Connecting with Gaza: June 19, 2025
Bearing Witness, Building Solidarity
Dear Friends,
Welcome to our newsletter, Connecting with Gaza, where we share Palestinian voices and experiences. For close to two years, the families we serve have endured siege, starvation, and relentless violence. Yet their defiance—and your solidarity—has forged lifelines where governments fail.
This newsletter is our shared act of witness.
Eid Under Bombs: Gaza’s Faith in a World That Fails Them
June 1, 2025 → June 7, 2025
Eid al-Adha arrived in Gaza this week - a time meant for sacrifice, faith, and community. Here, these concepts are not spiritual ideals but daily realities of survival.
For many months, our teams have worked in hour-to-hour cycles of crisis response, prioritizing those most vulnerable: the elderly struggling to flee bombardment, children wasting from hunger, pregnant women carrying lives that may never know safety. The generosity of donors keeps this work alive, but we are always running behind the avalanche of need.
This week saw small victories: three families received tents at $750 each, as so-called "safe zones" crumble under continued attacks. Our North Gaza pharmacy distributed life-saving inhalers and medicines. A $1,400 allocation fed 150 orphans in a region where starvation has become Israel's silent weapon.
For every family we reach, so many more remain beyond our grasp. We were unable to help a pregnant woman crying for food. Newborn kits had to be postponed. Israel's latest evacuation orders - displacing over 70% of Gaza's population into ever-shrinking hellscapes - have turned aid distribution into Russian roulette. One father in our network survived a bullet through the neck at a U.S.-supported "humanitarian point." Another family now sleeps on rubble after tanks crushed their tent.
Above the bombs, Western leaders still speak of "complex situations" while signing new weapons shipments. They veto ceasefires as Gaza's children learn to stop flinching at explosions.
This is Eid in Gaza: not celebration, but the quiet, unbreakable act of believing in life when the world has condemned you to death.
Silence is loud
June 8, 2025 → June 14, 2025
Communications from Gaza were sporadic this week. The silence spoke volumes, amplifying the horror of Israel's ongoing genocide. Families who had already gone days without food suddenly had no way to report their situation or confirm their survival. Funds we raised for emergency food and shelter sat in limbo, unable to reach those who needed them most. Reports of intensified bombing campaigns arrived without details—no way to know who had been martyred, injured, or survived.
For four days, Israel deliberately silenced Gaza. This blackout served as a stark reminder of how desperately our constant attention and collective voice are needed. When communications slowly resumed toward week's end, messages from our families began trickling in. They described massacres at so-called aid distribution sites, near-death experiences across both northern and southern Gaza, and food prices continuing to skyrocket.
These past two weeks of bloodshed at food distribution centers have made one thing undeniable: with Israel blocking nearly all official aid channels, the only real aid reaching Gaza comes from grassroots efforts like ours.
This realization has strengthened our resolve to scale up support. We are now working to provide weekly food baskets for families across northern, central, and southern Gaza, with each distribution run costing $1,500 USD. Additional funds go toward micro-finance support for families, care for 150 orphans in northern Gaza, and keeping our community pharmacies operational amid Israel's escalating ethnic cleansing campaign. We've also received urgent requests to fund clean water distribution trucks, with each truck costing $400 USD to prepare and deliver.
In a world determined to look away, your support ensures these lifelines remain open—every single day.
Golfing for Gaza
Last week, one of our community members began a powerful act of remembrance for the thousands of lives stolen by Israel in Gaza. David Knoppert, a 72-year-old Canadian, is undertaking the solemn task of putting 50,000 golf balls—each one representing a precious life taken in this ongoing genocide.
For David, hitting 500 golf balls takes two hours of strenuous effort, a humbling testament to the staggering scale of loss. Through this act, he hopes to awaken his community to the atrocities Israel continues to commit in Gaza—atrocities backed by the full support of our governments.
We invite you to sit with David’s own words, and to share them with others:
“I just hit 350 golf balls in the hot sun. At least I can have a shower and go home for dinner. Every day trying to do this shows me how big a number 50,000 is. Every ball represents a life; ironic how I can swiftly hit 2 or 3 balls in sequence and how an Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldier can kill 2 or 3 Palestinians even quicker.” —David, June 16, 2025
If you’d like to learn more about Connecting Gaza and the ways we support families under siege, we now offer informal online chats with our volunteers. For larger groups, we host detailed Zoom sessions about our work and the realities of life in Gaza. To arrange a conversation, visit www.connectinggaza.org/contact.
What Your Solidarity Has Achieved
No list of numbers could capture what your support means. Instead, we share these words from Alaa Abu Islam, a father in Gaza:
“I would like to express, on behalf of myself and my family, our deepest thanks and sincere appreciation for your generous support during the most difficult times.
Your help was not just assistance — it was a lifeline in a sea of pain and hardship.
Your support eased so much of our suffering and gave us new hope that there are still good and compassionate people in this world. Your presence and kindness had a deep impact on our hearts.
From me, my wife, and my children, we say: Thank you for being there for us, for standing by our side after God, and for never forgetting us in our struggle.
May God bless you, reward you greatly, and multiply your goodness.
And God willing, one day we will be able to return even a small part of the favor.
With heartfelt gratitude, Alaa.”
How to Stand with Gaza Today
Give: Every dollar delays starvation.
Act: Demand arms embargoes. Educate. Protest.
Amplify: Share #DirectVoices like Alaa’s and Maryam’s.
Final Words
“My friends, my beloved, and my second family, our humanity is rooted in our faith, also in the Islamic religion, customs, traditions, and good origin. Here we are, the people of Palestine, distinguished by chivalry, dignity, pride, and steadfastness. We are the stubborn people who refuse to be broken in the face of the might of the war machine and starvation.”—Maryam from Gaza
In relentless hope,
The Connecting Gaza Team
Donate | Advocate | Break the Siege
#SolidarityNotSilence
When you say “ Amplify: Share #DirectVoices like Alaa’s and Maryam’s “ do you refer to Mariam Ryad Dagga, a journalist from Gaza?
I would like to know, please, if you are in contact with her and if she is safe. I haven't received a message from her since June 20. I just want to know if she is ok.