Yves here. The horrors of Israel’s genocide in Gaza become more intense and wide-ranging as the pace of its extermination accelerates. Israel is also stepping up its ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. It is attacking Southern Lebanon as the Lebanese government is seeking to disarm Hezbollah….a move that is opposed by enough of the populace that Alastair Crooke contends it will produce civil war. And not surprisingly, Netanyahu is taking credit for the Lebanese initiative against Hezbollah. A civil war would lower the cost to Israel of subduing Lebanon.
With so many vicious campaigns in motion in parallel, it’s hard not to become numbed even to graphic accounts of institutionalized savagery. Stalin was correct when he said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
So in an effort to again remind readers of the very real human cost, we are featuring two final accounts from Palestinians who correctly anticipated that they would die at the hands of the Israelis. One is from Aljazeera journalist Anas Jamal Al-Sharif. Among the many fierce criticism that the rogue ethno-supremacist state has shrugged off it its targeting of journalists, medical professionals, and aid workers. The other is one that stuck with me, the will of a 10 year old in Gaza.
They accept the likelihood of their martyrdom and that it would serve Allah’s will. This level of faith seems common among Palestinians and seems to be more a deeply held cultural value than what we would consider a strictly religious belief. It may also be the result of having to steel oneself to daily indignities and cruelty, particularly arbitrary killings and maimings. I have heard some Evangelicals talk cheerily of dying and (unduly confidently) of going to Heaven. Those sort of formulas, even when sincere, often come off as Disneyesque or cultish. The US is addicted to feel-good and that seems to bleed into religious practice.
Ten-year-old children are supposed to be busy playing with toys, doodling and hanging out with their friends, not writing a will in case they die.
My will, if I become a martyr or pass away: Please do not cry for me, because your tears cause me pain. I hope my clothes will be given to those in need. My accessories should be shared between Rahaf, Sara, Judy, Lana, and Batool. My bead kits should go to Ahmed and Rahaf. My monthly allowance, 50 shekels, 25 to Rahaf and 25 to Ahmed. My stories and notebooks to Rahaf. My toys to Batool. And please, do not yell at my brother Ahmed, please follow these wishes.
Rasha’s will, written before she died in Gaza [Courtesy of Asem Alnabih]
No one in the family knew anything about a will from my 10-year-old niece Rasha, not until after we buried her in the same grave as her brother, Ahmed, aged 11, with half their faces gone as a result of an Israeli air strike on their home on September 30…
In her will, Rasha asked that no one shout at her older brother Ahmed, a mischievous ball of energy who also excelled at school and everyone loved. Curiously, she believed Ahmed would survive her, inherit her 25 shekels and live a life she couldn’t. But they were destined to meet their end together, just as they had lived, feared and starved together….
None of us in the family understands why a child so young wrote a will with her final wishes to distribute her belongings to her loved ones. What was going on in her mind? We know the past 12 months have been extremely traumatic for Palestinians, young and old, but why was Rasha convinced that she was going to die?
Unfortunately, Rasha inferred correctly and earlier than most adult Palestinians from the ferocity of Israel’s attacks on Gaza that its intent was to exterminate them all, and her odds of survival were very low.
By Anas Jamal Al-Sharif. Cross posted from openDemocracy
Anas Jamal Al-Sharif was a Palestinian journalist from Gaza. He was killed, along with four of his Al Jazeera colleagues and two others, including his nephew, in a targeted Israeli air strike on a media tent outside Al-Shifa Hospital on 10 August 2025. Below, openDemocracy is republishing his final statement, which was published posthumously on his X account.
This is my will and my final message. If these words of mine reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.
Peace be upon you, and the mercy and blessings of Allah. Allah knows that I exerted every effort and strength I had to be a support and a voice for my people, from the moment I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and streets of the Jabalia refugee camp. My hope was that Allah would prolong my life until I could return with my family and loved ones to our original hometown, the occupied Ascalon “Majdal.” But Allah’s will prevailed, and His decree was fulfilled.
I lived pain in all its details and tasted loss and grief time and again. Yet, I never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification, hoping that Allah would bear witness to those who remained silent, those who accepted our killing, and those who besieged our breaths, unmoved by the remains of our children and women, and who did not stop the massacre that our people have been enduring for over a year and a half.
I entrust you with Palestine, the jewel in the crown of Muslims, the beating heart of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people, with its oppressed young children who were not given the chance to dream or live in safety and peace, whose pure bodies were crushed by thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart, their remains scattered on the walls. I urge you not to let chains silence you or borders hold you back. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our plundered homeland.
I entrust you to take care of my family, I entrust you with the apple of my eye, my beloved daughter Sham, whom time did not grant me to see grow as I had dreamed. I entrust you with my dear son Salah, whom I wished to support and be a companion for until he grew strong, to carry the burden from me and continue the mission.
I entrust you with my beloved mother, whose prayers blessed me to reach where I did. Her supplications were my fortress, and her light was my path. I pray to Allah to grant her heart patience and to reward her on my behalf with the best reward.
I also entrust you with my lifelong companion, my beloved wife, Umm Salah Bayan, whom war separated from me for long days and months. Yet she remained steadfast, like an unyielding olive tree trunk, patient and trusting in Allah, carrying the responsibility in my absence with all strength and faith. I urge you to rally around them and be their support after Allah, the Mighty and Exalted.
If I die, I die steadfast in my principles, bearing witness before Allah that I am content with His decree, faithful in meeting Him, and certain that what is with Allah is better and everlasting. O Allah, accept me among the martyrs, forgive my past and future sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path to freedom for my people and my family.
Forgive me if I fell short, and pray for me for mercy, for I have kept my pledge and neither changed nor wavered. Do not forget Gaza… And do not forget me in your righteous prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.
Two things I must say about the disgusting coverage by BBC news. It is a sewer of Zionist propaganda and fed the public with 2 claims. Firstly it parroted the Israeli says claim that the lead journalist was a Hamas terrorist, and secondly it asked: “There’s the question of proportionality. Is it justified to kill five journalists when you were only targeting one?”.
The latter question is so obscene, the proverbial colleteral damage. It does not ask if it is justified in murdering any journalist.
The BBC claims to be the most trusted media provider. In fact, it is increasingly losing audiences thanks to the above.
This situation cannot continue, either the genocide or the propagandist reporting by western msm.
I don’t think anyone really trusts the BBC any more.
My social media feeds are full of posts criticising the lack of balance, perversions in the use of language, and there are very few who still claim that if both sides are criticising the BBC then it is pitched about right.
Radio 4 in particular gets a lot of flak for its Today coverage, and rightly so.
I think there are Zionists in BBC editorial positions, and the bias is evident.
Of course the few foreign correspondents of integrity have to toe the line, face highly vocal pushback from the Israeli propaganda machine or attempts on their lives – and they can’t get into Gaza anyway.
There have been many complaints and feedback about the extremely aggressive attack dog Zionist spokespersons put up by the Israeli regime, but they are still given airtime and barely fact checked or refuted by interviewers.
The trouble with Israel is that if everyone thinks (rightly) that you are a mass murderer and you kill all the witnesses, everyone thinks the worst version of your crimes. (Especially if all existing evidence keep suggesting that you really are guilty of the worstest possible crimes.)
Thank you for posting this story. Poor little Rasha, Ahmed and the journalists of Al Jazeera. None of the warmongers ever considers the children or other innocents in their terrible hate fueled wars.
I suspect Israel is engaging in more ways than murder to suppress any and all opposition, and not limited to journalists, medical professionals, academics and lawyers but also the general population.
Admittedly anecdata, but on YT where I have next to no followers, I follow someone who also has next to no followers, we share a very, very niche interest. One day he commented that the Catholic church should do more about Palestine, I agreed. Within 24 hours we had a somewhat incoherent commenter defending Israel which neither of us knew, who had nothing to do with anything, did not share our interests or our niche, was not signed to any of our channels or groups, had no apparent connection to us and had an anonymous profile created 10+ years ago which appeared mostly dormant, was itself associated with groups completely unrelated to anything we were involved with. And it’s not at all clear how this commenter even found this super super obscure and buried conversation so as to even comment on it. The incoherence of the response leads me to think it’s a bot.
Nevertheless, I believe it shows forces at play, that conversations where any mention of Israel takes place are being tracked, and likely with the intention to dissuade and intimidate. I’m also inclined to think Youtube is actively involved and participating in this intimidation. Given the average person could not easily have found this conversation and given how badly Youtube sucks for anything at all, but especially for search or curation, given the technical difficulty of having bots spider and track every conversation and every comment, how is it this conversation was even found? I can only think Youtube is firehosing its data.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin took offense on behalf of Jews at people calling what’s happening in Gaza a genocide. He said “throwing around the word genocide for what’s happening in Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who’ve experienced actual genocide”. Pandering to the emotional fragility of people offended by descriptions of what’s happening in Gaza is apparently more important than the lives of Palestinians. He also called the UN “transparently antisemitic” for daring to suggest that his company is benefitting from the genocide through its know contracts with the IDF. So yeah, when the co-founder of the company that bought YT and is now its stablemate within Alphabet makes such statements, your suspicions that YouTube may be up to something nefarious aren’t without rational basis.
The ‘most moral army in the world’ once again assassinates people sleeping in tents. This is no war with Hamas, its a canned hunt. What a collection of cowards, using every bit of sophisticated military hardware we can ship them, so they can murder at will, trying to exterminate a whole people. And the governments of the world watch idly from the sidelines, occasionally spewing platitudes about following the rules of the Geneva Convention.
This is clearly a case of from “never again” to “our turn”. The memory of the Holocaust against the Jews is being subsumed in real time by the horror being unleashed on Gaza. I remember watching a short interview, circa 2019, with a young Palestinian boy who was pulled aside by a journalist while playing with his friends to answer a few questions. The journalist began by asking him if he had lost any friends or family members to Israeli bombs in the past, and the boy answered “yes of course”. What haunts me to this day was his next statement where he said “we know soon it will be our turn as well so we enjoy what remains of our lives”. He must have been no older than 10 years but in his short life had become resigned to the inevitability of violent death. This was heartbreaking in a way that cannot be put into words and these two wills remind of that precious little boy.
At this rate, the genocidal Zionazi State of Israel is indifferent to the wave of global public outrage and are just daring humanity to do something about the carnage. Unfortunately, the countries currently leading the charge are relatively small countries like South Africa, Colombia, Yemen who operate within very narrow limits to bring pressure to bear on this murderous regime. Even if we allow for the fact that nation states are motivated by the pursuit of geostrategic interests and not moral or ethical concerns, it’s curious that China and Russia aren’t seizing upon this opportunity to sweep the collective west off the deck of global legitimacy once and for all by coming to the rescue of the besieged Palestinians. There hasn’t been this much geopolitical capital up for grabs since the allies defeated Hitler, yet China and Russia sit on the sidelines and issue vacuous condemnations while Netanyahu feasts on the blood of Palestinians. Russia demonstrated in Syria that it can swoop in at the 11th hour and scupper the evil plans of the hegemon and its vassals so it’s not as if such an intervention is without precedent. Gazan territory is so tiny at just 365 square kilometers that China and Russia could between them send a humanitarian intervention force to stop the carnage without taking away from eg Ukraine war effort. This would be a coup de grace for western moral legitimacy and would simultaneously advance the strategic objectives of Brics. The west is on the ropes, land the killer blow for crying out loud…
The US/UK, proxies and vassals have reached Nazi Germany levels of atrocities and crimes. And if we consider the support for Nazis in Ukraine, we can see the connections. (“The Germans lost WWII, but the Nazis won” reportedly attributed to George Carlin)
It is a pity that Turkiye and the most populous and powerful neighbors of Palestine won’t lift a finger to help and can be considered as enablers of the genocide.
.
KSA, Egypt, UAE, can be considered indirectly complicit. Other great powers like China and Russia have not done anything either. Israel is vulnerable and overstretched at the moment. An intervention from a great power could stop the genocide, but who is willing to risk the “Samson Options” of Israel and the US?
The fact that the emotionally unstable US president is very likely mentally ill does not bode well for peace.
Two things I must say about the disgusting coverage by BBC news. It is a sewer of Zionist propaganda and fed the public with 2 claims. Firstly it parroted the Israeli says claim that the lead journalist was a Hamas terrorist, and secondly it asked: “There’s the question of proportionality. Is it justified to kill five journalists when you were only targeting one?”.
The latter question is so obscene, the proverbial colleteral damage. It does not ask if it is justified in murdering any journalist.
The BBC claims to be the most trusted media provider. In fact, it is increasingly losing audiences thanks to the above.
This situation cannot continue, either the genocide or the propagandist reporting by western msm.
I don’t think anyone really trusts the BBC any more.
My social media feeds are full of posts criticising the lack of balance, perversions in the use of language, and there are very few who still claim that if both sides are criticising the BBC then it is pitched about right.
Radio 4 in particular gets a lot of flak for its Today coverage, and rightly so.
I think there are Zionists in BBC editorial positions, and the bias is evident.
Of course the few foreign correspondents of integrity have to toe the line, face highly vocal pushback from the Israeli propaganda machine or attempts on their lives – and they can’t get into Gaza anyway.
There have been many complaints and feedback about the extremely aggressive attack dog Zionist spokespersons put up by the Israeli regime, but they are still given airtime and barely fact checked or refuted by interviewers.
Mafia tactics. If you are going to create a massive crime, then you have to get rid of the witnesses first.
The trouble with Israel is that if everyone thinks (rightly) that you are a mass murderer and you kill all the witnesses, everyone thinks the worst version of your crimes. (Especially if all existing evidence keep suggesting that you really are guilty of the worstest possible crimes.)
Thank you for posting this story. Poor little Rasha, Ahmed and the journalists of Al Jazeera. None of the warmongers ever considers the children or other innocents in their terrible hate fueled wars.
I suspect Israel is engaging in more ways than murder to suppress any and all opposition, and not limited to journalists, medical professionals, academics and lawyers but also the general population.
Admittedly anecdata, but on YT where I have next to no followers, I follow someone who also has next to no followers, we share a very, very niche interest. One day he commented that the Catholic church should do more about Palestine, I agreed. Within 24 hours we had a somewhat incoherent commenter defending Israel which neither of us knew, who had nothing to do with anything, did not share our interests or our niche, was not signed to any of our channels or groups, had no apparent connection to us and had an anonymous profile created 10+ years ago which appeared mostly dormant, was itself associated with groups completely unrelated to anything we were involved with. And it’s not at all clear how this commenter even found this super super obscure and buried conversation so as to even comment on it. The incoherence of the response leads me to think it’s a bot.
Nevertheless, I believe it shows forces at play, that conversations where any mention of Israel takes place are being tracked, and likely with the intention to dissuade and intimidate. I’m also inclined to think Youtube is actively involved and participating in this intimidation. Given the average person could not easily have found this conversation and given how badly Youtube sucks for anything at all, but especially for search or curation, given the technical difficulty of having bots spider and track every conversation and every comment, how is it this conversation was even found? I can only think Youtube is firehosing its data.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin took offense on behalf of Jews at people calling what’s happening in Gaza a genocide. He said “throwing around the word genocide for what’s happening in Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who’ve experienced actual genocide”. Pandering to the emotional fragility of people offended by descriptions of what’s happening in Gaza is apparently more important than the lives of Palestinians. He also called the UN “transparently antisemitic” for daring to suggest that his company is benefitting from the genocide through its know contracts with the IDF. So yeah, when the co-founder of the company that bought YT and is now its stablemate within Alphabet makes such statements, your suspicions that YouTube may be up to something nefarious aren’t without rational basis.
The ‘most moral army in the world’ once again assassinates people sleeping in tents. This is no war with Hamas, its a canned hunt. What a collection of cowards, using every bit of sophisticated military hardware we can ship them, so they can murder at will, trying to exterminate a whole people. And the governments of the world watch idly from the sidelines, occasionally spewing platitudes about following the rules of the Geneva Convention.
Thank you, Yves. Yes, these stories bring more to the human level what is happening in Gaza. Just emationally crushing, and they need to be heard.
This is clearly a case of from “never again” to “our turn”. The memory of the Holocaust against the Jews is being subsumed in real time by the horror being unleashed on Gaza. I remember watching a short interview, circa 2019, with a young Palestinian boy who was pulled aside by a journalist while playing with his friends to answer a few questions. The journalist began by asking him if he had lost any friends or family members to Israeli bombs in the past, and the boy answered “yes of course”. What haunts me to this day was his next statement where he said “we know soon it will be our turn as well so we enjoy what remains of our lives”. He must have been no older than 10 years but in his short life had become resigned to the inevitability of violent death. This was heartbreaking in a way that cannot be put into words and these two wills remind of that precious little boy.
At this rate, the genocidal Zionazi State of Israel is indifferent to the wave of global public outrage and are just daring humanity to do something about the carnage. Unfortunately, the countries currently leading the charge are relatively small countries like South Africa, Colombia, Yemen who operate within very narrow limits to bring pressure to bear on this murderous regime. Even if we allow for the fact that nation states are motivated by the pursuit of geostrategic interests and not moral or ethical concerns, it’s curious that China and Russia aren’t seizing upon this opportunity to sweep the collective west off the deck of global legitimacy once and for all by coming to the rescue of the besieged Palestinians. There hasn’t been this much geopolitical capital up for grabs since the allies defeated Hitler, yet China and Russia sit on the sidelines and issue vacuous condemnations while Netanyahu feasts on the blood of Palestinians. Russia demonstrated in Syria that it can swoop in at the 11th hour and scupper the evil plans of the hegemon and its vassals so it’s not as if such an intervention is without precedent. Gazan territory is so tiny at just 365 square kilometers that China and Russia could between them send a humanitarian intervention force to stop the carnage without taking away from eg Ukraine war effort. This would be a coup de grace for western moral legitimacy and would simultaneously advance the strategic objectives of Brics. The west is on the ropes, land the killer blow for crying out loud…
The US/UK, proxies and vassals have reached Nazi Germany levels of atrocities and crimes. And if we consider the support for Nazis in Ukraine, we can see the connections. (“The Germans lost WWII, but the Nazis won” reportedly attributed to George Carlin)
It is a pity that Turkiye and the most populous and powerful neighbors of Palestine won’t lift a finger to help and can be considered as enablers of the genocide.
.
KSA, Egypt, UAE, can be considered indirectly complicit. Other great powers like China and Russia have not done anything either. Israel is vulnerable and overstretched at the moment. An intervention from a great power could stop the genocide, but who is willing to risk the “Samson Options” of Israel and the US?
The fact that the emotionally unstable US president is very likely mentally ill does not bode well for peace.
This will never be forgotten.