At a time of unprecedented scientific progress, humanity still cannot prevent one in every five young people in the Gaza Strip from contemplating suicide.
If this does not alarm you, then perhaps these facts will: 96% of Gaza's population lives with the constant feeling that death is imminent. One million children are suffering from psychological disorders, particularly in the aftermath of the ongoing genocide. Thirty-eight percent of adults are living with depression, while 61% of the population suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Many continue to endure the long-term effects of complex post-traumatic stress.
These are not merely statistics. They are the psychological map of a society that has been forced to live under siege, war, and the constant expectation of death.
The world has failed the people of Gaza.
It has failed to protect their mental well-being during a genocide that continues to this day. This ongoing catastrophe has persisted with the support—or, at the very least, the acquiescence—of most Western governments, as well as several Arab governments that have chosen to submit to the dictates of global imperialism.
This failure does not concern Gaza alone. It is a moral and a humanitarian failure, in front of the humanity itself.
If we are ever to speak honestly about peace, then peace must begin within the human being.
But the people of Gaza have been denied even that most basic form of peace. I am not referring only to the genocide unfolding before the world's eyes today. I am also speaking of the years that came before it—years of blockade, imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip since 2007.
This reality has created within us a psychological siege that exists alongside the physical one. It has produced a permanent state of fear and insecurity, leaving deep psychological scars that continue to manifest themselves in rising rates of trauma, anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions.
These conditions are not the product of individual pathology. They are a natural human response to an unbearable political reality imposed by the Zionist occupation.
No one can be expected to remain psychologically stable while living every day under the constant threat of death—whether their own or that of the people they love.
For this reason, the solution cannot be limited to individual psychotherapy. Such approaches were largely developed to treat disorders that emerge in relatively stable societies. Gaza's wounds are of a different nature. Before people need therapy, they need the political reality that produces this suffering, day after day, to change.
We need a reality in which the daily caloric intake of every person is not calculated and controlled, as revealed in documents published by Haaretz in 2012.
We need a reality in which starvation, siege, and collective punishment are no longer used as instruments of domination against an entire people.
I do not wish to describe these practices as fascism or Nazism because, in my view, the more accurate name is Zionism.
To me, Zionism is not merely a colonial ideology. It is a political project that has drawn legitimacy from one historical tragedy to justify another.
The Holocaust was one of history's greatest crimes and deserves unequivocal condemnation. But condemning that crime can never grant any state or political movement the right to commit new crimes against another people.
My people and I should not be made to pay the price for crimes committed against others.
From starvation and collective punishment to the control of food supplies, and ultimately to a genocidal war carried out before the eyes of the entire world, Palestinians in Gaza live in a reality where their humanity is violated every single day—as though their lives were somehow worth less than the lives of others.
The tragedy deepens when the Zionist movement invokes the historical persecution of the Jewish people to justify policies inflicted today upon Palestinians, while the people of Gaza are left alone to face death, hunger, and displacement, as much of the world either remains silent or deliberately looks away.
On a personal level, I call upon the world to allow my medication—and the medication of everyone in Gaza who depends on psychiatric treatment—to enter the Gaza Strip.
Since the beginning of the genocide, Israel has blocked the entry of psychiatric medications into Gaza as part of a systematic policy that deepens the psychological collapse of an entire society, not merely that of isolated individuals.
This deprivation does not affect only people living with mental health conditions, although their numbers continue to grow. It also affects people with chronic illnesses, older adults, and cancer patients, who are denied their medications, essential diagnostic tests, and even the most basic healthcare services—care that should be a fundamental human right everywhere in the world.
This is not a plea for charity. It is not a request for sympathy. It is a demand for a right guaranteed under international human rights law.
If my right to medical treatment is regarded as something secondary—or even negotiable—how can I possibly feel that my humanity is recognized?
I am a human being from Gaza.
Whether I am a civilian or a combatant, a young man or a young woman, a child or an elderly person, my humanity—and the humanity of every Palestinian—is neither conditional nor negotiable. It cannot be diminished because of our identity or because of where we live.
We refuse to be stripped of our humanity, as colonial powers have done throughout history and as the Zionist movement and the State of Israel continue to do to the Palestinian people today.
Like every other person in Gaza, I deserve life, dignity, and freedom, even if the world refuses to acknowledge it.
The fact that I am compelled to remind the world of my own humanity is, in itself, yet another measure of its moral failure—its inability to recognize the tragedy of Gaza first and foremost as a human tragedy, before it is a political one.
I am writing this letter as I wait for my appointment at a public psychiatric clinic. My number is 92, even though I took my ticket at seven o'clock in the morning.
What kind of world forces me to prove that I am human?
What kind of world compels me to fight for my right to medical treatment while allowing a colonial and racist state to strip Palestinians of their fundamental rights, invoking a history of victimhood that cannot justify its own colonial project?
In the end, I can only say that the world was confronted with a profound test of its humanity—and it failed.
That failure lies not only in direct participation in the killing of human beings, but also in silence, inaction, and indifference while people are killed before the eyes of the entire world.
I wrote this letter with tears in my eyes.
Every tear that fell was another testament to the world's failure to preserve its own humanity.
Bahaa Shahera Raouf
A Human Being from the Gaza Strip – Palestine
To a world that
I still hope will recognize my humanity.
(Letter originally published in PRIN newspaper - prin.gr.
Translation from Arabic to Greek by Nawzat Hadid HERE).
