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The damaged car in which five-year-old Hind Rajab and five members of her family were killed after they were shot by Israeli forces in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City. February 10, 2024. (Photo by Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Wissam Hamada, the mother of Hind Rajab, and several members of her family safely evacuated from Gaza to a third country on Thursday after protracted negotiations with the state of Israel for her release, a source involved in the exfiltration told Drop Site.
Five-year-old Hind was killed by Israeli soldiers in January 2024, along with six other members of her family in Gaza City. Her killing made global headlines after a recording of her call with Palestinian emergency dispatchers pleading to be rescued was posted online.
On January 29, 2024, the car Hind was in was shot at by the Israeli military, killing her uncle, aunt, and three cousins. Relatives called the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Ramallah seeking help. When a team member called the number provided, Hind’s 15-year-old cousin, Layan Hamada, the only other survivor in the car, picked up. Layan told them there was an Israeli tank nearby shooting at them. Layan can be heard screaming amid the sound of intense machine gun fire, after which, the call went dead. The rescue team called the phone back, and Hind answered, telling them that Layan had been shot and killed, she had been injured, and everyone in the car was dead. She said she could see the tank and that it was getting closer.
PRCS coordinated with Israel to allow an ambulance to get to Hind. Nearly three hours after requesting clearance, Israeli authorities finally granted approval for an ambulance to get to Hind, according to PRCS, and provided a map with an approved route. Yet that ambulance was also attacked by Israeli forces, killing rescue workers Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun. Hind continued speaking on the phone with the PRCS, her voice growing fainter, until she died of her injuries. Israel later denied that it had any tanks operating in the area, a claim exposed by multiple subsequent investigations, including satellite images clearly showing tanks in the area, to have been a lie.
PRCS released audio of the calls, which captivated the globe. Twelve days later, when Israeli troops left the neighborhood, civil defense teams were finally able to access the area and found Hind, Layan, and the rest of the family dead in the car.
An investigation by Forensic Architecture, Earshot, and Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines, later found that the Israeli tank had fired at least 335 rounds at the car, some from a range of just 13 to 23 meters away. The ambulance that had been dispatched to rescue Hind was completely destroyed in what Forensic Architecture found was most likely a direct hit by an Israeli tank shell.
The Israeli government has made no serious attempt to hold anyone accountable for the massacre; no results have been presented despite claims of an investigation being carried out. The Israeli public betrayed little serious sense of outrage at the unspeakable atrocity carried out by its government. Hind Rajab quickly became a global symbol of Palestinian struggle and Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. During a student protest encampment at Columbia University in April 2024, demonstrators took over a campus building and renamed it “Hind’s Hall” in her honor. A new film dramatizing the story, “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” has been met with acclaim globally but outrage inside Israel.
Hind’s mother, Wissam Hamada, was escorted from Gaza City where Israel is waging an all out military offensive to seize control and ethnically cleanse the city, and evacuated outside of Gaza to a third country. American philanthropist Amed Khan helped broker the evacuation, according to a source involved in the negotiations. Khan declined to comment.
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