A small group of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, around 320 people, mostly women and children, arrived in Italy, with a “health corridor” and hosted in some accommodation facilities in Florence. I am many minors, some still in infants, others slightly older, seriously injured by the bombs and missiles that hit the Gaza Strip every day. Among them there are also sick people who could no longer be treated in the hospitals of Gaza, made unusable after the bombings, lacking medicines, electricity, machinery and lacking healthcare personnel, some of whom were killed in the Israeli raids. For each child, there is only one parent or relative.
Some of these little ones no longer have a mother. All have lost more than one family member due to the war and all have at least one of their parents still remaining in the Strip, together with their brothers and sisters. They arrived in total silence, kept away from the spotlight, but they arrived and they are alive. They are also the living witnesses of a senseless war, like all wars. They tell us their story, that of family members and friends destroyed by the bombs: even very young children tell it to us, some only with their eyes, or with the signs of violence on their bodies, the only document they possess. They are the heirs of their murdered loved ones, who they carry with them. They are the “collateral effects” of the war, the innocent victims of the bombings that devastated the entire Gaza Strip from north to south, erasing its existence and sowing death, suffering and poverty.
As has already happened in many other terrible human events, Even the lives of the people of Gaza have a price: seven thousand dollars for an adult, five thousand for a child to save. Relatives and friends who live elsewhere raise money, mortgage their house to get a large loan to allow them to “buy” as many lives as possible, that of those imprisoned in Gaza, often used as human shields by Hamas terrorists, segregated without food or water inside a place that is tormented every day by bombs and missiles of the army of Israel. Whoever pays gets out and is saved.
“Please help me get my father here,” asks a little girl who has arrived in Italy. “I have my daughter who is very ill, she needs urgent care and they can’t treat her there, help me”, implores a mother. The “right” of the present gather around the refugees who have arrived in Florence, those volunteers who cover them with clothing and with their human warmth and those doctors, nurses, healthcare personnel who work to heal the wounds not only of the body, but also of their desperate soul. There are public and third sector institutions that are committed to ensuring that their rights as refugees are recognized as quickly as possible. All this will certainly not be able to fill the pain they carry inside, nor will it give them back what they have lost forever together with their dearest affections, which they will only be able to keep in their hearts.
The actress Anna Foglietta, president of the association “Every child is my child” went to assist the Palestinian guests in the city of Giglio to be close to them and understand how can, today, help a population of over 2 million people, with a large number of children, almost half of the inhabitants of Gaza, who are suffering the consequences of war following the Hamas terrorist attack against Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023. «The Gaza Strip continues to be a place of profound humanitarian suffering, where thousands of people face insurmountable challenges every day», he says on behalf of “Every Child is my Child” and calls for immediate action by the community and the authorities local and international to deliver humanitarian aid and guarantee vital support to the population of the Strip.
We talk to Anna while she talks to the Palestinian refugees who tell her their plight and plays with them. The eyes of these children are moving, they shine with hope and light, but the shadow can be glimpsed of their suffering. Seen from above, it seems like a moment like any other, in which adults and children play, smile, joke. But it’s not a time like any other. They are not stories like any other. They are stories crumbled by the war, which slowly need to be rebuilt. It is difficult to do this while friends and relatives are dead, dying, suffering. The network of volunteers, operators, doctors and associations is doing silent and powerful work. Whoever saves one life saves the whole world, says the Talmud, and they are saving him.
«According to UNICEF, almost 14 thousand children have lost their lives as a direct cause of this conflict», explains the Actress, «and now they are also starting to die from diseases caused by the lack of food and water. We cannot turn our backs on human suffering. It is time for the international community to act with determination and solidarity to bring relief to the population of the Gaza Strip”, she concludes.
