Dearest Brother, Sisters, and Supporters
Assalamu ‘alaykum & Peace be with all of you
On this midday before Laylat Al-Qadr, I am grieved by the sad news I must share with you. Inna li’Llahi wa inna ilayhi raji‘un. One of Zakat Foundation of America’s sponsored orphans in Gaza, so sweet a young girl, has been killed.
Her name is Hala. She was 16 years old. Hala, along with her entire family, has been martyred, made shahid.
Hala was just 10 years old when she joined Zakat Foundation’s Orphan Sponsorship Program in 2018. Like other sunny 10-year-old girls in the world, she had shinning dreams, incandescent hopes, and looked forward to a bright future. She was going to become a pediatrician, she said. “The children of Gaza need doctors to treat them!”
Hala was beautiful. She loved everything beautiful. She wrote poems, loved stories, read books.
Hala lived with her 49-year-old mother and three siblings. Her eldest brother Muhammad, 28, had a wife and baby boy, Basil. Hala’s elder sister, Ayah, was only 24. Here second sister, Alaa, was just 23.
They lived together in Jabalia Camp, one of the oldest refugee camps in Gaza. The United Nations built it in 1948. Generations of Palestinian refugees have lived in this camp, one of the most crowded pieces of land on earth.
The Jabalia Camp was bombed. One of the buildings hit held the home that Hala and her family lived in. Hala and everyone in her family were buried beneath a mushrooming cloud of dust and a sudden pile of rubble.
Hala, along with her mother, brother, sister-in-law, her baby nephew, and her two sisters, just like 32,000 other Palestinians in Gaza, were killed.
Hala can never again fill this world with her dreams, hopes, smiles, or laughter. Hala will never be married. Hala will never become a mother. Hala will never be a children’s doctor like she dreamed to be.
But the angels, with all their spreading wings, came to Hala, insha’Allah. They came to lift Hala up. They came to take her light soul gently. They came to carry Hala to the Throne of Allah, to Jannah, to the Garden of Paradise – Hala’s new home – with everyone she loved.
Hala joins 13,000 other children there, in the Flowered Garden of our Father Ibrahim, alayhi salam, the children of Gaza killed by indiscriminate attacks … with those not killed by the bombs bullied into starvation.
It is our duty to do everything possible to extend our hands to the children of Gaza – especially Gaza’s now 17,000 new orphaned children, just in the last six months, children like Hala.
We in Zakat Foundation of America, in this holiest of all holy nights, Laylat Al-Qadr – whose every deed is better than a thousand months! – we dedicate this Night of Arch-Angel Gabriel’s descent to earth, with Allah’s angelic hosts and every divine command – to Hala and all the Gaza orphans like her.
Please help us sponsor every single one of Gaza’s 17,000 - plus orphans in our Orphan Sponsorship Program on this most sacred Ramadan Night.
Each one sponsor one, please. I begin with myself.