Ghada Ageel
Their bodies lay together, inseparable: “One piece, one shroud, one grave … two little angels, burned to death.”
This is how my dear friend, English professor Abeer Barakat, described the tragic loss of her seven-year-old niece, Dania, and four-year-old nephew, Yahya.
Abeer, who taught at what was once the University College of Applied Sciences in Gaza, struggled to find words to convey the gravity of Israel’s “heinous crime”, which killed her youngest brother, Tareq, along with his wife and their two small children.
The family was burned alive in a tent in Gaza’s al-Zawayda village after Israel shelled the area early last month. A missile hit their tent directly, leaving no chance of survival.
The haunting scene of Tareq’s 69-year-old aunt, Naimiya, arriving at the ambulance to identify Tareq’s charred body should forever weigh on the world’s conscience.
In a trembling voice, she confirmed to medics her nephew’s identity, whispering through her shock: “They targeted him, along with his two little children and his wife, burning him alive.”
She screamed and struck her face in anguish, adding: “Not only they killed them, but burned them, burned them, burned them.”
The medics tried to calm her as she chased after them, desperate for one last look at her loved ones. But with fresh horrors waiting in the hospital corridors, the medics urged her to stay back, to hold on, to remain strong. She was left with only devastation.
Unimaginable loss
Everyone in Gaza knows Naimiya, a former Unrwa teacher, an icon, and a once-commanding presence. A legend in Gaza, she spent decades shaping generations of athletes, her own athletic figure serving as a symbol of strength and resilience.
She was the heart behind sports celebrations and events, festivals and matches that once brought pride to Gaza. She was known for her fierce dedication, elegance and impeccable style.
Now, a year into this genocide, that elegance is gone, stolen by unimaginable loss. Israel’s war has robbed her of everything: the home she built through a lifetime of hard work, her sense of safety, her medals, her precious photos and mementos of achievements - even the beautiful clothes she once wore with pride.
Today, she stands in the stark hospital hallway, barefoot, wearing the clothes of displacement, and confronts the unimaginable: examining the lifeless bodies of her beloved family members.
The sole survivor of the massacre was 13-year-old Ziad, who, by chance, decided to spend that night with his great-aunt.
Ziad is now an orphan, having lost his mother, father and two siblings. He joins the ranks of an estimated 20,000 children who have lost one or both parents in Israel’s attacks - a loss for which they can never be compensated.
Meanwhile, the horrors of shelling and burning people alive are becoming the norm, rather than the exception, in every corner of the Gaza Strip.
In the heart of al-Mawasi, a so-called humanitarian safe zone in Khan Younis, the brutal targeting of families continues unabated.
The designation of this area as a “safe zone” is not only misleading, but a tragic irony, as it has become a graveyard for countless civilians.
This is all part of Israel’s broader policy of annihilation; a systematic genocide. Neighbours, who live less than a kilometre from my family’s home, recently lost eight family members in an Israeli strike.
Two days later, a helicopter shelled tents in al-Mawasi, severely injuring 12 people, including women and children. Hours later, another tent in the area was targeted and burned, killing two people, including a child.
Beyond recognition
In mid-November, an Israeli drone strike targeted a small tent cafe in al-Mawasi that had become a lifeline for those seeking connections with loved ones in Gaza and beyond. People would gather there to charge their phones, access the internet, and download lessons, in a desperate attempt to maintain some semblance of normalcy amid the genocide.
Ten people were killed instantly in the drone attack, and many others were badly wounded, some burned and disfigured beyond recognition. The wounded were rushed to the semi-functional Nasser Hospital, with many requiring surgeries for their life-threatening injuries.
This cafe was more than a gathering spot; it was essential for my family, with my nieces and nephews frequently charging their phones there and using the internet, in an attempt to continue their disrupted studies.
Just days before the strike, my brother sent a photo of himself at the cafe watching over the children. Learning that it had been shelled was a horrifying blow - although, by some miracle, my relatives survived, having left just hours before the attack.
This marked their second near-miss: on 26 October 2023, they had left their phones to be charged at my cousin’s shop, which had a free solar-powered charging station for neighbours. Moments after they left to fetch water, the shop was bombed by Israeli jets, killing everyone inside.
In Gaza, the targeting of civilians is not an aberration; it has been the reality, in “safe zones” and elsewhere, both before and since 7 October 2023. “Safety” is an illusion in Gaza - a word devoid of meaning in a place where air strikes follow families even into the zones designated as shelters.
Families are killed everywhere they might seek refuge: homes, hospitals, UN-designated schools, tents. In these so-called safe zones, more than 60 members of my extended family have been killed, with four generations wiped out on 26 October 2023. Thirty-five members of my sister-in-law’s family perished in Gaza’s southern safe zone that same month.
Global indifference
I have reported these horrors to the world, but the lived testimonies of Palestinians are often questioned or dismissed. Our suffering and anguish is met with indifference. Amid global silence and doubt, we are left to wonder whether our words, cries and losses matter to anyone beyond Gaza’s besieged borders.
More than 430 days into Israel’s genocide, two million Palestinians remain besieged in a concentration camp, held hostage by a right-wing fascist regime intent on extermination under the guise of self-defence - an assertion unsupported by international law.
For decades, Palestinians have raised their voices, sharing the realities of their suffering, occupation and ethnic cleansing. But the world seems indifferent to these cries.
This past October, my friend Abeer captured this frustration on her Facebook page, writing: “After one year and still counting, we lost our voices. We are tired of telling the world what is happening because actions have been repeated over and over again … We are the victims of your silence. May Allah not forgive all of you.”
This is not just the story of Gaza, but the unending ordeal of a people forced to endure a century of suffering and settler-colonial violence that no human being should ever face.
Palestinian lives are not merely counted in statistics, but in shattered dreams, broken families, and resilience strained to the limit.
The families burned to death are not faceless numbers. The world’s silence in the face of such horrors amounts to complicity; we need decisive global action now to end the genocide.
(Dr Ghada Ageel is a visiting professor at the University of Alberta Political Science Department (Edmonton, Canada), an independent scholar, and active in the Faculty4Palestine-Alberta.)
