From children to the elderly, Bangladeshi citizens have been pooling their resources for people in Gaza in the wake of Israel’s attacks on the enclave, hoping their display of solidarity will show the Palestinians they are not alone.
From the beginning of the Israeli onslaught in early October, the Bangladeshi government has repeatedly denounced the bombardments of civilians and medical infrastructure in the besieged Gaza Strip, but it is the support of ordinary people that, for the Palestinian ambassador to Dhaka, shows the deep connection Bangladeshis have with his country.
“It means everything … And that comes from their hearts, deep from their hearts,” Yousef Ramadan told Arab News.
The ambassador recalled how two children, a brother and sister, brought a tin box in which they had been saving money for three years to the em-bassy.
“They brought it all to me,” he said. “And they wrote a letter saying how they feel about the chil-dren of Palestine.”
It was not an isolated story as many people have over the past month traveled from villages to visit the embassy and donate whatever they can for assistance to Gaza, where Israeli attacks have brought unprecedented destruction.
“They travel from very far, from very far places, and then they come to donate. The poor people, the people who are in need of this money … and yet they take it, and they prefer to give it to the Palestinian people,” the ambassador said, remembering a Bangladeshi man in his late 80s who came to the embassy in the first days of the Israeli aggression to donate the money he had been saving for Hajj.
“He preferred to give his savings to Palestine and not to go to Hajj … He came with the money,” Ramadan said, adding he did not accept the dona-tion, and that the intention alone was worth much more than the money.
“The Palestinian people, when they hear these stories, this makes them stronger,” he said. “This gives us a push, a positive push for the people of Palestine, that ‘you are not alone’ … there are other brothers and sisters far away geographically, but in the heart, they are very close. It’s indescribable … it’s overwhelming.”
