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# My Father, A Professor Who Lost Five Of His Children And Kept Researching
- URL: https://aontachtmedia.ie/my-father-a-professor-who-lost-five-of-his-children-and-kept-researching/
- Published: 2026-11-09T14:23:21.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-09T14:44:18.000Z
- Description: Caught between grief and a brutal reality, he faced a question he had never imagined having to answer: how does a person go on living after losing everything he holds dear? Even so, Abd Rabou did not abandon science.
- Author: Othman Abd Rabou
- Tags: Critical Analysis

For my father, Professor Abdel Fattah Abd Rabou, scientific research was never merely a profession or an academic career. It was a calling to which he devoted more than thirty years, in the conviction that knowledge transcends borders and that science is a mission that must never be abandoned, however grave the circumstances.

But the war that engulfed the Gaza Strip left his life unrecognizable. He lost his home, his wife and several of his children, and endured harrowing displacement, moving from place to place in search of safety. Caught between grief and a brutal reality, he faced a question he had never imagined having to answer: how does a person go on living after losing everything he holds dear?

Even so, Abd Rabou did not abandon science. He continued to research, write and publish, as though his papers had become his only means of holding on to life and resisting despair.

## **Three Decades of Research and a Legacy Beyond Gaza**

Abdel Fattah Abd Rabou was born in 1964 in Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, to a Palestinian family from the occupied town of Samsam. From his earliest years he was drawn to nature and wildlife, finding in living creatures and their environments a world worth exploring and documenting.

He studied biology at the Islamic University of Gaza before pursuing graduate studies in environmental science in Sudan, where he earned a master's degree from the University of Khartoum in 1996 and a doctorate from Al-Neelain University in 2006\. In 2021 he was promoted to full professor, the culmination of a long career in teaching and research.

Over three decades he has authored more than 100 scientific papers on the Palestinian environment, birds, wildlife, marine life and biodiversity in the Gaza Strip. They are more than scientific records: they preserve the ecological memory of Palestine and document rare and endangered species.

His work has appeared in international scientific journals in the United States and Europe and has reached researchers and institutions around the world, carrying the name of Palestine and Gaza to the global scientific community.

![Professor Abdel Fattah Abd Rabbo teaching an invertebrates class](https://aontachtmedia.ie/content/images/2026/11/data-src-image-b1a345a0-1c53-4ec4-aadc-98c3c9aca53a.jpeg)

*This photo was taken seven years ago, while my father was teaching the Invertebrates course at the Islamic University of Gaza.*

## **When Science Becomes a Refuge from Pain**

When the war began, Professor Abdel Fattah found himself trapped in a devastating humanitarian reality. He lost his home and his library, along with the books and scientific references he had gathered over many years, a collection he considered priceless.

The destruction was not merely material. It reached the core of his life: he lost his wife and five of his children in the war, a wound too deep for words. Even so, he sought in scientific research a space in which to breathe, away from the weight of memory.

Describing his experience of the war, he says:

*"If I sat at home with my hand on my cheek, I would fall into depression. I try to forget the pain of loss and displacement I have been through by working on my research."*

These words do not describe having moved past the pain, but learning to live alongside it. Science, his companion for a lifetime, became his way of resisting the void left by the loss of his loved ones.

![His martyred children, Mohammed and Sumaya](https://aontachtmedia.ie/content/images/2026/11/data-src-image-e44c3aee-bc82-4994-a90c-e6282849590f.png)

*His martyred children, Mohammed and Sumaya.*

## **Research Written Under Gunfire**

During the war, access to electricity and the internet was a daily struggle. Abd Rabou often had to walk long distances in search of a place to work, amid scarce transportation and constant danger. Every journey to a space suitable for writing and research carried risk, yet his determination to continue never wavered.

In the two years of war, he published more than 25 papers in peer-reviewed international journals, an achievement he regards as remarkable given the conditions he endured. In 2025 alone he completed 11 papers, a figure that reflects extraordinary resolve to keep working despite displacement, bereavement and the absence of resources.

Of that period, Abd Rabou says:

*"That was my golden age, for scientific research is the life of the soul."*

The sentence nearly captures his entire story: while death surrounded him on every side, he was creating new space for life through knowledge.

## **Documenting What May Vanish Forever**

Among his most notable work is the documentation of rare marine species in the waters off the Gaza Strip, including the whale shark, which is endangered worldwide; the angular roughshark, which inhabits the deep waters of the Mediterranean; and the Mediterranean monk seal, along with numerous birds and other species that form part of Palestine's biodiversity.

![My father on a boat trip at sea](https://aontachtmedia.ie/content/images/2026/11/data-src-image-574343e4-6b92-402b-a97f-b0749a2d458a.jpeg)

*My father on a boat trip at sea.*

This research has never been separate from the human reality around it. The war has not only destroyed homes and infrastructure; its effects extend to the environment, vegetation cover and marine life. Abd Rabou notes that the widespread destruction of vegetation in Gaza has had a direct impact on animals, while fish stocks have declined sharply as fishing boats were destroyed and restrictions were imposed on fishermen.

![My father on a field trip among the sand dunes](https://aontachtmedia.ie/content/images/2026/11/data-src-image-0ebdb872-9ef0-4fd5-a447-775ffd3740e1.jpeg)

*My father during one of his field trips among the sand dunes.*

Scientific research has thus become, for him, a form of testimony to what the Palestinian land is enduring, and an effort to protect what remains of its natural heritage.

## **The Zakat of Knowledge: Raising Researchers Amid the Rubble**

Despite everything he has endured, Abd Rabou never lost sight of his academic mission. He made a point of involving students and young researchers in his work, offering them opportunities to contribute and publish, in the belief that knowledge is complete only when it is passed on to future generations.

He holds that training researchers is as important as producing research itself, and that knowledge kept to oneself dies with its owner, while knowledge shared endures.

This philosophy is more than an academic principle; it extends the values he has carried throughout his career: generosity, perseverance, and the belief that a person can leave a lasting mark even in the harshest of circumstances.

## **A Father, a Scientist, and a Witness to Gaza's Tragedy**

Behind the title of professor stands a father who has suffered irreplaceable losses, and a man compelled to carry on amid the memories of a family that is gone.

Abdel Fattah Abd Rabou no longer has the library he assembled over many years, nor the home that held his memories. But he still carries what war cannot take from him: his knowledge, his memory and his faith in his mission.

His is not merely the story of a Palestinian scientist who kept publishing through the war, but of a man who refused to let tragedy have the last word. In Gaza, where war seeks to silence the sounds of life, his research continues to reach the world, bearing the names of the species he documented and the name of Palestine, which he has never ceased to serve through science.

Professor Abdel Fattah Abd Rabou has lost much of what made up his life, yet he is still writing. With each new paper, perhaps, he is telling the world that even a person who has lost everything can leave a mark the rubble cannot erase.