Abubaker Abed, a young Palestinian in Gaza, writes an emotional letter to the US president.
ABUBAKER ABED, ZETEO, FEB 23, 2025
Dear President Donald Trump,
You have a son almost my age. I am sure he lives the nicest life any young man desires and passionately and ambitiously pursues his dreams. I wish eternal peace and happiness for him and every young man around the world. Nonetheless, have you ever told him how the young men of Gaza, like me, are living? Have you once mentioned the staggering death toll among students of his age in Gaza?
During the last 16 months, Gaza was turned into an abattoir where we were immolated, starved, bombed, and displaced into the streets and tents, freezing to death. We have also been kept hostages for over 17 years, but you, with millions of people around the globe, haven’t cared a whit about us. We are indeed still hostages. If the lives of some hundred Israelis, many of whom were soldiers, are important, the lives of over 2 million people – half of whom are children – also matter.
When you were inaugurated, your duty was to make America, not Gaza, great again. We, Palestinians in Gaza, know how to make Gaza great and beautiful again. We never came after the recent wildfires in Los Angeles to say: “Los Angeles is an incineration site. It’s the city of ash. I think all people should leave it, and we will rebuild it again.” Gaza is our Los Angeles. Just as many Californians can’t – or don’t want to – leave California, we can’t leave Gaza. After all that we’ve endured over the past 16 months, which was financed by your predecessor, our roots have grown stronger because our sacrificed blood is priceless, and our right to our homeland is irreplaceable.
Since your first inauguration in 2017, you’ve been selling my homeland live on air before the eyes of the entire world as if it were your own.
You handed Jerusalem to Israel and were more than willing to give Palestinian hometowns, including my village of Beit Daras, away. Now, you want to “own” Gaza. You never considered us: the refugees hunted in Israeli killing traps over time after our grandparents were expelled from their homeland in 1948 simply for being Palestinians.
Around the same time of your first presidency, I was studying American history, which denounced dehumanization and slavery. I learned that the US was the land of freedom. But since the outset of the genocide in Gaza, the mask started to slip, and the real face of the US has appeared. I finally discovered I was wrong because your country defends the interests of an imperialist and colonial state that just wants to kill and destroy, specifically Palestinians.
During those years, I remember watching the lives of Americans my age with my very dearest friend. We couldn’t feel anything but wrath and sorrow because we were serving life sentences in Gaza. Both of us were quite bereft of hope and liveliness since we were denied travel multiple times and were struggling to facilitate our studies and build our futures.
We wished for things to improve; however, my friend was then bombed and killed by a rocket from an American F-16 in December 2023. The genocide has torn me apart and left me with only deep anguish in my heart.
Mr. President, I may be greedy if I ask for your help, although your country has played the most fundamental role in facilitating my suffering over time. But all that I want is for you to stop fueling our agony because it is enough trauma for us.
After almost 500 days of countless heartbreaks and tragedies and four weeks of the “ceasefire,” I haven’t given myself enough time to vent the pain inside my heart. I still need months and maybe years to recover from the trauma.
Like anyone in Gaza, I was thankful for your effort to stop the genocide inflicted upon us. I thought it would be a great start to wipe out Joe Biden’s dark legacy, which I am confident you watched as everyone across the planet, but what you’ve called for is not voluntary migration. It is tantamount to ethnic cleansing, even if it is not by the bombs and rockets. I just want to say that we, Palestinians, are like cacti. We are so patient and rooted here. If you think of uprooting us, our seeds and flowers will bloom again.
History may forgive you and your country if you seize this golden opportunity to erase the dark imperialist and colonial history of the US in this conflict. If you squander it and keep supporting Israel, we will keep sacrificing our lives until we liberate our hometowns.
On that day, there is no way to backtrack on anything, and history will never forget or forgive you. Remember that the blood we paid for more than 77 years will not dry until every piece of land in Palestine is free.
Sincerely,
Abubaker Abed, an accidental war correspondent from Deir al-Balah, Gaza.
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