world cancer day

fuck cancer

Dear readers,

Yesterday was World Cancer Day. As some of you may know, my 3-year-old has leukaemia and the past several months have been one long crisis for my family as he undergoes intensive treatment. We have a GoFundMe if you’d like to offer direct support. Throughout this period, I have been writing poems because poetry is how I survive, and I’ve been sharing some of them on social media. I first began to share poems this way while writing The Nightmare Sequence, because of the ongoing Zionist censorship of the arts, because I’m tired of having to second-guess whether my work will be accepted somewhere or rejected on the basis of my being deemed too politically “risky”, because they felt too urgent and because I didn’t want to make any money from it. I’m not sure if I’ll continue doing this, though I do feel a similar level of urgency here in processing and sharing my feelings as well as raising awareness of the impact this disease is having on us. If you’re interested in me continuing to share my work in this way, do let me know - and of course, share the poem, please.

I suspect I will look back on this one differently in time, but for now, I have such a hostility in me to everything this cancer has changed or taken away from us and yes that includes making me wear gloves when I change my son; making me treat him as a problem, as something I can’t handle, even for a moment, is unforgivable.

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It would be remiss of me not to remind you that there are 11,000 cancer patients in Gaza who are dying in agony because of Israel’s ongoing genocidal rampage, its mass starvation and violent occupation.

According to doctors, the number of cancer-related deaths has tripled since the October 2023 start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. With no chemotherapy, no radiotherapy, and no way out, a cancer diagnosis has become, for many, an immediate death sentence.

“We have lost everything,” Abu Nada said. “We lost the only hospital capable of diagnosing and treating cancer… We are now in Nasser Medical Complex, but unfortunately, we have no equipment to diagnose the disease, and we have no chemotherapy.” The human toll of these shortages is stark.. in the Khan Younis area alone, two to three cancer patients die every single day.

“The result is that cancer spreads in the patient’s body like wildfire,” he said. “We have gone back 50 years in cancer treatment.”

In December, the patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem put out a joint statement begging Israel to allow them to arrange for children in Gaza with leukaemia to be brought to Augusta Victoria Hospital which is equipped to provide them the specialist care they need. They offered to cover the cost of this in full. They have been denied. This has not been reported on any news site in the West that I can see. Gaza’s lone specialist cancer hospital was destroyed by Israel in March 2025; every hospital has been destroyed either totally or partially by this genocidal assault.

I have been trying to share this information about Palestinians with cancer being condemned to this agonising death for the past month. It never goes anywhere. It does not go viral. I hate this so much. How can anyone allow this? How can Israelis allow it? It is monumentally evil. Meanwhile, our disgraceful government is due to welcome Israel’s racist president next week. On Monday, when Herzog arrives in Sydney, I will be in Westmead Children’s Hospital with my little boy and so many other kids all battling this vicious disease knowing that this man, who presides over the extermination of Palestinians and the continued bombing and occupation of Lebanon, is in the same city being feted by our politicians.

I don’t know what else to say.

Salaam,
Omar