Israeli F-16 strikes destroyed a house in the Mughraga area of Gaza overnight, killing five-months-pregnant Nour Hassan, 27, her two-year-old daughter Rahaf, and injuring her husband Yahya and their toddler son. All that remains of the house is a massive blast hole several meters deep and twenty meters wide amid scattered bits of clothing and personal belongings.
“No one called and told us to evacuate the house,” said 17-year-old Abdullah Hassan, Yahya’s cousin who was nearby when the missiles struck. “It was a cheap shot.”
As soon as the missiles struck, Abdullah Hassan and his cousin sprinted to the site. They heard crying and found the little boy dozens of meters away – he had been blown afar by the explosion. After rescuing the boy, they heard the father’s voice. The two cousins began a heroic effort to rescue Yahya Hassan who was trapped under a large piece of concrete and was impaled by a piece of rebar. The boys continued to dig through the rubble until they found the lifeless bodies of Nour and Rafah Hassan.
Situated approximately 300 meters from the Badr training site of Al-Qassam, Gaza’s largest armed resistance group, the house was shabbily built, like many of its kind.
“Such high-tech weaponry for such a simple house,” Abdullah Nasser Hassan remarked.
Early this afternoon, mourners gathered at a neighborhood mosque. The distraught and injured father sat in a wheelchair next to his dead wife and daughter, tearing up as he kissed the little girl’s lacerated, bare face and gripped her tiny hands.
Mourners carried the body of Rahaf Hassan outside, raising her body overhead, reciting verses and calling for armed resistance. Gunfire rang out as the funeral proceeded.
Family members lined the streets outside, angry and distraught after another Israeli attack on a Palestinian family.
“I hope God breaks Israel,” Ijdia Hassan, Yahya’s mother, shouted through tears as she held the surviving boy’s hand. “What is the fault of the little baby who is crying for his mother? God burn them the way they burned this child’s heart!”
“We should have a third, fourth and fifth intifada,” said 65-year-old Amna Zahar, Yahya Hassan’s cousin. “We should have a third, fourth and fifth intifada. Whatever it takes to keep fighting. They have no conscience, they have no mercy. They are dead inside!”
“All of the Gazan women are fighters! Just bring us weapons and we’ll take the fight them,” another elderly woman shouted. “If they were to meet us face to face, they’d see the kind of fight they would get.”
The bombing came hours after three rockets were launched from northern Gaza, none of which caused any damage. No group claimed responsibility for the rockets, and Al-Qassam security forces combed the streets looking for the perpetrators.
Since the ceasefire that ended Israel’s 51-day mega-assault on Gaza last year, Hamas has abided by the terms while Israel has violated the agreement on a near-daily basis. When rogue factions have launched rockets, Israel has held Hamas responsible, bombing evacuated Al-Qassam training sites.
Israeli soldiers killed eleven and injured at least 145 Palestinian youth including three children along the border over the previous days. University students called for protests at the Nahal Oz crossing.
Blowback continues in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and inside Israel as government forces continue to increase repression.
Thank you, Dan. Decades ago an image such as your first photo would have become well-known. We’ve just become too inured to violence now. Persevere.
The grandmother: ““I hope God breaks Israel,” Ijdia Hassan, Yahya’s mother, shouted through tears as she held the surviving boy’s hand. “What is the fault of the little baby who is crying for his mother? God burn them the way they burned this child’s heart!”
All the Palestinian grandmothers. May God hear their prayers.
People who are deeply wounded says things they know deep down are unrealistic or they don’t want to have to do. Israel has the Goliath arsenal; Palestinians have sticks and stones and not much else. Israel will take the most rudimentary resistance and use it to launch the most disproportionate, barbaric punishment.
Palestinians know that Israel is looking for any excuse to decimate them and justify it to the world as self-defence and get away with it, when this is but a sadistic joke as Palestinians have no arms of consequence to meet such monstrous power as Israel can unleash.
No one is helping the Palestinians with their legitimate cause for freedom and the return of their land. The U.N. under that idiot Banky is a useless parrot. And the community in whose name these murders are being committed and who have the ultimate power, the most significant power to do something about this are filled only with apathy, self-righteousness and complete self-indulgence. They can only find a hundred excuses why this is a necessary evil and ensure this narrative persists while Palestinians continue to be battered and incapacitate everyone else from helping in a significant way.
So is this being done in the name of Zionism alone? No, it’s called the Jewish state for a reason, and anyone of the Jewish faith from the U.S. to Moldova to Timbuktu can go there and continue to steal land from Palestinians until the latter disappear.
It’s immoral, inhumane, totally depraved and in one word that says it all…EVIL.
“All that remains of the house is a massive blast hole several meters deep and twenty meters wide amid scattered bits of clothing and personal belongings ”
That’s not quite what happened.
“3:00 A.M. The IDF Spokesperson confirmed that the Israeli Air Force struck two Hamas weapons manufacturing sites in the northern Gaza Strip following rocket fire several hours ago.” (Haaretz)
“5:15 A.M. Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra said a 30-year-old pregnant woman and her four-year-old daughter died after her house collapsed following Israeli airstrikes in the area.”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.679689
So Israeli missiles targeted a Hamas weapons manufacturing site, and subsequently, a nearby house collapsed.
Dan makes it sound as if the family’s house was targeted. That the house was destroyed by a missile.
That’s not the case.
This unique ability of people here to be so exact when something serves their case and disregard completely an absolutely clear case that don`t is no less than amazing.
It seems that nobody here read that in the very same day a guy from Um El Fahm run with his car into several people and after wounding them also got down from the car and shot them from close distance. This got everybody shocked here and in his case there are no ambiguities whatsoever.