Remembering Awni
Three years ago on October 7th 2023 the life of a young boy ended in Gaza. His name was Awni Eldous and the cause was a war-crime.
At around 8:20 PM that night, Israeli airstrikes hit the building that he lived in and 15 of his family members perished along with him. He was one of the 7 children of the family who were wiped from existence in that cowardly attack.1
He was by all accounts a happy child who inherited his love of technology from his father, a computer engineer. He started a Youtube channel to stream his gaming and in one of his videos professed his hope that his 1000 subscribers would someday grow to 100,000, or 500,000 or a million, or even 10 million. A goal he should have been allowed to strive for in his life.
I choose to remember Awni this day and his siblings and all of their hopes and dreams that were ended along with the hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians, men and women and children who have suffered the same fate before him and after him by the colonial state of Israel.
The creation of the state 78 years ago was a colossal mistake. The only way to ensure their depravity and the horrific atrocities they have normalized once again become unthinkable is for Palestinians to be free, on every last square centimeter of Palestine.
Please check my profile for a family that still lives in the Strip that could really use your direct donation.
May God give peace to the souls of the martyrs, have mercy for the rest of us who failed to stop their martyrdom, and give the criminals every last thing that they deserve.
Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un.
Indeed we belong to God, and indeed to Him we will return.