Israel launches an ‘investigation’ into killing of Hind Rajab

In January 2024, 335 bullets were fired into a car containing five-year-old Hind and six of her family members in Gaza. When paramedics came to help, they were killed too. IDF vehemently denied responsibility for this atrocity, despite investigations making it obvious that its military was responsible. This week, Israel finally admitted its troops fired into the car and said there would be an investigation. Which is not particularly reassuring: Israel’s investigations into itself rarely result in any sort of accountability. Wesam Hamada, Hind’s mother, is demanding an independent inquiry, which is the least Hind deserves.

• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/22/natalie-harp-republicans-feminists 

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  The Voice of Hind Rajab, a film about a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in 2024, has been nominated for best international feature film... Palestinian actor, Motaz Malhees, who plays the role of a call center operator attempting to help the girl, can’t attend Oscars because of US travel ban

   

  The Voice of Hind Rajab gets record 23-minute ovation at Venice premiere

   

  Anne Frank 1929-1945 Hind Rajab 2018- 2024 ... NEVER AGAIN MEANS NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE !

   

  Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead- Many of the children who survived attacks have life-changing wounds... More than 40,000 children have been injured in the war, according to the UN. Gaza is now home to more child amputees than any other place in the world.

   

  How much is your support for Israel worth? Try $1 billion [that we know of]... Israel is spending wads of cash on public diplomacy in a desperate attempt to reverse waning American support for the country after it stands accused of genocide in Gaza and pushing the U.S. into the Iran war.

   

  America's "Trail of Tears" refers to the forced relocation of approximately 60,000 native First Peoples tribes who were cruelly displaced from their homes and communities by white settlers between 1830 and 1850. Times and technology have changed since then. We now know that forced displacement is wrong. Very very wrong... So why we are arming Israel to disenfranchise and forcibly displace and/or kill indigenous Palestinians?!!!

   

  Never Forget! Hind Rajab- a little 5 year old Palestinian girl hit by 355 bullets fired by Israel's IDF in Gaza

   

  "When future generations read about Gaza with horror and wonder how the western world, with all its moral superiority, its rule-based order and its focus on international human rights law, allowed a livestreamed genocide to happen, what will you say? " What did you do during the genocide in Gaza? Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian

   

  Dear America - Please stop funding and fueling Israel's wars and the ongoing destruction of historic Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria... and Iran.

The Voice of Hind Rajab, a film about a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in 2024, has been nominated for best international feature film... Palestinian actor, Motaz Malhees, who plays the role of a call center operator attempting to help the girl, can’t attend Oscars because of US travel ban

Motaz Malhees is an actor in The Voice of Hind Rajab, a film about a Palestinian girl killed by the IDF in Gaza in 2024

A still from The Voice of Hind Rajab, with Motaz Malhees in the background. Photograph: BFA/Alamy

Palestinian actor Motaz Malhees said a travel ban imposed by Donald Trump is preventing him from attending Sunday’s Academy Awards, whose nominees include a movie in which he has a starring role.

The Voice of Hind Rajab, a film about a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in 2024, has been nominated for best international feature film.

Malhees, who plays the role of a call center operator attempting to help the girl, said he cannot attend the Academy Awards show, known as the Oscars, because he has been barred from entering the US.

“I am not allowed to enter the United States because of my Palestinian citizenship,” Malhees said on Instagram, adding “it hurts” he would not attend the Oscars.

In a December proclamation restricting entry of foreign nationals, Trump said as president he had “determined to fully restrict and limit the entry of individuals using travel documents issued or endorsed by the Palestinian Authority”... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/mar/14/palestinian-actor-oscars-travel-ban 

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Anne Frank 1929-1945 Hind Rajab 2018- 2024 ... NEVER AGAIN MEANS NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE !

Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead- Many of the children who survived attacks have life-changing wounds... More than 40,000 children have been injured in the war, according to the UN. Gaza is now home to more child amputees than any other place in the world.

The children’s names below appear on a list of victims of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, maintained by health authorities in the territory. As of the end of July it ran to 60,199 names, of whom 18,457 were under 18s. Far from comprehensive, the list does not include the thousands still buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, as well as the war’s many indirect victims....

...  compiled using the 31 July 2025 edition of the list of names of the dead, published by Gaza’s Ministry of Health. The list records those killed as a direct result of the Israeli bombardment, not those who die as an indirect result of the war, through starvation or other causes. It does not include bodies that could not be identified or did not pass through a hospital morgue.

For the list of names in this story story we filtered the data to include only individuals under the age of 18. English transliterations of the original Arabic names were sourced from Iraq Body Count, a public database of violent civilian deaths.

Photo credit: Courtesy of the families, aside from the picture of Hind Rajab which was provided by AFP.

READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/oct/08/young-lives-cut-short-on-an-unimaginable-scale-the-18457-children-on-gazas-list-of-war-dead

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Israeli soldiers speak out on killings of Gaza civilians

IDF soldiers tell documentary of opening fire unprovoked and arbitrary designations of who was an enemy

Israeli soldiers have described a free-for-all in Gaza and a breakdown in norms and legal constraints, with civilians killed at the whim of individual officers, according to testimony in a TV documentary.

“If you want to shoot without restraint, you can,” Daniel, the commander of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank unit, says in Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War, due to be broadcast in the UK on ITV on Monday evening.

Some of the IDF soldiers who talked to the programme requested anonymity while others spoke on the record. All pointed to the evaporation of the official code of conduct concerning civilians.

The soldiers who agreed to talk confirmed the IDF’s routine use of human shields, contradicting official denials, and gave details of Israeli troops opening fire unprovoked on civilians racing to reach food handouts at the militarised distribution points set up by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/10/israeli-soldiers-breaking-ranks-gaza-civilians-human-shields

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"Fashion has always been political. Now, demonstrators are putting pro-Palestinian slogans and symbols on their clothes – and not just for marches" REPORTING by Ellie Violet Bramley. Photographs by Ethan Parker in The Guardian

 

Wear it loud, wear it proud: how marchers for Gaza are bringing ‘protest dressing’ up to date

It’s early afternoon at the latest national march for Gaza in central London. A man is wearing a sweatshirt bearing a photograph of Hind Rajab, the five-year-old girl who was killed in the Gaza conflict last year along with family members and the paramedics who tried to save her. He doesn’t want to be named. But it is, he says, his attempt “to keep her memory alive, until we get justice … Whether it takes one month, one year, 100 years, I’m not giving up. I’m not going to stop wearing this until the killers are behind bars.”

It’s a heart-rending example of a phenomenon common to all these marches over the past two years: people are here to call for an end to the war and the Israeli occupation, and many are using their clothes to bolster their message.

Far from being a frivolous afterthought, protest dressing has become an important part of these marches. Wearing the symbols and colours of solidarity can be an expression of grief and a call to action.

“Enough is enough,” says Mariama, who is in her 30s and works for the NHS in Nottingham. She is wearing a football-style shirt with a Palestinian flag in place of the club crest. Alongside it are the words “viva Palestina” and a visual representation of the contested area.

“It’s one way of giving voice to your opposition, my opposition, to the occupation of Palestine,” says the Rev Poppy Hughes, 65, of her Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) pin badge. Otherwise “there’s nothing to identify you as somebody who’s opposed to the occupation and the genocide and the starvation.”

There’s a sense of shared project about it. “You feel more united when you’re sharing the dress code,”... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/sep/19/wear-it-loud-wear-it-proud-how-marchers-for-gaza-are-bringing-protest-dressing-up-to-date 

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The Voice of Hind Rajab gets record 23-minute ovation at Venice premiere

Al Jazeera’s Caley Callahan reports:  The Voice of Hind Rajab, recounting the final plea of a six-year-old Gaza girl who was brutally killed by the Israeli forces in Gaza City last year, received a more than 23-minute standing ovation at its premiere at the iconic Venice Film Festival. At Wednesday’s premiere, the emotional docu-drama focuses on recordings from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which tried for hours to reassure six-year-old Rajab as she lay trapped in a car where her aunt, uncle and three cousins were killed by Israeli fire in early 2024.

"When future generations read about Gaza with horror and wonder how the western world, with all its moral superiority, its rule-based order and its focus on international human rights law, allowed a livestreamed genocide to happen, what will you say? " What did you do during the genocide in Gaza? Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian

‘It is too late for real justice in Gaza now. We can never bring back the dead children.’ Photograph: Hatem Khaled/Reuters

Now, when Israel is executing a “final solution” in Gaza, when it is far too late for dissent to make any difference, the tide is slowly starting to turn. Now that Gaza is flattened, turned into mass graves and rubble, people who have kept quiet for the past 19 months are slowly starting to speak up. Now that Israel and the US are not even trying to pretend that they aren’t intent on emptying Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians, of “taking control” of all of the land, some criticism has started to trickle in.

Over in the UK, they’ve pulled out the “e” word. After 19 months of genocidal violence and almost three months of a starvation campaign the UK has decided to describe the situation as egregious. The UK, along with France and Canada, has threatened – and I’m sure Israel’s leaders are quaking in their boots over this – that there might be a “concrete” response if the mass killing and starvation continues.

Meanwhile, there’s been a slight shift in the media coverage. Instead of just parroting the Israeli government’s talking points, major media figures such as Piers Morgan are starting to challenge Israeli spokespeople about why the international media has not been freely allowed into Gaza to see what is happening for themselves.

All of this is too little, too late. It will not bring back little Hind Rajab, a five-year-old girl who was killed when 335 bullets were fired by Israeli soldiers into the car the terrified child was trapped in. Or the aid workers executed by Israel and buried in shallow graves.

It will not rebuild the hospitals, kindergartens, IVF centers and universities that have been systematically levelled by Israel. It will not give kids in Gaza – the largest cohort of child amputees in the world – their limbs back. It will not fix the long-term damage that malnutrition and almost two years of no schooling has done to a generation... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/22/israel-gaza-genocide

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Anne Frank 1929-1945 + Hind Rajab 2018-2024... NEVER AGAIN MEANS NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE

Sign seen in Berlin Germany 2025

Never Forget! Hind Rajab- a little 5 year old Palestinian girl hit by 355 bullets fired by Israel's IDF in Gaza

 

Hind Rajab was six years old when she was killed in Gaza. So why did a CNN host refer to her as ‘a woman’?... "It’s not just CNN, of course. There is a long history (one that stretches back way before October 7) of mainstream media outlets dehumanizing Palestinians. "

Students at Columbia University took over Hamilton Hall and named it after Hind Rajab, on 30 April 2024 in New York. Photograph: Marco Postigo Storel/AP

"Through no fault of their own, children in Gaza have never known a life without airstrikes and military incursions. The constant trauma means that – back in 2022 – four out of five children in Gaza lived with depression, grief and fear. Now, with Gaza in ruins, every single child in the strip has been robbed of a childhood."

The adultification of children has consequences from Palestine to the US

Arwa Mahdawi

Who gets to be a child?

Trapped in a bullet-ridden car in Gaza City, surrounded by her dead relatives, six-year-old Hind Rajab pleaded with the Red Crescent for help. That help, in the form of a medical team, eventually came – only to be slaughtered on arrival. Hind was killed, too, her decomposing body found weeks later.

Back in January, little Hind died one of the most awful deaths imaginable. Unlike most of the more than 13,000 other dead children in Gaza, Hind has been written about extensively. Still, despite the fact that Hind said on a recorded phone call that Israeli tanks were firing at the car, Israel has refused to accept any blame. They’ve said that the IDF had absolutely nothing to do with Hind’s death and they weren’t anywhere near her. An Al Jazeera analysis and a Washington Post investigation, meanwhile, found that to be what some people might term “inaccurate” and what others might describe as a “brazen lie”. Satellite imagery found that Israeli armored vehicles were in the area and that the damage caused to the ambulance and the car was consistent with Israeli weapons.

Again, Hind isn’t just an anonymous statistic rotting in a mass grave, like lots of dead Palestinians. Her death has been documented and I encourage you to read about it if you haven’t already. I am not here to rehash the nightmarish details; I am simply here to say this: Hind was six years old when she was murdered. Six. She was a child. A six-year-old is a child.

Why am I spelling out the obvious? Because the fact that Palestinian children are children doesn’t seem obvious to many in the western media. It’s clearly not obvious to CNN host Kasie Hunt. During a segment on Columbia University students taking over Hamilton Hall and renaming it “Hind’s Hall”, Hunt explained to viewers: “Hind is a reference to a woman who was killed in Gaza.” A woman.... 

READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/04/adultification-children-palestine-us

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