HuffPost reports:

Samira Thari recently told her six children still in Gaza that she doesn’t want to hear from them.

She thinks of them constantly, especially those most hurt by the violence there ― like her 22-year-old son, who is in a wheelchair after being hit by shrapnel, and her 14-year-old daughter, who’s been rendered speechless by the shock of the war. But she knows that for the family to get cell service, they have to leave their tent shelter and climb up a hill that has previously been targeted by Israeli forces.

“Don’t try to call me, because I won’t answer,” she told them on Feb. 23.

Thari has been in Qatar for nearly three months, since she woke up there after she was injured in an Israeli strike on a United Nations school. The attack killed her 3-year-old granddaughter, who had been sitting with Thari as she made bread for her family, and wounded Thari so badly that emergency workers put her in a body bag ― only realizing she was alive when her grieving sister noticed Thari’s eyes were still moving.

Medical teams moved Thari and her injured husband from hospitals in Gaza to an Italian hospital ship, then to Egypt and eventually Qatar. She’s now had five surgeries, and is awaiting one more in her back.

“If I had the option to stop treatment, I would go back in a heartbeat,” Thari, 39, told HuffPost last week. In addition to the concern for her children, her “heart burns” for her parents, who are 70 and 75.

“I’m not able to heal because of my mind and emotional state,” Thari said. “My therapist tells me to stop watching the news, but how can I stop? I have to check the lists of people being martyred. How can I stop?” [Continue reading…]