Operation Cast Lead Part 8 “Burning up Ants”
At around 5.45 a.m. on the 6th of January 2009 the al-Daya family house on al-Rai’i Street in Zeytoun, south-east of Gaza City, was hit by a projectile from an F-16 aircraft. Twenty-two members of the al-Daya family, included Fayez al-Daya; Iyad al-Daya, Ramez al-Daya, Raghdah and Sabrine, and Radwan al-Daya, were killed; most were crushed by the rubble.
Amnesty reported: “The previous day, following rumors that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had informed local residents that the Israeli army was going to bomb the house of a neighbor nearby, the family and other neighbors left their homes for fear that their homes would be damaged, given that the street is densely built up. However, residents reportedly contacted the ICRC, which denied having any information about any impending bombardments of targets in the street. Reassured, residents, including the al-Daya family, returned to their homes. Only one son, who lived on the top floor of the house, and his wife and seven children stayed with the relatives to whose house they had moved after the alert. In the evening of the 5th of January, the family had dinner on the ground floor, listening to a battery-powered radio, as there was no electricity. They then went to sleep, the sons and their wives and children in their apartments on the upper floors and the parents and the unmarried children on the ground floor. Before dawn the father and one of the sons, Mohammed, went to pray at the nearby mosque and at about 5.30 a.m. returned home as Israeli air strikes had once again resumed. The father entered the house shortly before the strike. Mohammed was trailing behind and was approaching the house when it was struck. His pregnant wife, Tazal, and their three daughters and one son, all aged less than seven, were killed, along with his parents, Fayez and Kawkab; his brother Iyad and his wife Rawda and their three daughters and three sons, all aged less than 10 years; his brother Ramez and his wife Safa and their six-month-old daughter and two-year-old son; his two sisters, Raghda and Sabrine, and his brother Radwan. When Amnesty International delegates first visited the family, on the 20th of January, nine of the 22 bodies were still under the rubble as the removal of the rubble had been made difficult by the location of the house, in a narrow and densely built-up street, and the lack of equipment to remove the large amount of rubble.”
An IDF soldier said: “Look, after having directed planes twice — not personally — you see him drop a bomb and you say “not there, it’s one location further north-west” and you don’t see him coming back, perhaps tomorrow he’ll drop his bomb over the location I meant, or perhaps there was something else at the location he just bombed, but I got out of there feeling in total lack of control over things I said.”
Another stated: “The amount of destruction there was incredible. You drive around those neighborhoods and can’t identify a thing. Not one stone left standing over another. You see plenty of fields, hothouses; orchards, everything devastated. Totally ruined. It’s terrible. It’s surreal.”
According to Amnesty International: “On the 6th of January 2009 at 1.30 p.m., Afaf Mohammed Dhmeida, a 28-year-old mother of five, was killed by a tank round as she was hanging the laundry on the roof terrace of her home in Jabalia. Her husband, relatives and neighbors told Amnesty International that the strike had cut Afaf’s body into two, and that the top half had been flung off the roof, bouncing off the roof of a lower building across a yard and landing in a parking lot across the house. Her five-year-old daughter had just reached the top of the stairs to the roof and saw her mother being killed. When Amnesty International delegates visited the house three weeks after the incident, the girl was still not speaking, apparently as a result of the trauma of witnessing her mother’s killing.”
A series of Israeli mortar strikes in the vicinity of a UNRWA school in the Jabalia refugee camp in the afternoon of the 6th of January 2009 killed more than 30 civilians, including local residents and people who had fled their homes and were sheltering in the school. Among the victims were 11 members of the Deeb family, including five children and four women, who were killed in their yard. Seven Palestinians, a school guard and six civilians were injured inside the school by shrapnel and flying debris and dozens of others were injured outside.
One IDF soldier complained of: “...all that destruction; all that fire at innocents. This shock of realizing with whom I’m in this together. My mates, really, and that’s how they’re behaving. It was simply amazing; inconceivable; the price of all the draft dodging. You have all the radical lefties who don’t enlist for some reason or another, or stay close to home, and this is what your combat units look like. They’re my pals, because there’s no other way, I have to be friends with them. I don’t have much choice. I live with them. But the hatred, and the joy of killing, no ... “I killed a terrorist, whoa ... We blew his head off...” When your company commander and battalion commander tell you, “Go on, fire!” the soldiers will not hold back. They are waiting for this day, the fun of shooting and feeling all that power in one’s hands.”
In the late morning of the 7th of January 2009, according to the Goldstone Report, Israeli tanks moved onto the small piece of agricultural land in front of the house of Khalid Abd Rabbo and his wife Kawthar in the eastern part of Izbat Abd Rabbo, a neighborhood east of Jabaliyah. “Shortly after 12.30 p.m., the inhabitants of that part of Izbat Abd Rabbo heard megaphone messages telling all residents to leave ... there had also been a radio message broadcast by the Israeli armed forces around 12.30 announcing that there would be a temporary cessation of shooting between 1 and 4 p.m. that day, during which time residents of the area were asked to walk to central Jabaliyah. At about 12.50 p.m., Khalid Abd Rabbo, his wife Kawthar, their three daughters, Souad (aged 9), Samar (aged 5) and Amal (aged 3), and his mother, Hajja Souad Abd Rabbo, stepped out of the house, all of them carrying white flags. Less than 10 meters from the door was a tank, turned towards their house. Two soldiers were sitting on top of it having a snack (one was eating chips, the other chocolate, according to one of the witnesses). The family stood still, waiting for orders from the soldiers as to what they should do, but none was given. Without warning, a third soldier emerged from inside the tank and started shooting at the three girls and then also at their grandmother. Several bullets hit Souad in the chest, Amal in the stomach and Samar in the back. Hajja Souad was hit in the lower back and in the left arm. Khalid and Kawthar Abd Rabbo carried their three daughters and mother back inside the house. There, they and the family members who had stayed inside tried to call for help by mobile phone. They also shouted for help and a neighbor, Sameeh Atwa Rasheed al-Sheikh, who was an ambulance driver and had his ambulance parked next to his house, decided to come to their help. He put on his ambulance crew clothes and asked his son to put on a fluorescent jacket. They had driven a few meters from their house to the immediate vicinity of the Abd Rabbo house when Israeli soldiers near the Abed Rabbo house ordered them to halt and get out of the vehicle. Sameeh al-Sheikh protested that he had heard cries for help from the Abd Rabbo family and intended to bring the wounded to hospital. The soldiers ordered him and his son to undress and then re-dress. They then ordered them to abandon the ambulance and to walk towards Jabaliyah, which they complied with. When the families returned to Izbat Abd Rabbo on the 18th of January, they found the ambulance was in the same place but had been crushed, probably by a tank. Inside the Abed Rabbo house, Amal and Souad died of their wounds.”
One IDF soldier said: “It is impossible to conceive of such an extent of suffering as that which we inflicted on Gaza...” while another stated: “You feel like a child playing around with a magnifying glass, burning up ants. Really. A 20-year-old kid should not be doing such things to people.”