Everyone must see this photo — thousands of lives depend on it

Toronto Star

29-05-2025

Her name is Ward Al-Sheikh Khalil.
She's the silhouette of a 5-year-old girl who was recorded in the early hours of Monday morning as she escaped through the flames of Israel's latest slaughter.
An air strike destroyed the school in Gaza City where Ward had sheltered with other Palestinian families who had been forced from their homes. Ward survived. Her mother, and all but one of her siblings, did not, according to reports from Gaza.
Sometimes it takes an image, or one story, to grab hold, and to shock the world into caring.
Alan Kurdi was the 2-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on the sandy shores of a Turkish beach in September 2015. The rubber boat carrying his family to Greece capsized, like so many other boats transporting desperately fleeing refugees had before. That image of the little boy's lifeless body brought the plight of the humanitarian crisis to the world.
The attention was too late, too little and short-lived. But his death saved lives.
South Vietnamese forces follow after terrified children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, as they run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places, June 8, 1972.
Nick Ut AP
Kim Phuc was perhaps the most famous image to break through.
The 1972 iconic photo of children fleeing a deadly napalm attack, with Phuc in the foreground, became a defining photo of the Vietnam War and helped finally bring an end to the fighting.
It too came too late. But her terrible suffering saved lives.
Images now are everywhere, for everything, and this saturation means they do not hold the same power as they did a decade ago and certainly not as they did five decades ago. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of photos and videos and testimonials from Gaza, as heartbreaking as this one. Those in power will condemn the atrocity and promise action that never comes.
Saying 'it's complicated' has become synonymous with 'look away.'
But take a moment and don't look away. Watch this video of Ward — and try to absorb that horror. The footage is on CBC, BBC, CBS and other media outlets that fact-check to the best standards that are possible in a war that Israel has censored.
Foreign journalists are barred from entering Gaza and the brave Palestinian journalists who are on the ground have been targeted by Israel and harassed by Hamas.
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On Oct. 25, 2023, Canadian journalist and novelist Omar El Akkad wrote this sentence on X: 'One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.' Beneath was a video of the destruction with the words: 'This is Gaza.'
He wrote that before more than 50,000 Palestinians were killed, almost a third of them children. He turned that 'tweet' into a book that is a searing indictment of the West's 'institutional gutlessness.'
It's not 'complicated.'
And it's too late.
But let the image of Ward grab hold and save what lives we still can.