IN the basement of a slightly shabby city office building, two women spoke of unimaginable, almost biblical horrors.
Searching for superlatives is futile. The two Palestinian women addressed a practically empty room to tell how they were haunted by the memories of their slain family members in the hellhole that Gaza has become in the last year.
The UK media had been invited to a press conference with the Palestinian Ambassador, Husam Zomlot, and his two guests at the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce, housed in a down-at-heel converted townhouse in Mayfair, an otherwise plush corner of central London.
Zomlot gave a speech in which he called for Israel to be “compelled” to respect international law by its Western enablers and end the massacre of Palestinians.
He said those who did not see that Israel’s actions in its nearly relentless assault on Gaza amounted to genocide were “wilfully blind”.
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Winter is approaching and with it, disaster, said Zomlot (above) – his warning providing a grim conclusion to his speech.
“If you think the death toll is high now,” he said just a day after the Palestinian authorities announced that the grim milestone of 42,000 people killed had been passed. “Just wait until cold, hunger and disease really start to bite.”
He then gave the floor to Khitam Attaallah, a mother who left the Al-Shati camp in Gaza in 2020.
She spoke out publicly last December when an Israeli strike killed 42 members of her family in Palestine. By the time Attaallah spoke on Thursday, that number had risen to 48.
She stood before the room “without a soul”, she said. “My soul was taken from me and scattered among graves holding the bodies of my entire family.”
All were killed, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, her mother and 80-year-old father, by the “the cruel, fascist occupation that knows no humanity”.
READ MORE: Gaza death toll passes 42,000 Palestinians killed by Israel
Her face was drawn and she looked close to tears as she went on: “I wake and sleep with their images and memories. Do you know what it means to find yourself without a family?”
The room replied with silence. “They have all gone without a goodbye, leaving me only with sorrow in my broken heart. Do you know what it means to lose your family?
“You will never see their smiles, you will never hear their voices, you will never hear your mother’s voice praying for you every morning. Losing your family means being an orphan and alone forever.”
The 49-year-old mother of three continued: “These were 48 of my family members, my loved ones, 48 futures, 48 innocents, 48 dreams, 48 memories, each of them carried a part of me.”
In a challenge, she asked: “If we were to reverse the situation and if I were an Israeli woman standing in front of you, saying that the Palestinian resistance had killed 48 of my family members, what would the world’s reaction be?
“Would they stand, with no action and watch in silence? Of course not.”
Attaallah charged the world at large with inaction as she said: “They turn a blind eye to the thousands of children and women being torn apart and killed every day in front of their eyes on TV and they do nothing.”
For the perpetrators, there would be “no escape”, she said as she pledged to “pursue justice for them, in every court”.
READ MORE: Palestinian describes returning to Gaza for first time in nine months
Attaallah ended with an injunction to her audience: “My lesson for you: if you have mothers, dads, sisters and brothers – just hug them and pray every day for God to protect them.”
She returned to her seat and one of her daughters sitting in the front row tapped her fingertips together in a mute round of applause.
In silence, she was replaced at the insubstantial podium by Reem Al Rikhawi. She began by casually observing: “You know there is a new abbreviation that is often used in Gaza hospitals?”
Answering her own question, she added: “It’s WCNSF; wounded child, no surviving family.”
Then followed a devastating description of the horrors visited upon those stuck in Gaza.
“In Gaza kids are often in so much pain, shivering while they’re left alone on the floor of a bombed hospital, with no mother to hold their hand, no dad to comfort them while they are getting their limbs amputated with no anaesthetics.
“In Gaza, women give birth on the road with no medical attention, sometimes they die, sometimes they live and sometimes their babies die. In Gaza, fathers cry saying goodbye to pieces of their kids, not always they find all the pieces. In Gaza, premature babies are left alone to die in hospital with no food or oxygen.”
Harrowingly, Al Rikhawi spoke at times in a manner bordering on irreverent, observing at one point that for Palestinians, “pain is just a big part of our lives”. But “oh, dear God”, she added, it is “still painful”.
READ MORE: Israeli strike on Gaza school shelter kills at least 27 people
The 39-year-old, who moved to England in 2007 to study journalism, went on: “In Gaza, the lucky ones are the ones who buried their kids in one piece. The lucky ones are the ones who lost everything but who are still in one piece.
“The lucky ones are the ones who managed to write their kids names on their arms so they could be identified once their little bodies have been dismantled by the heavy, evil bombs that are dropped on them. This is the meaning of luck in Gaza now.”
She spoke of children cowered in tents in the sprawling refugee camps that are now where Palestinians, fleeing from Israeli bombs, find themselves.
They eat “animal feed and leaves to survive” and instead of “bedtime stories in the comfort of their homes” they lie awake at night “anticipating their deaths”, Al Rikhawi said.
Yet despite this “pain that mountains cannot bear”, Palestinians remain strong, she said.
“You’re targeted, you’re starved to death, you’ve lost your home, your kids, your family, your parents, your job, everything. But you still hold your head up high, raise your hands and thank the Lord,” she said.
READ MORE: Palestinian refugee to take Home Office to court in bid to bring family to Scotland
Palestinians trapped in the killing fields of their home have their pain and those far away have their own, Al Rikhawi said: “It’s a survivor’s guilt that we feel, it stabs us in the heart every single day.”
In another challenge to the sparsely-populated room, she said: “And to add insult to injury, every Palestinian who dares to appear in any Western media outlet will be dehumanised, with little empathy towards their loss and pain.
“He or she will be cornered and asked the one and only question that seems to matter to the media here: Do you condemn?”
Her reply came doused with venom: “Do you condemn bombing hospitals and UN schools? Do you condemn targeting journalists and medical crews? Do you condemn killing and detaining kids? Do you condemn starving the whole nation of all basic needs? Do you condemn the mass graves? Do you condemn?”
Again, the room fell silent. Zomlot returned to the podium to field questions, three from English language journalists and one asked in his native Arabic.
Then it was over. It weighs on a body to hear tales of unfathomable suffering – but it feels desperate when it appears few are even willing to listen.
Milling about before the event, I was told by the organisers the main media outlets in London had been invited. By my count, just five showed up.
I had asked Zomlot if he felt any reasons for optimism that the killing might stop. It’s not about optimism, he replied, it’s about doing the work of bringing people together, speaking, diplomacy.
That is an admirable sentiment – but dialogue only works if people are willing to listen.
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