Insulin, Freedom, and Palestine

(I used AI to help me write this piece, but every word reflects my own truth and lived experience.)

This story didn’t begin on October 7th. For Palestinians, pain is not sudden. It builds, it layers, it stretches across generations. It is the story of 77 years of loss, of exile, of demolished homes and demolished dreams.

When Palestine Bleeds

When Palestine bleeds, I bleed with it. Gaza is not a separate country, not a distant place on the map. Gaza is Palestine. The grief of Gaza is the grief of every Palestinian. The bombs that fall there echo in every Palestinian heart.

The suffering is not abstract; it lives in my chest, in my bones, in every cell of my body. It shows up in ways the world cannot see, and it lingers in ways the world cannot imagine.

No Insulin, No Medicine, No Rest

As I inject my insulin, I think of the children in Gaza who cannot. Pharmacies stand empty. Hospitals run without fuel. Parents hold their children in their arms, knowing that the simplest medicine could save them — if only it were allowed in.

I often think about this: what would happen to me if I suddenly had no insulin?

Without insulin, my blood sugar would rise higher and higher. My mouth would dry, my body would ache, and every cell inside me would be screaming for energy it could not use. I would start to vomit, my breath would become heavy with the smell of ketones, and my muscles would feel like they were melting from the inside.

And then the pain would become unbearable. My organs would slowly shut down, one by one. My body would collapse, but not quickly. It would be a slow, agonizing death — a death I would be fully aware of until the very last breath.

This is not a thought experiment. This is the reality that children and adults in Gaza face when Israel blocks insulin, when hospitals run out of supplies, when the world looks away.

Insulin is not a luxury. It is life. To be denied it is not neglect — it is deliberate killing.

Diabetes and Israel

Sometimes I think about how similar diabetes and Israel are.

Diabetes hijacks my life. Every detail — when I eat, how much I move, whether I sleep, if I drink water — is dictated by it. I don’t get to live freely without thinking of it. It is always there, waiting to strike if I let my guard down.

And then I think: when someone asks me, what would life be like without diabetes? — I don’t just think of my body. I think of Palestine. I think of what life would be like without Israel.

I think of a free Palestine, where we are not forced to leave by death and guns powered by the white West. I think of my grandfather’s home in Tulkarem. I imagine a Palestine without checkpoints, without walls, without the carved-up sectors of A, B, and C.

Yes, diabetes is like Israel. But there is one difference. With diabetes, I can take insulin. I can manage it. I can live despite it.

Israel is nothing to be managed. It is not a condition. It is a terror machine with one single intention: to erase Palestinians from this earth.

Israel’s problem is not Gaza. Israel’s problem is not the resistance. Israel’s problem is every single Palestinian — wherever we are, in whatever form we exist.

Because for Israel, our very existence is resistance.

The Death of Hope

As a teenager, I held onto one fragile dream — that one day I would see my country with my own eyes. That maybe, somehow, I would return. But the same way Gaza is demolished today, brick by brick, that dream was demolished inside me.

What do you do when every sunrise feels like another reminder that the world has failed you? That people watch, count numbers, debate politics — while an entire nation is starved, bombed, and erased in real time?

My Truth

I cannot separate my life from Palestine. I cannot laugh without remembering who is mourning. I cannot eat without thinking of who is hungry. I cannot take my insulin without knowing who has none.

Israel has not only killed thousands in Gaza. It has killed the illusion of safety, the illusion of justice, the illusion that this world is capable of protecting the innocent.

What is left is grief, stubbornness, and survival.

And maybe that is all we have. But even that is ours — and no one can take it away.