When Israeli bombardment and repeated displacements turn normal life upside down, how do autistic and non-verbal children in Palestine cope? In Gaza, one older sister shares the experiences of her autistic teenage brother as the family faces first confinement and then upheaval, eventually turning to social media to raise vital funds.
On the first of August 2025, Spain’s military conducted a mission to distribute food rations to people living in the Gaza Strip. 24 parachutes fell from the sky, carrying over 5,000 rations of food.
One of the aid parcels was destined for Jenin Alassar’s family. Alassar, a 23-year-old translator, said her brother Hesham ran for ten minutes to retrieve food from a drop site in Deir al-Balah.
“Then, when he got there, it was like a battlefield, you know? People were fighting. People were all over each other,” Jenin said in a phone interview later that month.
Hesham managed to walk away from the scene with one day’s worth of rations. In addition to prepared meal pouches, the family also received packaged desserts — chocolate, lemon cake, and biscuits.
Most of the desserts were gifted to Jenin’s little brother, the youngest member of the family, 16-year-old Aser Alassar.
Jenin and her brother, Aser
“The chocolate, we gave half of it for my little brother. We gave most of the cake for him. There were two packets of sweet biscuits, and we gave it to him,” Jenin says. “So, you know, spoiled and pampered!”
Aser is autistic and does not speak — he communicates with family and friends through gestures and sounds. Since October 2023, Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip has shattered the sense of normalcy for the Alassar family, but especially for Aser. The life he was previously accustomed to has completely disappeared.
Due to his autism, Aser requires unique accommodations and care, which have been extremely difficult to provide during Israel’s bombardment. One major difficulty is finding food that Aser can eat, Jenin says.
Research shows that autistic children are often reported to be highly-selective eaters, rejecting certain foods based on sensory factors like texture, smell and taste. For Aser, this means that only certain foods are acceptable, which adds another layer of complexity to sourcing food for the family.
“He is really picky,” Jenin says. “Autistic children don’t really eat a variety of foods. He would typically like to eat some fried chicken with fried potatoes — he would like really, really limited kinds of food.”
In March of 2025, Israel imposed a complete blockade of Gaza, denying the entry of all aid and supplies, including food. For the Alassar family, this meant that finding food for Aser was nearly impossible.
“During famine, we really struggle just to find anything, anything that he would accept,” Jenin says. “For so many days during these five months from March to August, he would ask for so many things, and there are still so many things that we can’t make for him.”
After some time, Jenin says, Aser started accepting new foods into his diet, like fish and rice.
“I think he became more open to trying other foods, but not that open.”
The challenges for autistic children in Gaza extend far beyond food. In an article for The New Arab, journalist Rodayna Raydan reports that repeated bombardment, displacement, and destruction of already lacking support systems have left autistic children to face regression in behavioral progress and heightened psychological dysregulation.
Raydan writes that these impacts stretch throughout daily routines, negatively affecting sleep, playtime, and mealtime.
When violence reached the Alassar family’s home in Rafah, they were forced to flee and have since been permanently displaced. That’s when Aser’s typical daily routines and surroundings completely vanished.
“I’ve always wondered what war looks like through the eyes of a nonverbal child,” Jenin wrote in a post to her social media account. “I got my answer when I saw him losing weight, when he refused to go anywhere, and when I lied to him countless times, telling him we were going home.”
Before they were displaced by the Israeli military, the Alassar family lived in Rafah, a city in the south of Gaza that sits at the border with Egypt. Their home was in the east of the city, surrounded by palm trees and a garden wall.
In one post, Jenin described the house as “a sanctuary filled with warmth & love.” There, she was focused on her studies, and Aser was focused on his bicycle.
“Basically, this bicycle was the dearest thing to him,” Jenin says. “He would just wake up, take his bicycle, go around, and then come back, eat some lunch, use the phone, and then he would go back out.
“He would spend so much time outside, more than he would spend even at home.”
But when the bombardment began, that had to change.
Losing the freedom to explore outside
On October 27, 2023, after weeks of shelling the entirety of Gaza, the Israeli military began its full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. Soldiers entered the Palestinian territory from the north. Rafah, a southern border city, quickly grew in population as displaced people arrived from cities where Israel had ordered civilian evacuation.
Despite the Israeli government labelling the south as a safe zone for people to evacuate to, Rafah was still targeted by indiscriminate air raids and bombardment from Israel’s military.
“Everything was crazy and the air strikes were everywhere. It was like something that we had never lived before,” Jenin says. “Like, we have lived escalations and wars before, but this was so different in so many ways.”
At first, the family was able to stay at their home, sheltering from the attacks. For Aser, this meant a confusing change in routine.
“At the beginning, we wouldn’t let him go out at all,” Jenin says. “We ourselves wouldn’t go out at all because it was so scary.”
For eight months, Rafah remained a location for displaced people from all over the Gaza Strip to evacuate to. Jenin said that, over time, the city became “not stable, but you know, better than any other area in Gaza.”
The family eventually felt that the situation was secure enough to let Aser ride his bike to a nearby football club during the day. They bought him an old Nokia phone for emergency communication.
Planning for evacuation
Then, in early 2024, reports began to emerge of Israel’s plans to invade Rafah. The Alassar family knew that their home would not remain safe for long.
During that time, many Palestinians were seeking evacuation to Egypt through the Rafah Crossing, the only border of the strip allowing access to a country other than Israel.
Evacuations into Egypt were logistically precarious and cost thousands of dollars per person.
In March of 2024, the Alassar family began a fundraiser to raise the money needed to cross the border into Egypt. The GoFundMe campaign, titled “Help Aser and his family evacuate Gaza,” was created by Jenin’s older brother Mohammed, who lives in Sweden.
Jenin took to social media to promote the campaign. In two weeks, she had raised close to $6,000 by posting about the fundraiser. “I didn’t have hope that I would ever collect enough money for us to evacuate,” Jenin says. “But then, when I saw that people [were] donating or sharing, I was like, ‘I’m gonna keep doing it.’”
At the end of March, one of Jenin’s posts went viral. In the post, she describes lying to her father that she forgot to share the fundraising link to the family’s GoFundMe after he asked why so few donations were coming in.
“I couldn’t say that I’ve been sharing it day & night, I just pretended that I’ve forgot,” she wrote in the post, which featured a link to the fundraiser.
Over 300,000 people saw Jenin’s post, and it was shared over 9,000 times. In mere days, the family had raised enough money for five people’s evacuation.
“I was like, ‘oh my god, this is so crazy,’” Jenin says. “And at that time, when we had raised that $25,000, we had enough money to be evacuated.”
It was a long process to get the money where it needed to go — out of a Swedish bank account and into the hands of an Egyptian logistics company, Hala Consulting and Tourism. By the end of April, the Alassar family was able to coordinate a payment to Hala, with hopes of evacuating within a couple of weeks.
“Then, at the sixth of May 2024, borders were closed and the IOF invaded,” Jenin says, referring to Israel’s military as the IOF, or Israeli Occupation Forces.
Forced to flee home
Just days before the family’s planned evacuation, Israel began an offensive assault on Rafah, closing the border crossing and forcing many to flee their homes.
Residents in the east of Rafah, where the Alassar family was located, were ordered to evacuate first. Following notices from the Israeli army, Jenin and her whole family left their home.
In one post, Jenin describes the family’s first displacement as the moment when “the real war” began for Aser.
“Where Aser changed the most was when we left our home,” she says. “When we left, at first, he didn’t really understand that we were leaving, that we may not come back at all.”
Jenin says it was difficult to explain what was happening to Aser.
“It was so hard for him to process what was going on,” she says. “Why are we not home? Why doesn’t he have his bicycle? Why? Why are we running? What are we running from?”
The family gradually moved further and further away. In May alone, they were displaced three separate times.
First, they stayed with some relatives in the central area of Rafah.
“We stayed there for like, four or five days, and then new evacuation orders came, so we had to leave,” Jenin says.
They then moved to the west of the city, where they lived in the empty apartment of a family member.
“We stayed there for three weeks,” Jenin says. “Then, one night, without any evacuation orders or anything, the IDF came… they started shooting, bombing everywhere. And then the next morning, we had to leave.”
From temporary home to refugee camp
The attacks that night led to a deadly fire that became known internationally as the Rafah tent massacre. The Israeli bombardment targeted the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah, a neighbourhood where displaced people were sheltering.
In a news release, the International Humanitarian Law Centre stated that at least 45 people were killed in the attacks.
“Footage from the aftermath of the attack depicts tents and makeshift structures in flames and dark smoke billowing into the night sky, as well as injured persons with severe burns being carried away,” the IHL Centre said in its release.
The day after the unexpected attacks, the Alassar family waited all day for transportation out of the area before finally catching a ride north to Nuseirat, a refugee camp in the middle area of Gaza.
“Just evacuated for the third time in three weeks,” Jenin posted to X.
The family stayed in Nuseirat for two months before being ordered to evacuate again — this time, a week of life in a tent in Deir al-Balah, before returning to Nuseirat for the second time.
Longing for a home and life that no longer exists
Throughout each agonising iteration of displacement, Aser was adamant about his desire to return to the family home in Rafah.
“He would always like to point out the direction of our home, as if he was asking if we’re gonna come back or not,” Jenin said. “He would point to the direction of our home, and he sometimes would wear a backpack and be like, ‘bye, I’m going.’”
In January 2025, Aser did return to the site of the family’s home. A ceasefire deal between the Israeli military and Hamas had taken effect, and it was safe to return to Rafah and see their neighbourhood.
Aser visited the site with his dad and Hesham. Their home was in ruins. Jenin describes the shock Aser felt when he saw the destroyed house.
Aser returning to his family home in Rafah
“His bike, we left it in Rafah, and of course, it got destroyed,” she adds.
Around the same time, Jenin graduated with honours from Al-Azhar University’s online program with a degree in English language and translation. Before the war, she had looked forward to graduating from the campus of Al-Azhar, Gaza’s oldest university. But by the time of her graduation, the school had been reduced to ruins, too.
“It was heartbreaking,” Jenin says. “I had hopes of graduating and taking nice pics at my university.”
Moving on – again and again
After the ceasefire was announced in January, the family moved into an apartment north of Rafah. They lived there for a couple of months, using the fundraiser money to make rent payments and purchase food.
Last March, just two months after the January ceasefire, Gaza was an active warzone once again. Negotiations between Hamas and Israel had failed, and relentless fighting returned to the strip.
The family fled their apartment days before Jenin’s 23rd birthday. It would be their seventh displacement.
For three days, the family lived in a tent once again. Then, Jenin’s father found an abandoned kindergarten school in Deir al Balah for the family to rent and live in. They have been living there ever since.
“It’s like, a little bit old, there’s no kitchen, of course, it’s a small bathroom, but it’s better than nothing,” Jenin says.
Once they arrived at the abandoned school, Aser no longer seemed to want to go back to Rafah. Instead, he indicated a desire to leave Gaza altogether.
“When war got back and we came to Deir al-Balah… he would take the backpack, and we would ask him, ‘do you want to go to Rafah?’ He would go, ‘no, no,’” Jenin recalls.
“He got sick of all the Gaza Strip, he just wants to leave.”
A renewed plea for help
With borders closed and pay-your-way evacuations no longer accessible to Palestinians, Jenin turned to a new approach for getting her family out, appealing to international autism organisations.
“I’m doing this because I know that it’s not impossible,” Jenin says. “There are some individuals, some people who do have the power of evacuating people out of Gaza.”
In one social post, Jenin urged her followers to email various Belgian organisations that specialise in Autism advocacy.
“PLEASE HELP ME AND MY AUTISTIC BROTHER EVACUATE FROM GAZA,” she wrote in the post. “Email these Belgian autism orgs and kindly ask them to support our case.”
One of the organisations, Autism Europe, responded that they were “deeply moved” by Jenin’s family’s situation, and offered to contact the Belgian Foreign Affairs Crisis Centre.
“Please note, however, that according to the sources we have the conditions for evacuation are extremely strict,” the email went on to say, “…Belgium is currently not issuing new visas.”
In addition to Autism Europe, Jenin has used social media to coordinate email campaigns to autism organisations in Spain and Ireland.
“I know that social media has the power to do this,” she says. “The problem is, you never know when a post is going to go viral.”
Last October, another ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was negotiated. Over six months later, Jenin and her family are still unable to return to Rafah, due to the ongoing Israeli occupation of the city. The border crossing remains under strict control by the Israeli government, and the majority of people inside the Gaza Strip are unable to evacuate.
During a phone interview in November, Jenin said that after the announcement of the latest ceasefire, the funds critical to her family’s survival became increasingly difficult to raise.
“People do retweet my tweets and everything. But I think people are not so eager to donate as they used to,” she said. “It’s not just me, it’s the case for everyone who’s fundraising in Gaza.”
For now, Jenin is committed to furthering her education, in the hopes that a university placement could help her and her family evacuate.
She describes standing next to a window for hours at a time in the makeshift school-turned-home. It’s the only location in the building where she can get strong enough internet to apply for scholarships.
“I would always tell my parents that I want to get my master’s degree, get my PhD. I don’t want to stop learning at all,” she says.
But the future is uncertain for Jenin and her family. The Israeli military is still in control of more than 50% of the Gaza Strip, including all of Rafah and the partially reopened Rafah Crossing.
The family home and the majority of buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed, and there is no firm timeline for when Palestinians in Gaza can leave or begin to rebuild their lives with the resources they need.
“There is nothing certain,” Jenin says. “Uncertainty, it’s really killing us. We don’t know what to do.”
Featured image by World Central Kitchen via Flickr.
All other photographs supplied by Jenin Alassar.
