“I’m So Scared, Please Come”

Editors Note: Visuals may be stressful for some readers.

Dear Hind,

Will an apology be enough for you to forgive the world? The same world that listened to your pleas, requesting them to save you as you sat alone amidst the dead bodies of your family. But in the end, your frail little body was found lifeless.

They say a Palestinian does not know whether they will come back home after they leave it in the morning. The same goes for the children of Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.

Memories of little Hind Rajab still linger as her frail voice was last heard before the world lost her to darkness.

“I’m so scared, please come. Please call someone to come and take me,” she was heard saying in a recording shared by the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) after which the line cuts off, leaving Hind to her fate.

For days, people took to social media questioning about her disappearance, even as Israel denied knowing about the incident. However, there was still hope that little Hind was alive. People kept holding onto the last shreds of humanity as Israel continues killing Palestinians.

Photos of her beautiful smiling face surfaced online as people demanded answers.

12 days later Hind’s decomposed body was found…

After almost two weeks of anxious anticipation, tragedy revisited when the body of a six-year-old Palestinian girl, missing for 12 days after an Israeli tank targeted their family car in Gaza, was found along with the bodies of two medics dispatched to look for them.

According to ‘Al-Jazeera’ the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and the family of the girl, Hind Rajab, confirmed on Saturday that all seven people inside the car were killed, with the Palestinian relief organisation saying it lost crew members Yusuf Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun in the Israeli attack on civilians in Gaza City.

The bodies were decomposed when found by the family inside the car.

Social media went on a frenzy when 12 days back Hind made a call to the PRCS sobbing, requesting help as the sound of snipers and bombs could be heard behind her.

Earlier this month, the PRCS published an audio file in which Hind could be heard pleading on the phone with a member of the rescue team. All members of her family are believed to have been killed before her, leaving her terrified in the car with the dead bodies of her loved ones.

Family members found Hind’s body along with those of her uncle and aunt, and their three children, near a roundabout in the city’s Tal al-Hawa suburb, the Palestinian news agency ‘Wafa’ reported. Another of Hind’s uncles, Sameeh Hamadeh, said the car was peppered with bullet holes.

“The occupation deliberately targeted the ambulance upon its arrival at the scene, where it was found just metres away from the vehicle containing the trapped child Hind,” said the PRCS statement.

Sobbing hysterically, Hind’s helpless mother said her heart is shattered into pieces.

“She was martyred in that car. She was there for two weeks. No one cared for her. God is the only one sufficient for us. Where are the human rights? My heart is completely destroyed over my daughter. They killed them. Two weeks they were in the car,” she was seen saying in a video.

Meanwhile, PRCS said that despite prior coordination to allow the ambulance to reach the location to rescue the child, “the occupation deliberately targeted the Palestine Red Crescent ambulance crew.”

In an interview with ‘Al Jazeera Arabic’ shortly after the family was targeted, Hind’s mother said she had managed to speak to her and an older cousin, 15-year-old Layan Hamadeh, who was with Hind in the car.

“They are shooting at us. The tank is next to us,” Layan said in a recording released at the time. Then a barrage of shooting was heard, followed by screams, before the line cut out.

Hind’s death has shaken the world once more to the brutality of the occupation who has killed more than 28,000 in Gaza and hundreds in Occupied West Bank. The fact that globally everyone was waiting and hoping that Hind and the paramedics would be alive.

Users on social media shared their anguish and despair as reports of little Hind’s death were confirmed.

“The "most moral army in the world" bombed an ambulance crew they'd previously said would be permitted to rescue a child trapped in a car with her dead family. The paramedics, and the little girl Hind, have all been killed,” Ash Sarkar, a journalist wrote on X.

“I have been crying since I heard the news. There are no words. I was trying to hold onto some sort of hope that she was alive. But we know what the occupation is capable of,” Kasturi, an independent journalist who covers Palestine, told ‘The Citizen’.

“We will never, NEVER, forgive the world for letting this happen and for letting it continue to happen. Justice for Hind, Ahmed, Yousef and the millions of Palestinians that have been murdered, maimed and dispossessed by this occupation. Ceasefire now,” another user on X said.

Babies and children have been the main target by the occupation forces who have till now allegedly murdered more than 11,000 children till now. Unbearable wails of babies and children fill social media, as journalists from Gaza desperately try to show the world brutalities that the Israel occupation is bestowing on Palestinians.

Photos of little Hind smiling innocently are being shared on social media as the world mourns her death along with the two paramedics. There has been an outrage over western media’s coverage on the incident who have failed to mention how the girl was killed.

“Israel killed Hind. First, they murdered her family, then they murdered her. They bombed the ambulance and killed the paramedics who went to save her. And yet, this is how CNN decides to cover it. Shame on every Western media outlet,” Sarah, a Lebanese commentator takes to X.

The Israeli army had earlier said it was not aware of the incident.

The massacre did not stop as everyday is a story just like Hind’s. Distressing images of children being shot on streets resurfaced as another shocking incident occurred on Sunday.

Usually Sunday is a day to ease your stress from the burden of this world, but for Palestinians in Gaza, it only means death and destruction. Videos that showed dead bodies of a mother and son who were shot by Israel sniper in Sheikh Radwan area, went viral on X.

The lifeless body of the mother, and the tiny body of her son, lay on the ground as people shouted around them trying to see whether any one of them was alive. What sense would shooting a child make, is a question that lingers on the mind of everyone watching the horrific scenes from Gaza unfold.

 

Starved and humiliated at every juncture, the Palestinian resistance has moved the world to speak out against the brutality of Israeli occupation.

Israel’s military has reportedly killed nearly 28,000 people – mostly women and children – since October 7 when Hamas fighters attacked Israel, killing more than 1,100 people and taking 253 captives, according to Israeli tallies.