The next generation: Children are eager to learn and education is their right. Photo: Farida Algoul

In every community on Earth, children are afforded a special status as precious. They are small, vulnerable, and innocent. We protect them, teach them, and nurture them. We keep them safe at all costs.

Children amaze us as they develop—with their first steps, their first words, and so on. They eventually grow up to build on what came before them. They help us progress as the next generation. This is the circle of life.

It takes a special kind of evil to deliberately target children and to celebrate in their death and suffering. Yet some political leaders and religious extremists in Israel are publicly calling for, and celebrating, the deaths of our beloved Palestinian children.

Surely no one really believes that the murder of more than 20,000 children could be anything but a deliberate and intentional attempt to completely exterminate the children of Gaza? Put another way, this is ethnic cleansing.

Her name was Diana

On the morning of Eid, six-year-old Diana Altourk—daughter, sister, granddaughter, student, and my beloved and completely innocent little cousin—twirled in her new pink dress. It was embroidered with silver threads that shined brightly—just as she did.

Diana’s mother, Sabrine, my father’s only remaining sister, had chosen the dress for her daughter weeks earlier, even though money was tight. Diana, with a smile as wide as the sky, delighted all of us as she held a green balloon in one hand and a small paper bag of sweets in the other. We saw in her eyes, and she helped us to believe, that this was going to be the best day of her life.

Teaching in one of the educational tents. Photo: Farida Algoul

She didn’t know. We didn’t know. It would be her last.

In the early morning of March 18,2025, Israel renewed its assault on Gaza after a precarious ceasefire lasting just 42 days.

On this day, Diana’s neighborhood in Khan Younis was alive with laughter. Children chased each other through the narrow alleys, their sandals slapping against the hot concrete. Sabrine called out from the window, urging Diana not to stray too far. Ahmed, Diana’s father, handed out sweets to his daughter, her baby brother, and the other neighborhood children.

In spite of the unremitting death, destruction, and suffering from Israeli airstrikes, we are always trying to capture moments of normalcy. Even if only for a few precious hours, we let ourselves believe that the drones and bombs are a distant memory. For a few brief moments, we convince ourselves that life has returned to normal. It was Eid and God was with us, after all.

A class in one of the education tents. Photo: Farida Algoul

Diana didn’t understand the politics that had torn Gaza apart.  She didn’t know about borders or blockades. Or about ceasefires that never lasted. But Gaza was the only world she had ever known and, like all of us, she knew fear.

She knew what it sounded like when my aunt Sabrine gasped at the distant roar of a jet. She knew the silence that followed when the electricity went out. She knew to grab her baby brother’s hand and run to the hallway when the sky lit up red.

Her tiny life had been dominated by these events and yet she was so resilient.

Imagine that for just a moment. And then think about your child, your grandchild, your younger sibling, or your friend. 

But not today. Today was Eid. We were so very grateful just to be together.

At 10:17 a.m., everything changed.

A sudden roar cracked the sky. Then came the thunderous boom of an explosion. Dust and debris shot into the air. The alley where Diana had just been playing disappeared in a cloud of smoke and fire. Screams followed. Chaos. People running. Sabrine’s voice crying: “My daughter! My daughter!”

For hours, Sabrine and Ahmed dug through the rubble. Someone found her doll—its dress was charred and one arm was torn off. Later, someone found a small sandal. It was pink, with a silver buckle.

Then we found her.

There had been no blood-curdling scream from Diana. No miracle rescue. Just her small, still body covered in dust. Her smile gone. Her green balloon had drifted up into the sky, unnoticed.

Diana’s mother collapsed, while Ahmed stood silently, staring at the ruins of the home he had built with his bare hands. There would be no more Eid in that house. No more laughter. No more dancing in pink dresses. Life as we knew it would be no more.

How to bear the unbearable

The loss of Diana and thousands of Palestinian children just like her, is unfathomable. Ahmed and Sabrine will never be the same. Their lives are shattered. Their hearts forever broken.

We go on with our lives, but people do not recover from this kind of trauma. We are paralyzed by our grief and can no longer envision the future without our children. Our little cousins. Our brothers and sisters. Our tiny friends.

In the days that followed, the world moved on. Israeli news reported the airstrike that murdered Diana as “collateral damage.” Military spokesmen claimed they were targeting a weapons cache. But there were no weapons in Diana’s hands. Only a green balloon and candy.

Diana’s only remaining toy from her stolen childhood. Photo: Farida Algoul

Incredibly, Diana was but one of hundreds of children killed by Israel that month. Like thousands of other parents, Sabrine and Ahmed are devastated by the tragic and completely unnecessary loss of their beloved daughter.

What is happening to our beautiful children is beyond words. It is beyond the most evil and outrageous of imaginations.

Those who support this genocide. Those who choose to look away. And those who remain silent for the sake of their comfortable lives. Someday they will be judged and must be held accountable for the loss of an entire generation.

I pray for the day when the world sees us and recognizes our humanity. The day when the world finally rises up to stop Israel. To stop the obscene mass slaughter of children who were guilty of only one thing in their short, innocent lives—of having been born in Gaza. This should not be a death sentence.