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silence


Hind Rajab, six years old, sat in the back seat
between her uncle and her aunt.
They weren't moving.
She asked them to wake up.
They didn't.

Her cousin's shoe had come off.
She tried to put it back on.

She called for help.
She said Please.
She said she was scared.
She said Please again.
The line stayed open for three hours.

Her voice, small, terrified, precise, echoed everywhere.
Rightfully.
But also because she was young enough,
innocent enough, helpless enough
to satisfy the purity fetish.

She had never thrown a stone.
She had never shouted a slogan.
She had never done anything except exist
in the wrong body at the wrong checkpoint
When Israeli tanks needed target practice

The fifteen-year-old who died beside her
her cousin, Layan, barely made the headlines.
Old enough to be suspected.
Old enough to have opinions.
Old enough to be complicated.

This is the formula:
The younger the victim, the purer the grief, the safer the mourning


BBC News: "Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza."
Guardian: "Child's desperate calls for help went unanswered."
CNN: "Tragic death of innocent girl sparks outrage."

Innocent. That word doing heavy lifting.

As if her cousin wasn't.
As if innocence is the prerequisite for the right not to be murdered
Hind's favourite colour was bubblegum pink.
She drew flowers with petals falling off.
The day before she died, she asked her mother
if they could go to the park when the war ended.
Her mother said yes.
Her mother lied

What about the boy at Qalandiya checkpoint?
fifteen, tortured, electrodes on his genitals,
jaw broken, hands shattered—
When he picks up a stone six months later, does he stop being a victim?

What about the journalist shot in Jenin last month?
Palestinian, thirty-four, mother of two
whose name no one knows because she didn't carry
an American passport to make her death legible?

What about the father who remembers 1948,
who refuses to perform the kind of victimhood that makes anyone comfortable,
Who is angry—rightfully—but whose anger disqualifies him from sympathy

The politics of appeal demand suffering be simple.
Victims be pure.
History began five minutes ago when the cameras started rolling.

Sky News: "Conflict claims another young life."

Conflict. As if there are two equal sides to occupation.
As if kindergartens have air forces

The Israeli military later said they were "investigating the incident."
The investigation found "no evidence of wrongdoing."

The ambulance that tried to reach Hind was also bombed.
The paramedics died too.
Their names: Yusuf Zeino. Ahmed Al-Madhoun.
They told Hind they were coming.
She asked if they were nearly there.
They said yes.
They didn't know that trying to save her
would also require dying.

The West keeps a checklist:

• Under 10 years old  
• Demonstrably terrified  
• No family ties to resistance  
• Photogenic suffering 
• Death captured on recording  
• No history that complicates the narrative  


Say her name and they call you antisemitic.
The word, once a shield, is now a weapon.

Jewish activists holding "Not In Our Name" signs
called antisemitic by people who've never faced it,
never had it spat at them on the tube,
never seen it scrawled on their grandmother's gravestone.

Meanwhile, actual antisemites march in Charlottesville,
shoot up synagogues in Pittsburgh,
and get called "very fine people"
by the same politicians screaming antisemitism
When anyone mentions dead Palestinian children.

Every false accusation weakens the word
when it's needed for the real thing

Every cynical deployment endangers
the Jewish people it claims to protect

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched with King.
He said: "Few are guilty, but all are responsible."

Now his words are used to sell weapons.
Now responsibility means silence.
Now guilt is reserved only for those who speak

Three weeks after Hind died,
another child, seven years old, was killed in Rafah.
No one shared that one.
The algorithm had moved on.

Hind's body was found exactly where she said she was.
In the car.
Surrounded by her family's corpses

She was wearing a pink dress.
The bubblegum kind.

In the morgue, they had to pry the phone from her fingers.
Her mother asked if she could keep it.
They said no.
Evidence.

Hind's mother still keeps her number saved.
Sometimes she calls it.
Just to hear the voicemail.
Just to hear her daughter say her own name.

The number was disconnected three weeks ago.
She still calls it.

                    *silence*

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