'I plead with Ireland to stand firm with us': An open letter from a mother in Gaza

Humanitarian worker Fidaa Ibrahim's husband and her brother were killed in an Israeli air strike on the UNRWA shelter where they sought refuge earlier this year

Fidaa Ibrahim and her seven children outside their shelter in Deir al Balah in the central Gaza Strip. She writes that hope prevails even amid the continued bombings and the lack of food and basic sanitation. 

Dear people of Ireland, I write this from the hell that is Gaza right now.

I am a 38-year-old Palestinian humanitarian worker and a mother of seven who has spent my entire life living here in Gaza, my beloved homeland. This past May I lost my beloved husband, Abed, in an Israeli bombing.