Israel's victims in Gaza are nameless in western media. These are their names

Middle East Eye

2 days ago

A man in a green shirt stands in a Gaza hospital, phone in hand, making a call.
"Hello, Hany, come to the hospital. Hany, please come. Send someone. My children died, Hany. Both my sons - they're gone."
He hangs up, whispering: "Oh Allah…"
Another man, who seems to know him, approaches and asks: "Abu Muhannad, what happened?"
He breaks down in tears. "My sons died. Muhannad and Mohammed. They both died. They're gone. I swear to God - they're gone. My sons are gone."
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This is not fiction. It's a video from one of Gaza's hospitals, where grief is documented in real time. This is not the lonely cry of one man echoing through a hospital corridor. It is one of countless screams confirming that a genocide is unfolding - one body, one child, one neighbourhood at a time.
As Israeli ground troops begin their policy of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, civilians across the south are - once again - being herded into ever-shrinking spaces where there is no safety from the bombardment.
Scrolling horror
I spend hours each day scrolling through Telegram channels showing what Amnesty International has described as a "live-streamed genocide". The pain, the horror, the fear, the blood - along with forced starvation and expulsion - are all visible on our screens.
Wounded people flood into Al-Awda Hospital in central Gaza after an F-16 air strike on the Al-Hassayna UN school in al-Nuseirat refugee camp, where displaced families had sought shelter.
The pain, the horror, the fear, the blood - along with forced starvation and expulsion - are all visible on our screens
The names of those killed begin to scroll: five martyrs - Ayda, Asmaa, Yasir, Ismail, Ashraf. Then three more: Awni, Alaa, Mohammed, and many others still uncounted.
Soon, videos of the massacre begin to surface. Footage from Al-Awda Hospital in Deir al-Balah shows rows of wounded children.
A baby lies in blood-soaked clothes while doctors wrap bandages around his head. He cries while sucking his fingers - perhaps from hunger, perhaps for comfort.
In another clip, a father cradles his injured daughter while medics fight to save her shattered limbs.
These are the images millions of Americans and Europeans will never see, protected in their bubbled living rooms by corporate propaganda news that shields them from such sights - atrocities that may lead them to question what their governments are supporting.
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Then another video of the same massacre: Mahmoud Allouh, a correspondent for Al-Ghad TV, rushes into the hospital carrying his bloodied daughter.
He darts between the wards, searching for space. There are no beds left. He lays her beside another wounded child. The girl starts to cry. A voice behind the camera murmurs: "What happened?" Mahmoud points at his daughter: "Here is what happened."
"She's lucky," my all-too-aware son whispered behind my shoulder. "At least she has a bed - and a father."
Not every child in Gaza does.
'Where should we go?'
More news floods in. This time, from my hometown, Khan Younis, where more evacuation orders have been issued and desperate families are fleeing again. A video shows a man running through rubble-strewn streets with his elderly mother on his back, crying out: "Where should we go?"
Many will go to Al-Mawasi - perhaps to be bombed in tents rather than their own homes.
The news doesn't stop. The Abu Daqqa family home was targeted in eastern Khan Younis. Jumana Abu Daqqa, the mother, was killed along with her four young children - Wesam, Julan, Jilan and Siraj.
Israel killed my family and destroyed my home. The world just kept scrolling Read More »
Another artillery strike hit the Al-Omur neighbourhood in Al-Fukhari, also in east Khan Younis, wiping out an entire family: Safaa al-Omur and her six daughters - Sama, Lamma, Saja, Leen, Layan and Nada. All gone in the blink of an eye.
Then came the bombardment of a makeshift encampment in Al-Mawasi - the hell zone - what the Israeli army misleadingly called a "safe zone".
In less than an hour, around 10 strikes hit the area.
One of them obliterated the Kassab family's tent in the southern part of Al-Mawasi, wiping out the entire family. Abeer, the mother, was killed along with her six children: her four daughters - Qamar, Samira, Abeer and Shireen - and her two sons, Imad and Ghali.
The attacks come so fast, one after another, it's hard to catch my breath.
It feels as though the Israeli occupation forces are racing against time to annihilate as much as they can, as quickly as possible. The Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem has declared: "Israel is carrying out a deliberate, systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip."
'They are killing us like chickens'
Still, the news doesn't stop.
In northern Gaza, Israeli forces bombed the power generators at the besieged Indonesian Hospital - one of the last remaining medical lifelines in the north.
The rest are out of service. This caused a total power outage that now threatens the lives of every patient still breathing. Calls to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society to coordinate firefighting efforts go unanswered.
Similarly, Khan Younis's Nasser Hospital is "suffering immensely" from a shortage of medical supplies after an Israeli attack hit a medical warehouse in the early morning on 19 May.
This is not collateral damage. It is a deliberate strategy - a methodical execution of a declared plan, since the much-argued bombing of the al-Ahli Hospital on 17 October 2023, which killed about 500 people.
As I write, all hospitals in northern Gaza are currently out of service.
Then Gaza City was struck. The target: the al-Khour family in the Sabra neighbourhood - where I lived for two years in the 1990s, after I began working in Gaza. Six members of the family were killed, and many others were wounded. Still, the news floods in faster than I can absorb.
I am reminded of words my brother said to me almost a year and a half ago: "We survived, but we don't know what tomorrow holds. It is like living in a chicken coop, waiting to be slaughtered. Every day, they come and pick 300, 400 or 500 to slaughter. Our turn is yet to come."
Molly Moore in The Washington Post quoted an older woman in southern Gaza saying much the same more than 20 years ago: "They are killing us like chickens."
Dying nameless
And yet on and on it goes - back to 1967 and 1948. The horror of that woman in southern Gaza in 2002 is now seen multiple times a day all over the coastal territory.
Then we at least had names. Now we die nameless - no western journalist fighting to learn our names, to tell the story of the headless men, women and children killed as they slept in their homes or tents.
Each day brings a tally of more than 100 Palestinians killed. Since Nakba Day on 15 May, Israel has killed nearly 150 people a day. On 15 May alone: 120 lives lost. On 16 May: 125. On 17 May: 146. On 18 May: another 140. The numbers mount. The horror deepens.
States could acknowledge the genocide. They could impose arms embargoes, block Israeli ports, and sever diplomatic and economic ties. But they choose not to
Amid the smoke, the rubble, and the silence of the world, the question remains for the two million souls trapped in the Gaza concentration camp and on the move from one place to another: Where should we go?
Israel's policy is not just rhetoric - it is a genocidal policy in action. Yet the world's response remains swallowed by moral decay disguised as diplomacy.
Finally, after more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed - the vast majority women and children - Britain, France and Canada issued a joint statement threatening "targeted sanctions" against Israel if its expanded attack on Gaza continues.
While such measures may appear to be a step in the right direction, they are woefully insufficient in the face of genocide, in the face of Gaza's killing fields and the systematic erasure of entire families. This is not just a failure of politics or diplomacy - it is a collapse of our shared humanity.
Palestinians are not asking for sympathy. We are demanding accountability under international law.
As legal scholar Noura Erakat reminds us, this is not a failure of law: "There is sufficient law to end the genocide. To lift the blockade. To end the occupation. And to realise Palestinian self-determination."
The world has the legal tools to act. States could acknowledge the genocide. They could impose arms embargoes, block Israeli ports, and sever diplomatic and economic ties. But they choose not to. They choose impunity.
Until foreign governments choose differently, Palestinians will continue to live in a world where journalists carry their injured children instead of cameras, where doctors operate by torchlight, and where a child's scream is the only proof of life.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.