Page 16 - North Star 2024

plates of food, breaking their fast amid the rubble of their former homes. Yes, they are surrounded by the evidence of the hellish havoc that has been wrecked on them for the past six months. Yes, many of their iar tables are missing loved ones who had been killed in the onslaught, and their absence surely casts an excruciating shadow upon the meal. But these images show the determination of the Gazan people to observe one of the core traditions of the Islamic faith while doing their best to salvage whatever meaning, hope, and joy they are able to find in a landscape that reeks of desolation and death. I cannot help but be struck by how vastly different their iar circumstances are from mine, how deprived they are of the most basic human resources, and yet their Ramadan experience attests to the rawest and most unfiltered truths of Islam: the endless value of faith, perseverance, and spiritual fortitude.
4 Source: NBC News
The Islamic faith of so many of the people of Gaza has become more than just a religious identity. Despite the physical violence and global culture of hate that has enveloped the Islamic Palestinian narrative - or perhaps because of it - simply being Muslim and exercising the pillars of the faith has become a show of survival, persistence, and resistance. The families of Gaza have refused to allow the hellish onslaught they have been subjected to, to diminish their faith or undermine generations of cultural practice. The endurance of their religion has sent a clear message to themselves, their attackers, and the world: Gaza lives on.
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“There are no Christians in Gaza. There are no churches in Gaza.”
Or so said Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, as she attempted to deny the Israeli government’s murder of two unarmed Christian women in Gaza on the grounds of a