“If I hadn’t started baking again, I would have collapsed.”
In this episode of Women of Resistance, we are introduced to Dima Omar al-Buhaisi—a 21-year-old professional baker in Gaza whose resilience has risen alongside her cakes, even as her world falls apart.
As Israeli bombs rained down on her city, Dima returned to her kitchen—not for profit, but for survival.
“They asked me, ‘How can you bake during a war?’” she recounts. Her answer? “Try it. You might find a reason to smile again.”
Before the war, Dima’s cakes were her craft and livelihood. With over 40,000 followers online, she had built a thriving business—one she never imagined would become her emotional anchor through genocide.
“I wasn’t earning anything,” she says. “But when I saw the children smiling—just one cupcake—it kept me going.”
Despite injuries from working over a clay oven, scarcity of ingredients, and the trauma of watching her friends and family die, Dima found strength in flour, sugar, and resilience. Her Instagram became a thread connecting Gaza’s suffering to the outside world. Support poured in—from Bahrain, from strangers abroad, from people who saw in her a symbol of life refusing to bow.
She even innovated: baking eggless, milk-free cakes for hepatitis patients—many of them children infected through Gaza’s contaminated water.
“My existence is my resistance,” she says, echoing the unshakable will that defines so many Palestinian women.
In the studio, Dr. Annie Shah joins host Sakina Datoo to reflect on Dima’s story. “She’s an institution in herself,” Annie Shah says. “In a place torn by war, girls like Dima are the hope that refuses to die.”
Her spark is contagious. Her pain, tangible. And her message, clear.
“We want to live,” Dima insists. “Like any other human being.”
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