Freedom and Dignity for Translators in Gaza - RCT Arabic Team Co-Director
I am Respond Crisis Translation’s Arabic Team Co-Director. I’m writing this from northern Gaza.
I’m the sole breadwinner for my family. In the early weeks of the war, I was forced to flee my home in Gaza City under relentless bombardment. The Israeli military had issued warnings that the city would be wiped out entirely. The city where I live was once the most beautiful places on the coast—a home I shared with my family, one my father spent over ten years saving for. I helped furnish it so we could live there with peace. We spent two nights under open skies, terrified and exposed to the bombs, before seeking shelter in a friend’s home in Rafah. Shortly after, we learned that our house—and the entire neighborhood—had been obliterated. We lost everything, including our clothes and essential documents. We fled with only what we were wearing.
I joined Respond Crisis Translation (RCT) in 2023 as a linguist with the Arabic team. Despite the organization’s commitment to offering pro bono services for refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers, they ensured I, and all displaced Palestinians were compensated for the tasks we took on, even in spite of the fact that most were unpaid cases. This support, during one of the darkest times in my life, was a lifeline.
With RCT’s help, I was able to buy shoes, medicine for my mother, who suffers from nerve damage, and clothing to replace what we had lost. But the displacement didn’t end there. We were uprooted again, from Rafah to Deir al-Balah, and eventually forced to live in a tent for months. The need for income became more urgent than ever.
When the temporary ceasefire was announced and we were allowed to return to Gaza City, I reached out to RCT, this time to ask for help finding work. We needed to rent a home as we no longer had one and the rent was extremly high with few residential buildings or houses left in the city. That’s when my journey with Respond deepened.
I was offered a staff role as co-Director of the Arabic team, an opportunity that gave me not just income, but renewed purpose.
Thanks to this job, I was able to rent a small place and move my mother out of the tent. For the first time in months, we had running water, a functioning toilet, and a clean pillow to rest our heads on. I used to say, “Even if the house is bombed, at least we’ll die with our heads on clean pillows and my mother will die with some peace, inside four walls.”
RCT's support gave me more than income. It gave me back my dignity; it gave me purpose and hope.
It spared us from crowded shelters, from the instability of moving from one host family to another. It lifted the crushing anxiety of not knowing how we’d pay rent or eat the next day. In Gaza, cash is almost impossible to access and commissions on withdrawals reach 50%; even basic food is out of reach for over 2 million people.
Food, in Gaza, at the rare moments when it is available at all, is very expensive. A kilo of flour now costs between 75 and 180 shekels, about 22 to 53 USD. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is a big lie; it is designed to be a deadly trap; desperate people are drawn there in hopes of finding food, only to be shot. I’ve lost friends who went looking for flour or canned food for their children.
We go to bed hungry most nights. My sister and I often give up our share of bread so our sick mother can eat. Sometimes we find mice or ants in what’s left of our bread, but we eat it anyway because we have no other choice.
Destruction is everywhere. Hunger is everywhere. Armed groups and smugglers roam freely. You never really feel safe. You never truly feel full. There’s no public transportation anymore, we now travel in hearses, on donkey carts, or in fish trucks. Every time I step outside, I feel a part of my soul and dignity slip away.
But through all of this, RCT has been my anchor. It allows me to work with honor, to help others while supporting my own family. Despite everything, I make a point to share what I can. I save a portion of my salary each month to help others in even worse conditions, hungry children and elderly people in pain.
The profound impact of this work extends deeply into my personal well-being and that of my family and people around me. With the most recent support I received from RCT, I was able to buy prescription glasses for several children struggling with vision problems. This helped them see better, participate in local activities, and focus in school, instead of being held back by a treatable issue. And it’s not just me, most of my friends and people I know do the same. We’re always thinking about how we can help others, even in small ways, because there’s always someone in a harder situation than ours.
Working with Respond hasn’t just impacted me financially or emotionally. It’s helped me rediscover meaning. I now feel I have purpose, not just surviving myself, but as someone who can still build, give, add value to people’s lives when they too are in crisis, and connect others with the support they need.
My story isn’t just my story. It’s the story of thousands of Palestinians living through what has become the most devastating famine and genocide of our time. And yet the world goes on, looking away, ignoring the children, mothers, elders, and civilians dying each day for a handful of flour, a drop of water, a safe place to sleep.
We go to sleep each night not only with empty stomachs, but to the sound of bombings, buildings being leveled, and ambulances screaming through the dark.
We wonder:
Will there be food tomorrow?
Will the price of flour go down?
Will I be able to buy food for my nephew, who is suffering from malnutrition?
Do I still have time left to live?
Will I return home on foot—or be carried back in a paper bag, wrapped in newspaper?
Will there be a ceasefire?
Will I get a piece of meat—or taste fruit again?
The RCT team, this family grounded in deep human values and an unwavering moral compass, embraced me before I even had to ask for help. Their support eased not only my pain but also the suffering of those around me. They gave me hope, not just in a better tomorrow, but in humanity itself. Even if the world turns its back on us, I still believe that compassion, equity, and humanity aren’t dead. That somehow, through all the cruelty, they will find their way back.
I now know that if I were to die, I would go in peace, knowing I lived a life of service to others. I stood with refugees and migrants from Yemen, Syria, Palestine, Sudan, and beyond. I would die knowing I was someone of worth to the innocent, humble Palestinians around me, people who not only deserve life, but love it deeply.
Your support is more than just aid, it’s a powerful message of solidarity and hope to Palestinian linguists who are striving to live with dignity. It uplifts those who believe in their capacity to make a difference and to ease the suffering around them, even in the darkest moments of their lives. By supporting us, you offer what feels like a quiet apology on behalf of a world that has looked away. You place a gentle hand on our shoulders and say ”You deserve more than survival. You deserve freedom. You deserve to live and to live with dignity.”
