I had a different email planned for today.
I was going to write to you about everything we achieved together last month. The children we fed. The families we reached. The numbers that, when I look at them, make me well up.
Because behind every single one is a real person who needed us and we showed up.
I was going to make it a happy email.
And then I saw the video.
I need to tell you what happened because I think looking away is something none of us can afford to do anymore.
A one year old baby. One year old.
The age where the whole world is still soft and new. Where your father's arms are the only place that makes complete sense. Where you don't yet have the words for anything including fear.
Israeli forces took him. And they tortured him. Burnt him with their cigarettes, In front of his father.
This tiny, uncomprehending child who had done nothing, understood nothing, knew nothing except that something was terribly wrong and he was in pain and he needed his father.
And his father was right there. Held. Watching. Unable to move. Unable to reach him. Unable to do the one thing every father on this earth is built to do.
The cry of a one year old is the most honest sound in the world. It doesn't perform or exaggerate. It just tells you exactly how much something hurts.
I cannot get it out of my head.
Last month, so many of you showed up in the most extraordinary way. Together we fed thousands of children in Gaza. Kids who had been going to sleep hungry for months. We were on the ground every single day and because of you, we didn't miss a single one. When I look at what we did together, I feel something I don't have a word for. Bigger than pride. Closer to hope.
But that baby is still there. That father is still there. And the need did not end when the month did.
I keep coming back to the father. Standing there. Watching. Because there is no helplessness on earth like being forced to watch your child suffer and being unable to stop it. That love. Total, ferocious, completely powerless in that moment is the thing that breaks me most about this.
He couldn't stop it.
But we are not powerless. We are on the ground. And every single pound donated today goes directly towards the children who need someone to show up for them to feed them, to reach them, to make sure they are not invisible.
That baby is not invisible to us.
That baby didn't need the world to be perfect. He just needed to be safe in his father's arms. That is not too much to ask. And it is exactly what we are fighting for.
That is what we do together.
For the babies who should only know safety,
Hafsa