The Electronic Intifada 24 July 2025
Karim al-Sori, 25, and Reem Oram, 5, were killed by Israeli occupation forces in separate incidents in Gaza in June.
Every night, we complain about life.
We do this mostly before bedtime, sitting in our tent. We complain about the mosquitoes and bugs, and we complain about the loud buzzing from the occupation drones overhead.
We jokingly tell the drone that if it wants to come in and sleep with us, that would be fine as long as it would stop its buzzing.
My mother, younger brother and sister and I have shared a tent in Nuseirat, central Gaza, since January 2025. We were displaced for the first time on 19 October 2023, from our home in al-Zahra, south of Gaza City, and numerous times after that.
Al-Zahra was destroyed by the occupation forces in 2023, and we can never go back.
It’s very dark at this time before bed, as our phone batteries are dead after a long day, and we have no other source of light. And though we may have a lot of complaints about life, we also do not want to die.
This is why, just in case, we say goodbye to each other before bed. We do not know when an Israeli strike will kill us.
The morning of 22 June, at 4 am, a massive explosion woke us all up at the same time. I remember the horror that gripped our tent.
My mom tried to calm me and my siblings down and told everyone to stay in place, to not leave the tent. We heard kids crying and women screaming.
We could still hear the quadcopter right above us. It sounds like a kitchen vent fan turned all the way up. A steady, whooshing buzz that vibrates in the air. Sometimes, when it gets closer to the ground, it sounds like a motorcycle at full speed.
When the quadcopter finally left, about 15 minutes later, we ran out to see what had happened.
Massacre of the Oram family
A nearby tent, about 100 meters away, was on fire. The tent belonged to the Oram family: Amjad and his wife Amal, and their two children, Reem, 5, and Hazem, 3.
Neighbors in the camp poured water on the burning tent. It took about four minutes to extinguish the fire and then the group searched for survivors.
I watched as men removed torn-apart bodies from the tent.
Um Amjad – Amjad’s mother – arrived and saw her son. The missile had struck him directly.
His brain was outside his head. His mother only recognized him from his blond beard. His ears, eyes and nose were not visible. Everything had been torn apart.
“Ya Habibi, wake up, please wake up, Ya Mama,” she said to him.
Um Amjad gathered pieces of his body that were scattered on the ground and put them in a bag.
There was only one survivor in the tent, 3-year-old Hazem.
As soon as they found him, his tiny body covered with shrapnel wounds, he was driven by a neighbor to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.
Loss compounded by the blackout
My mother loved Amjad and his wife Amal as if they were her own children, and my siblings and I often played with Reem and Hazem, whether hide-and-seek or singing funny songs.
At sunset, we would often sit with the Oram family and drink sugarless tea and discuss the hardships we were all enduring. This was especially true in recent weeks, given the internet blackout.
In June, there was a massive internet outage in Gaza. It would last over two weeks, with only blips of service during this time.
During the blackout, Amal had told my mom that her mother, currently in Egypt, would now be worried about her and her kids, as there was no internet and she could not be in touch with her.
The morning of the attack, 22 June, the internet was still out. That meant no news was published on this attack, no updates reported. Three members of the Oram family were killed in silence, without a single mention in the media.
This fact was especially painful.
The idea that their stories would remain untold during the blackout was an extra burden to bear.
I searched through the remains of the Oram family tent for any memories that I could pass along to Um Amjad. We found Amal’s jewelry and some toys the kids used to play with.
All burned.
We also found Amjad’s mobile phone.
The martyrdom of Karim al-Sori
The next day, the blackout persisted, and news of the massacre of the Oram family remained sealed in Gaza.
Yet tragedy continued to unfold.
The Israeli soldiers never stop. They continue killing, starving and humiliating us. They want to erase us and keep us silent. They want our voices buried along with our dead. They want things that happen in Gaza during the blackout to remain only in Gaza.
My brother Abd told me that he had overheard in the street that Karim al-Sori, my close friend Baraa’s brother, had been shot and killed at an aid distribution point run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation near the so-called Netzarim corridor.
Karim was 25 years old and had been killed three days before.
I knew Karim had only gone to the aid point to get food for his starving family.
I visited Baraa at a house the family had set up for mourning to offer condolences. She wore black and was beside herself with grief.
She told me that “a whole month passed and we didn’t eat bread. Karim went only to [the aid site] to bring us flour. We kept waiting that night, but he didn’t come back. We thought maybe the aid point opened late. We didn’t know he was lying dead on the ground the whole night, covered in blood.”
They learned early the next morning that Karim had been shot and killed. Karim’s friend had come to their house to deliver the news.
“It was a heavy knock [on the door],” she said. “I felt a bad thing was behind it.”
“My father and younger brother risked their lives to bring back Karim’s body.”
Karim was the eldest son. He wanted to be a calligrapher.
He was gifted with beautiful handwriting. He wanted to get married and to bring joy to his family.
Not to become a memory they’d mourn forever.
Back online
After 12 days of a total internet blackout, we were online again.
Then it was cut off again. And then back.
We can share the news now of the tragedies that took place in June during the blackout.
I daily pass by the ruins of the Oram family tent. There is a meters-deep hole in the ground now, and the belongings are in the pit, melted and burned by the fire.
Hazem survived the night and the weeks that have followed. I saw him a couple of days ago being carried by his uncle.
His right leg was broken and in a cast. His head was also wrapped in a cast even though there is still shrapnel lodged in his head.
He has some burns on his face, but doctors told his relatives that he will survive.
Razan Abu Salem is a writer and translator based in Gaza.
