Karim: Beloved Cousin, Shining Light
“You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5)
Today I’d like to introduce you to Karim, the cousin of one of our previously-spotlighted neighbours, Rabie Hussein. Unfortunately, I’m doing so in memoriam.
Any time I open Instagram, one of the first things I look for is the telltale multicolour ring around Rabie’s profile picture—the sign that he’s posted something to his Instagram Story in the past 24 hours. The sign that he’s still alive. Last Wednesday though, my relief was short lived. I opened his story and found mourning as Rabie lamented the murder of his beloved cousin Karim.
Karim was, to borrow Rabie’s words, “one of [the] family’s shining lights.” He was “a polite and well-mannered boy.”
Karim was also one of the dozens of our neighbours who continue to be killed each day by Israeli bombs, bullets, and drones—and even framing it that way makes me sick. These are human beings—cousins, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers—but even in the media that bothers reporting on them, they’re made nothing but numbers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve refreshed Al Jazeera to see 20 become 30, 30 become 60, 60 become 100. Every day, the relentless inhumanity rolls on, crushing more and more Karims under its weight. And if I didn’t know Rabie, I would never have even known his name.
This is wrong. And you and I are not the only ones who know that. In the past few weeks, multiple endeavours representing thousands of people of conscience have tried to break Israel’s physical blockade of food, water, and medicine around Gaza. In doing so, they’ve also tried to break this moral blockade—that disgraceful log in our eyes which circumscribes the humanity of our Palestinian neighbours to mere numbers on a screen.
First, the Freedom Flotilla sailed to Gaza on “the Madleen,” carrying with it vital humanitarian aid and a crew of 12 peace activists, including European MP Rima Hassan and the world-renowned climate activist Greta Thunberg. The Madleen’s voyage followed years of similar attempts by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to break Israel’s 18-year-long illegal blockade of Gaza; the most recent attempt, sailing on “the Conscience,” was struck by an Israeli drone while in international waters in May 2, stranding its crew at sea for two weeks.
Despite the Madleen being entirely supported by international humanitarian and maritime law, Israeli forces illegally boarded the boat on June 9 in international waters and kidnapped its crew (this is piracy, by the way). As of writing, four of the crew members have been deported after knowingly pleading guilty to a crime they did not commit—entering Israeli waters—to that they could report this injustice to the world, speak up for the remaining 8 crew members who are being illegally held in Israeli custody, and, most importantly, continue to remind the world why they were sailing to Gaza.
Around the world, the eyes of the people and the pens of the media have been focused on the Madleen and its well-known crew members, but those very crew members have been quick to point out that they should not be the main focus of our attention. After Greta Thunberg was deported, she told interviewers:
“They did an illegal act kidnapping us on international waters…but that is not the real story here. The real story is that there is a genocide going on in Gaza and a systematic starvation following the siege and blockade now.”
The crew of the Madleen are heroes for their attempt, and in many ways have succeeded in their true mission: to grab the world by the shoulders and press its gaze to where it is actually needed. But we have to ask ourselves: what is it that makes the world take notice of these 12 (mostly European) activists, while Karim and dozens like him are killed in Gaza every day without so much as a whisper from our leading media and top politicians?
Or consider the March to Gaza, happening right now. Thousands of regular people are flying or driving to Egypt this weekend. Their goal? To march peacefully to the Rafah border as an act of global collective witness. Someone I know personally flew from Toronto to be a part of this historic moment. I was sorely tempted myself.
Had I gone, I would be sitting in Egyptian detention right now. That’s right: Egyptian authorities have detained hundreds of marchers from around the world—including more than 40 Canadians—before they even began their march. Despite the organizers of the march constantly and consistently maintaining that this action is entirely peaceful and there will be no attempts whatsoever to try and breach the border with force, the Egyptian government is treating these people like terrorists—even confiscating their passports for hours at a time.
Like the Freedom Flotilla, they went with one demand: let Gaza breathe. It has been over three months since unimpeded (relatively-speaking) humanitarian aid has entered Gaza. Our neighbours. Are. Starving. To death, in many cases. Starting with the youngest and the most vulnerable. This is not a natural disaster. Israel is holding baby food at the border, dangling scraps through its unbelievably cruel excuse for an ‘aid program’ and then firing on starving people who scramble for them.
And to top it all off, Israel destroyed the remaining fibre-optic infrastructure in Gaza on Friday, plunging 2 million starving, besieged people into an internet blackout. If you wondered why I didn’t have more to tell you about Karim at the outset of this introduction, it’s because I can’t get in contact with Rabie anymore. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how terrifying that is.
As a society, we need to reckon with the moral myopia we have toward Gaza—or for that matter, Sudan, Congo, Tigray, Kashmir, or any of the other places in the global south where the value of human life is being diminished. We have been accustomed to images of black and brown bodies starving and dying, of bombed buildings rather than thriving cities, of numbers, not names.
Karim isn’t just a number. He was a beloved cousin, son, and friend. He had hopes, desires, and fears. In his portrait, he’s looking off to the horizon—I imagine him looking to his future, to what his life could be beyond occupation, the sun warm on his face. But he won’t get to experience that. And that should hurt.
“This never-ending loss, whether of a brother or a friend, is like the fire that slowly devours the soul. Its flames reach into our behaviours and actions, reshaping who we are as individuals, as a family, and as friends. It leaves us wrapped in silence and fear that grips the deepest parts of us, turning our days into furnaces of torment and tears. It is a wound that time cannot heal, casting a darkness over our days that never lifts, weighing down our steps in a life journey that once moved with passion. Suddenly, the world feels petty, vile, trivial, and small in its presence.” - Rabie Hussein
Author’s note: Just before I began preparing this for posting, I finally saw that Rabie was online again—I saw that beautiful multicoloured circle of a new Instagram story. He has still not been able to contact me, so I didn’t modify any of today’s message, but I’m overjoyed to see that he’s still here with us. See today’s prayer requests for info on how to finance eSims which allow people like Rabie to access the internet, even as Israel destroys Gaza’s infrastructure.
With your heart: “Lord who knits us together, sets our paths, and establishes our future, we cry out: ‘how long?’ How long will shining lights like Karim have their journeys cut short by Israeli weapons, Western complicity, and global indifference? Lord, what will it take for us to see the way you do, to see each others humanity with eyes unclouded by racism, greed, and lust for power? Tear open our stubborn eyelids, our idle hands, and our walled off hearts like you will soon tear open this vile blockade.”
With your voice: Contact your representatives to demand the release of the Madleen’s remaining crew, the protection and release of March to Gaza participants, and most importantly, immediate unimpeded humanitarian aid to Gaza NOW! (Canadians, your contact info is here!)
With your hands: Donate to Crips for eSims for Gaza to keep lines of communcation open with our neighbours in Gaza via digital eSims.
#FastforGaza this Wednesday
Most relevant first, then organized chronologically with regards to the main text. Resources linked in the text are denoted with a ❦
In the spirit of today’s word of introduction, I’d like to share two resources that are useful in reminding us that our neighbours are not just numbers:
Neighbours Killed in Gaza as of March 2025 (sourced from this dataset from Tech for Palestine)
Martyrs of Gaza, a Twitter account that tries to match faces and names of our neighbours killed in Gaza [read on Nitter, a free Twitter reader]
Information from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (Website: freedomflotilla.org, Instagram: @gazafreedomflotilla)
“Freedom Flotillas: A history of attempts to break Israel’s siege of Gaza” at Al Jazeera
“U.N. condemns U.S. aid scheme in Gaza after Israel opens fire on crowd” at the Washington Post, May 28, 2025 [archived at Archive.org] ❦
Other neighbours mentioned (or linked to) in this word of introduction:
We first introduced Rabie Hussein in this guest post by our mutual friend Candice Rozario. Rabie also contributed this reflection after Israel shattered the January ceasefire. I encourage following him on Instagram