A moment of clarity above Gaza

Futility feels no different at 1,000 feet. Sitting in the hull of a Jordanian Air Force C-130 flying low above the stretches of burnt ash and gray rubble that is now Gaza, I felt as helpless as I did sitting in my comfortable home office in Amman writing about war and famine in a place 180 miles away that has become so familiar and so unreachable. When the Jordanian Armed Forces called me at 9 p.m. on a Thursday evening to ask if I was willing to join an airdrop over northern Gaza the following morning, I jumped at the chance. As a journalist, this was the closest I could get to Gaza.

Taylor Luck’07 awaits takeoff on a humanitarian aid mission in April.
Credit: Taylor Luck’07

That was March 8. I’d been leading The Christian Science Monitor’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war for five months, from the West Bank, Israel, and from Jordan. In my 17 years as a journalist in the Middle East, I thought I had seen it all: forever wars, civil wars, revolutions, caliphates, the carnage of ISIS. But nothing had prepared me for the bloodshed, misery, and horror of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s brutal offensive in Gaza in response to that attack.

In front of me, three rows of crates affixed with parachutes held thousands of ready-to-eat chicken and rice meals, sacks of flour, and powdered milk. The plane carried enough food to feed 6,000 people for a single day, one-tenth of what a truck can carry. But it would still save lives. The U.N. estimates some 400 trucks of aid are needed daily to support Gaza.

The crew loads crates containing flour, powdered milk, and ready-to-eat meals, affixed with parachutes onto the plane.
Credit: Taylor Luck’07

In March, Amman to Gaza City was a daily commute for Jordanian airmen, a route that took their aid-laden planes south to the port of Aqaba, west to the Sinai, and back north along the Mediterranean at Gaza’s edge. At the time, this was the only way to get food into northern Gaza. Jordan began these airdrops in late February as famine set in northern Gaza, and the U.N. warned that fighting and Israeli restrictions were preventing its trucks from reaching half of the Gaza Strip. By the time I boarded this flight, one of nine cargo planes heading to Gaza, the U.S. had joined the airdrops, sending three C-130s along with Jordan’s fleet, which also included Egyptian and French planes.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Beloit College helped put me on that plane.

My sophomore year, a chance class in Middle East politics with [Manger Professor of International Relations] Beth Dougherty captivated my heart and mind, convincing me that I wanted a career in this region of the world with so much potential but so little self-determination. I changed my major from acting to international relations, and I studied abroad in Amman as a junior. Weeks after my 2007 graduation from Beloit, when I landed an internship at The Jordan Times and decided to become a freelance foreign correspondent, a timely International Venture Grant from the college funded my airfare to Amman and the first three months of rent. I never looked back.

As I and a Jordanian journalist took photos of Khan Yunis from a tiny, scuffed plane window, the airmen looked on, stone-faced and silent. Outside of Gaza itself and the West Bank, you can most keenly feel the anguish over Gaza in Jordan. Around half of Jordanians are of Palestinian descent. Many have — or had — family in Gaza, and all feel attached to the place and the people there. A pall was then still cast over Amman — no events, no nightlife, no joy. Jordanians held regular protests in the thousands at the Israeli embassy in Amman that stretched into late May, and they boycotted brands viewed as providing material or financial assistance to Israel.

As we flew over the scattered palm trees and missile-pockmarked ground of Deir Al Balah, central Gaza, I thought of my colleague Ghada Abdulfattah. Ghada was guiding me and our readers through this war and into the lives of Palestinians in Gaza. From Gaza City to Deir Al Balah to Rafah back to Deir Al Balah, she has braved bombs, missile strikes, snipers, and tanks. She has been displaced six separate times. Like the rest of those in Gaza, she navigates food shortages and hunts for scraps of wood and twigs to boil unsanitary water to cook and drink, all while reporting and filing stories for The Christian Science Monitor. Her brother’s kidney dialysis, when possible, has been reduced to once a week. Seven months into the war and she still cannot secure heart medicine for her mother.

And yet Ghada continues to go out in the field, searching for humanity amid the rubble, trying to make this war known and real to our American readers. Thanks to Palestinian journalists like Ghada risking their lives each day, we know what is happening inside Gaza. As of June 1, Israel’s military offensive had killed 102 Palestinian journalists in Gaza — the most in any modern conflict on record. They are telling their people’s story to the entire world while exposed in a war zone without protection, without support, and often without recognition. At The Christian Science Monitor, Ghada is our most praised — and prayed for — correspondent.

Thanks to Ghada, I know Osama, in Gaza City, who relies on foraging for kobaizeh, marrow leaves, or grass for his three children to eat. Thanks to Ghada, I know Mohamed Abu Kmeil, whose family picks through rancid animal feed to find barley kernels clean enough to fry up, crush down, and grind into flour. Thanks to her, I understand how milk and infant formula can be the difference between life and death and how families stretch a single can of beans to feed 10 people. I wondered if any of the food from this airdrop would reach Osama or Mohammed.

As we approached the charred expanse of Gaza City, our Jordanian C-130 dipped down to 500 feet in preparation for the drop, and my stomach plunged. It wasn’t airsickness, it was clarity: while my U.S. tax dollars were paying for this lifesaving rice, chicken, and flour, it was also paying for the bombs Israel would drop over the same stretch of northern Gaza later that evening.

Beloit College instilled in me a passion to learn about others — how they think, how they see the world, why events happen — and to seek out opportunities for human connection.

The desire to pursue knowledge and understanding that I gained at Beloit aligns with The Christian Science Monitor’s calm, thoughtful news coverage — journalism that aims to “injure no man but to bless mankind” — which perhaps made me fit in as the publication’s Middle East correspondent. But what good is this pursuit of knowledge and progress when it does not alleviate the suffering? Riding in that aid plane was just another heart-wrenching day in a war in which journalism often feels futile.

The Jordanian Air Force C-130 carries enough food to feed 6,000 people for one day.
Credit: Taylor Luck’07

Finally, it was time. The cargo door of the plane opened and one after the other, the three rows of crates slid out into the Gaza sky. The Jordanian airman hanging at the edge of the open bay watched as each red parachute opened and the crates floated down toward the rubble-strewn streets. Finally, he gave the thumbs up. The plane turned around for the half-hour return journey to Amman. We arrived back in time for lunch — as if we had not just flown to a war zone and back. It was not until checking my phone in my Uber ride from the Marka Civilian Airport back to my apartment that I learned the full story. The parachutes of pallets dropped by one of the other planes failed. As the starving crowds rushed for food, one of the crates crushed five people to death.

As I write this in late May, three months later, these airdrops are less frequent, but the famine has not slowed and neither has the death toll. Since my flight, Israel’s military offensive has killed an additional 6,000 people in Gaza, 12 more Israeli hostages have been confirmed to have died in captivity, and a ceasefire-hostage release deal appears as distant as ever. Unofficially, Israel is deep into its offensive into Rafah, closing off the main entry point of aid and cutting off humanitarian organizations from warehouses and supply hubs. A much-touted U.S. military-built offshore pier is offline, literally falling apart after a week of struggling to bring in 10 trucks of aid per day, a mere five percent of what is needed. Famine, once limited to northern Gaza, is spreading rapidly across the Strip. Ghada and dozens of other brave journalists are still on their own there, battling missiles, starvation, disease, and dehydration. We had not made life easier or better for anyone.

The world is not Beloit. It is not always a safe place, not always kind, and it certainly doesn’t always embrace empathy and nuance. But perhaps that is the point. My time at Beloit College taught me to look for these qualities in the world, not to expect them — and in the places and times where I find these values lacking, to try to foster them.

Journalism can inform and inspire, but without political will and popular pressure, the ink fades away. The stories disappear into history like errant aid packages swallowed by the Gaza Sea. Watching protest movements grow and pressure increase on Israeli and American leaders, there is some hope our ink will last. When I wake on this day in late May, as always, I message Ghada, review last night’s Israeli strikes, and check in with Israeli hostage families and U.N. humanitarians in Gaza. An hour later, Ghada messages back: “We are still alive. What should we do this week?” As journalists, we cannot bring an end to this war, but we do the best we can: we write.