grave amid the rubble. I cried all day. There was no compassion from the German society for Nathmi as he mourned.

Although I have never met the Abushedeqs who are in Gaza, I feel connected to them — a closeness that I can hardly imagine in Germany anymore. It feels as though I have never truly known this country.

I see profound humanity in devastated Gaza, where death is omnipresent. For me, it has become more of a home than the country I have lived in for over 30 years. I never thought I would feel so alienated, unwanted, and persecuted in Germany.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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