Wounded Gaza children find respite from war at Ohio summer camp

BUTLER, Ohio — Their bodies are maimed or burned. Their childhoods have been shattered. And their futures are filled with uncertainty as war rages in Gaza.

But for one week, three dozen wounded Palestinian children and members of their families have found a respite from the fighting at a summer camp in Mohican State Park, just an hour north of Columbus.

Thanks to HEAL Palestine, a nonprofit group that aids the youngest victims of the Gaza war, children like 7-year-old Qamar Alkordi, who uses two-hand crutches to walk, have been able to play in a safe place with other wounded children and feel less alone.

“There’s other kids, they have the prosthetic, they are walking, and this is, like, it makes me happy to see this,” her mother, Huda Alkordi, said about the sleepaway camp, where Qamar played in an inflatable pool and sprayed other kids with water.

“And I really hope that Qamar, one day, she gonna walk, inshallah [God willing].”

HEAL runs field hospitals and food kitchens in Gaza and runs educational programs for children who haven’t been inside a school since Israel Defense Forces invaded the crowded Palestinian territory after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage.

“A lot of them are facing a future of near illiteracy,” said a HEAL co-founder, Dr. Zeena Salman, referring to how schools have largely ceased functioning in the shattered enclave.

In the 19-plus months since Israel began bombing Gaza and with most of its 2 million residents forced from their homes, Gaza has become an especially dangerous place for children.

About 1,309 children have been killed and 3,738 have been injured since the end of the ceasefire in March, UNICEF said in a report last month.

Overall, more than 55,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the conflict began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Realizing that they were confronted with “the largest population of child amputees in modern history,” Salman said, she and her cohorts came up with the idea of a summer camp for the dozens of children they have been able to bring to the United States for specialized care.

“Some of them have lost four limbs, and we as individuals are not able to stop this from happening, but at HEAL Palestine, we can start to give them back a little bit of what was taken from them,” Salman said.

That means a summer camp with ramps so kids who rely on wheelchairs and walkers and prosthetics can get around and play.

“We brought them to a camp that’s very accessible, where they can play wheelchair basketball or can do art with, like, adapted paintbrushes, you know, for kids who don’t have fingers,” Salman said. “We want every child to feel whole.”

When camp is over, many of the children are sent back to Egypt, where they are living temporarily because Gaza’s borders are closed, HEAL officials said.

Qamar was badly injured when her home was bombed two months after the war began.

It was Dec. 4, 2023, Qamar’s birthday. But with the fighting getting closer and closer to their home, Huda Alkordi purposely did not make plans to celebrate.

“I decided not to tell her that it’s her birthday, just in case if something bad happened,” she said.

And something bad did happen.

Both of Qamar’s siblings were hurt in the attack, as were several of her cousins. But Qamar was the most badly wounded, and after a week in the hospital she developed an infection that the doctors were unable to treat.

“They decided to amputate her leg because of infection that happened with her leg,” her mother said.

Watching her daughter play, Huda said she knows this is only a temporary break from the chaos in Gaza. But she said her daughter, even without one leg, is luckier than many other injured children still back in Gaza.

“I had the chance to take my daughter out and give her that treatment,” she said. “All of them, they deserve to get treatment.”

At age 18, Sara Bsaiso is one of the oldest campers. She, too, was injured in the early days of the war when her grandmother’s home was hit by a missile in an airstrike that killed one of her brothers, mortally wounded another and set her ablaze. The brother who initially survived died days later while waiting for help.

Bsaiso sustained third-degree burns over much of her body and went weeks with only limited medical care before she was able to be medically evacuated to the United States. She is staying in New Jersey.

Being at the camp and being able to interact with so many other young people who went through similar ordeals has been healing, she said.

“I’m so grateful to be here, and I’m so happy to see you bring in all of these amazing children together,” she said.

Bsaiso said that as she was growing up in Gaza, she and her family often went to the beach and swam in the Mediterranean Sea. Since she has been at the camp, she has had the chance to do something she hadn’t done since she was injured.

“I haven’t been able to swim until now,” she said.

Bsaiso said she was living in what she called a “cozy house” in the Rimal section of Gaza City with her parents, four brothers and three sisters when the war started.

“I was in law last year of school, and I remember when I’m preparing to go to school, and then suddenly everything went crazy,” she said. “We didn’t understand. We didn’t understand. We thought first probably it’s raining, but it wasn’t.”

It was the start of the Israeli offensive.

Bsaiso, who has undergone multiple operations and skin grafts, said she thinks about her family back in Gaza every day.

“For sure, I’m hoping for the ceasefires,” she said. “And there’s my dad and two brothers and two sisters’ sons stuck in Gaza. And yeah, I hope the ceasefires happen and the borders open and everything will be good.”

In the meantime, she said, she is using her time at summer camp to mend, both outside and in.

“Actually, I can say it’s, like, peaceful to see people like you, coming from hard challenges, like a war,” she said.