To Gaza with Love: Through animation, Gaza's children transform pain into storytelling

For the youngest members of Gazan society, storytelling starts with a drawing. Before children learn to write, they learn to draw.

It is a medium through which they express their innermost feelings, memories, desires, and dreams, and in the case of children in Gaza, life in an ongoing war.

Recognising that the children she taught were sometimes at a loss for words, stop-motion animator and teacher Haneen Koraz from Gaza City turned to animation, not knowing she would spark a global movement.

Prior to October 2023, 37-year-old Haneen delivered animation workshops to Palestinian children in schools. Her work took her far and wide; five months before the war, she says she went to Lebanon and Egypt.

Haneen and her friend and co-animator Noor Abdul Jawad had big plans; they were going to launch a project that would involve teaching animation to children in Egypt and the West Bank.

Just two days before they were meant to travel to Ramallah to deliver a workshop, Hamas’ attacks on Southern Israel took place, and Israel’s ensuing war on Gaza postponed their project indefinitely.

Forced to evacuate by the Israeli Army, Haneen found herself displaced to Deir El Balah among hundreds of thousands of other Gazans. It was there that she had a serendipitous meeting. A child walked past her one day and instantly recognised her as the teacher who gave him an animation workshop before the war.

“He asked me if I would continue giving workshops in Deir El Balah,” Haneen tells The New Arab.

“I thought, why don’t I go back to working with children? The children need to express themselves. They have a large amount of energy and creativity. They have not had the space to express themselves or expel that energy because everything in Gaza has gone: the playgrounds, art centres and schools. Nearly all of them have been bombed," she continued.

“Noor and I decided to start working again, even if the space we had was small. Instead of the children being victims of the war and deprivation, they would instead narrate their stories in their own artistic way.”

Stories born from struggle 

A tent for the displaced was converted into an animation studio, but Haneen and Noor faced their next challenge — all their sound, lighting, and filming equipment, as well as art materials, had been left behind in Gaza City.

With the north of Gaza cut off from the south by the Israeli army, they could not go back to retrieve their things. They were stuck. But then, a miracle happened.

“Before the war, we delivered a workshop to an organisation for girls with hearing difficulties,” Haneen shares. “At the end of the workshop, we gave the girls filming equipment and art materials as a gift. We got in touch with the organisation via WhatsApp and asked if they would loan us the equipment until things improve in Gaza.”

The organisation agreed straight away and brought the equipment and art materials to Haneen’s tent. But procuring a steady supply of stationery in the midst of a genocide has not been easy.

“The prices are through the roof,” she says. “A lighting stand before the war used to cost $30; now it costs £300. A pencil was $ 1 and is now $7 or $8. Some UNICEF workers managed to bring us art materials since the borders closed, and nothing else is coming in.”

Using pencils, markers, scissors, coloured paper, and a stop-motion app on her mobile phone, Haneen has taught the children how to storyboard their ideas, draw and cut out characters, and film animated shorts. The children then record their voices over the film. They are now officially known as the Animated Stories team. As the brutality of Israel's war progressed, so did the children’s stories.

“At the start, the children would draw planes, rockets and destroyed houses. As they continued to attend the workshops, they started to draw their whole lives, and those drawings told entire stories,” Haneen explains.

“In one film, the children tell the story of their grandmother, who would send them off each day to collect water until their buckets were filled, and how tiring it would be to bring this water back. They come to the end of the day and go to take a bath, only to find that all the water has gone. They discover their grandmother has used it all to take a bath. So, they are still finding comic moments in their day-to-day lives.”

Calling for peace and spreading love 

The impact her workshops have had on the children has been nothing short of remarkable. Once silent and nervous, the children are now bursting with ideas and stories, taking those back with them to their families at the end of the day.

"Animation is important because it allows the children a way to support themselves mentally and relieves their stress,” says Haneen. “When they record their voices over their animation, this also empowers them and gives them a sense of control.”

Over the last two years, Haneen has kept in touch with two fellow animators who live thousands of miles away — British film director and animator Joanna Quinn and Canadian animation director Elise Simard.

Since 2023, Joanna has been sharing films from Haneen’s workshops every week on her social media platforms, which she calls Sunday Cinema.

This collaboration culminated in the formation of Animation Community for Palestine (ac4pal) in February 2025, a volunteer-run collective of artists, animators, educators, festival directors and curators from around the world.

Inspired by Haneen’s work with Palestinian children, they came up with the idea for a global anijam – an ongoing festival of short animated films that anyone from anywhere in the world could create and submit, with the theme being a show of love and solidarity with Gaza.

“We wanted to offer a way for animators to show their support for Gaza. We both felt and continue to feel that animation is a powerful way to call for peace and spread love,” says Sam Decoste, a Canadian animator and assistant professor in 2D animation who is also part of the ac4pal team.

“To Gaza with Love: A Global Anijam is a reminder of our interconnectedness, our responsibility to one another, and our shared humanity,” she adds.

“At its heart, the project is a collective effort by animators around the world to reach out across borders and speak a universal language of care and compassion.”

Sam says the response has been phenomenal, with 350 animated shorts submitted from over 70 countries. They have been holding film screenings, workshops and events in multiple countries around the world and plan to launch a YouTube channel soon. 

When the children saw the films flocking in from every corner of the globe, Haneen says, they could not believe their eyes.

“They are so happy that there are other children and people around the world who think of them and support them. They feel that people have not forgotten them, value their work and see their suffering.”

“I noticed that when the children see films sent from one of the artists, their eyes shine. They tell me, ‘They’re speaking about us! They’re speaking about the strikes!’ These short films take them to another world.”

To help provide funding for Haneen Koraz’s work, you can donate to her GoFundMe page or subscribe to her Patreon. To find an Animation Community for Palestine event near you, check out their Eventbrite page.

Yousra Samir Imran is a British Egyptian writer and author based in Yorkshire. She is the author of Hijab and Red Lipstick, published by Hashtag Press

Follow her on X: @UNDERYOURABAYA