10 September 2024
Parents and children
‘Where are they? Where are they?’ She was screaming, trying to get into the morgue.
Some men managed to bring her out. She kept calling, asking, screaming, ‘Where are they?’ The men start to mumble, ‘May God give her patience!’ She said, ‘Don’t ask God to give me patience, ask him to take me with my 4 children! Why were they killed? Why!?’
‘My son did not stop crying for 2 hours as he could not use the spoon to eat like his brothers. His arms were amputated after a nearby bombing.’
‘There is no one to play with. All my friends, brothers and sisters were killed.’
‘I was at Shifa hospital after the first invasion on November 2023 with a UN delegation visiting the place, part of my job with UNOCHA. Thousands and thousands of people around us, all of them wanting to reach us, to talk, to tell us about the agony they went through during the invasion. Suddenly a man reached me carrying a small coffin, he brought the coffin near me shouting, look what they did to my son, look, he moved the cover from the coffin, andpushed the body of the dead child towards my face. I can never forget what I saw. A dead body of a 4 – 5 year old without arms and without legs; he was killed during one of the Israeli bombardments. I turned my face away, I could not tolerate the scene, I felt dizzy. I thought I will fall unconscious. I am a father of 3 children, the youngest is 6 years old. Since that day I wake up at night panicked, almost every night I wake up and I count the legs and the arms of my child, making sure there are still four.’