LETTER TO THE EDITOR
CLOSE your eyes for a moment. Imagine your child—hungry, trembling, covered in dust—whispering, “I don’t want to die.” Now, imagine no hospital to run to, no food to give, no safe place to hide.
This is not a dystopian nightmare. This is Gaza in 2024.
While global leaders debate politics and issue cautious statements, children are buried under rubble, mothers give birth without anesthesia in bombed-out hospitals, and the elderly starve to death, abandoned in shelled nursing homes. This is not a war. This is genocide in real time.
And yet, the Philippines—a nation born of struggle, rich in memory of oppression—remains disturbingly silent.
What kind of world accepts this?
The numbers are not just statistics. They are graves.
- 15,000+ children killed since October 2023 (UNICEF).
- Over 1,000 children have lost limbs, often without anesthesia (Doctors Without Borders).
- 17,000 orphans now navigate ruins alone (Save the Children).
- 95% of Gaza’s population faces hunger; famine is imminent (UN).
- 35 hospitals bombed or shut down, leaving cancer and dialysis patients to die (WHO).
If this were happening to our own children, to our own mothers and grandparents, would we still call this “self-defense”?
Weaponizing hunger, erasing humanity
This is not collateral damage—it is strategy. Babies die from dehydration while mothers fake milk using flour and polluted water. Aid trucks wait at the border, blocked by Israeli forces, while people eat grass and leaves. Hunger has become a weapon of war.
Even aid drops are turned into massacres—like the “Flour Massacre,” where over 100 people were gunned down while scrambling for food.
Israel doesn’t just destroy lives—it destroys hope.
Women and elders: The forgotten victims
Where are the women’s rights defenders? The child advocates? The church leaders?
Pregnant women in Gaza give birth on the street, holding newborns with one hand while shielding them from shrapnel with the other.
Grandmothers bleed out in bombed-out homes, unable to flee.
Holocaust survivors in Gaza have called this worse than Nazi Germany—because the world sees and still allows it.
The scale of devastation is unimaginable. According to the latest data from UN OCHA and Palestinian sources:
- Over 70% of homes in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged, leaving 1.7 million people displaced.
- All 12 universities in Gaza have been bombed, including the Islamic University of Gaza and Al-Azhar University.
- More than 400 schools reduced to ruins, denying 625,000 children their right to education.
- Over 1,000 mosques and several churches deliberately targeted, including the historic Great Omari Mosque.
- All 35 hospitals in Gaza have been attacked, with only 3 partially functioning amid severe shortages.
- Over 200 journalists and media workers killed, the deadliest conflict for press freedom in history.
While the world speaks, we remain silent
Other nations are not turning away:
- South Africa brought genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
- Spain, Ireland, and Norway formally recognized Palestine.
- Colombia, Bolivia, Chile cut military ties with Israel.
- Students in the U.S., UK, Indonesia, South Africa, and Malaysia face arrest and expulsion to protest genocide.
Meanwhile, the Philippines—our government, our churches, our universities—stay silent.
We continue to purchase weapons from Israel.
Our pulpits offer no prayers for the Palestinian dead.
Our campuses turn away as students abroad risk everything to say, “Not in our name.”
Have we forgotten who we are?
We who know martial law. We who remember colonial brutality.
We who hold EDSA in our hearts.
Have we forgotten the value of resistance? The cost of silence?
To be neutral in the face of genocide is to choose the side of the oppressor. To turn away from Gaza is to turn our backs on ourselves.
Break the silence. Reclaim our conscience
This is not a call for charity.
This is a call for moral clarity.
For courage. For solidarity rooted in justice. Speak out. Educate others. Demand that our institutions take a stand.
Boycott. Protest. Pray.
Do what you must—but do not do nothing.
Because if we let this continue in silence, we are no longer innocent.
We are complicit.
#FreePalestine
#GazaGenocide
#NotInOurName
#SolidarityFromTheSouth
#TheFilipinoConscience
Evangeline L Grandeza
A 62 y.o. mother, former contractual government employee
Davao City
Elgrandeza@gmail.com
