“The world must not look away from the horrors in Gaza” - Wa’ed network addresses NGO CSW/NY
Jude Khdeir, a 15-year old member of the Wa’ed Network for Adolescent Girls, addressed a meeting in New York, imploring action to stop the genocide in Gaza.
Speaking as part of the preparations for the 68th Commission on the Status of Women, Jude talked about her experience growing up under occupation, and the impact of seeing appalling violence visited on children just like her in Gaza.
Read Jude’s statement below, or watch on the recorded stream here.
Hello, my name is Jude Khdeir, and I am 15 years old. I live in Ramallah, in the West Bank, and I don’t know what life without the occupation feels like.
Every Friday, I face the fear of crossing military checkpoints just to visit my grandparents. Each time, we are treated like criminals—searched, patted down. I’ve seen my dad call his siblings, telling them to wait before leaving their home because Israeli soldiers are on the roads, and things could escalate at any moment.
What breaks my heart the most is that I can’t visit the place where my mother grew up. I only know it through her stories—stories about the beauty of our small land, now stolen from us. It’s painful to hear about a world that feels so close, yet remains beyond my reach.
I dread opening the TV or scrolling through social media, knowing that every click could show me children, just two hours away, crushed beneath their homes, their screams for help unanswered. I see mothers lose their children, denied the chance to watch them grow and succeed. Even those who survive the bombings in Gaza live in fear—a life of unending torture.
What kind of world allows this? In Gaza, families are burned alive in the tents they are forced to live in. They can’t escape. Their flesh melts from their bones, their final moments filled with agony and hopelessness as they die slowly and painfully. This isn’t a war—it’s genocide.
Innocent civilians, children, and women are being slaughtered. People in Gaza sleep to the sound of screams, sirens, and explosions. But the worst sound of all is when the screaming stops, and the silence takes over—because it means they didn’t survive. Children shouldn’t have memories of bombs turning the night sky into blinding flames.
Two million people have lost their homes in Gaza. Among them, 625,000 children—58% of them young girls—have lost the right to education, to learn, and to grow. Schools are reduced to rubble, and for some, their blood stains the classrooms they once dreamed in.
Despite all this suffering and loss, no one seems to hear us. Our voices—crying, pleading for help—are met with silence, leaving children to fight alone, just to survive another day.
This is the reality I live with. And the world must not look away.