Free Gaza Circus: Balancing hope amid devastation

On the rubble of what was once a home, a young performer named Khalil juggles stones plucked from the wreckage. Children gather around him, eyes alight with a rare mirth. For an instant, laughter punctures the heavy gloom of displacement, and the desolate surroundings of southern Gaza shift into a fleeting stage of reprieve. This is the Free Gaza Circus, reclaiming children a stolen birthright: laughter, play, and normalcy. 

Palestinian brothers Mohamed and Yousef Khader launched the Free Gaza Circus in 2018, transforming the elusive spectacle of circus arts into a local and accessible joy for Gaza’s youth. It began as a small centre in the north of the strip, teaching gymnastics, juggling, and performance. For members, it served as a workshop to hone their acrobatic skills and a gathering place for a shared purpose. For children in the besieged Palestinian enclave, it was a fragile pocket of joy where play and fun could briefly eclipse their grating realities. 

In October 2023, Israel’s airstrikes reduced the circus headquarters to rubble, and the circus members joined over a million Palestinians in a relentless migration toward safety. Members were scattered across Gaza’s patchwork of make-shift tent camps. Unyielding, the Free Gaza circus team carry their mission into displacement camps across Rafah, bringing moments of light to children who have endured the unimaginable. As 85% of schools have been destroyed since the onset of the genocide, their work is one of the few remaining outlets for children bereft of learning, community, and sanctuary. 

One cannot overstate the impact Israel’s ongoing genocide has had on Gaza’s children. While the occupying powers have killed at least 17,400 children—one every 30 minutes—since October 7, 2023, thousands more remain buried beneath the ruins, presumed dead. For those who survive, daily life is a relentless cycle of trauma. A new acronym has emerged to label the thousands now unaccompanied: WCNSF; wounded child, no surviving family. Many of these children have faced life under siege their entire lives. Now, they are existing in a reality solely shaped by grief and pain. 

Amid this infernal devastation, members of the Free Gaza Circus don their makeup, climb onto stilts, and perform their feats of wonder—clowning, juggling, somersaulting—transforming anguish into awe. It’s a gift of immeasurable urgency for children living through unfathomable suffering. This piece honours those who rise each day in that desolation, dressing in costume to coax giggles and smiles from a generation scarred. Those at the Free Gaza Circus bring light into the darkest corners, even as they shoulder their own grief. 

The Circus has not been spared the toll of genocide; Muath Hijazi  and Salam Abo Harbel, members of the team were martyred over the last year. Communication with many of their students remains severed amidst widespread blackouts. Yet their work persists, a fearless assertion of the human need for joy, even as it is cruelly and systematically withheld by their oppressors, even when it feels impossible to find. Every performance of the Free Gaza Circus is a triumph over despair and an unspoken promise to those in Gaza that joy, however brief, is worth fighting for.