I see the disparities everywhere. Images of Gaza juxtapose themselves over what is in front of my eyes. We were picked up by an ambulance. In Gaza the injured - be it by bombings or by accident, ie like the one my Dad had - are transported to barely functioning hospitals on the back of donkey carts. Sourcing the pins/rods my Dad now has in his hip and leg were not an issue. We have our own room, plenty of painkillers as needed. I fill Dad’s water bottle regularly. I think about those in Gaza whose pain is not taken away, whose thirst is not quenched, who crave things those that love them cannot even provide.

There’s one moment my mind keeps going back to, one that was generated after I bought a backgammon set to stem off the monotony of a hospital days.

It’s of little Aseel who I met in al Aqsa hospital in Nov of 2024. Her “hospital bed” was in the corridor. Her entire family was piled on it. I had promised I would do her nails black like mine. I just wanted to make her smile. I just wanted to give her a moment that would break up her day. Plus we had managed to find the creams she, her sister, and father needed for their burns.

Across from them was another little girl who had been injured 24 hours earlier in an Israeli strike and had not uttered a word since. On the day when I first met Aseel I had dropped off more pediatric tracheostomy tubes (ie children sizes, used mostly to decrease dependency on ventilators, without which often children don’t stabilize enough to be taken off the machines in the ICU). One little girl was fighting for her life. But if she survived, she would wake up to find out she was orphaned. One little boy had to have a piece of his skull removed, I could see his brain pulsing under the area where his skin was stitched together. There wasn’t enough soap for medical staff to keep up proper hygiene.

All these images come rushing back to me, along with present day reality. Not mine, but Gaza’s. How the nightmare for the people of Gaza is far from over. How little attention is paid to Gaza these days. How there is still a severe shortage in medicine, medical supplies, imaging capabilities, everything that you can imagine.

On July 20th, two days before my Dad’s accident, Israel hit a car just outside my charity INARA’s primary care clinic in Gaza City.

Our team was thankfully all OK and able to respond to the injured, among them many children. Mohammed, our physical therapist, messaged me with this video later and a brief message.

“The hardest thing I witnessed was while I was providing first aid to a baby no older than four months.” Mohammed wrote. “He had no idea what was happening—only blood, crying, and shock.”

One of our doctors, Dr Lara, commented that despite how terrifying and heartbreaking it all was, their instinct to help was stronger than any fear.

“In those moments, humanity took over, and all we could think about was reaching those in need.” She wrote.

None of us on the outside, even those of us like myself who have been there, can really understand what it’s like. People tend to look at how things have gotten “better”, but the baseline is starvation. According to the latest IPC report 1.4 million people are expected to face high levels of acute food insecurity through December 2026. That is a number that has gone up from the 1.2 million it was at in the mid-April–June period.

The daily death toll is less yes, but people are still dying regularly in bombings, being shot for accidentally crossing Israel’s barely demarcated and constantly shifting yellow line as Israel snatches more territory. You may remember Netanyahu proudly boasting that he ordered the IDF to take control of 70% of Gaza and that it is “just the start”.

People are dying from illnesses and diseases that would normally not be life threatening. Despite this so-called “ceasefire” it is all still so incomprehensibly relentless, the psychological toll is so immense it crushes the mind and soul with a force we cannot comprehend.

The day after my Dad’s surgery my phone was with him and I hear him say “God bless them this is real humanity. Life’s meaning is in what they are doing, caring for people in the worst conditions.”

I look up and realize he still has my phone.

“Dad are you reading my phone?” I ask laughing.

“No.”

“Yes you are.”

“Oh, this is your phone.”

My parents and I aren’t great with boundaries, which won’t come as a surprise to those of you who read about my mother calling CNN to get me off air during a breaking news firefight.

The messages my Dad had - allegedly - accidentally read were from a couple hours earlier in INARA’s senior staff group chat. Our clinic was damaged again. Yousra, our Gaza program coordinator, had sent over a series of videos with the message. “The Gaza center got affected by nearby heavy bombardment last night.”

“Is everyone OK?”

“Yes all is okay, thank God, but was an intense night while today Gaza is celebrating the annual high school graduation, tawjihi.”

High school annual graduation.

The team did the necessary repairs, cleaned up the space and opened.

I message Mohammad to check in on him, especially after that message about treating the baby and now this. He tells me that his brother graduated high school among the top of his class and asks how my Dad is doing.

“We’re used to in Gaza having to scrounge around for things, hopefully where you are are easier.” He says in a voicenote. “And if you need anything, like a bit more information about anything, just let me know. Remember after a surgery like that physical therapy is very important. We wish him a speedy recovery”.

I’m again, as I always and constantly am, blown away by the people of Gaza’s ability to show such compassion and care.

Prologue: Note to those who are new here: I went to Gaza four times with my charity INARA and then Israel denied me entry. We still have an ongoing court appeal to reverse that decision.

Dad was discharged. We got home. I think about all those in Gaza who leave the hospitals to go back to a tent, a flimsy mattress, the beating heat of summer, not enough water to drink, no ability to cool down. I look at the bag of medicine that I’m holding, the walker I was able to easily buy.

Dad told me he also was constantly thinking about what it was like to go through everything he went through with nothing.

I just saw a post from someone in Gaza whose father is in intensive care needs a pacemaker. He’s waiting for permission to leave Gaza. He just wants to save his father’s life. My eyes are burning. I keep thinking about him and all the others who are just watching those they love suffer without the ability to do anything about it.

It is all just so wrong. The way we treat each other is so wrong. What we allow to happen to others is so wrong.

Most of the families had well cleared out of the area, but we met one that had been living underground for four months. The Kudiye family of five had run out of their home as bombs shook buildings and shrapnel fell around them, sheltering in a carpenters underground workshop. They only left every two weeks to shower. Their home was just five doors down.

“Sometimes its so close this space fills with dust” Zahra, one of the sisters, says as a couple of explosions echo down into the darkness. “We just want to leave. I want to feel the sun, smell fresh air.”

Their father refuses, he’s a proud man and doesn’t want to be at the mercy of others. Here he can send his son out to scrape around for odd jobs and make some money to buy food.

They insist on making us tea. I try to say no thank you, we’re good, you’re so kind. But it’s already served and I notice that they only pour a glass for their father. There isn’t enough for all of them and us.

It’s the end of Nov 2012, and my CNN team and I are in Aleppo. Every corner, every person you meet has a story that shreds your soul. A young man who risked his life to save a stranger shot by a sniper. A mother who has nightmares her children are dead. The muazzin (the person who recites the call to prayer) who uses a low archway in the old city to bounce his voice because his mosque, minaret, and speakers have been destroyed.

There are signs that things might be starting to shift. Led by the Nusra front, a coalition of rebel brigades are assaulting a key Assad military base. As I as described in Part 1 of this series, Nusra’s men were largely former fighters in the Iraq battle space; Syrians who had gone to Iraq, some who joined al Qaeda. Suffice to say, they had plenty of knowledge on how to utilize unconventional tactics coupled with sophisticated military maneuvers.

We had asked about going along on the assault itself, were but in the end were told no, it was too dangerous. I do have a high risk threshold, but I like to think that I’m not entirely reckless. And no, I’m not an adrenaline junkie. Barrel bombs and snipers are enough for me, thank you. I wasn’t all that fussed about not being a part of the “tip of the spear” when I’m with the side that has second hand weapons, no proper comms, and no air assets.

A few days in, we’re given access to one of the units that is holding up the siege on Syrian government forces at the base. Fighting did keep breaking out, especially when a chopper with resupply for the trapped troops would try to drop a load, although they often missed and the rebels would end up with all the food and ammo.

My thighs were already burning from sprinting across an open space littered glass, debris, and spent bullet casings before ducking into the shelter of a small building on the military base. We had hoped that we would get the opportunity to talk to one of the Nusra Front commanders, but in the end that was also a no-go. They were still less than media friendly to say the least.

But we did get a full briefing from one of the other rebel commanders, standing over a printout of a satellite map of the base. The Nusra Front had mapped out the military strategy, collaborating with three other rebel units to launch a multi-prongued attack that left analysts commenting on how sophisticated the assault was and on how Nusra was shifting the battlefield, even though at the time they were estimated to make up roughly 10% of Syria’s medley of rebel units.

The young rebel commander who was briefing us was receptive to the questioning of Nusra’s ultimate goal for Syria and how that fit into other more moderate rebel units broader objectives. The answer was straightforward.

“The U.S. and the West in general have given us next to no help while we’ve witnessed thousands die at the hands of Bashar al-Assad’s heavy weaponry and dominance of the skies.” The commander explained.

“We need them. We have different visions for Syria, but we need their organizational and battlefield experience.”

Having spent time with other rebel units on their frontlines in the city, that need was clear. One unit I was with had a homemade rocket, a rocket launcher that was basically a plastic tube and no sandbags to stabilize it, so it all might as well have been a door weight. They used a sledgehammer to punch holes through the walls of Aleppo’s historic beautiful homes, to create crawlspaces that would allow them to avoid the streets and snipers line of sight.

When America designated Nusra a terrorist organization many people were furious.

“America is calling Nusra a terrorist but not Bashar?”

Roughly 12 years later, the Assad regime would fall and the man who established the Nusra Front, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, would become the President of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa. Over the course of those 12 years, Nusra would fight and lose against ISIS, cut ties with al-Qaeda, re-brand itself numerous times, each time building on the lessons learned from its previous incarnations.

And the man who was once called a terrorist would get perfume from President Trump in one of the oddest interactions I’ve witnessed to date, share a stage with General Petraeus whose forces hunted and imprisoned him in Iraq, and shake European and other world leaders hands.

I pulled them out of their plastic wrapping. Both were embellished with silver sparkles. Mr. ex-AQ watched while I stuffed my neck through the bonnet and tucked away any offending hair. His mother adjusted the scarf over it.

“See you look so much more beautiful now” Mr. ex-AQ exclaimed.

I laughed.

“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose? I mean if a headscarf makes me more beautiful then I should take it off so I’m uglier and not subjecting anyone to more temptation.”

He laughed. I kept it on while I was in his family home. His mother served us some cracked wheat, tomatoes, cucumber, and hummus, apologizing for not having more. Its not like it was her fault, it was hard to find anything.

It’s November 2012 and I’m in Aleppo, the rebel controlled part. I met Mr. ex-AQ, as I called him to myself, at the activist safe house we (my CNN crew and I) were crashing in. A whole medley of characters, all who went by pseudonyms, made their way through. Activists, citizen journalists, fighters and members of the local coordination committees. The regulars who I ended up spending the most time speaking with were a fighter who loved fashion and wanted to be a women’s clothing designer, an activist who blatantly stated that there would need to be a revolution against the revolution given the rise of radical Islamist groups, and Mr. ex-AQ.

That night I went to meet his mother, Mr. ex-AQ pointed to a corner of the couch and said “That’s where Zarqawi sat when he was here recovering from his injuries.”

He was talking about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda in Iraq’s founder. While Zarqawi is believed to have been injured then, most US intelligence points to him being treated in Iraq although there are rumors he crossed into Syria. I had no way of knowing if what he claimed was true.

The name alone sends me back to the first beheadings that we witnessed in Iraq in 2004. And to the kidnapping and killing of British-Iraq-Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan, who had spent decades helping Iraqis. And to the countless bombings that AQI had taken responsibility for that left flesh flung on buildings, limbs strewn across streets, Iraqi’s sobbing in despair over loved ones.

“Do you want to sit on that cushion, I’ll take your picture.” Mr. ex-AQ asked me.

“No thank you.”

If you’re wondering why I even went to his home, its because I believe in trying to understand the “why” that results in a person’s evolution, especially when that evolution is towards violence, and extreme violence. And no, wanting to understand, understanding is not condoning.

Mr. ex-AQ had said he was incensed after seeing repeated videos of of children in Iraq and Afghanistan pulled out from under the rubble of US bombs. He told me he went to Iraq to join al-Qaeda as a fighter, but they rejected him because of his eyesight and clear inability to hold, nevermind fire, a gun. The man wore the thickest pair of glasses I’ve ever seen. So he ended up sticking around there doing admin work. He told the story like a stand up comedian. He also told a hilarious story of falling in love with a woman he saw on a balcony who would wave at him every morning. He could not believe that a woman was expressing interest in him, given he was regularly rejected. When he went to ask the family for her hand in marriage he found out that she was intellectually disabled and waved at everyone from the balcony.

The mind does struggle to reconcile the contradictions. The way that someone who once joined a group like Al Qaeda can simultaneously be someone who also tells you a funny love story and jokes about their appearance. But I also find that those contradictions, those moments that surprise you in an interaction, are what make us human. I also do not believe in dehumanizing even those who at one point would have wanted to see me dead. Do not mistake this for sympathy.

Mr. ex-AQ claimed he did not last all that long with them. He claims he was not aware of just how brutal and horrendous al Qaeda was before he arrived in Iraq. At one point he joked that things would have turned out different for me if we had met there.

“Things are different now, I am different.”

He says when he saw the way AQ terrorized even the Sunni Muslim population it was not all that different to the oppression he was against in Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. For him it was about fighting the American occupiers, not oppressing fellow Sunni Muslims. Or so he said.

The other safe house regulars were friendly with Mr. ex-AQ but we were all wary. All sorts of people and fighting groups were coming out of the woodwork. What I called the radicalization of the revolution earlier that year with all its warning signs was materializing very clearly. And that January of 2012 the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria was established by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani who you might know as Syria’s current President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

By the time I got there that winter, Nusra had established itself with a number of bases that we steered well clear of. They weren’t patrolling the streets, they weren’t trying to rule. Rumor was that they had learned the lessons of Al Qaeda in Iraq’s brutality and realized that they could not afford to utterly alienate the population. Al-Jolani/Sharaa back then was a mysterious figure, a ghost. We did not know what he looked like.

Watch one of my reports from Nov 2012 on the rise of Islamist groups and families returning to rubble

Families who had fled were returning to utterly decimated neighborhoods. Civilians were regularly killed. The old city of Aleppo was in ruins, its historic streets turned into sniper alleys. Food was in short supply. Volunteers tried to do what they can, but most of the time the little they were able to cook up was not enough. Children fought over remaining burnt clumps of cracked wheat.

People were getting angry at the other rebel groups hoarding the limited bread and flour supplies. At one point, while I was there, Nusra took over bread distribution at the bakeries. This was interesting because it was one of the ways that they ingratiated themselves to the population. Nusra distributed equally.

The other major and more important aspect of Nusra’s presence was that they knew how to fight. They knew military strategy, how to launch a multi-pronged assault, design ambushes and create kill zones. A good chunk of their members, including al-Jolani himself, were jailed in Iraq. Some had been jailed upon their return to Syria only to be later released by Bashar al-Assad in the summer of 2011. Assad was more than happy to let Syrians cross into Iraq and to have Syria be the main transit point for foreign fighters into Iraq. But when the US and the Iraqis regained control over most of the country, Assad did not want to have those battle-hardened men turn on him. That is, until he needed them to make his lie a truth. Remember Assad used to say that the demonstrators in Syria were not peaceful, that they were terrorists. It was a very Machiavellian move.

Nusra’s capabilities were having their impact on the battleground. The resources of the other rebel fighters were rudimentary at best. On our drive to Aleppo we had stopped at a bomb makers house. He incidentally was not trained in Iraq, he had trained in Libya and fought with Palestinian groups against Israel. He had also been jailed twice by the Israelis. He described them as being more merciful than the Assad regime.

He had all his fingers which was reassuring. That his assistant was killed a few years ago when he was, as he said, less experienced was not. He was stirring sugar combined with I don’t know what sort of noxious chemical in the middle of his living room. His kids were running around. There were all sorts of bits and pieces of ordinance he would cobble together and use the sugar concoction and somehow turn it into rockets and grenades. One rebel group took us to see a 2m/6ft massive slingshot they would use to hurl the grenades at Assad’s army.

We heard that rebel units along with the Nusra Front were going to launch an offensive against an Assad military base. We were asked if we wanted to go.

Ever since he took power, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has either been viewed as the former al-Qaeda fighter who has transformed into a statesman or as a terrorist in a suit. This 2-part mini series looks at my time in Aleppo in Nov 2012, 10 months after al-Sharaa, going by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, formed his first group, the Nusra Front, that was Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch.

PART TWO COMING JULY 19

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Trash piles are already taller than most of the people forced to scavenge through them, all sorts of diseases are spreading like Hepatitis A (its horrid, I’ve had it), diarrhea (the number one killer of children under the age of 5), and any number of skin and other infections.

I had visited one of the wards in Nassir hospital that was stuffed with beds and flimsy mattresses on the floor, where children covered in this horrific skin disease called impetigo howled as their blisters pussed and oozed. Impetigo is relatively easy to treat. Wash with soap, apply a topical cream. Neither was available.

Snipper of a video from that Aug 2024 trip:

People were mixing salt with a few drops of lemon and sand from the beach to do dishes and try to clean off.

I remember thinking back then that Israel did not need to drop anymore bombs to kill people, the conditions they had imposed on Gaza, the sheer deprivation would exterminate the population on its own. Slowly, painfully and methodically.

Watch my interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour during that time where I state as much:

After I left Gaza, I got on a call with some members of the Biden administration’s Gaza team. I figured if we can simplify it all down to a bar of soap maybe the needle would move. Maybe they would be willing to get the Israelis to just let in soap. I have to say I have never in my life briefed people less interested in what I had to say. Not even the perfunctory grunt of “oh that’s terrible.”

The sense was, and still is, that the US is not even willing to yield a modicum of the pressure it can put on Israel. Not even for something as simple as a bar of soap.

The UN independent commission of inquiry found that Israel is deliberately targeting children in ongoing genocide against Palestinians. The report was released last week, and it’s a really tough read. Of the many testimonies shared is a story of a five year old boy who was treated by a doctor who had to reinsert his intestines by using diapers and tape.

I found myself thinking back on all the ways that children die or suffer needlessly due to deprivation. A little girl I met that was lying in the ICU. The hospital, Aqsa, did not have any pediatric tracheostomy tubes. I won’t go into the details of how, but I got three in. THREE. When, if, this little girl woke up she was going to find out that she was an orphan.

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I also find myself thinking about all the different ways that deprivation kills, especially the young whose bodies are still growing, who cannot fight the infection or disease.

Last year there was a spike in what’s called Guillan Barre Syndrome. Its terrifying, you wake up basically paralyzed, unable to move your legs and then it spreads to your arms and in extreme cases even further.

GBS is when your immune system attacks the nerves, usually following a bacterial or viral infection. It starts off with the voluntary nervous system – ie the muscles you move on your own and can turn deadly if it attacks your involuntary ones for example your diaphragm. We had a boy, Souhaib in our INARA clinic who came in with GBS. He had been discharged from the hospital after weeks with no improvement. After months of physical therapy, by some miracle, he was able to walk again. Many cases remain with partial paralysis. GBS is treatable if medication is administered within a month of symptoms. In Gaza there was no medication.

Deprivation is a crushing weapon, killing slower than the bombs, killing not just physically but psychologically. There are still not enough hygiene items. Trash and filth is piled as high as a one to two story building. There is a rat and mouse infestation spreading even more disease. There’s still a severe shortage in medicine, medical equipment, everything.

I was just messaging with Yousra, INARA’s Gaza program coordinator. We’re already seeing an increase in heat rashes and skin infections at our clinic and, as she pointed out, the next two months are going to be much worse as temperatures rise. Life hasn’t gotten “better” in Gaza.

“Everyone around me is suffering.” Yousra messaged. “Our life is impossible to explain. No one can understand it, no one can understand how hard it is.”

“We don’t need a heat wave to suffer” she writes.

Prologue: After four trips into Gaza in 2024, Israel denied me entry five times in a row. I still have an ongoing appeal to reverse that.

I was recently discussing Gaza, the UN report, and more along side Dr , one of the most extraordinary humans I have met; pediatrician, humanitarian, beautiful writer and INARA board member on another equally brilliant foreign policy analyst and former Pentagon Middle East advisor, Jasmine el-Gamal’s podcast. You can listen to our conversation with

THE ESSENCE OF CHILDHOOD HAS BEEN DESTROYED

Episode Description:

What does it look like when a childhood is stolen?

A new UN report accuses Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, documenting what it describes as the destruction of childhood through death, injury, displacement and psychological trauma. The report has already become deeply politicised, with supporters and critics fiercely debating its findings.

But beyond the politics are the children themselves.

In this episode of The View From Here, Jasmine El-Gamal speaks with humanitarian Arwa Damon, founder of INARA, and pediatrician Dr. Seema Jilani, two women who have spent years caring for children in war zones, including Gaza.

Together they discuss what they witnessed on the ground, how Gaza compares with other conflicts they’ve worked in, what prolonged war does to childhood, and why so many people have become desensitized to images of suffering. They also reflect on the challenge of bearing witness, whether testimony can still change minds, and what they wish every policymaker—and every one of us—could understand about the daily lives of children living through war.

By 2013 a decade of reporting from Iraq coupled with the first few years of Syria had turned me into a hot mess ball of angry. I was angry at people not caring about the suffering of others. I was angry at world leaders, decision makes, those who perpetuated the narrative of dehumanization, of “otherizing”. And I was angry at my own industry, journalism. Oh yes, even back then we were already failing ourselves.

Syria was a sledgehammer to the psyche. Many of us covering it were from the old Iraq gang. We could see it, predict the worse case scenario. It had been nicknamed the youtube revolution, an army of young brave media activists risking their lives every day to prove to the world that yes, the Assad regime was killing demonstrators. We watched hope rise as the US would make comments about red lines only to have those crushed. We filed reports on what was at risk if the US did not take decisive action, did not protect those demanding freedom and democracy. Nothing changed. I can feel that rage, that helpless rage as I write this. No matter how many of those brave souls who we generally spoke to on Skype (yes it was Skype back then) were killed or disappeared getting the story out, no matter that once the death toll hit 200,000 the UN stopped counting, no matter that we could see the radicalization, the ties between Iraq and Syria, the rise of extremism.

Watch: My journey from CNN to INARA

I was angry at me. I felt as if I must have failed as a journalist. For surely if my reporting had properly depicted the pain of all the people who had bared their souls people should have cared on a basic human level. Surely if I had properly explained all that was at risk, world leaders, namely the US would realize that it was in American’s security interests to end Assad’s massacres of his own people. Surely if I had done my job properly, something should have changed. The rational part of my mind realizes it’s irrational but my inner monologue to myself was all sorts of nasty, its favorite phrase being “not good enough” (If I ever do write an autobiography that will be the title).

I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. I had this visceral, primal need to do something and see the impact of it, as if that would somehow justify my failure as a journalist, justify the failure of journalism. I sank into that abyss, but if anything my brain does have a fantastic ability to do this percolating thing. I am really good at digging metaphorical tunnels if doors shut. The story of how I got to be a journalist, covering Iraq from the get-go with zero journalism experience and then to CNN is a lesson in that, but that’s a story for another day.

Somehow in the middle of that mental cesspool, by the end of 2013 an idea started to crystallize, pulled from the threads of my experiences. The 2007 story of this little boy named Youssif who had masked men pour gasoline on his head and set him on fire when he was just five years old. When we reported the story, it was at the height of the bloodletting in Iraq, a point in time when those of us in the CNN Baghdad bureau kept hearing “no one wants to hear about Iraq anymore.” And yet the response was massive, global and Youssif and his family ended up going to America for his treatments all funded by donations from CNN viewers. The thread: there are good people out there willing to give, find them.

We did a piece on three year old Safa, also out of Iraq, who looked like Violet from Charlie and the Chocolate factory, the growth in his belly was so big. An organization in the US initially came forward after our report, but then backed out when they saw his medical records. We, in the CNN bureau, ended up contacting the King Hussein Cancer Center, finding a donor. The surgery was given a 2% chance of success. Today, he’s living his life, totally fine. The thread: you can figure this out, make the needed connections, pull it all together.

But the reality is that both of those stories are rarities. The reality is that we did plenty of stories where no organization came forward. The reality is that you cannot do a piece on every child you meet. The reality is that there are countless children whose life story can be changed, to whom I do believe we owe that change. The thread: Do something about it. Build that organization that is going to get kids the surgeries they need who other organizations are not helping.

So I did. And it was both the best and most self-destructive idea I’ve ever come up with. For anyone thinking of starting a charity, let me tell you this: it’s a nightmare. I cannot even count the number of times I wanted to curl up in the fetal position, that I have cursed me for being me, and just gone “f*ck this”.

In fact, I got the word “INARA”, which in Arabic means “ray of light”, tattoo’ed on my wrist in Arabic. I did that before we even officially launched so that if I did decide to throw in the towel at any point in time, I’d have a permanent reminder of my failure. I know, psycho-analyze that.

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Like much of what I do, I went into it like a bull in a china shop. I had zero patience or experience for what actually building a sustainable charity looked like, what the foundation needed to be. In some ways I was just this silly girl tunnel vision focused on getting kids into surgery. I emptied my savings. I was trying to do it all on my own.

I got a kid whose face had practically melted off and could barely breathe into surgery. I sent a friend to his dentist to lobby for free dental prosthesis for a girl that had her jaw blown off. I was reporting from the field getting shot at and trying to coordinate transport for a mother to take her kids to physical therapy post-op on their hands.

And when I started meeting those first kids INARA was treating, I started to breathe a little. Journalism’s failures still had a bitter bite, but at least I was doing something else for people as well. I could justify my existence. I had an outlet for my angry, where I could turn the angry into action.

Prologue: While yes, INARA has given me an outlet for my angry, it also exacerbated it. Nothing about getting INARA to where it is today was easy. I’d need to write a book if I wanted to get into the betrayals, broken promises, how utterly disheartening it is to see just how hard it is to do the right thing, to do right by others. During the bulk of those early years, up until a few years ago, I was rowing the metaphorical boat mostly alone, gripped by this terror that I was about to lose what I had built and with that lose myself. INARA has become my “raison d’etre”, my reason for being.

CNN was extremely supportive of me starting INARA. The first thing I did when I started having to manage people - which by the way is the WORST - was to call my CNN boss and apologize because I had no idea how hard it was to manage people.

None of what you see INARA doing today is thanks to me. Sure, it was my idea, but INARA’s real growth has come in the last few years. Don’t worry, INARA is run and managed by those who know what they are doing, has expanded its programs beyond anything I could have imagined, and has a solid foundation.

I don’t “work” for INARA. I am its founder and board president. I do not, did not, and never have taken a salary from INARA. It is my passion project, not my job.

My own mental health journey, that whole “working on yourself” utterly annoying process would take years and a couple more hitting pretty close to “rock bottom” to get me to where I am today and is still a work in progress.

I left CNN in 2022 for multiple reasons, which yes included wanting to focus on INARA, but more to explore different forms of storytelling. I directed my first documentary that tells the story of four survivors of war from Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan who come together to summit Mt Kilimanjaro, to unite in demanding an end to war. It was another project that my brain would not let me ignore, and so I left CNN and did it, draining that good old bank account again. All proceeds from “Seize the Summit” are going to INARA.

Click here for where you can watch "Seize the Summit"

I cannot wait for the day, and we are very close if not already there, where I can be confident that INARA will survive past me. Yes it morbid, but my goal is always “is INARA strong enough to keep going if I die, can it stand on its own, hold together, if Arwa is no longer there”.

I’ve often questioned why I built my own personal hell. Why I, someone who is fiercely independent who does not want to be attached to anything, would construct her own ball and chain. I’m laughing as I write that sentence. I’m laughing at myself.

No matter how many times I have cursed the day I started a charity (which happens significantly less now) there is always that voice that goes “but if you hadn’t …” and then i remember all the faces, stories, the way that the spark of life comes back into a child’s eye and the rest of it doesn’t matter.

When I was in Damascus for a few days last week, I could feel the air was thicker, the euphoria of the fall of Assad not entirely gone, not by a stretch but settling into a “al 3alam ta3bana”. It directly translates to “the people are tired” but in Arabic it means so much more than that. It’s the sort of exhaustion that settles into your bones, drags you down, brings about a sort of lethargy. It’s the exhaustion of the soul, of the essence of life.

It’s hardly surprising given what the country and its people have been through not just over the last 15 years but more like the last 50 plus. I was invited to moderate a panel at a conference organize by the Syria Peace Initiative and there are a million and one things to discuss and share. But my starting point is the whole “are you optimistic about Syria”. This attitude that demands a yes or no, that is one of the first things that needs to shift when we talk about the prism through which we view Syria.

My response is always “that’s irrelevant”, much to the frustration and at times irritation of those asking the question. People tend to want a clean answer around which they can base their decision of if they should invest, support, donate etc etc. I find that it also lends itself to the wrong framework for action, which is what Syria needs right now. The better question to ask of oneself – be that a government, investor, donor is: what sort of a Syria do you want to see?

And if we can agree on the baseline of: we want a Syria that is stable, where its citizens can live with the rights so many died and sacrificed for then the framework shifts towards what role can you play to make that happen. How do we give Syria and Syrians the best fighting chance?

Very little of the money pledged to Syria has actually materialized, investors still find it “too risky”, humanitarian efforts, including those of my own charity INARA, remain grossly underfunded. Everyone is waiting for the ideal conditions which are literally impossible to accomplish without those same people/entities working to create those ideal conditions. It’s a ridiculous guaranteed to fail “chicken or the egg” scenario.

“Syria is the posterchild for the consequences of inaction.” Martin Griffiths, former Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator of the United Nations, who was on my panel said.

I struggled to concentrate on the conversation I was moderating in that moment. My mind rolodexing back to all the consequences of inaction in Syria that I witnessed over the years. The young media activists who would become so much more than sources on the ground, and the bonds built over long hours on Skype (yes it was Skype back then, we’re talking 2011/2012) before the majority would invariably go silent, killed or disappeared by the Assad regime. The early morning chats in safe houses I was smuggled to, as artillery fell around us and dark jokes that led to utterly inappropriate yet necessary for the survival of the soul laughter. The way that tents mushroomed into massive displacement camps, the tears of the mothers, the parent sifting through rubble for their dead children’s clothing just to have something to hug, the barely breathing bodies in makeshift clinics. The desperate questions I could not answer without causing the person more pain “Will America stop this now now?”, “How can the world let this happen to us?”, “Why doesn’t anyone care?” …

So world, what is it going to be this time around? Another round of paralytic inaction that results in the worst-case scenario? Or will you give Syria and Syrians a fighting chance this time?

Postscript:

There is a lot more to dissect when we talk about international support which I will get into in later pieces. How international support cannot and should not be conditional. How it’s not just about investment, but proper investment. How the Syrian people’s needs cannot be sidelined and “Syrian led” cannot just just be a phrase that is batted around. How support is not just financial but also supporting Syria’s sovereignty – ie pushing back against Israel’s land grab.

My friend says I shouldn’t use the word “rolodexing” or “mental rolodex” because no one knows what a rolodex is anymore. I still use it all the time.

I felt a chill of horror, my mind created the visuals of what that really meant, scenes I witnessed in person during my four trips to Gaza post Oct 7^th with my charity INARA before Israel denied me entry with no reason given. Visuals we have all seen on our social media feeds or in the news. Little limp lifeless bodies carried out of the rubble. The primal cries of the agony of loss. The heavy exhausted steps of a population who cannot carry the weight of what is being demanded of them just to stay alive, the haunted look in people’s eyes.

Netanyahu’s demeanor is that of a man who knows that there will be no consequences for his rhetoric or his actions. He is utterly relaxed, smiling as he talks about how at the start of the so-called peace plan in October 2025 Israel occupied 50% of Gaza, then took 60% and now this directive to take even more.

The media did pick up on this, headlines all over talking about this directive to take 70%, but there’s a crucial point in Netanyahu’s smirking declaration. The words “LETS START WITH THAT.”

There are some who are analyzing this as Netanyahu playing to his specific audience, he was talking at a conference at a settlement in the occupied West Bank, and their calls for Israel to fully take occupy Gaza and re-establish settlements there.

The concept of pandering to your base is one thing, politicians and world leaders do it all the time, as is the use of rhetoric to pressure an opponent or party at a negotiating table. But to dismiss this merely as pre-election political blah blah or a pressure tactic is rather naïve against the backdrop of Israel’s actions since Oct 7^th.

These are not comments made in a vacuum. Outside of Gaza, Israel has expanded its occupation of the West Bank, of Lebanon, of Syria. From the onset Israeli leaders have specifically expressed their ultimate goal. Just one example is last year when Netanyahu expressed his support for “Greater Israel”, comments which caused condemnation and an outcry across the region, not that is made much of a difference.

Unsurprisingly there has been, as of this writing, no reaction from the Board of Peace. Barely a hiccup from Europe. Deafening silence from Arab countries. Then again that has pretty much been par for the course. What can change any of this? The quick fix answer to that is the same as it has always been: The United States of America. Be it the Trump administration or the Biden one, America knows this as well.

But to lay this fully squarely on the US is to allow others to abdicate responsability. Arab countries, namely Gulf countries, if we lived in a world where the concept of Arab unity existed as anything but a concept, do have power. Perhaps not to pressure Israel as much as to pressure the US. But that would take a level of courage that no nation whether in the region or out of it as exhibited to date.

Europe has sanctioned some Israeli leaders, some agreements have been suspended, there has been a small degree of economic isolation, but most of it has been performative and hardly carries the weight of what Europe and others can actually really do.

I flash back to one encounter I had in Gaza. A mother had grabbed my arm after hearing that part of the work we do was with mental health for children.

“My son he’s 7.” She said. “Every night he screams and convulses. He’s been doing this ever since he saw his younger sister’s head fly off when the bomb hit our house.”

“Where were you?” I had asked.

“I was there too” she had responded.

In that moment, I had felt like my brain froze. It wasn’t just the horror of what she was describing, it was her tone of voice. Utterly monotone as if she was commenting on the weather.

It hits me just how deep she’s had to bury her own emotions, how much she has to fight everyday to make sure they don’t surface, that they don’t break her. It’s as if she’s reading my mind because then she says “I know, but I have other children who are still alive. They need me.”

To try to frame Netanyahu’s comments as anything but what they are – a declaration that 70% is JUST THE START – is, at this stage unconscionably naïve.

“I feel the weight of all the black bags. So many black bags. Did you see the black bags?” M mutters when her voice returns, curled up in a corner of my couch with my cat Burrito happily purring away in her lap. I’m grateful in that moment that my cats are little cheaters and non-selective in their cuddles.

M is a journalist who just got out of Iran and has been crashing at my place. She’s referring to the black bags of the dead, zipped, unzipped, sobs and wails as people searched for those they loved.

“What do you know about the people of Iran!” She explodes at the TV set we have on in the background. It’s an old white man, of course, on a talk show on a major network. I know him from my Iraq years and suffice to say he understood Iraq as well as I understand technology (just in case it’s not clear I don’t understand technology).

Her anger is more than justified. I also carry a version of it, the version that’s a byproduct of my own life and experiences, the disgust at how a people’s story, perspective, diversity gets hijacked by the media, governments, armchair pundits.

M has a list in her phone that she shares with me. Short choppy sentences.

The ways IRGC massacred Iranians in January:

The finishing shot (forehead shot at close range)

They shot people in the head, leaving their brains splattered across the asphalt.

There were trucks full of bodies

Using axes for killing

Shot from behind

Killed those who their hands were tied

Taking Money for bullets from families of killed people.

Using Poison gas and toxic pellets

Execution without trial

Killing the wounded in hospitals

Throat-slitting

Attack on a mourning ceremony

Arrest of family members of those have been killed.

There is no mention of this amid all the blaring headlines of a potential deal between the US and Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices, the global economy. It is all unsurprisingly, appallingly brushed under the proverbial carpet.

“They (the Iranian regime) just bought themselves another 10 years.” M comments.

“If not more” I respond.

The Iranian regime massacred at least 30,000 of its own people in January in the span of just 48 hours, as the country was under an internet blackout, one that still continues today.

How many deaths can a people endure? Physical killing, psychological killing. And as if that was not wretched enough, we kill their voice either by negating it, refusing to recognize it’s diversity, wanting to shove it into a neat little monochrome soundbite box to be regurgitated over and over.

M wrote the list at the time in January to have a record, to have something to do, because what does a person do when their brain wants to explode, when the eyes witness when the mind cannot comprehend?

“No one knows, no one understands these brutal evil murders. No one understand what we have been through.” She says. It’s true. We don’t. We can’t. I wonder if we realize how lucky we are that most of us don’t.

“I love my country, but my country doesn’t love me.”

M kept the list in her phone, refusing to delete it and any other potentially incriminating content as she crossed from Iran to Turkey. She acknowledges the recklessness of that, she personally knows the consequences of being imprisoned, but in some way it was her parting act of defiance, her own way of saying “F*ck you. I might be leaving for my and my family’s safety, but you will not fully break me.”

“Do people know all this? Did they care? Did it make a difference in anything?” she asks. It’s not a rhetorical question. She did not know what was being reported in the news. That’s what an internet and communications blackout does.

Yes, it was reported on, as the bits and pieces came out I tell her. Did they care? I suppose it depends on who they are, I say. What is “caring” these days? A reshare on social media, a box of “oh I did something” ticked? A “oh did you see what’s been happening in Iran, it’s so horrible” over morning coffee? Writing about it like I’m doing now?

Or is truly “caring” something bigger? Something that requires a certain level of self-sacrifice from those of us on the “outside”? Something that is supposed to be a power so strong it can course correct history?

Did it make a difference? The answer to that is no.

PROLOGUE: M’s identity is being kept anonymous for the obvious reason. Her family is still There is a lot more to M’s story as you can imagine. That is for her to share, when she is ready and how she chooses to do so. This piece is written with her approval.

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