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Laila El-Haddad ليلى الحداد

@gazamom

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🇵🇸Writer|Author|Public Speaker
🥇 James Beard Award Winner
🌶️ From Gaza—أرض العزة
🥘 Food, politics, media & storytelling
📩 DM for collabs/bookings

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Congratulations to me and my dear sister Laila El-Haddad on each winning a prestigious JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION AWARD 2025.
I won in Personal Essay
Laila won in Personal Essay with Recipes.

We Palestinians win, with or without recipes.

Laila read her remarks, which represent me and her and all of us who have families in Gaza. I could not share mine there because I was not there in person. But I will post my remarks here soon. by @gazamom

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a year ago

I feel numb these days, stunned, grief stricken. I feel like the past few months have been a bad dream. That the people we lost may still return to us. We do what we can to keep going, to hold on to whatever is left, to honor the memory of those who have been killed, and to keep fighting for all that remains. Thank you @benjaminkemper and @saveurmag for giving me the chance to write this essay and honor my beloved Aunt and City. by @gazamom

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3 years ago

Thanks to @vivien.sansour and @paliheirloomseedlibrary for helping me save these precious seeds, which we named in honor of my friend’s brother Abdelhakim, from whom we received them shortly before his martyrdom. They are an heirloom variety only found in Gaza, where hot peppers are vital and much beloved.m. One way we resist ongoing erasure and succumbing to despair is by continuing to cultivate hope, the last frontier of G*. We preserve and transmit , we cook and grow, and we tell our stories and transform our pain into power. And we have a lot babies along the way too! 😆 if you’d like to help, you can support the library’s work to save Palestinian seeds, my work in urban agriculture in Gaza in conjunction with @youth_vision_society (link in bio), and the work of @thamra_org to support farmers in Gaza. by @gazamom

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8 days ago

One year in ICE captivity.

These are Ya’akub’s reflections from detention:

The wealthiest is the most content. The strongest has tamed his anger. The most intelligent remembers death and prepares for it.

Just as he was taken, he will be freed.
Ya’akub is a DACA recipient, photojournalist, community advocate, and Filipino Muslim who has lived in the U.S. for over two decades with no criminal record. He remains detained at the Folkston ICE Processing Center in Georgia for protected speech and advocacy.

The fight continues. Take action:
 ✍️ Sign the petition → bit.ly/freeyaakub 💸 Donate to ancillary fees → tinyurl.com/FreeYaakub ⚖️ Donate to legal fees → shorturl.at/JogtG 📞 Contact your representatives → tinyurl.com/freeyaakub2026
#FreeYaakub #1yearofcaptivity by @gazamom

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8 days ago

One year.

One year since ICE dragged him from his doorstep at gunpoint.
 One year since a camera, a conscience, and a refusal to stay quiet to injustice became a federal offense.
 One year of concrete, heat, overcrowding, and a system that decided dissent is deportable.

Our Brother, Ya’akub Ira Vijandre.
 Filipino- Muslim American. DACA. Arrived at fourteen.
 Never charged. Never broken.

While the world moved on, he sat in Folkston and still found the strength to teach: wealth is contentment, strength is controlled anger, intelligence is remembering death, and the only provision that matters is the one that lasts forever.

He reminded us that life runs on polarity — what was taken will be returned. What was locked will be opened. What they tried to erase will be remembered louder.

One year carved into memory, resilience, and unshaken faith.
We do not forget. We do not quiet. We do not stop.

Free Ya’akub.
Free every soul he stood for.

A door is already opening, inshaAllah.

The fight continues. Take action:

Donate to ancillary fees →
tinyurl.com/FreeYaakub
Donate to legal fees → shorturl.at/
JogtG
Contact your representatives →
tinyurl.com/freeyaakub2026

#FreeYaakub #1YearOfCaptivity
@freeyaakub by @gazamom

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8 days ago

German media, most recently @zeit with its five-part podcast The Gaza Chef, keeps turning my brother Mahmoud’s killing into a mystery.

They bring in experts to discuss algorithms, “target rooms,” and whether a computer made a mistake. Was our kitchen too close to a hospital Israel had designated as a target? Did a baker walking through his own neighborhood somehow look like a fighter?

No.

Our kitchen was more than half a mile from that hospital. Mahmoud was not operating next to it. He was not in some disputed location between two buildings. He was in his own neighborhood, doing what he had been doing every day: feeding people.

You don’t accidentally confuse half a mile with a target when you are watching from the sky and firing a guided weapon.

They call it “the banality of AI in warfare.”

I call it a targeted assassination.

And this is what bothers me most about the coverage, especially in German media: the Israeli military is constantly given the benefit of the doubt. If Palestinians are killed, there must be an explanation. A mistake. A bad identification. A technical failure.

Palestinians, meanwhile, are treated as suspects who have to prove their innocence even after they are dead.

Germany’s history matters. But German guilt over its own past cannot become a reason to rationalize what is being done to Palestinians today.

If you want to talk about technology, fine.

But stop asking whether the machine made a mistake.

Ask why Mahmoud was targeted in the first place.

My brother was not an algorithmic error.

He was a chef. He was feeding starving people. He was a lifeline to thousands of displaced families.

And I am done allowing his murder to be turned into a software problem. by @gazamom

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17 days ago

🚨 THE SENATE COULD VOTE AS SOON AS TONIGHT. CONTACT YOUR SENATORS NOW AND URGE THEM TO VOTE YES ON S.RES. 852

Muhammad Seif El-Deen was 12. He should have been going to school and imagining his future. Instead, he was shot and killed this week by Israeli forces in Rafah City.

His family deserves answers. Palestinian children deserve lives free from violence. And the American public deserves to know what our government knows and what it has done in response.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s S. Res. 852 would require the State Department to report on Israel’s actions against Americans and Palestinians. It is a step toward the transparency and oversight that families have been denied.

Tell your senators to vote YES on S. Res. 852. It takes only a moment to send your message:

🔗 https://action.cair.com/a/report-the-truth

Take action now, and share this alert before the vote. #linkinbio by @gazamom

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17 days ago

We are honored to welcome Laila El-Haddad as a keynote speaker at the Gaza Genocide Center’s public launch on November 7. Join us as we launch a permanent, evidence-based record of the genocide in Gaza. Featuring Prof. John Mearsheimer, Laila El-Hadded, and firsthand testimony from Gaza. Link in bio for 🎟️. by @gazamom

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18 days ago

Free Ya’akub Now!

When they detain one of us for advocacy and journalism, none of us are safe. taken in Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. by @gazamom

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23 days ago

A huge thanks to our guests, donors and other supporters for making our national policy conference and 32nd annual gala an amazing success with record-breaking fundraising and turnout.

We also commend all of our honorees, including Ben Cohen, Salah Sarsour and CAIR-Texas and CAIR-Florida. We were honored and inspired by the presence of Imam Taha Hassane and the beloved children of martyred hero Amin Abdullah. We pray that God comforts Brother Amin's family and the families of Brothers Nader Awad and Mansour Kaziha.

Despite unconstitutional crackdowns on free speech, a manufactured surge in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate, attacks on immigrants, and a foreign policy held captive by Israel-first extremists, the American Muslim community remains focused on our vision of securing free speech, religious freedom, racial equality, and justice for all. taken in Washington, DC by @gazamom

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a month ago

In Gaza, children have not only been deprived of their childhood, but also of their fundamental right to education.

Schools have been destroyed, classrooms reduced to rubble, and children have found themselves away from their desks, carrying the few books they have through circumstances no child should ever have to endure.

But education in Gaza has not stopped.

Despite the destruction and displacement, our children continue to hold on to their right to learn. They still dream of a future beyond the reality of war.

That is why we took a step to support and reopen this school, providing the essential educational resources children need to continue learning, including desks, blackboards, stationery, and other learning supplies.

Today, we did not simply open the doors of a school…

We opened another window of hope.

More than 100 children deserve a safe place to sit, to hold their pencils, to write down their dreams, and to learn without having destruction as the only scene before their eyes.

Education is not a luxury, and it is not something the children of Gaza should have to wait for until the war is over.

Education is a right.
Hope is a right.
And the future of Gaza’s children is worth protecting.

At Daughters of the Land, we will continue supporting the children of Gaza, step by step, so that the doors of education remain open. 🤍 taken in Gaza City مدينة غزة by @gazamom

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a month ago

“How do you say you’re from Gaza?

Don’t just say: I’m from Gaza.

Say you know how a home can become a tent, and how, somehow, that tent can still become a home.

Say you know that walls can fall, but the meaning of home does not fall with them. That a hanging blanket can become a door, a piece of rope can become a wardrobe, and a mattress on the ground can hold an entire family and all of its dreams.

Say you know what it means to divide a meal, not because you have plenty, but because you were never taught how to eat alone.

Say that “ya khal” is more than a phrase. It is a way of shortening the distance between people, as if to tell a stranger: from this moment on, you are not a stranger here.

Say you know the takiyya not simply as food, but as an entire idea of survival: that people should still have a share in one another, even when there is very little left to share.

Say you know what life looks like when a tent becomes an address, when longing for your old home hurts more than the cold, when you begin to miss a door, a window, a wall you once passed every day without ever imagining you would one day ache for it.

Say you have seen things no human being should ever have to see, and somehow, you still did not learn cruelty.

You are tired, yes. You have lost, more than anyone should. But exhaustion did not stop you from feeding someone else, and grief did not stop you from asking:

Have you eaten?
Have you had water?
Do you need anything?

And say that Gaza is not recognized by its accent alone.

There are people who were not born there, whose dialect is not Gazan, but who ate from its land, drank its water, and lived among its people.

And somewhere along the way,
they became a little part of Gaza,
and Gaza became a part of them.

So don’t just say: I’m Gazan.

Say: I come from a place where a home can become a tent, without its people becoming any less human.

I come from a place that, the more it is confined, the more its people make room for one another. A place genocide tried to take everything from, and yet it still kept giving.

Then say nothing more.

The rest can be understood in just two words: Ya khal.”

Words by: @miramarabusalim by @gazamom

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a month ago