A Feast Without Meat… and Dignity Amid Genocide (click here for the Arabic version)
In Gaza, Eid al-Adha this year was not just marked by poverty — it was a scene from a life being crushed under the slow weight of genocide. The sheep were gone. The meat was gone. The colors of celebration faded. Yet dignity fought to remain, rising from the ashes.
On the morning of the first day of Eid, people didn’t line up to buy sacrificial animals. They lined up for a hot meal from relief organizations. Under the sun, the question was not, “Which sheep shall we sacrifice?” but rather, “Will we eat something today besides lentils?”
A mother, sitting beneath a tent near a bombed-out school, looked at her child as he asked:
“Mama, is Eid over? Didn’t the sheep come?”
She stayed silent, then hugged him and whispered:
“Eid is in you, my love.”
Men who had lost their homes and livelihoods spent the first day of Eid sifting through rubble, searching for anything they could sell or reuse. The holiday was overshadowed by a deeper truth: this wasn’t just a crisis of hunger or poverty — it was a deliberate policy of breaking the will of a people, erasing them from the map.
A young man, formerly a photojournalist, held a plate of rice and oil from a relief agency. He said: “We are not just hungry — we are being erased. This isn’t merely a humanitarian crisis. This is a slow-motion suffocation of an entire population. This is genocide.”
Eid al-Adha — a symbol of sacrifice and redemption — became, in Gaza, a mirror of the world’s cruelty. No meat. No new clothes. No gifts. What remained was an unexplainable insistence on preserving the meaning of Eid, even when everything else had been taken away.
In damaged mosques or overcrowded shelters, Eid prayers were recited in whispers, not loudly. They were more like a silent cry for mercy — and proof that a people still prays, still chants, even when the world has decided not to hear them.
Mothers stitched joy out of scraps of fabric. Youth shared a simple meal on the ground. They tookturns keeping the spirit of solidarity alive.
Eid in Gaza this year?
An Eid in the time of genocide — but not without meaning.
A feast written in tears and patience — a declaration of existence, in defiance of erasure.
Alaa Alburai, Kufi Productions
