What do you do when you can’t hear the bombs? Being deaf during the Gaza genocide.
Jumana Mughari reports in Mondoweiss on 2 September 2026:
Zuhdi Murtaja, a deaf man working in a community kitchen serving children with hearing disabilities in Gaza City, posed a question in sign language: “How can we protect ourselves if we can’t hear the bombings or the warnings? And where is the safe place?”
Fadl Kuraz, a sign-language interpreter and trainer who has spent more than three decades working with Gaza’s deaf community, paused before answering. “There isn’t always a safe place,” he told him. Instead, Kuraz gave him practical advice: watch the people around you. If they suddenly start running, run with them. Carry a card that says, “I am deaf. I need help.”
For Gaza’s deaf community, the war has added a layer of danger that is largely overlooked amidst the inhumane conditions with which the whole population grapples on a daily basis. Unable to hear incoming strikes, evacuation orders, or emergency sirens, they are fully dependent on others to interpret a rapidly changing reality — and in a war that has killed more than 73,000 people and displaced nearly the entire population of the Strip, that dependence has become a matter of survival.
A 2023 UNDRR survey of more than 6,000 people with disabilities across 132 countries found that 56 percent either were unaware of disaster-risk information available in accessible formats or could not access it. In Gaza, where the infrastructure for reaching people with disabilities has largely collapsed, this gap is acutely felt.
Kuraz has become one of the few people still trying to close it. The hardest thing deaf people face during the war is not only the bombing,” Kuraz says. “It is being unable to access information when they need it most.”