Hind Rajab is indeed the Anne Frank of the Gaza Genocide

Every day in Palestine is an anniversary marking a tragedy or killing that is so horrific that it stops people in their tracks around the world. This article is a reminder, lest we forget. Anniversaries provide an opportunity to look back on shared experiences, both positive and negative, and appreciate how meaningful a relationship can have an impact on our lives.

We all have at least one significant date to remember. For me, 28 January will always be special, as that was the day that my mother Joyce left this earthly life in her 98th year. However, for millions of others, the following day, 29 January, provides a permanent reminder of the inhumanity and cruelty of what Israel still claims is the “most moral” army in the world.

As world-renowned scholar, imam and activist Dr Omar Suleiman reminds us, 29 January was the first anniversary of the murder of six-year-old Hind Rajab by Israel’s “most moral” soldiers. The Palestinian child cowered for hours in a car surrounded by the bodies of her dead relatives, killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza. We held our collective breath on that fateful day and heard the haunting words of the little girl as she begged the emergency services to help her. An Israeli tank was just a few metres away as she made that final phone call and waited.

“Hind Rajab is not just another casualty in a war that has already claimed far too many lives,” wrote Dr Suleiman. “She is the Anne Frank of Gaza, a child whose final moments should haunt the conscience of the world. Just as Anne’s diary bore witness to the horrors of Nazi persecution, Hind’s last phone call is a testament to the atrocities of our time. And like Anne, her story must be told, not just for the sake of memory, but for justice.”

The reaction from some Zionists to the imam’s words was predictable.

How could the American-born scholar compare the Palestinian child to Anne Frank?

“The story of Hind Rajab is very sad and Omar is correct that we should not forget her,” wrote one observer. “To compare her to Anne Frank a victim of the Holocaust is deeply wrong. The Shoah was a unique event and it should not be compared to anything else regardless of one’s feelings over Gaza. Why not make Dua for the Bibas brothers Omar that would show a consistent commitment to justice?”

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The Bibas brothers are Ariel, 5, and his brother Kfir, who turned 2 last month. They are believed to be the only Israeli children left in Gaza, after a November 2023 deal that saw the release of more than 100 of the 251 people seized in Operation Al Aqsa Flood by Hamas on 7 October 2023. The recent hostage releases raised hopes that the young brothers and their mother would be among those freed, but no one is sure of their fate.

It was suggested nearly a year ago that the boys and their mother perished in an Israeli air strike which, given the scorched earth policy adopted by the Zionist army in Gaza, would not be improbable. The fact is that we simply do not know the fate of the Bibas children, but we do know the fate of Hind Rajab, because we listened for more than three hours to the child talking to a Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) responder. “I’m so scared,” she cried, “please come. Come take me. Please, will you come?”

The whole world heard the cries of Hind Rajab, but unlike so many other Palestinian children, she is not a statistic. She is still very real in our hearts. We heard her voice, we listened along with the distraught telephone operator for hours as she pleaded for help. Then her engaging photograph stared at all of us from newspapers around the world. For the Palestinian diaspora, Hind was their daughter, but she also belonged to every one of us because, like Anne Frank, she stole our hearts.

Anne Frank and her family hid in an attic in a secret annex of her father’s business in Amsterdam for 761 days until they were discovered by the Gestapo and hauled off to a concentration camp on 4 August, 1944. She left behind a secret diary and died, with her sister Margot, of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany in February 1945.

“Anne Frank did not live to see the end of the Holocaust, but her words survived,” added Dr Suleiman. “And because of that, no one can claim ignorance about what happened to her and millions like her. But Hind Rajab had no diary. Her testimony is in the broken phone call, in the wreckage of her car, in the cries of every Palestinian mother who has had to bury a child. The world has a choice. It can let her name be buried under the weight of ‘collateral damage’ reports, or it can hold onto it, say it, demand that those responsible answer for it.”

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I don’t think any one of us will forget Hind, but we must all take a stand and make sure that those responsible for her cold-blooded murder — for that is what it was — stand in a dock and answer for her suffering.

Jewish suffering during and since the Holocaust is as painful as Palestinian suffering during and since the Nakba right up to today’s Gaza Genocide; the two are not mutually exclusive. I cannot differentiate from the pain and tears of heartbroken mothers simply because one is Jewish and another is Muslim.

I think Imam Suleiman, the founding president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research in Texas and an adjunct professor of Islamic studies and member of the Ethics Centre Advisory Board at Southern Methodist University, is right.

Hind Rajab is our Anne Frank and we must keep her memory alive.

Her frail little body was found on 10 February last year nearly two weeks after being trapped inside a car with her dead family while being surrounded and shot at by cowardly Israeli soldiers.

We failed her horribly in this life and we must bring those responsible for killing her to justice, not least the soldiers who fired 355 bullets into the car where Hind was sheltering. They know who they are, and so do their colleagues and senior officers.

The two heroic paramedics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society who were despatched to rescue Hind, Yousef Zeino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun, were also killed. They had sought and secured permission from the Israel occupation forces to enter the area to rescue Hind and were only a few metres away when their ambulance was bombed. What sort of “morality” guides people who would do and condone such a thing?

Yes, the Holocaust was a very dark period of history, and we should never forget what happened. The powerful words in The Diary of Anne Frank continue to resonate loudly and should cause bad men like wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to have sleepless nights, for it was under his watch that Hind Rajab was killed by his rogue soldiers in his rogue army acting in the name of his rogue state.

Zoe Strimpel is the journalist, historian and IDF propagandist who wrote in her weekly column for the Sunday Telegraph a year ago that the Israeli army was, she insisted, still the “most moral in the world”. I suggest that she takes the anniversary of Hind’s killing to listen to the recording of her phone call in real time, and then give herself a reality check before putting pen to paper on such matters again. Moreover, I hope that Strimpel gets a front row seat at the International Criminal Court for the trial of Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes. For that day will come when the world will no longer turn a blind eye to the crimes of the Zionist state and its supporters.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.