More than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza in the past month, including thousands of women, children, and elderly, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The real number is likely much higher… we don’t know how many people, dead and alive, are under the rubble right now. But we do know that the bombs continue to fall, every day, at rates unseen in the 21st Century.

For the past month, we have been trying every single day to make contact with Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, to get their stories on the show so people could hear directly from them. But, for obvious reasons, that has proven to be extremely difficult. Every single time we connected with someone and set up an interview, something would happen, we’d lose touch with them, their phone would stop working, and we’d have no idea if they were safe, if they were alive. One of those people was Mohamed el Saife. Mohamed is an independent video journalist in Gaza, and the last message he sent us on October 15 said, “I am now on the ground, between life and death.” After that, we lost touch with Mohamed for over two weeks, and we feared the worst. Then, on November 9, we got another message. With the tiny amount of internet he was able to use, Mohamed sent us a three-minute voice message from Gaza…

Additional links/info below…

Permanent links below…

Featured Music…

  • Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

TRANSCRIPT

Maximillian Alvarez: This is Maximillian Alvarez for the Real News Network and the podcast Working People. It’s Friday, November 10th, about 5:30 PM Eastern Time in the evening, and it’s raining outside, and I am once again sitting at my desk here in Baltimore, just shaken, devastated.

As I record this, nations and human rights organizations around the world continue to sound the alarm that Israel is committing acts of genocide with its scorched-earth bombing and ground invasion of Gaza, to say nothing of the drastically increasing Israeli military and settler violence in the occupied West Bank. In the wake of the brutal Hamas-led attacks on October 7th that, according to the latest figures, killed around 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers, and led to over 200 hostages being taken from Israel, Israel’s far-right government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has unleashed absolute hell on Gaza, which is a 22-by-5-mile open-air prison where Palestinians have been held captive, killed, and brutalized for decades by Israel’s US-backed apartheid state.

More than 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in the past month, including thousands of women, children, and elderly, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. And frankly, the real number is likely much, much higher, because we don’t know how many people, dead and alive, are still buried under the rubble right now. But we do know that the bombs continue to fall every day at rates unseen in the 21st century.

Basic humanitarian aid should be flooding into Gaza right now, but because of the bombing and Israel’s ongoing blockade, it’s coming in drips. People can’t get clean water. Food is scarce. Hospitals are shutting down for lack of fuel. Tens of thousands have been injured by the bombs and the ground invasion. Almost 1.5 million people displaced, and that’s according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. I mean, just before I started recording this, the latest headline that I read from CNN said, “Gaza Hospital surrounded by tanks as other healthcare facilities say they’ve been damaged by Israeli strikes.” I mean… this is an absolute fucking nightmare. 

For the past month, I have been trying every single day to somehow make contact with Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank to get their stories on the show so that people here could hear directly from them, because that’s what we do here on this show. We lift up the voices and struggles of our fellow workers, our fellow human beings, and our fellow human beings are being slaughtered en masse right now, and our tax dollars are funding the genocide.

But, for obvious reasons, it’s proven to be extremely difficult to get folks in Palestine on the show right now. Every single time that I connected with someone and set up an interview, something would happen. I’d lose touch with them, their phone would stop working, I’d have no idea if they were dead or alive, or if they were safe. I had no way of knowing.

And one of those people was Mohamed el Saife. Mohamed is an independent video journalist in Gaza. I actually connected with him months ago over Twitter, before all of this was happening, and I messaged Mohamed on October 8th trying to see if we could talk or if he could even send a voice message to me to let people know what was happening in Gaza at that time.

I didn’t hear back from him for a whole week. And then, a lone message appeared in my inbox, and it was very short, and the last line from Mohamed read, “I am now on the ground, between life and death.” That was sent to me on October 15th, and then… nothing. Silence. No posts on his Twitter, no messages. Obviously, I feared the worst, and I didn’t really know what to do. But then, yesterday, November 9th, I got another message. With the tiny amount of internet he was able to use, Mohamed sent me a three-minute voice message from inside of Gaza. Here’s that message in its entirety…

Mohamed el Saife: My name is Mohamed el Saife. I’m a 31 years old video journalist working and based in Gaza City. Since 2014 I was working as a journalist and a video journalist with several media all around Gaza Strip. I covered the 2014 War, and I also covered the 2021 War, and I covered multiple escalations and aggressions in Gaza City.

But this time, and for the first time ever, I feel scared, and I don’t have any way to describe what is happening in Gaza. IDF war planes just decided, out of nowhere, that my neighborhood, which is a residential [neighborhood]—Al Zahra residential buildings—is ordered to be totally bombed and flattened to the ground. I lost my house. I lost my memories. I lost everything that I built and everything that I have.

Thank God I didn’t lose any beloved. I evacuated my family, my beloveds, my sisters, my father, all of them just got displaced to the south end of Gaza, to Rafah, a place that they never had been to.

This is not a war. This is not something that we usually cover. I can’t even understand what is happening at the moment, and what it’s going to be [like] tonight, and how it’s going to be tomorrow.

Thankfully, my family is still safe for the moment, but I can’t guarantee anything more, because even the south is under bombardments nonstop with a majority of massacres and an approximate death [toll] every day, raised from 350 to 700 citizens being bombarded every single night. I just hope one thing here, that me and my family… get out all of [this] just with our own souls and lives. Mohamed el Saife, [inaudible 00:08:44] complex.

Creative Commons License

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Editor-in-Chief
Ten years ago, I was working 12-hour days as a warehouse temp in Southern California while my family, like millions of others, struggled to stay afloat in the wake of the Great Recession. Eventually, we lost everything, including the house I grew up in. It was in the years that followed, when hope seemed irrevocably lost and help from above seemed impossibly absent, that I realized the life-saving importance of everyday workers coming together, sharing our stories, showing our scars, and reminding one another that we are not alone. Since then, from starting the podcast Working People—where I interview workers about their lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles—to working as Associate Editor at the Chronicle Review and now as Editor-in-Chief at The Real News Network, I have dedicated my life to lifting up the voices and honoring the humanity of our fellow workers.
 
Email: max@therealnews.com
 
Follow: @maximillian_alv