Gaza food blogger serves ‘hope on a plate’ to war-weary kids

Palestinians gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, amid shortages of aid supplies, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 19, 2024. (REUTERS)
Short Url
Updated 03 August 2024
Follow

Gaza food blogger serves ‘hope on a plate’ to war-weary kids

  • Shaqoura’s cuisine includes beef tacos, “Gazan style,” pizza wraps, and a deep-fried “golden sandwich,” which he films as he cooks and offers to the tent camp’s hungry children

JERUSALEM: Sitting in a tent in southern Gaza, Palestinian food blogger Hamada Shaqoura surveys cans of beans and tinned meat and longs for something that could conjure a sense of home.
Before the war, before his house was destroyed and his family uprooted three times, the 32-year-old was a YouTuber reviewing Gaza City’s buzziest burger, pizza, and noodle spots.
To satisfy his craving for comfort food on a war-rations diet, he taught himself to cook using food aid packages and whatever fresh vegetable he can scrounge up.
“I had an idea to turn this canned food we have been eating for months into something new, to make delicious food for kids,” he tells AFP in a video call from Khan Younis.




Hamada Shaqoura. (Photo/Social media)

Shaqoura’s cuisine includes beef tacos, “Gazan style,” pizza wraps, and a deep-fried “golden sandwich,” which he films as he cooks and offers to the tent camp’s hungry children.
“Zakee (delicious)!” a boy beams in a video after biting into a sweet “fettuccine crepe” — strips of fried batter mixed with apples and chocolate sauce.
Despite patchy internet, Shaqoura offers a different side of the conflict to document what he calls “resilience and persistence” amidst the rubble of war-devastated Gaza.
He is known as Hamada Shoo online, and his blogs have attracted nearly half a million followers on Instagram and donations from his fans.
“I want to feed as many mouths as possible,” he said.
Barefoot children toting empty pots and bowls run through the ruins of Khan Younis to his tent, where the war chef cooks up pea stew in huge pots over an open-pit fire.
While the UN has not officially declared famine in Gaza, experts say hunger is rampant in the Israeli-besieged territory, with little food aid reaching the 2.4 million population.
More than 30 Palestinians have died from malnutrition since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel set off the war that has devastated infrastructure across Gaza. Palestinians have told AFP of being forced to skip meals and having to boil weeds for
their children to survive.
“There is real famine” in northern Gaza, says Shaqoura, who fled from there in March and had little to go around in the south of the battered territory.
He says he is determined to help feed children. “That is my motivation.”
Shaqoura, who had just married when the war erupted and planned to work in the food industry, is one of several Gaza food bloggers.
He says Their goal is to provide “dignity and a sense of liberation” through food to beleaguered Gazans, not just comfort.
Cooking something that people can identify with is part of the “everyday struggle to stay human and retain your dignity in the face of a brutal occupation intended to strip you of that humanity year after year,” says Laila El-Haddad.
Gaza developed a “distinct” cuisine, with its spirit of innovation forged by two decades of Israeli blockades and sieges, said the food expert.
Shaqoura says he serves “hope on a plate” as an antidote to the deprivations and grief overwhelming Gaza.
During the El-Adha feast, he prepared donuts for the children to help them feel that “there is something worth celebrating.”
On hot days, he offers them refreshing lemon granitas.
He says his videos are meant to show the world that Gazans “are persistent, strong people.”
“We do our best to keep existing.”

 


Iran says killed eight militants since attack on police in province bordering Pakistan

Updated 6 sec ago
Follow

Iran says killed eight militants since attack on police in province bordering Pakistan

  • Militants from the Jaish Al-Adl group killed 10 police officers during a raid in Sistan-Baluchistan province on October 26
  • Sistan-Baluchistan, which straddles border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, is one of Iran’s most impoverished provinces

TEHRAN: Iran’s military has killed eight militants in an operation in the restive southeast since a deadly attack last month on a police station, state media reported Tuesday.
Militants from the Pakistan-based Jaish Al-Adl group killed 10 police officers during a raid on October 26 in Sistan-Baluchistan province — one of the deadliest attacks in the region in recent months.
Sistan-Baluchistan, which straddles the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, is one of Iran’s most impoverished provinces.
It has long been a flashpoint for cross-border attacks by separatists and extremists, opposed to the authorities in Iran.
Revolutionary Guards commander Ahmad Shafahi said “a total of eight terrorists have been killed” since the beginning of operations in the province, according to the official IRNA news agency on Tuesday.
“Fourteen other terrorists have been arrested,” including key figures involved in the attack, he said, adding security forces seized weapons and ammunition.
Shortly after the attack in Taftan county, some 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) southeast of the capital Tehran, a report on the Tasnim news agency said four militants had been killed and four others arrested.
Late on Monday, IRNA quoted Guards ground forces commander Mohammad Pakpour as saying the attackers “were not Iranian,” though he did not specify their nationalities.
In early October, at least six people including police officers were killed in two separate attacks in the province.
Jaish Al-Adl said on Telegram they had carried out the attacks.
Formed in 2012 by Baluch separatists, the group is proscribed as a “terrorist organization” by both Iran and the United States.
 
 


Over 100 patients to be evacuated from Gaza, WHO says

Updated 43 min 41 sec ago
Follow

Over 100 patients to be evacuated from Gaza, WHO says

  • The patients will travel in a large convoy on Wednesday via the Kerem Shalom crossing

GENEVA: More than 100 patients including children suffering from trauma injuries and chronic diseases will be evacuated from Gaza on Wednesday in a rare transfer out of the war-ravaged enclave, a World Health Organization official said.
“These are ad hoc measures. What we have requested repeatedly is a sustained medevac (medical evacuation) outside of Gaza,” said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, adding that 12,000 people were awaiting transfer.
The patients will travel in a large convoy on Wednesday via the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel before flying to the United Arab Emirates, he added, and then a portion will travel to Romania.


Iran says two French detainees held in good conditions

Updated 05 November 2024
Follow

Iran says two French detainees held in good conditions

  • In recent years, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners, mostly on charges related to espionage and security

DUBAI: Two French citizens detained in Iran since May 2022 are in good health and being held in good detention conditions, Iran’s judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said on Tuesday, according to state media.
Last month, France’s foreign ministry said the conditions that three of its nationals were being held in by Iran were unacceptable.
“According to the relevant authorities, these two people have good conditions in the detention center and are in good health, so any claim regarding their conditions being abnormal is rejected,” Jahangir said.
The spokesperson was referring to Cecile Koehler and Jacques Paris, who he said were arrested on charges of espionage and will have their next court hearing on Nov. 24.
Jahangir did not mention the third French national detained in Iran. French media have disclosed only his first name, Olivier.
In recent years, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners, mostly on charges related to espionage and security.
Rights groups have accused Iran of trying to extract concessions from other countries through such arrests.


Israeli strikes in Gaza, West Bank leave dozens dead

Updated 36 min 1 sec ago
Follow

Israeli strikes in Gaza, West Bank leave dozens dead

  • Airstrikes in Gaza kill at least 30, Palestinian medics and media say
  • Israeli military says it ‘eliminated terrorists’ in latest operations

CAIRO/QABATIYAH: Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip and West Bank have resulted in significant casualties, as conflict in the region intensifies.

Since Monday night, at least 30 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, with strikes leveling buildings and tightening sieges on northern areas of the enclave, according to Palestinian media and medical sources.

In Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, two houses were heavily damaged in an airstrike, killing at least 20 people late on Monday, as reported by WAFA and Hamas-linked media. The Gaza health ministry has not immediately verified this toll. Additionally, four people were reported dead in the central town of Al-Zawayda around midnight.

Meanwhile, six more Palestinians died in separate airstrikes on Gaza City and Deir Al-Balah. The Israeli military claimed that its forces had "eliminated terrorists" in central Gaza and Jabalia and uncovered weapons and explosives in the southern area of Rafah, where it had also dismantled "terrorist infrastructure."

Reports from the ground suggest that Israel's tactics aim to clear northern Gaza towns and refugee camps to establish buffer zones, a strategy Israel says has successfully neutralized hundreds of Palestinian fighters in Jabalia over the past month.

More than 43,300 Palestinians have died in Gaza over a year of fighting, and much of the region has been devastated. The conflict initially erupted following Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed around 1,200 Israelis and resulted in 251 hostages being taken to Gaza.

Violence has also erupted in the occupied West Bank. On Tuesday, Israeli airstrikes killed four Palestinians in separate incidents during two military operations.

In Tammun, near Tubas, two Palestinians died, one of whom was severely mutilated, according to the city’s governor, Ahmad Assad.

The health ministry in Ramallah confirmed the deaths, noting that the identity of one victim remains unverified and that the army is withholding the body.

In a separate airstrike in Qabatiyah near Jenin, two more Palestinian men, aged 40 and 38 and reportedly related, were killed, confirmed Kamal Abu Rubb, governor of Jenin.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to inquiries about these operations. The West Bank has seen escalating violence since the onset of the Gaza conflict, with at least 754 Palestinians killed in the territory by Israeli forces or settlers, according to the health ministry in Ramallah.

In contrast, Palestinian attacks have claimed 24 Israeli lives during the same period, according to official Israeli sources.


Sudan paramilitaries kill 10 civilians: activists

Updated 05 November 2024
Follow

Sudan paramilitaries kill 10 civilians: activists

PORT SUDAN: Ten civilians were killed in the central Sudanese state of Al-Jazira, pro-democracy activists said on Tuesday, in an attack they blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The Madani Resistance Committee, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating aid across the country, said the RSF carried out the killings on Monday night in the village of Barborab, about 85 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of the state capital Wad Madani.