#OutlookMagazine Anniversary Issue | I am ready to die, here in Gaza - video Dailymotion

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00:00 I am Pragya and I bring to you excerpts from the year-ender issue titled "We Bear Witness".

00:06 The issue is dedicated to the people of Gaza and what they went through.

00:10 I am ready to die here in Gaza.

00:14 Maraz Shamali.

00:15 Republished with permission from This Week in Palestine.

00:19 She is a 21-year-old dental student in Gaza.

00:23 She has survived many Israeli military attacks.

00:26 The Israeli army assassinated two of her uncles and two of her cousins.

00:31 This is her story.

00:33 I don't know where to start or what to say about the current situation here in Gaza

00:39 because we are not numbers.

00:40 Everyone has a story to tell.

00:43 It is my destiny that I was born in a geographical area

00:47 where wars and sieges haven't stopped since my birth.

00:51 I have survived three wars but was not sure I would survive this one.

00:56 During the 2008 Israeli aggression, I was 9-year-old.

01:00 In the 2012 Israeli assault, I was 13-years-old.

01:04 In 2014, I was 15-years-old.

01:09 And here I am, 22 now.

01:12 I still remember vividly when the Israeli occupation forces bombed us directly in 2014.

01:18 My mother and brother were seriously injured but miraculously we survived.

01:25 The story is too long to tell but the scars of the 2014 war have not yet been erased by time.

01:32 And the 2021 Israeli aggression brought back these painful memories as time repeats itself.

01:40 At the beginning of every Israeli assault, my mother sends us to my grandfather's house.

01:46 Is that strange?

01:47 Of course not.

01:48 Actually, this is what every Gazan family does to make sure that if the occupation strikes the house,

01:55 at least one or two of them would survive and the entire family would not be completely obliterated.

02:01 One night I wrote a tweet saying,

02:05 "I am afraid of living at home and living the Shusas massacre of 2014 once again.

02:11 Then again I am afraid of leaving and being bombed and wounded as in 2014.

02:17 There is no safe place in Gaza."

02:19 Two hours later I tweeted,

02:21 "The shelling has intensified. We can't live the 2014 massacre again.

02:27 We will leave the house now. Pray for us."

02:29 We went out and were surprised to find that all the people in our area

02:34 were leaving in the middle of the night.

02:36 They were leaving their homes, hopes and memories, yearning for safety that was no way guaranteed.

02:43 We moved to my aunt's home where about 40 people live in the same house.

02:48 We had hoped it would be safer for us to stay there, but in reality,

02:52 it was more heavily bombarded every night.

02:55 They say death with a group is mercy.

02:59 We didn't gain the safety we had hoped for.

03:02 When the tower next to my aunt's home was bombed, we ran in panic into the street to escape,

03:07 thinking that perhaps the street was safer than the houses,

03:11 as they are being destroyed over the heads of their owners without warning.

03:16 For this and more, read the Year-Ender issue of Outlook.

#OutlookMagazine Anniversary Issue | I am ready to die, here in Gaza

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