“Judy, please get me out of here. I’m exhausted.”
“Judy, do you have any updates?”
Those were the last texts my cousins, Wadea, 23, and Ahmad, 22, sent me the day before they were killed on 27 April 2025.
By then, it had been 568 days since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza – a genocide that uprooted the lives of millions and killed thousands of innocent civilians, including two of the people I loved most in the world.
I was one of their few relatives in the so-called land of dreams and opportunity. But instead of offering them hope or safety, the United States funded our nightmares.
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It was a Sunday afternoon when they went to a nearby cafe along the Nuseirat beach with friends to charge their phones and access the internet. Minutes later, an Israeli drone hit the cafe, leaving the building intact but killing everyone inside.
Six young men – Mohamad al-Jabdi, Hashem al-Saftawee, Salameh al-Saftawee, Ibrahim Washeh, Ahmad al-Safeen and Wadea Ziada – lost their lives in the attack.
They were young men, just beginning their lives – not numbers or symbols, but sons, brothers and my best friends
News of their brutal deaths quickly went viral.
Photos showed them seated around a table, frozen in their final moments. Strangers online remarked on Ahmad’s “peaceful” expression, as his mother wept over his body.
That image was everywhere, but it told nothing of who they were.
They were young men, just beginning their lives – not numbers or symbols, but sons, brothers and my best friends.
All I could think about was the first time I met my cousins. I write this to honour their memory, and so the world remembers how they lived, before their futures were mercilessly taken from them.
Long before October
I visited Gaza for the first time in 2013 to see my dying grandfather.
I was only nine years old, and can barely recall most of the trip. But I remember the kindness of Wadea and the warmth of his father.
I remember being squished into a small room with my cousins, the air swinging between laughter and arguments over which movie to watch. I remember going to the beach, swimming, and playing in the park.
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The following summer, during Israel’s 50-day war on Gaza in 2014, Wadea’s father was killed.
I was back in the US, watching the horror unfold from a distance.
In an instant, the joy and innocence of the moments I had spent with them were violently stripped away, becoming inseparable from grief.
His murder changed the trajectory of Wadea’s life. From that point on, he committed himself to making his father proud and worked tirelessly to become a doctor.
When I returned to school that autumn, I noticed that none of the other students or teachers seemed to realise what had just happened in Gaza.
That was when I knew I wanted to become a journalist. Even at a young age, I could see that the media wasn’t simply failing to report Israel’s crimes against Palestinians – it was helping to bury them.
I wanted to tell the story of the kind man who took us out for ice-cream on the beach, but I also wanted to make visible the violence that killed him, and the systems that erased it from view.
A meaningful life
I returned to Gaza six years later to visit my grandmother, whose health was rapidly deteriorating.
This time, I was older – wiser, I thought – but still more naive than I realised. I tried to talk about Palestine – about its history, its future – as if I truly understood it. My family happily indulged me. It was more than they expected from most Americans.
It was during this visit that I reconnected with my cousins. I especially bonded with Wadea, who, like me, loved to spew nonsense about everything and nothing. After that, we spoke constantly, sharing our hopes and dreams with each other.
Wadea was a hopeless romantic. He loved pop culture and would rewatch television shows – everything from the widely popular Syrian drama Bab al-Hara to Friends – and argue with me about whether Ross and Rachel were really “on a break”.
He also took pride in his athletic achievements. He had a black belt in karate and consistently ranked highest in his tournaments, but was never allowed to compete outside of Gaza due to Israeli restrictions.
Our conversations would always go back to how much we resented the political forces that confined his family in Gaza and kept mine out entirely, rooted in Israel’s occupation and siege and sustained by US policy.
By 2023, I was studying political science, and Wadea was studying pharmacology – both of us pursuing the plans we made nearly a decade earlier.
Then the war began.
Unimaginable loss
When Israel launched its genocidal assault in October 2023, we were terrified. Wadea knew he had to get out of Gaza.
After his death, I couldn’t stop thinking that I should have done more. I couldn’t afford to bring Wadea and his family out, and I didn’t have the connections to save them. I was just a student, but that didn’t stop my overwhelming guilt.
All I could do was stay in regular contact and check in as often as possible.
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But as electricity became scarce, our conversations grew shorter. Snapchat became our only way to quickly message – a way for him to let me know he was OK. We kept in contact whenever he had power or internet.
While trying to help others in the family, I also began speaking more with Ahmad. Each time I asked about his wellbeing, he would end with a joke – often too dark for anyone outside Gaza to appreciate.
Ahmad had worked various jobs since he was 13, including selling things on makeshift stands by the beach – partly for money, but mostly because he hated being idle.
Even during the war, he continued to search for work, moving from one place to the next whenever a shop was bombed or forced to close due to supply shortages. He was supposed to graduate this year, pursuing his dream of becoming an interior designer.
Every time I spoke to my cousins, I could hear their voices growing more weary and strained. In their photos, they consistently appeared to have lost weight.
They relied on their friends and each other to stay sane. Jobs were hard to find, and food was even scarcer. They hated asking for help, but there came a point when the war seemed to have no end.
Ahmad and Wadea were both supporting their siblings and relatives, so whatever money they made quickly disappeared. The first time Ahmad received ramen – a food I had taken for granted in college – was months after the war began.
Despite everything, Wadea and Ahmad always asked about my day and insisted I share my problems. I would talk about mundane things like finishing my schoolwork or resolving a conflict with a friend.
Wadea was brutally honest, telling me to toughen up, while Ahmad would laugh and tell me to be patient. We never ran out of things to talk about – our families, the future, God and spirituality, even Instagram influencers.
I never imagined they would die.
Honouring their memory
Like all people, Palestinians in Gaza want to live. My cousins were so full of life – they wanted nothing more than to survive this war of extermination and continue building their futures.
There is no pause to grieve, no space for healing. Our loved ones are still being hunted, even in mourning, even in starvation
I made some connections and got a job to save up and help them. But they didn’t really need my help. Ahmad was working nonstop. Wadea had completed his degree just four months before he was martyred, fulfilling his father’s dying wish.
What they needed most was an end to the war – a permanent ceasefire.
Following their murder, videos of Wadea’s interviews resurfaced, speaking to his perseverance as a student under siege. He spoke about trying to study through air strikes and power cuts, refusing to let the destruction around him derail his path.
Meanwhile, Ahmad’s peaceful face, as his mother wept over him, captured the hearts of millions. These viral moments offer only a glimpse of who they truly were.
My cousins were hardworking, kind, funny, brilliant – and alive. They didn’t want to die. They wanted to live free of the violence and oppression imposed on them by an occupation they never chose.
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Wadea and Ahmad leave behind parents, siblings, relatives, and friends who must still endure the horrors of genocide while grieving their loss.
Not long after, Israeli forces killed our uncle, Yahya al-Saafein, as he delivered supplies to their surviving relatives. He leaves behind four young children.
There is no pause to grieve, no space for healing. Our loved ones are still being hunted, even in mourning, even in starvation.
That is why I write – to preserve their memory and to tell the world, which only knew them in death, about the full, meaningful lives they lived.
May God grant them the highest level of heaven, and give their loved ones patience. And may He grant us not only a ceasefire, but the will to end this genocide – and never again look away.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
