I write forgive me, not forgive us, because this guilt is deeply personal. It’s a burden I carry in the comfort of my home, sipping clean water while the children of Gaza drink from brine water wells mixed in sewage—their small bodies wracked with dehydration and disease—if they even find water at all.

I can pluck wild mallow leaves from my backyard—not to satisfy hunger, but for the luxury of a healthy diet. I’m guilty of throwing away leftovers, when fathers and mothers in Gaza search through the rubble of demolished homes for a can of food that might have survived an Israeli bomb. Or they dare crawling through cratered fields, scavenging for wild greens to silence their children’s growling stomachs—only to become moving targets under the cold gaze of Israeli drones.

Forgive me—I have a home, a heater and blankets to keep my children warm. While in Gaza, parents lie awake—not just from the cold, but from the torment of being unable to warm their children’s tiny, freezing feet.

Forgive me when I kiss my daughter on her birthday and her laughter rings in my ears—while only the buzzing of Israeli drones rings in yours. She blows out her candles in a breath of joy, while you light a candle to push back the darkness, wheezing for air in a world that denies you breath.

I can hold my daughter, while you can’t even retrieve yours from beneath the rubble—can’t gather enough of her remains for one final embrace. American-made Israeli bombs scattered her flesh like sand in the wind, leaving you empty, aching with grief and dust.

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Your hospitals, doctors, medics, and first responders who chose their professions to save lives—but became targets, because saving a Palestinian life is deemed existential threat for Israel. I beg forgiveness from every journalist whose words to expose war crimes became bullets, and whose cameras were more dangerous to Israel than cannons.

Forgive the world that calls........

© Middle East Monitor