“He doesn’t know what a kitchen is.”
That is how Rawan describes her one-year-old son’s life in Gaza—born into war, raised in displacement.
In this third episode of Women of Resistance, host Sakina Datoo introduces us to Rawan, a 29-year-old accountant and mother of two, whose story reveals the intimate and brutal impact of Israel’s ongoing war on Palestinian families. Once a professional liaising with Israeli import authorities, Rawan left her job when she could no longer bear the daily reminders of injustice. “They can import anything. We face restrictions at every turn,” she says.
But after October 7, things grew worse.
Her home was destroyed. Her family was separated. Her children—Safa, aged five, and Saeed, barely a toddler—have known nothing but tents, scarcity, and fear. “Safa goes to school in a tent,” she explains. “No books, just pencils.” For Saeed, “he’s never seen a door.”
And yet, Rawan persists.
“We send them to school because we refuse to let them win,” she says. “They want us uneducated. But we are not nothing. We are something.”
The episode doesn’t stop at the personal. It widens to the collective trauma—how families like hers faced the terrifying reality of tanks at their doorstep, bullets above their heads, and soldiers shouting them out of their homes. “We were one hundred people in one room,” she recalls. “We thought we were all going to die.”
Studio guest and activist Carole Swords, herself a grandmother, is visibly shaken.
“My great-granddaughter just swam her first 25 metres. And Rawan’s son has never even seen a home.”
Together with Sakina, they reflect on the global silence, the double standards, and the role of women in fighting back—not with weapons, but with voice, memory, and refusal to be erased.
“Don’t stop speaking for us,” Rawan pleads. “Gandhi succeeded because he was persistent. Be persistent.”
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