Intimaa Salama, a 27-year-old dentist from Gaza, attended last week’s State of the Union address at the invitation of U.S. Rep. Cori Bush. Though she said she felt honored to join Bush in demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire and full restoration of funding for humanitarian assistance through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), she said she’s now clear she’ll never go to another State of the Union.

Salama will graduate from St. Louis University’s Master of Public Health program with a focus on global health in just two months. Her plan was to earn her degree and return to Gaza to help build out Palestine’s public health infrastructure. Cholera, starvation, the crisis of amputations and the less visible fallout from Israel’s massive bombing of civilians have only increased the urgency of that project, Salama told Truthout. But she literally has no home to return to, and her family has been decimated by Israel’s war.

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