Entire Families Were Crushed in Gaza by Israeli Airstrikes. Not Even Memories Remain - Palestinians - Haaretz.com
Some of the members of the Salem family that died in an IDF attack in Gaza, in December 2023.Credit: Youssef Salem / AP
The al-Nasr, Doghmush, Salem, al-Masri and al-Astal families in Gaza have one thing in common. "In these families, dozens of people have been killed, and in some even over 100," a Gazan journalist said. "They've been erased from the Palestinian Population Registry and there's no trace and no documentation of them – not even someone who will tell their story."
The journalist, who reports on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, requested anonymity in order to describe how the war is hitting civilians in Gaza, and to explain the significance of the wiping out of entire families. As proof he mentioned what happened to the al-Nasr family this past October 28 in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.
"In early September tens of thousands of people remained in the northern Strip," he said. "In such situations, family members stay in a single place that serves as a refuge."
An injured man reacts while sitting on the rubble of a building hit by an Israeli strike in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, on October 29, 2024.Credit: AFP/-
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Accordingly, the members of the al-Nasr family – a grandfather, grandmother, mothers, fathers, grandchildren, children, uncles, aunts and cousins – were staying in the same apartment building.
"When a bomb hits a building, the immediate result is usually the killing of whoever is inside," the journalist said. "That's what happened to the al-Nasr family: An entire building above them was bombed, and they were killed."
The story of the al-Nasrs became known when it was covered in the foreign media. According to the civil defense authorities in Gaza, 93 people were killed in the bombing, while over 40 are considered missing because their bodies have not yet been found in the rubble.
"This isn't the first time that such a thing has happened," the journalist said.
7-year-old twin girls Amal and Ayloul Salem, who were killed in the strike in December.
In a report, Airwars, a British nonprofit group that keeps track of wartime airstrikes, specified the precise location of the strike and wrote that 50 children were believed to have been killed.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, which is under Hamas control, 7,160 families have been bombed between the start of the war and November 1 this year. Of them, 1,410 have been wiped out entirely; 5,444 people dead. In 3,463 families, 7,934 people have been killed with only one member per family surviving. In 2,287 families, 9,577 people have been killed with two or more family members surviving.
The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
A familiar practice
In its fighting against Hamas and other groups, Israel's bombing of residential buildings occupied by uninvolved families is nothing new. A January 2015 report by Israeli rights group B'Tselem includes stories of families that suffered fatalities when their homes were bombed. The report looked into the ethical and legal aspects of striking residential buildings in Gaza during the 2014 Gaza war.
According a UN report that year, a new pattern had emerged of entire families being wiped out in Gaza, a practice the UN called a war crime.
'Sometimes it's hard to remove the bodies from under the rubble, so we make a temporary list of the dead, the missing and the survivors – and constantly update it.'
According to The Associated Press this past June, the news agency "identified at least 60 Palestinian families where at least 25 people were killed – sometimes four generations from the same bloodline – in bombings between October and December, the deadliest and most destructive period of the war."
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the five families with the highest number of dead are the al-Najjars with 530, the al-Masris with 287, the Ashours with 217, the Hijazis with 199 and the Awwads with 198.
The Gazan journalist said that sometimes a single family is hit in a single attack, but members of the al-Najjar family were hit in several attacks in the first months of the war. "This is a large family with members in Gaza City, while others left for the center of the Strip – Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah," he said.
The plight of the family emerged gradually. "Sometimes it's hard to remove the bodies from under the rubble, so we make a temporary list of the dead, the missing and the survivors – and constantly update it," the journalist said.
He added: "Sometimes not a single adult from the family remains after an airstrike; only children survive. In such cases, it's hard to know with certainty the names of all the family members."
For that purpose acquaintances must be consulted, and neighbors who were away during the attack. Even then "it takes days or weeks to draw up the final list of the people killed," the journalist said.
A mass grave in Gaza, in March.Credit: AFP/SAID KHATIB
Another difficulty is how to memorialize the families. "It saddens me that we talk about them in numbers, but basically that's the situation," he said.
"An entire family is wiped out in every sense: There are no pictures, albums or official documents." In the case of the al-Najjars, family members who had moved south to Rafah at the start of the war had to be consulted.
"It's a very difficult situation – to inform them about the incident," the journalist said. "The people who do that aren't experts or people with professional experience. They try to reach them by word of mouth."
Not a final number
Haaretz verified four cases of families that were wiped out in October and November last year by cross-referencing with sources from Gaza, real-time reports on the strikes, lists published by family members outside the Strip, and the Gaza Health Ministry's lists.
On November 1 and November 5 last year, 77 people from the Abu Eida family from Jabalya in northern Gaza were killed in two strikes. On November 17, 109 people from the Doghmush family were killed in an attack in the Sabra district in the north. Over 50 people from the al-Mughrabi family were killed in an attack on the home of the father of the family, Abu Darwish al-Mughrabi, in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
According to the sources, bodies still remain under the rubble, so the numbers are expected to rise.
Then there's the Salem family. According to the journalist, 102 civilians were killed when at about 8 A.M. on Monday December 11, 2023, six homes of the Salem family were hit in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.
The incident was reported in real time on Al Jazeera. In a video showing the area after the strike, people are seen trying to extract bodies from the rubble.
After the attack, Palestinian journalist Younis Tirawi wrote on social media that an entire neighborhood had been wiped out in Gaza City, including six houses belonging to the Salem family. The rescue teams brought out 32 bodies, but they believed that 80 were still buried under the ruins.
Doaa Abu Hatab, a resident of Gaza City and an acquaintance of the family, wrote on social media: 'Our friend Rafik Salem and his family were killed in an attack in the Sheikh Radwan district [of Gaza City].'Credit: Screenshot from Facebook
Members of the Salem family who live outside Gaza eulogized their loved ones with pictures on social media. Hussam Salem, who lives in Turkey, posted a picture of 7-year-old twin girls Amal and Ayloul who were killed in the strike.
He wrote: "These pretty twins were killed together with their grandfather, their grandmother and the father of the family, Abu Basal, and with over 100 people in the massacre of the Salem family. May you reach Paradise."
Doaa Abu Hatab, a resident of Gaza City and an acquaintance of the family, wrote on social media: "Our friend Rafik Salem and his family were killed in an attack in the Sheikh Radwan district [of Gaza City]."
In a report, Airwars, a British nonprofit group that keeps track of wartime airstrikes, specified the precise location of the strike and wrote that 50 children were believed to have been killed. According to several sources, an entire neighborhood was wiped out. Family members were living together in the neighborhood as a refuge, believing that Israeli forces would enter other areas of Gaza.
S., a resident of Gaza City and an acquaintance of the Salem family, left the Strip with her family for Egypt in January. "It's horrifying," she said. "I can only imagine what the family experienced during those moments. During the first weeks of the war we also remained in Gaza. It's hard to describe in words the moments of terror and fear."
She says that members of the family usually stay together in the same house or adjacent houses, and that the credo "If we die, we'll all die together" has become a very common phrase.
A doctor provides medical care to two young victims inside the Kamal Adwan hospital following an Israeli strike that hit an area near the medical establishment in Beit Layia in the northern Gaza Strip early on November 21, 2024.Credit: AFP/-
"Staying together helps decrease the panic for the families. During previous wars we also did that and tried to strengthen and calm each other," S. said, adding that "during the bombings there's nothing you can do – we just hold hands, while the children are crying or scared."
S. said she was haunted for days when she didn't know the plight of the Salem family, which she learned about on social media. "I was afraid that it would happen to us too, so my husband and I made every effort to leave Gaza."
Sufian Salem, a doctoral student who is studying in Turkey, summed up the killing of his close relatives on Facebook.
"2023 is my year of sadness," he wrote. "It began with the death of my father and ended with the death of my mother, my brother Yahya, his wife, my brother Ahmed, my only sister Umm Tair, all her children, her daughter, and her daughter-in-law, who got married only two months ago, in the terrible massacre in which over 70 members of my family were killed."
As he put it, "It still haunts me every day, and my life is no longer normal. I don't believe that all that really happened. I don't think that I'll ever be able to say the words 'the massacre of the Salem family' or 'half my family is gone.'"
People check the rubble of a building hit in an overnight Israeli strike in Beit Lahya in the northern Gaza Strip on November 17, 2024.Credit: AFP/-
The documentation is also buried
As S. put it, "The serious problem is documenting the families." The Gazan journalist spoke about initiatives designed to collect stories about family members.
"It's almost impossible, the feeling that not only is the family wiped out, but so are all the memories that remained of it. Everything is buried under the rubble," he said.
People are trying to tell the families' stories on social media, which the journalist called a welcome effort – before immediately expressing reservations. "It's not being done by professional groups. After all, the story ends up consisting of only a few lines."
He says that the entire work of documentation – collecting testimony and finding the missing and the connection among family members – wasn't done properly in previous wars, and systems established for that purpose have also been destroyed.
"The professional organizations that were supposed to work at the hospitals and the community centers have been hit," he said.
As The Associated Press reported in June, "Brian Castner, a weapons investigator with Amnesty International, said any war crimes investigation in Gaza is complicated by the pace of the bombings, limited access for independent entities, and a lack of forensic evidence."
According to AP, "Since October, Amnesty has found evidence of direct attacks on civilians, unlawful and indiscriminate attacks in at least 16 Israeli strikes it investigated that killed 370 civilians, including 159 children and 'decimated families.' The strikes included three as recent as April."
According to S., "Death is everywhere in Gaza. My family hasn't been wiped out yet, but my cousin was killed a month ago, and my aunt and my daughter were killed at the start of the war."
She notes that while some families are wiped out all at once, others disappear gradually, sometimes from illnesses and the other hardships of the war.
"Those who remain alive are suffering in other ways, and they also feel guilty for remaining alive," she said. "This suffering has to be remembered and documented."