Wilma visited the Gaza War Cemetery in 1995, braving a two-hour Mossad interrogation and armed checkpoints by herself.
She brought with her a wreath, a photo of her father and an Australian flag.
Wilma was alone in the cemetery, save for the Palestinian caretakers, when she finally found her father’s tombstone. Grave 3, Row A, of Section B, was where he lay...
Sat 7 Feb 2026
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| Wilma Spence’s father served in the second world war and was buried at the Gaza War Cemetery. His grave has almost certainly been bulldozed by the IDF. Photograph: Rohan Thomson/The Guardian |
Wilma Spence’s father was an Anzac buried in a part of the Gaza War Cemetery bulldozed by the IDF
“Fighting for those who love him, our darling daddy died,” the inscription reads.
Just saying the words threatens to overwhelm Wilma Spence.
In the quiet of her living room, tears welling in her eyes, Wilma shares the inscription that was carved into the now-ruined tombstone of her father, Albert Kemp, an Anzac buried in the Gaza War Cemetery.
But her father’s grave, she learned this week, has almost certainly been destroyed along with the graves of hundreds of other Commonwealth war dead, bulldozed by the Israel Defense Forces.
Wilma has had no official word, but she knows exactly where his grave was, in a corner of the cemetery that houses the graves of Australians who died during the second world war, where satellite imagery shows the worst of the damage has been sustained.
An IDF spokesperson claimed the military destroyed the graves to deal with “underground terrorist infrastructure … identified within the cemetery and in its surrounding area”, a claim that has been met with deep scepticism by families of the Anzac dead... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/07/anzac-graves-gaza-war-cemetery-bulldozed-by-israel