YWCA of Palestine: Baby Shayma from Gaza: A Security Threat?

Action alert from the YWCA of #Palestine

She was saved from the body of her dead mother. Her mother and father were killed in an airstrike on their home. Her father had been a journalist for the radio. Her mother was 8 months pregnant. Shayma Shilech al Eid was born through an emergency C-section. Her mother died on the way to the hospital.. For 43-year-old Mirfat Qanan, it was a tragedy to lose her daughter, but there was joy at becoming a grandmother. “God has protected this child for me. My daughter Shayma is dead, but I now have a new daughter,” she said. “She’ll call me ‘mummy’ just like her mother did.”

Shayma was everybody’s miracle baby. Her doctor, Fadi Al Khoury, said she was the symbol of hope for Palestine facing daily bombardments from air, sea, and land. Shayma needed three weeks of oxygen in an incubator to survive. On her fifth day she died when the electricity to the hospital was cut due to Israel’s bombing of a power plant causing power outages throughout Gaza.

Shayma dared to be born Palestinian. She died because the power was cut off to her incubator. The question is what else has been cut off. How does the world’s selective morality and silence cut off more than the life of this miracle baby? Has it cut off hope for a humanity united against genocide?

We pray not. We hope not. The death toll today is more than 1,300 Palestinians dead with more than 7,000 injured and thousands more homeless. This is not a military operation or a war but a full scale genocide taking place. This is not a time for telling or comparing narratives of suffering.

This is genocide and it needs the world’s attention and action which means, calling for:

• Prosecuting Israel for war crimes at the Hague and at the Criminal Court of Justice
• Imposing trade sanctions and weapons embargos.