If you are ever in doubt about the nature of Israel’s onslaught against Gaza, remember this little girl. Hind Rajab was a five-year-old Palestinian with an adorable smile. On the morning of 29 January, she got in a Kia Picanto along with her aunt, uncle and several cousins. They were seeking to flee the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City. The Israeli military fired on the car, killing everyone inside except for Hind and her 15-year-old cousin, Layan. A terrified Layan answered a call from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), informing them that a tank was firing on the car: in the recording, you hear her tortured screams as she is shot dead. When the PRCS rang back, Hind answered, now the only survivor, surrounded by the bloodied corpses of her six relatives. She also referred to a tank and begged to be rescued. At one point she told the operator it was getting dark and that she was scared.
After hours waiting for permission, the ministry of health negotiated safe access with the Israeli authorities for an ambulance. The paramedics arrived at about 6pm and were shot upon arrival. Two weeks later, their remains were recovered – along with the decomposed bodies of Hind and her family.
After each atrocity it perpetrates, the Israeli state has a standard modus operandi: deny, deflect, deceive, and wait for attention to move elsewhere. Most media outlets have collaborated with this strategy, which has allowed Israel to continue its genocidal onslaught, because it prevents observers from joining the dots to understand what this really is. For this reason, every crime must be revisited until it is properly understood. In this case, Israel claimed they had no troops in the area.
Nearly five months after the killings, Forensic Architecture – an acclaimed multidisciplinary research group based at Goldsmiths, University of London, published a detailed investigation in conjunction with Al Jazeera. They mapped 335 bullet holes in the car’s exterior. Analysis of Layan’s phone call found 64 gunshots fired in just six seconds, consistent only with Israeli-issued weaponry, with the tank estimated to be between 13 and 23 metres away from the car. “At such proximity,” they write, “it is not plausible that the shooter could not have seen that the car was occupied by civilians, including children.”
Listen to the testimonies of these dead children, read the detailed research, and you cannot but conclude that these killings were deliberate. It was broad daylight, an Israeli tank was close to the car, at least 335 bullets were fired over an extended period, and then the ambulance – whose passage was coordinated with Israel’s authorities – was blown apart. If this one atrocity had been committed by Hamas militants on 7 October, it would be repeatedly and specifically highlighted as evidence of the utter barbarism of the enemy. That has not happened here.
Israel’s modus operandi can be seen in action time and time again. When the Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in May 2022, Israel denied responsibility, pointing the finger at Palestinian militants, waiting for months until attention had moved elsewhere before acknowledging its likely responsibility. When Israel assaulted what had been Gaza’s main medical facility, al-Shifa hospital, last November, over a month later the Washington Post discredited its key claims, suggesting a lack of evidence that the hospital was used as a “command and control centre” or that tunnels could be accessed from hospital wards. Nearly six weeks after more than 100 Palestinians were massacred while waiting for aid in the so-called Flour Massacre in February, CNN discredited Israeli disavowals of responsibility. We could go on.
These detailed rebuttals of Israeli claims reveal a pattern of atrocities followed by cover-up – yet still media outlets treat initial Israeli claims as credible, where they would rightly pour scorn on similar claims by the Russian state.
As Gaza’s official death toll passes 40,000 – including about 14,000 children – Israeli newspaper Haaretz points out that this represents a higher proportion of the prewar population killed in 10 months than were killed in the Iraq war over 20 years, or in the Yugoslav wars over 10 years; and it’s four times the proportion of people killed in Ukraine over two-and-a-half years. What’s more, this is likely a drastic underestimate: thousands buried under the rubble are excluded from official figures, as are indirect deaths – going by precedent, likely to end up the biggest killer – while the reporting system has virtually collapsed thanks to a destroyed healthcare apparatus. Other estimates by medical experts range from 92,000 to 186,000.
If a state not allied to the west were guilty of this, there would not only be a consensus that it represents one of the gravest crimes of our age, it would be regarded as morally indecent not to think so. Those who respond by deflecting to undeniable atrocities committed on 7 October not only reveal their total disregard for Palestinian life, but their lack of understanding of the normal dynamics of genocides, which are invariably justified by atrocities committed by an enemy. Many are aware that the 1994 Rwandan genocide involved Hutu extremists slaughtering the Tutsis: how many know this slaughter was justified by the perpetrators because of a civil war begun by Tutsi rebels invading from Uganda four years earlier, committing multiple war crimes as they did so?
If Israel’s conduct in its war on Gaza was understood for what it is – an abomination perpetrated by a murderous regime – powerful figures would fear consequences. Those who cheered it on would fear being permanently branded as monsters. Those who stayed silent, empty platitudes and handwringing aside, would fear accountability. Until this happens, the horrors will not end. So if you are ever in doubt about what this really is, think back to the final, terrified moments of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old girl with an adorable smile.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
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