Photo: Maryam from Gaza, 3 years-old, October 2026

Maryam is a Palestinian three-year-old child who was rescued by a journalist from a building on fire resulting from an Israeli air strike in Gaza. She was sitting watching as her mother burned to death. Maryam is alive but is suffering severe burns, and without medical evacuation (an impossibility given the Israeli blockade on such evacuations from Gaza), like so many before her, there is the threat of blood poisoning from her burns. She’s now an orphan, like so many other children in Gaza. Over 20,000 children in Gaza have been killed in the past three years (read 2026 UN Human Rights Council report here). When will this horror end?

Words are impossible, but silence is worse. I wrote this, simply because I had to:

she’ll remember this

always—

as she watched

her mother burn

the world remained

silent