So last December, there was this brief video that was posted on social media. It showed members of a family, the Abu Salahs, dead on a street in Northern Gaza. I’m going to start the story by showing you that video. But just as a warning, it’s extremely graphic. Two brothers lay huddled with their mother, Inshirah. Two other brothers lay on the street, one next to a stretcher. And next to the hand of their father, Saadi, lay a white flag. What struck us about this video is that for all the scenes of death and destruction that we see out of Gaza, what we see on the street is actually quite rare. Normally, when we see evidence of civilian casualties in Gaza, those people have often been killed by bombs or rockets launched from far away. If and when people have been killed by gunfire, the aftermath is seldom captured. But here they were, members of an immediate family, all seemingly killed at once. And as we’ll show, it was Israeli troops who shot them. But what were the circumstances, and why was the family all together? Why were they carrying a stretcher and two shovels? And what about that white flag? When we presented our findings to the Israeli military, they didn’t deny responsibility. They said their forces in the area, quote, “experienced many encounters with terrorists who fight and move in combat areas while wearing civilian clothes.” But our analysis of what happened showed that the Abu Salahs posed no threat, yet were still targeted with clear intention at close range. Here’s the story of who they were, how they ended up on that street at midday on Dec. 6 and how we determined it was Israeli troops who killed them. So the Abu Salah family was displaced from their home in Northern Gaza on Oct. 8, just as Israel launched its military response to the Oct. 7 attacks. It’s been pretty tough to get in touch with people in Northern Gaza because of the war. However, over the course of several months, we were able to get in touch with Hanady Abu Salah. She’s a sister and daughter of the people we see lying dead in the video. She was sheltering in a school just 200 feet away from her family when they were killed and heard the gunfire. Across many conversations with her, Hanady was eager to talk about her family. Hanady said that home ended up being destroyed during the fighting, and that their father had dreamed of rebuilding it after the war. Like many Palestinians, they were forced to flee. They ended up living with other displaced families at a girls high school turned shelter. Still, the violence followed them. This video was filmed by Hanady’s brother Ahmed. Ahmed was one of the brothers killed just weeks later. The school they lived at is here. It’s one of several schools in the immediate area that are now acting as shelters. And just up the road is the Indonesian Hospital. It has a strategic view of the entire area. The makeup and layout of the neighborhood is important to know because at the time of the killings,…
2024-09-06 07:36:15
Original from www.nytimes.com