An appointment with destiny
Doaa Ghandour's story of surviving an Israeli airstrike that killed her family
Doaa Ghandour is one of the first people I met when I moved to Gaza in 2017. An active member of the Gaza Sky Geeks tech hub, my former workplace, Doaa was always in the co-working space hard at work on her own startup or mentoring others in coding and business. She is a game developer and co-founder of the Palestine Skating Game, which she describes as “Tony Hawk meets ethnic strife.”
On December 3rd, Israel bombed Doaa’s home while she and her family were sleeping. The airstrike killed Doaa’s mother, father, sister, brother, and sister-in-law. Read that again—five family members murdered in the blink of an eye. May they rest in power and peace.
Doaa and her younger sister Nour, a 14-year-old with Down syndrome, miraculously survived.
When I heard the shocking news that Doaa’s home had been bombed, I sent her my love and prayers via an Instagram message. Several days later, she responded:
A few weeks later, Doaa sent me a three-page document recounting her harrowing experience accompanied by the message: Tell my story.
Here is Doaa’s story, which I’ve edited for clarity and length. Trigger warning for abject state-sanctioned violence enabled by American taxpayer money and weaponry.
It was like any day in this war. I got up at 5:38am, prayed Al-Fajr prayer, then decided to go back to sleep. I had the flu and felt my body needed extra rest. I got back into bed and checked the news on my phone. At 6:20am, I was ready for sleep again.
I looked at my younger sister Nour and wondered why she was still asleep; she usually woke up by 6:00am. Minutes after that, I saw my other sister Esraa get up from her bed and exit the room. I thought to myself, "This is strange. Esraa is up before Nour." I didn't know then that everyone has an appointment with destiny.
I thought, "Why am I bothered with these details? Let my body get some rest." I checked my phone once more at 6:53am. I rolled to my left and gazed at the sky from our third story window. I made a mental note to go outside that day. I wanted to feel the sun.
Minutes later, I heard the sound of the warplane. I have heard this sound before, but this time it was very, very close—closer than ever before. In an instant, before I could do anything or even blink my eyes, I found myself inside a gray box, suffocating from a strange, toxic smell. I wondered what happened. I knew I was sick with the flu but this felt more serious. The whole world started shaking. I didn't feel any physical pain at that moment, but there was something torturing my soul. I was praying, "Oh dear God, whatever this is, please let it end. Please, I can't handle it." I heard myself screaming, but it didn’t feel like it was coming from me.
Then I saw myself from above, sleeping in the fetal position with my hands on my ears. I think it was my soul leaving my body. I heard a deafening whistle.
I started a journey to a new world, one I couldn’t visualize but only feel. I was in a wide space, a gray tunnel. It didn't have a beginning or end. There was silence. I was very light; I had nothing there—no mind or heart. I knew nothing, and didn’t have any kind of control. There was no gravity, and I was traveling so fast. I don’t know for how long; there was no time. In this endless space, I received a message. I can't describe how I got that message but it said, "Hang on to God, and you may survive.”
After I heard those words, I felt like I crossed a speed bump. I was lost; I didn't even know what "hang on to God" meant. I couldn't think. While I was lost, I felt something put words inside me. I started to say, "Ya Rab, ya Rab, ya Rab, ya Rab, ya Rab, ya Rab." [Translation: Oh God, oh God, oh God.] I hung on to those words, they were my only way to survive. Then I started feeling pain, but it felt miles away from me. I felt my lips moving: "Ya Rab, ya Rab, ya Rab."
I heard voices. I opened my eyes and found myself in a room filled with dust. There was a man standing at the end of this room; I remember his shocked eyes. I heard another one talking to me, "Please help us to get you up." I realized there were two guys, one holding my arms and the other holding my legs. They were trying to get me up, but my clothes were stuck. I slipped my arm from his hand, put it under me; there were many, many broken stones under me. I pulled my clothes; my hand got injured while doing that. Then I gave him my arm again. They managed to pull me out. He wrapped me in a blanket and hurried inside.
I realized then that we had been bombed, but I couldn’t recognize my home. I was shocked sitting alone on the rubble, trying to understand what happened, desperately trying to recognize my own home. I saw a small table near a wall and dragged myself towards it. Then, I saw Nour's pillow and felt a huge shock. "Oh my dear God, Nour was sleeping on this pillow. Definitely, I lost her." I could only feel shock and pain in those moments, sadness and grief were nowhere to be found.
I saw scattered papers and thought how upset my dad would be to see his books and files in such a mess. I kept looking around trying to recognize objects. I looked to my right and saw a man holding Nour. Her face was covered with blood. I wanted to run and take her, but I couldn't stand. I tried to scream to let them know that she is my sister. “Let me go with her,” I kept saying, “Nour, Nour,” but no one heard me.
I was 100% sure that I lost her. A woman approached me and I asked her about Nour. She told me, “She is OK; they took her to the hospital.” I thought that she was lying to me to keep me calm. I was sure Nour was dead. I was sure I lost her forever.
A man approached me and told me to come with him. He noticed my bare feet and warned me to be careful; the ground was filled with glass. We walked a few steps, and I realized I was in the street behind my home. “How did I get here?” I wondered. Many people gathered in the street. They were all looking up.
My sister-in-law’s sister who lives nearby appeared. She ran to me, asking about her sister. I told her I knew nothing. A man took me to his home. He told me to stay with his mother until the ambulance arrived. They brought another unconscious woman into the home. Women from the neighborhood arrived with headscarves; they gave me one.
Minutes later, someone came to the house; he introduced himself as a doctor. He said, “You have to go to the hospital.” I told him I don't want to go anywhere; I just wanted to rest. A paramedic eventually arrived and helped me into an ambulance.
When I last heard from Doaa, she was preparing to move with Nour to a tent in Rafah, the southernmost region of Gaza where 1.4 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced. Israel is currently bombarding Rafah and a ground invasion looms.
The incomprehensible horror that Doaa endured is an embodiment of the violent ideology called Zionism and of US foreign policy. To say these words—to denounce Zionist Israel—is akin to denouncing Nazi Germany. It does not make me anti-Semitic. It makes me anti-ethnic cleansing and anti-apartheid. It makes me anti-genocide. It is 75 years of Zionism’s unrelenting violence against Palestinians, not Hamas, that is the root cause of the madness we are seeing today.
We are soon to enter the fifth month of this genocide. This week, the US—for the third time—has vetoed a ceasefire resolution. This week, when confronted over the senseless slaughtering of Palestinian children, sitting congressman Andy Ogles said: “Kill them all.”
It seems that it bears repeating that Doaa, like every Palestinian, is a human being. She is not collateral damage, she is not a human shield. What is happening in Gaza is a modern-day Holocaust bankrolled and co-signed by Joe Biden, a leader who was sold to us as a decent man—the moral alternative to Trump.
I am exasperated, I am enraged. I am depressed and drained. I am mortified, though not surprised, by the barbaric behavior and rhetoric of the Israeli government and military. I am disgusted by the silence of my peers and fellow American citizens who shrug this off as too complicated, a single issue, or beyond the scope of their emotional energy.
Most of all, I am terrified for what is to come for my friends in Gaza.
I look back on Doaa’s message:
And I am reminded that my despair is unmerited. There is a future that includes the Palestinians of Gaza. That future will be built and led by people like Doaa, a future where Palestinians not only survive, but thrive. In the midst of all this pain, I envision that future, commit my whole heart to it, and find the strength to bear another unbearable day.
Some calls to action:
Several of my friends in Gaza, including Doaa, have launched GoFundMe drives to secure the tens of thousands of dollars needed to pay off the Egyptian government in order to escape the violence in Gaza. I have compiled all the fundraisers here on my Instagram profile—please contribute to give them a chance of survival.
Help Gazans stay connected to the internet and lifesaving information by donating an electronic SIM card. This initiative, run by my former colleagues, makes it easy to do so.
Raise the stakes on our representatives. Stop appealing to the morality of the politicians and power structures that are upholding this violence. After 140 days of a live-streamed genocide, it is clear they have none. Appeal to the only thing that matters to them—power and money. Withhold your votes, withhold your money. That is the only language they speak.
Reflect on your individual self. You are either trying to stop this genocide with your actions and words, or you are enabling it. There is no middle ground, no neutrality. On behalf of Doaa and every human in Gaza above and beneath the rubble, I ask: where do you stand?
💔thank you for sharing Doaa’s story. and your reflections. 🙏🏾
The personal tragic experience Doaa pierces through the soul. 💔 Martyrdom is an honor for the believers and an edict of doom for the murderers and mockers of God.
I wonder about those widely touted Christian values or morality in general, which are so deeply indoctrinated in the colonial occupation mindset. All answers to the question point towards one cause: the limitless avarice, on which the capitalist ideology survives on.
A society that feeds and nurtures avarice, practices apartheid by default. The norm is to oppress the weak and the defenseless people. They create the grounds to terrorize with WMD of all sorts, including untested new bombs like the thermobaric bomb which sucks the oxygen causing lungs to implode, chemical and biological weapons, rape, famine, and psychological dehumanization.
All ingredients of genocide have been tried and tested in the recent centuries by the West in the name of shoving democracy and civility on other older and mature societies, which the Westerners have plundered and hollowed in the name of development. If they were not so heavy, the pyramids and the Taj would have be ‘surgically’ relocated to Europe.
In 400 years since the 1600s, the European and US colonial warfare has killed at least 400 million people. That is one million people killed every year for 400 years. Let that kill rate sink in.
The ‘mowing of grass’ at this rate is required to support a capitalist economy which depends on the Military Industrial Media Academic Complex.
Project Zionism is a code name for one of the several ‘mowing the grass’ projects to generate a constant demand of weapons on which the allied industries run; the media harps endlessly the falsehood propaganda to indoctrinate hate in the society; and the academics spend their lives in developing new WMDs and pontificating to turn wrong into right. Last count of US toppled legitimate regimes around the world is at least 72. Of course, the political turmoil keeps the poor countries in constant battles for their survival. And IMF and other such ‘benevolent’ agencies keep the under-developed perpetually under-developed.
This charade of the Western values is self destructive. The world is witnessing that while the empire fiddles, its fall is underway. Fascism has set its roots. Politicians are AIPAC pawns. Democracy is dead and decomposing in the bombed Gaza hospitals and the bulldozed Gaza cemeteries.
The tiny Gaza Strip has shown the world the medieval savagery that is mutated in the European genes. The world is fed up of the hypocrisy of the Western values. Tyranny has reached a tipping point. It is time for the failed way of life to give way to a new civilization, in which human dignity and human rights will reign supreme.
Humanity owes gratitude to the martyrs of Palestine and the besieged masses. Their sacrifice will shine bright till the Day of Judgement.🙏🏼🇵🇸💔🇵🇸🙏🏼