The clowns trying to bring joy to Gaza's traumatised children

Teaching safety through fun

In the camps, he says the clowns "help strengthen children's resilience, teaching them through play to remember their full names—this helps combat the rising number of children gone missing due to displacement and social fragmentation". The performers "also deliver critical messages, such as avoiding suspicious objects and reporting them to adults," he adds.

Dr Alloush says his recent work has centred on children wounded by war. "I try to bring a smile to the faces of children lying in pain in a hospital bed." Moataz Jundia, known as "Uncle Mickey," points out that depression often hits Gaza's children. "We see faces that have aged prematurely, burdened with unspeakable trauma," he says.

Yet like the others, he is driven. "The role of the clown, particularly in wartime, is not mere entertainment; it's therapeutic," he explains. "It is to heal wounds and help kids overcome pain and anxiety. The laughter and play also help me heal."

Yearning for joy

Gaza's children yearn for joy as if clinging to life whilst confronted with death. "They keep asking us to come back and play," says Uncle Zezo. "They want to laugh. We never tire of the hopeful glances that light up their eyes during our shows."

Deep emotional bonds are formed through their performances, says Dr Alloush. "I see threads stretching between me and the children wounded in body and soul. I feel myself gradually drawing out the fear within them, so they can remember what joy once felt like." Uncle Mickey describes his own elation. "Every cell in my body rejoices when I dance with the children. They believe in my happiness and respond to it."

Like most structures in the battered Strip, the Gaza Circus School in the north—once a hub for artists—has been reduced to rubble by Israeli bombs, but the troupe is not deterred, gathering amid the debris to rehearse new acts.

"We face enormous challenges," says Uncle Zezo. "Constant shelling, relentless killing, and the destruction of the very place where our ideas were born. But we have no choice, we must go on. Displaced and war-weary children need all the psychological support they can get."

Uncle Mickey concurs. "We work under the eerie watch of Israeli quadcopters. They see us laughing. They must always see us this way: standing tall, supporting our children. Our lives are constantly at risk. We work in near-impossible conditions, often without basic costume supplies, but still we press on."

Given the suffering endured by Gaza's children, laughter may seem absurd, yet it is drawn from the rubble by those determined to share their smiles and share the pain. "We carry the painful stories of the children when we leave the camps," says Uncle Zezo. 

"I once met a girl who had lost her entire family in shelling. Her leg was amputated. But during one show, she laughed. For a fleeting second, it was as if her body and family had returned to her."

As Dr Alloush leaves the children's hospitals, he is haunted by what will become of them. "It is unbearably cruel to return to the hospitals to play with the injured children, only to find they have been martyred, taken from this world before they could experience the laughter that awaited them," he says.

Uncle Mickey has also experienced profound sorrow. "I have a video of my dancing with the children of Al-Arqam School in eastern Gaza," he recalls. "That day, we were happy. We played, we danced with passion, and—for a brief moment—we drowned out the sounds of war."

"A few days later, the occupation bombed the school. Many of the children who had danced and laughed with me were martyred in the attack. All that laughter was bombed away. Now, I have only that one video with them. Every time I watch it, I am overcome by grief."

Laughter as medicine

Uncle Zezo explains that circus art was a niche field in Gaza, even before the war, "but now families and children gather around us… they've come to realise the value of what we do". Eliciting a single laugh in wartime is nothing short of a miracle.

Laughter is "an act of resistance and resilience," he says. "It is a message to the Israeli occupation and the silent world that—no matter the suffering, the killing, the displacement, and the destruction—we will continue to paint smiles on our children's faces because they deserve life, like every other child in the world."

Dr Alloush describes the clowns' work as "medicine through laughter," adding: "The war has weighed heavily on the souls of children and adults alike. But no matter how their sorrow deepens, or how many disasters surround them during this genocide, laughter remains essential. There must be a circus performer, a clown, because through that interaction, we reclaim a piece of life."

"This war of genocide has birthed something strange: a hunger for laughter as intense as the hunger for food. I even have adults gathering around me, laughing like children," Uncle Mickey says.

"But it is the children who matter most. We work for their future."