Every day for a week, the children gathered at the refrigerator and called out to their mother. She never answered. She was inside it. 💔
Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal recounts the account behind that scene, from Beit Hanoun in the early days of the genocide. A man there had solar power running in his home when Israeli occupation forces besieged the neighbourhood and opened fire on residents. His wife was preparing food inside the house, her baby of no more than six months in her arms, when an Israeli occupation sniper shot her directly. She fell to the floor with her child, and every attempt to revive her failed. Her husband tried to bury her outside, but the occupation army was in the area and he could not, and for a whole week her body stayed in the house with nowhere to lay it.
With every option impossible, the man placed his wife's body inside the refrigerator that ran on his solar system. He tried to lay it on its side to serve as a grave, and when that failed he left it upright, his wife inside, and tied the door shut with ropes so it would not open. That is where the children kept their vigil, beside their mother, hoping she might answer. Basal stresses this is a scene, not a story, a reality lived by one family in Beit Hanoun, and he says there are accounts in Gaza even harder than this one. His appeal is to the world's living consciences: protect humanity before it is too late.
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