...Being in Rafah never meant safety, even before Israel’s current ground invasion. On October 24, my family’s home in the city was struck by an Israeli missile. Israel targeted us because of my work as an activist and my visible role in mobilizing the Great March of Return in 2018. The missile killed six members of my family, including my 13-year-old son, Abdullah. I was so consumed by agony that I could scarcely feel the pain of the second-degree burns covering my own body.

Then, in March, Israeli forces blew up my apartment in Khan Younis. I found myself homeless, like more than a million and a half Palestinians in Gaza, who are displaced from one roadside to another, seeking a place to sleep...

Yet how can we believe that President Biden is serious about supporting us, while US military, economic, and political support continues to enable the war crimes Israel is committing?

In addition to dropping meals, hundreds of thousands of American-made bombs and shells have been dropped on us, including the missile that killed my son Abdullah. This is why I became a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in US federal court against the Biden administration, suing them for their complicity in Israel’s genocide. The judge found that this was, indeed, a plausible case of genocide. And yet, war crimes funded by the US continue, unabated.

We don’t need empty words of concern or cynical PR stunts like air drops or floating piers. We need the international community–and the Biden administration in particular–to impose a cease-fire on Israel and to stop the invasion of Rafah and the destruction of Gaza. We need the world to take a stand against the policies of collective punishment on civilians, through repeated displacement, endless massacres, widespread destruction, and denying people access to food and other basic necessities of life...

Read the full piece here.