PALESTINIAN CHILD TRYING TO ESCAPE ISRAEL’S SCHOOL BOMBING

This clip shows 5-year-old Ward Jalal Al-Shaikh Khalil looking for a way out of a classroom after Israel's 26 May airstrike on a Gaza City school where she and her family had sought shelter. Israel k*lled at least 35 people in the Fahmi al-Jerjawi School.

Before managing to escape, she watched her mother and four siblings - Abd al-Rahman (17), Muhammed (14), Maria (13) and Silwan (11) - burn to death, according to the Middle East Eye. Speaking to the news outlet, her uncle, Iyad Muhammed al-Sheikh Khalil, said, ‘She is devastated. Her situation is indescribable. I don't know how she will recover, or if she ever will.’

Israel's onslaught that began on 7 October 2023 has k*lled one or both parents of nearly 40,000 children. It is the ‘largest orphan crisis in modern history,’ as Dr. Ola Awad, president of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), reported in a 5 April statement. Although Ward’s father also survived the bombing, he was left in a critical condition and rushed to the intensive care unit (ICU).

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said in March, ‘There are reasonable grounds to believe Israel is committing g*nocide.’ Yet, despite widespread reporting of Israel's atrocities and the world watching a plausible g*nocide unfold on our screens in real-time, Israel has not been held accountable.

Efforts to seek justice for Palestinians, such as South Africa’s g*nocide case at the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Galant, have been met with resistance. On 6 February, long-time Israel ally, the United States, placed sanctions on ICC ‘officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members.’ Washington also slashed funding to Pretoria, in a move many view as a retaliation for challenging Israel at the ICJ and standing with the Palestinian people against settler-colonialism.