00:00hello and good evening i'm melissa idris welcome to consider this this is the show where we want
00:16you to consider and then reconsider what you know of the news of the day palestinians in gaza have
00:21already endured 22 months of displacement and bloodshed with entire neighborhoods reduced to
00:28rubble families torn apart and now food and medicine have been cut off tonight we speak
00:34directly to someone living through it dr ziyad shahada is the general manager of my cares
00:41office in gaza he joins us now dr ziyad ken thank you so much for being on the show with me today
00:46what is life like for you and your family right now as you speak to us in gaza
00:51okay first of all i would like to thank astro awani for giving this opportunity to speak about the
01:03situation in gaza actually life right now in gaza is very hard to explain to anyone who has not lived it
01:15every single day is about survival we wake up to the sound of drone or explosions we go to sleep
01:26with the same sound in our ears we've been actually displaced more than once sometimes because
01:35our area became too dangerous sometimes because the building next to us was destroyed every move means
01:48leaving behind whatever little comfort we've managed to rebuild
01:56the mattresses blankets sometimes even clothes and starting over in a new unsafe place most of
02:09of my day is spend in queues the bread queue the water queue sometimes the queue for aid that may not
02:20either arrive and even it does arrive it's often not enough for everyone so people go home empty-handed
02:33unfortunately i look around and see the same exhaustion in every case people walk slower talk less and even
02:48laughter is brief and cautious as if joy might draw bad luck
03:01can i ask you dr ziad how are you and your family and your community finding food and water right now
03:10given that we know you who are operatingennia easy peppers and ultra seump in the treatment
03:17you talked about waiting in queues spending your days waiting in queues
03:21what who who's running those queues where are those those you say tell us more
03:27basically the truth is we are not finding enough
03:33food here is scarce
03:35prices are beyond what most people can afford even if you have money there is no guarantee
03:46the market will have what you need many days families skip meals some days we eat once
03:56for children it means bread and tea for days without a single vegetable or bees fruit
04:10the international reports about famine are not exaggerating they are actually understatements
04:18water is another battle safe drinking water is almost gone we rely on tracked water
04:31but it's irregular and sometimes it's only if you have if you have fuel you boil it
04:44if not you drink it and hope you don't be sick and it's not just hunger and stress
04:55it's the weakness that comes with them you see adults too tired to walk far and children too tired
05:07to play actually this is the truth on the ground all the day when i go to implement some project
05:20all the faces of people are so tired all of them very sad uh all of them screaming crying
05:31the situation actually the real situation on the ground is very bad and no one even no words in this
05:42world can describe the the very bad situation in a gun strip right now dr siad you mentioned children
05:53can you talk to me about the children in gaza today what are you seeing in the children around you how are
06:00they coping uh with what's happening with what's happened to them okay this is actually uh maybe the
06:10hardest question the hardest thing to talk about children here have lost so much of their childhood
06:21children you see you see you see it in their faces they don't run or play the way the pictures or
06:32forms and trains not flowers and houses silent others cry easily many have nightmares and wake up screaming
06:46and wake up screaming bed bed waking is common even among older children and physically many are
06:59male-nourished you can i mean they have no healthy foods you can see you can see their bull their hair is
07:12faint and their growth has stalled unicef says nearby every child in gaza is in a crisis
07:26mentally and physically i see that every day they ask questions those children ask will
07:40we die tonight those are even my my my child ask will we die tonight or why did my friend not wake up
07:53so once the pond nearby this happened to me our neighbor already targeted pond so we we try
08:03me and my family uh go and try to help to save them but my child see the body in the street
08:13so they see their their friends and ask me where is my friend why they they still asleep why they they
08:22did not wake up so this is the truth few days ago we we did a a very emotional project
08:33so actually we we go to help the children who lost both parents the father and mother and they are
08:43the only survival in the family so i need too many children in a court and go to help them but
08:56when i see hundreds of children in the court all of them lost their families they are the only live
09:08so most of them less than six years they are almost from three years old to 12 years old but the majority
09:18is around six so six years old this means the first year of school so supposed to go to school
09:27and play to kindergarten but when i ask them and the first thing this is what happened the first thing
09:36when i want i have a package and i want to give the first thing they hug me so when when i hug even me i cry
09:46because they believe in me like like the father they lost the father the mother no one can hear them
09:57now they stay with their grandfathers they stay actually with their relatives so then this is the
10:06the truth on the ground yeah sorry that does yet how old are your children
10:11my my my my child i have four but the youngest one is abdullah abdullah now five years old he was born in
10:26malaysia by the way because uh i i i i back to to gaza uh during the covet 19 in 2020 so he was born
10:42and i take him back to gaza so now every day he he told me we are waiting the rafaha crossing between
10:53gaza and egypt to open and we want to to travel to malaysia i asked him why he said i want to eat
11:01i want to play and i want to see when when i show him a video for a sea by the way we we stay near the sea
11:11so the sea here the mediterranean sea is less than one kilometer but since 7 october is unreachable
11:21so he's here i want to go to the sea i want to swim it's nearby but we can reach so yeah
11:33dr siad can i ask you um when you see how the world is talking about gaza in the news
11:41is it does it reflect the reality as you're living through it today what what are we missing from
11:49outside of gaza that we what would you like us to understand about what life is like for you in gaza
11:56today okay actually sometimes yes but often no when i read headlines i see numbers
12:09numbers this is air trucks displacement figures but numbers don't capture the smell of dust after a
12:23building falls or the sound of a child calling for their mother under the rubble i also see views that
12:34says air trucks enter gaza but what's missing is that aid is nowhere near enough and that getting to the
12:48distribution point can be dangerous sometimes aid is described as it's flowing freely the truth is
13:02it's a trickle and sometimes the coverage makes it sound like this is a natural disaster like
13:15like a storm or earthquake but it's not in nature this is man-made and because it's a man-made it can be
13:27it stopped so this is why i ask people around the world to help us not help us just with the donation but
13:40help us to stop this genocide to stop this man-made war at least to save the children the future generation
13:51we are talking about ourselves i can stay here even the home around me but i cannot stay once i see my
14:02children crying and my wife screaming so this is our message to to the world
14:12dr zia thank you so much for your words today and for helping us understand
14:17what you are going through and hopefully we will get that message out there thank you so much for
14:21your time today it's been my honor to talk to you thank you thank you so much thank you so much
14:28thank you dr zia that was really moving i appreciate it thank you okay take care bye-bye that was dr zia
14:37shahada the general manager of my care in gaza we're going to take a quick break here and consider this
14:43we'll be back with more stay tuned
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