“If this happened in Israel, they would have gained so much international support, everything would be turned upside down, because we are talking about children in a graveyard”, says Fayez Abu Karsh, a Palestinian father who lost his son to an Israeli airstrike. The families of the victims now call for Israel to be brought to the International Criminal Court to be tried for war crimes.
On August the 7th an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip. Israel initially tried to blame the massacre on a misfired Palestinian rocket. However, after it was clear that the shrapnel removed from the bodies was of an Israeli munition, unnamed Israeli officials took responsibility for the strike, 9 days later, according to Israel’s Haaretz news.
Israel’s three day attack on the Gaza Strip, earlier this August, resulted in 49 Palestinian deaths, 17 of which were children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. No Israelis were killed or sustained notable injuries. Israel claimed that its military were targeting Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Party fighters, yet the majority killed were civilians.
Various attacks against civilians were recorded by human rights groups in Gaza. Perhaps the most shocking of which occurred at the Fallujah cemetery, located in Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip. It took place at around 7PM (local time), on August 7, when an Israeli airstrike murdered a group of children visiting the graves of family members. The victims names were Nazmi Karsh, 15 years old, Hamed Najm, 16 years old, Mohammad Najm, 16 years old, Jamil Ihab Najm, 13 years old, and Jamil Najim al-Din Najm who was only 3 years old. Three of the young boys were already being treated for trauma, at a Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)’s facility in Gaza, before their deaths.
After the controversy surrounding the case, we now hear from the victims’ families and their initial reactions from the day they heard the news that Israel had admitted to committing the massacre. They spoke on what they saw on the day of the strike, tell us about their loved ones that they lost and react to the false claims originally made about the circumstances surrounding the massacre.