Chapter 8 - Children in the toy graveyard:

In Gaza, even toys are martyred. In Gaza, you find a doll burned on the rubble. You find a car without wheels next to a child's body. You find a deflated ball under a cement column. The laughter that used to fill the alley has become a deafening silence. In the corners, small dreams hide: a worn-out teddy bear, a toy cooking set without batteries, a kite forgotten on the roof of a destroyed house. The children of Gaza never finished their toys. They never finished their drawings. They didn't know the end of the story. Yousef, my neighbor's son, used to say to me, "I have a toy soldier, but not like the Jews, a good soldier." He was martyred while hugging his toy. And little Sarah wrote in her notebook, "I want to be a toy doctor, to fix every toy that breaks in the war." But the war was faster. I saw a child named Omar searching under the rubble for his doll. He told his mother, "I want to find it. It was scared during the bombing." Is it possible that we lose children who were afraid for their toys? In Gaza, a child doesn't just cry because he's lost his toy. He also cries because he's lost the hand he used to hold it with. Drawings of toys were painted on the walls of the tents. It was a childish attempt to revive the dead. In the hospital, I heard an injured girl tell the doctor, "If I die... give my toy to my brother. He's small and afraid at night." What kind of childhood is this? What kind of time is this? Here, where the parks have been bombed, where safety has been stolen, the playground has turned into a graveyard. But we promise them... we promise our children that we will bring the toys back to life. We will build them playgrounds of light, unreachable by missiles. And that their laughter... won't be bombed twice.