Usually when I write a note for campaigns, they are my summaries of the family's situation. Today, I will let Abood's own words and images tell you. Please show him some love and just take a few minutes to read it. Aboud holds a special place in my heart. He is 20. Just a 20 year old kid having to grow up way too soon. Donate if you can, even if you can't, please share share and share.

My name is Abdul Rahman Mounir, everyone calls me Abood. I am 20 years old, the oldest son, and the only man left standing for my family in northern Gaza. Before the genocide stole everything, I was just a boy who lived for soccer. I trained every day, and I actually led my college team to the championship. That trophy was the proudest moment of my life. Here is the photo of my team, all of us smiling, full of dreams that would soon be buried under rubble.

Our house was destroyed in the first weeks of the war. One bomb fell directly on it but, by some miracle, did not explode. We fled north to south, carrying whatever we could, until we reached central Gaza. Since then, we've been displaced countless times, north to central Gaza, tent to tent, shelter to shelter, until we finally made it back north. But “back home” is now a torn plastic tent that shakes in the winter wind and cooks us alive in the summer. There is no floor, no walls, no safety.

My father was abducted by the army in the very first days of 2023. For two unimaginable, torturous years, we agonized over his whereabouts. Was he murdered and his body is lying alone somewhere? Was he in detention camps being tortured and starved? Does he know that we missed him more than anything in the world? The not knowing is like a slow drip of death that won't fully take you, but also won't let you fully live. We finally got news that he was alive and released in the last prisoner exchange of 2025. Joy was short-lived. The occupation banished him to the West Bank. We have not seen his face since. My mother still cries herself to sleep, whispering his name. The family is split forever.

I am only 20, yet I have already escaped death dozens of times, airstrikes, sniper fire, tanks rolling past while I hid with my siblings. I lost two of my closest friends, boys I grew up with, both gone in the blink of an eye. Their mothers still send me messages asking if I have any photos of their sons. I do. I keep them in my phone like ghosts. Now I carry everything alone. My mother. My 21-year-old sister. My 17-year-old brother. My 15-year-old brother. My 13-year-old brother. And my baby sister, only 6 years old, who wakes up every night screaming because a terrible infection is eating away at her face. It started as a small cyst. Now it is swollen, red, spreading across her cheek and eye. She cannot eat without pain. She cannot sleep. Every day it gets worse. The doctors in the north say she needs urgent medicine and proper treatment or the infection will reach her blood. We have no money. Not even for bread some days. I watch my little sister’s innocent face being destroyed, and I feel like I am failing her every single second.

I am responsible for six other lives, six hearts that look to me and say, “Aboud, what are we going to eat today?” “Aboud, will my sister die?” “Aboud, when can we go home?” There is no work. There is no aid that reaches us. There is only this tent, the sound of drones overhead, and the fear that tomorrow will take one more of us.

If you can spare even $5 to help us survive another day. Every single dollar will buy medicine for my 6-year-old sister’s face, clean water, food, or a thicker blanket so we don’t freeze at night. If you cannot donate, I beg you with everything I have left, please share this campaign. Let it reach someone who can help. Let my little sister’s face be saved before it is too late.

I am just a boy who used to play soccer. Now I am a father to five children and a helper to my broken mother. I am begging you, please don’t let us disappear in silence. Here are more photos of me before the war, the boy I was, the boy I am fighting to keep alive for my family.

Thank you for reading my story. Thank you for any mercy you can show us.

Aboud