“All my wishes can be summarized in two words,” Gazan English teacher Asma Mustafa told me in a voice message on January 25, “peace and love among people here.”
This was the first I’d heard from Asma since a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was implemented. We had been communicating on and off through text and voice messages since last September, when she asked if I would write a report about her teaching, which continued throughout the Israel-Hamas war, despite her daily struggle to survive.
Asma has taught for over 15 years, and is renowned for her creative and playful methods. The winner of both the Global Teacher Award and the Creative Teacher of Palestine Award in 2020 and 2022, respectively, she’s also the author of two pedagogical books.
We first met in 2022 when I interviewed her through video chat about Pen Palestine, a letter exchange program founded by Berkeley-based teacher Heather Alexander, where hundreds of 8–18-year-old students in Berkeley, Canada, Ireland and the Czech Republic became pen pals with students in Gaza. Asma is a key organizer of the project, and many of her students have participated.
Asma used to teach teenagers in an intermediary school in northern Gaza. That changed on the morning of October 7, 2023. About a year later, in October 2024, while living in a tent with her family in central Gaza, she told me she remembered that day clearly.
“I was looking at myself in the mirror, smiling and putting on my last touches before leaving home to go to my school,” Asma texted. “The taxi driver was waiting for me. Then suddenly, sounds of rockets and violence was all I heard. I shouted and I felt like my heart was out of breath. I knew it was the war. Since that moment, I lost my life, despite being alive.”
On October 7 and 8, Hamas, which has governed Israeli-occupied Gaza since 2007, launched Operation al-Aqsa Flood into southern Israel. The operation resulted in the deaths of around 1,200 people, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, 38 of whom were children. Hamas captured around 240 hostages, according to the Israeli military.
In response, Israel has killed more than 61,709 people in Gaza, according to the latest Palestinian Authority estimates. Against a pre-war population of about 2.25 million, Israel’s attacks have killed, at minimum, one out of every 36 people in Gaza. At least 17,492 of those killed were children. Human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have labeled Israel’s attacks a genocide. Asma agrees.
“It’s not war,” she told me plainly in a voice message. “It’s genocide.”
Teaching during Displacement
Asma left northern Gaza within two weeks of Israel’s occupation, the first of eight displacements she and her family would face over the course of the war. In each of the eight places where Asma fled, she forged connections with children, regularly teaching them in large groups. Her students were generally much younger than the teenagers she had been teaching before October 7. Since leaving northern Gaza, she said she has taught about 2,000 students in total, and often incorporated music, dance, and play into her lessons.
“I always played music for the children in order to take them away from the miserable, terrifying, awful time full of sounds of bombs and rockets everywhere, targeting places very close and even right around us,” Asma said. “I wanted them to dance, play, and forget about the war. They will never forget this experience and trauma, but at least I could give them a first-aid of education.”
Asma stressed the importance of incorporating bodily movement into her teaching to aid students’ mental health.
“We need to make what is called emotional discharge,” Asma said. “We want the children to jump, to dance. We want to take the negative energy from inside and take it outside.”
As Asma taught, Israel violently suppressed Gaza’s education infrastructure. According to a UN report released last July, Israel has damaged at least 84.6 percent of schools in Gaza, to the extent that full reconstruction or significant rehabilitation will be required before reopening them. Often, Israel’s Defense Forces killed those sheltering in schools, including civilians, women, children, and UN workers.
Asma said the loss is devastating, especially because the people of Gaza place tremendous value on education. According to the most recent UN data from 2020, Palestine—the combined land of Gaza and the West Bank—had a literacy rate of about 98 percent, one of the highest in the world.
“What we’ve lost is aggressive and massive,” Asma said. “We have lost our life. Education means life here in Gaza, and most of the Gazans are well-educated. We love education and belong to the books.”
Beyond the loss of Gaza’s educational infrastructure, Asma’s students have been acutely traumatized by the war, which has subsequently harmed their ability to learn.
“They have become less able to remember, understand, and perceive because of the tragedies and disasters,” Asma told me in January. “It’s led to them losing passion and love for learning. Thousands of children in Gaza have lost one or both of their parents. They do not feel safe at all.”
Asma witnessed the Israel Defense Forces kill one of her students. The student was selling bread on the street when Asma encountered her, and she insisted on giving her a piece. The student praised Asma and said she felt inspired to love life and work hard for a better future for her family.
“I was so happy,” Asma said. “I hugged her and she walked down the street opposite me. I was still eating the piece of bread and looking at her. In less than a second she disappeared totally.”
The child had exploded in the Israeli rocket attack. Asma found pieces of her body all around, blood on the cart she had sold bread from. Asma said she’s “continuing to make bread in heaven now.”
Enduring the Effects of War
Israel has not only devastated Gaza through its military attacks, it also created the conditions for a humanitarian crisis. Israel continues to limit the import of necessities such as food and water, and according to a UN report published in November, Israel has destroyed 70 percent of farmland and killed 90 percent of cattle in Gaza. According to an Oxfam report published last July, Israel has reduced the available water in Gaza by 94 percent and destroyed 100 percent of the wastewater plants. Human Rights Watch accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.
Asma said food prices fluctuated due to the lack of supply during the war, sometimes reaching 10 times their normal price,. The scarcity of resources often instigated conflict among Gazans. Multiple news reports have shown armed gangs stealing large portions of the food aid Israel has allowed into Gaza, while Israel Defense Forces looked the other way.
As an educator, Asma countered internal conflict by fostering positive relationships among her students through stories and humor.
“I want them to learn how to make friends,” Asma said, “to learn honesty, collaboration, and cooperation. Everyday I teach a new funny story with a new lesson.”
Asma also used drama games to help students work together, collaboratively thinking through problems.
“Drama is very difficult but it is wonderful because you see results,” Asma said. “I feel very happy and satisfied when I listen to the young children thinking as if they are adults, solving problems together in such an amazing way.”
Throughout our correspondence, Asma often mentioned feeling sick and tired, describing sleep as “like something from heaven…an impossible wish.” Crowded conditions in the tent camps did not allow for privacy or quiet, and on nights when the rumble of Israeli bombs didn’t resound through the area, the sound of one baby crying woke the entire neighborhood.
Inclement weather also had a harsh impact on Asma’s ability to rest. Throughout the winter, temperatures in Nuseirat camp, where Asma was living, would sometimes reach near-freezing levels. In late January and early February, wind and rain caused flooding in her tent.
“It’s awful,” Asma told me at the time. “It’s as if I am swimming in the tent all night long.”
In early February, Asma said illness was a constant burden through the war, and the health system can’t help much.
“I am always in pain,” she said. “But I can hardly ever find medicine.”
Since October 2023, medical care in Gaza has been extremely limited or impossible to access. According to a UN report, Israel has bombed at least 27 hospitals and 12 other medical facilities at least 136 times between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024—about one medical facility attack every two days—and attacks have continued since the release of the report. As of January 3, only 16 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were partially operational and offered just 1,822 beds, according to a World Health Organization Report. Documents from humanitarian operators show Israel has blocked medical aid items from entering into Gaza.
The strained system has hit children hard. Save The Children reported over 10 children a day had one or both of their legs amputated between early October 2023 and January 2024, and many of these operations occurred without anesthetic.
Connections beyond Gaza
Almost all Gazans have not had the option of leaving while facing this crisis. Since 2007, Israel and Egypt have implemented a blockade that bars those in Gaza, which is 141 square miles, or about three times the size of San Francisco, from leaving. Human Rights Watch refers to Gaza as an “open air prison.”
Asma has long helped her students battle isolation by connecting them with the outside world. Before October 7, Asma had been arranging for her students to practice English with students in over 50 countries through online meetings, and used the letter exchange program Pen Palestine to connect her students to those outside of Gaza.
But for Gazans, connecting with the outside world has become more difficult since October 7. Since the start of the war, Israel’s widespread destruction of infrastructure, including attacks on the offices of Paltel, Gaza’s biggest internet company, has greatly increased the price and reduced the ability for Gazans to access the internet.
Asma told me that, throughout the war, Israel would repeatedly shut off the internet for several days in a row. When the internet was available, it worked in limited places and times. Asma often answered my questions at an office building far from where she lived.
“People in shelters and tents do not have internet,” Asma said. “Whenever I communicate with people outside [of Gaza], I have to walk for a long distance. There is a limitation of access. Not all people can afford this service. It is very expensive.”
Despite these limitations, Asma continued Pen Palestine by receiving written letters through the internet and sharing them with her students. Asma also helped her students write letters in response, which she would send back when she had access to the internet.
The program hasn’t just been helpful for Gazan students. Students outside Gaza who had participated in the program during the 2021–2022 school year told me that communicating directly with a student in Gaza has had a lasting effect on them.
Nayla, a Berkeley-based seventh-grader, said she thinks about her former pen pal often.
“It makes me scared for her and her family,” Nayla said in December. “I’m empathetic that these are actual people that I consider my friend.”
Her connection to a student in Gaza has inspired Nayla to speak out against the genocide. During a Berkeley city council meeting in late 2023, Nayla spoke of her former pen pal in public comments, and encouraged council members to pass a ceasefire resolution. They never did, to Nayla’s disappointment.
Jana, now a college student in Canada, told me she often thinks of her former pen pal. She said her connection to her has helped her to “be more committed towards a cause that can help children in Gaza in the future.” Currently, she’s studying in a medical program, and wants to help children in Gaza access prosthetic limbs.
Returning Home
Asma said the last days before the ceasefire were the worst for her. Although Israel and Hamas announced a ceasefire on January 15, there was a four-day gap until it was implemented on January 19. Israel continued its attacks until the moment the ceasefire was implemented.
“Those were the hardest days,” she said. “The continuous rockets, voices and bombs everywhere. There was no pause at all. The Israeli army became mad. They were the most violent nights ever.”
Asma and her eight- and nine-year-old daughters sheltered in their tent for four days straight, never leaving and fearing their death.
When the ceasefire was finally implemented, paradoxical emotions flooded Asma. She was relieved, but mourned those killed and traumatized.
“I was dead and alive at the same time,” she said. “I was happy and sad at the same time. I felt every single emotion, positive and negative. It was awful and terrific. It was not a beautiful moment.”
But much like her actions throughout the war, Asma also spoke of peace. She expressed her unwavering commitment to loving children in Gaza while facing continuous displacement and relentless brutality.
On February 18, Asma told me in a voice message that she had finally returned to Jabalia in northern Gaza. After the ceasefire, she had been living less than 10 miles from her former home, but due to the high expense of travel through damaged roads, it took her about a month to make it back. Upon returning, Asma and her family moved into a rented apartment not far from the rubble of her former home, which Israel Defense Forces had compeletely destroyed.
“When I first arrived here I was happy and I’m still happy,” Asma said, her voice filled with joy. “I feel comfortable and relaxed. I can’t believe I’m back. How could I have bared all that I have witnessed? My heart is back in its normal place, beating smoothly and nice as if it makes music.”
Shortly after arriving, Asma’s father went to the location of her old home. He found two blankets she had bought from Spain and Saudi Arabia, along with a pillow. She’s finally been able to rest.
“I spent the last three nights sleeping without worry,” Asma told me. “I feel safe. It’s home.”
Asma looks back with pride that Israel’s genocide did not stop her from teaching.
“I am so proud to be one of the first teachers who taught from the start of the genocide,” Asma said. “I started my sessions within a month and didn’t stop for a single day. There were catastrophic moments but I was able to continue.”
Asma expressed gratitude for the children, and what they taught her.
“They have been my teachers all the time,” Asma said. “I’ve learned so much from them and they are amazing. I feel like the new Asma. I am now a storyteller. I can tell a story every day, and even create and act out stories with children. It was a really amazing experience.”
Life is still challenging. Asma said she is living without electricity or running water. Every time she needs water she has to transport it from a long distance in jugs. Recently released drone footage of Jabalia shows the vast majority of buildings appearing as rubble. Almost all of the buildings still standing show significant damage.
“Sometimes I cry,” Asma said. “Sometimes I feel very happy and I feel like jumping and dancing. At the same time I look around and see the neighborhood full of destruction.”
Asma plans to remain in Gaza and continue to teach as Gaza rebuilds.
“This is my homeland,” she said. “I love it here. I belong here. And I will stay here and help the people around me to rebuild. Rebuilding Gaza is not only about the buildings. It’s also about the minds of the people.”
Zack Haber is a journalist and writer who lives in Oakland.