“Wake up, my son!” None of Gaza’s murdered children are just numbers

Sahir Salman Abu Namous, left, “was just a kid who wanted to play and be happy.”

Sahir Salman Abu Namous was just four years old, soon to turn five.

“Everyone who saw him loved him because he was always smiling,” his first cousin Diaa Mahmoud recalls in an email he sent me from Gaza.

“One month before Sahir died, his father was sitting and talking to the boy’s aunt,” Mahmoud says.

“He looks so clever,” Mahmoud remembers the boy’s proud father saying, “even more clever than his siblings.”

Sahir was killed on Friday afternoon when an Israeli warplane bombed his family home in the Tal al-Zaatar neighborhood in northern Gaza.

Sahir Abu Namous by the sea in Gaza.

“He was playing and smiling next to his mother when missile shrapnel divided his head,” Mahmoud writes.

“His father took him to the hospital screaming ‘Wake up, my son! I bought toys for you, please wake up!’”

The photo that Mahmoud sent of Sahir with little left of his head, cradled in the arms of his anguished father, Salman Abu Namous, is too graphic to show here.

But Mahmoud sent me some other photos of his cousin Sahir in happier times.

“He was just a kid who wanted to play and be happy,” Mahmoud says, “he wasn’t just a number.”

Salman Abu Namous carries the body of his son Sahir, 4, at the boy’s funeral. Sahir was killed in an Israeli missile strike in northern Gaza on Friday.

Yasser Qudih APA images

Since Monday, Israel has targeted hundreds of private homes, banks, social institutions and mosques with relentless bombardment.

Sahir Salman Abu Namous was one of 21 children who had been killed in the onslaught by Friday.

Two disabled women among dead in unrelenting massacre

By Saturday, the toll had exceeded 130 people killed and more than 1,000 injured, almost 80 percent noncombatant civilians.

The ruins of the al-Farouk mosque, destroyed in an Israeli air strike in Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, 12 July 2014.

Ezz Zanoon APA images

In a particularly horrifying attack, Israeli warplanes last night bombed a home for people with disabilities in northern Gaza, killing two women, Suha Abu Saada, 47, and Ola Wishaa, 30.

Residents of the home “were barely mobile,” neighbors told the Guardian, “spending their time in bed or in wheelchairs, and could not escape the building.”

None of them are just numbers.

Tags

Comments

picture

So where are the voices of US religious leaders , who are supposed to be voices of peace and justice?

How can American leaders stand by while Israel continues to destroy Palestinian lives again and again ?

And not only stand by, as they have done since the 1880s invasion of Palestine, but aid and abet the long term plan of Yosef Weitz and other murderers?

America, EU and Israel leaders will have a weight on their conscious and and burden to carry on their souls for all enternity.

As an American, I am not surprised by the US media and legislators - AIPAC owns them all , from Mr. Obama, the Pentagon, Defense Dept. and the Senate and Congress.

picture

I am very sorry about your loss. A child is a child no matter his religion, birth.
Do you have a shelter in Gaza?

picture

I have seen the picture of him after his life was taken. I cried for days and I cannot imagine the pain and suffering his parents and siblings are going through, he is such a beautiful boy who was too good for this world. He will never be looked at as a number, he was a human, a child, who felt emotion and pain, he had dreams and aspirations like us all but the Zionists, the real Terrorists, took his life. He is now waiting for his parents in Heaven, and is at peace, and may Allah grant them all Jannatul Firdaus. Ameen.

picture

The UN declared 2014 "the year of UN solidarity with the Palestinian people". This is solidarity? Ban Ki Moon stated that he sympathizes with the "poor , frightened Israelis, huddled in bomb shelters." How many Israeli's are dead and injured? Gaza is under siege & has no bomb shelters for protection. Israeli's are watching from mountain tops with binoculars CHEERING and laughing at this senseless slaughter. 88% of the deaths in Gaza are civilians. Families just like our families. 30% of the deaths (so far)are CHILDREN. Our news outlets are lying and we taxpayers are paying for this slaughter. Stunned, sick and mourning for Palestine. God, where are you?

picture

Zionists/ Israelis and their supporters need to know that using air force and advanced weapons to kill innocent civilian people is a ruthless, barbaric, and cowardly act.
Those countries, companies, and individulas who receive economic and political gains from Israeli occupation of Palestine are equally criminal and must be held accountable for Israeli crimes and violations of Palestinian human rights.

Those western countries that support Israel and still claim to be civilized, free, and protectors of democracy and human rights are liars and full of hypocracy.

The Romans, The Crusaders, The Mongols, The Othmans, and the British all have occupied Palestine and then forced out; the zionist invasion is no exception.

Israel/zionist circles of evil are put on notice as they are being challenged by forces and voices of good, justice, and peace such as the "US campaign to End the Occupation", "Jewish Voice for Peace", Presbyterian Church and many other groups advocating peace, justice, and human rights.