Brett Wilkins
“What we are doing in Gaza is a
war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal
killing of civilians,” said former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Seven-year-old Palestinian girl Ward al-Sheikh Khalil is seen
trying to escape from the inferno following a May 26, 2025 Israeli
bombing of the Fahmi al-Jarjawi School in Gaza City, Palestine. Photo:
screen grab
Video
footage of a young girl trying to flee an inferno caused by a Monday Israeli
airstrike that killed dozens of Palestinians including her mother and siblings
sparked global outrage and calls for an immediate cease-fire in what one former
Israeli prime minister called a “war of extermination.”
Medical
officials in Gaza said that at least 36 people were killed by an Israel Defense
Forces (IDF) bombing of the Fahmi al-Jarjawi School in the al-Daraj
neighborhood of Gaza City. The Gaza Government Media Office (GMO) said that 18
children were killed in the “brutal massacre.”
“The
school was supposed to be a place of safety. Instead, it was turned into an
inferno,” Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told reporters. “We
heard desperate cries for help from people trapped alive inside the blaze, but
the fire was too intense. We couldn’t get to them.”
Video
recorded at the scene of the strike showed the silhouette of a young
girl—identified as 7-year-old Ward al-Sheikh Khalil—moving against the infernal
backdrop as she tried to escape the blaze. According to The National, paramedic
Hussein Muhaysin rushed in to rescue the child, whom he said “was moments away
from death.”
“When
we pulled her out, she was in shock, silent, trembling, unable to comprehend
what had just happened,” Muhaysin said. “We couldn’t bring ourselves to tell
her that her entire family was killed in the bombing.”
The
child’s mother and at least five siblings were reportedly killed in the
bombing.
“Only
her father survived, and he is now in critical condition,” said Muhaysin.
“We
see tragedy every day, but holding a child who has lost everything, who doesn’t
even know yet, that’s a kind of pain no one can explain,” he added.
The
IDF admitted to the bombing—one of 200 it said it carried out Monday—and
claimed it targeted “a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control center.” As
usual, no evidence was provided to support the claim.
Meanwhile
in the northern Gaza city of Jabalia, another predawn IDF strike reportedly
killed 19 people—mostly women and children—sheltering in the Abdel Rabbo family
home. Medical officials told reporters that recovery operations were still
underway on Monday afternoon, with charred and mangled bodies being pulled from
the rubble.
Moumen
Abdel Rabbo, who rushed to the scene following the attack, told The National:
“It was sudden. The house was completely flattened. Ambulances barely made it
through to recover the wounded and the dead. Some bodies are still trapped
under the rubble.”
Abdel
Rabbo said that Israeli bombing continued nearby and drones buzzed overhead as
first responders—who are often attacked and killed by Israeli “double-tap”
strikes—dug through the ruins in search of survivors and victims.
“How
can we search for survivors under fire?” he asked. “These were civilians;
mothers, toddlers, elderly people. This wasn’t a military target. It was our
home.”
The
GMO said Monday that more than 2,200 Palestinian families have been entirely
wiped out since October 2023.
The
U.S.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a statement
Monday condemning the school shelter bombing and Sunday’s “barbaric” killing of
two Red Cross workers—weapon contamination officer Ibrahim Eid and hospital
security guard Ahmad Abu Hilal—in an IDF airstrike on their home in Khan
Younis. The weekend bombing followed the March 23 massacre of 15 Palestinian
first responders including Red Crescent paramedics by Israeli ground troops in
Rafah.
“How
many more children, women, the elderly, journalists, healthcare workers, and
first responders must [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu slaughter
with American weapons before [U.S. President Donald] Trump forces him to accept
a permanent cease-fire deal that ends the genocide for good and frees all
captives?” asked CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad.
“Every
hour that Israel’s genocidal crimes continue with impunity—and with our
government’s complicity—adds more dishonor to a shameful period in the history
of our nation and the world,” Awad added.
Hamas,
which led the October 7, 2023 assault on Israel that left more than 1,100
Israelis and others dead—at least some of whom were killed by so-called ”
friendly fire” and under the intentionally fratricidal Hannibal Directive—is
believed to still be holding 23 living hostages of the 251 people it kidnapped
during the attack.
On
Monday, the Trump administration refuted reports that Hamas had agreed to a
cease-fire proposal by Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff under
which 10 hostages would be released in exchange for a 70-day truce.
Although
Witkoff told CNN Monday that the “deal is on the table” and that “Israel will
agree” to it, he subsequently walked back his claims. An unnamed Palestinian
official told The Times of Israel that Witkoff changed his mind on the proposed
deal. The envoy blamed Hamas for an unspecified “unacceptable” response to the
proposal, which he also claimed he never proffered.
Netanyahu—who
is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes including
extermination and forced starvation in Gaza—said Monday evening that he hopes
to be able to announce at least some progress toward a hostage release deal on
Tuesday and that his government “will not give up on the release of our
hostages, and if we do not achieve this in the coming days, we will achieve it
later.”
Israeli
forces are currently carrying out Operation Gideon’s Chariots, a campaign to
conquer, indefinitely occupy, and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza to
make way for possible Jewish recolonization.
Amid
IDF attacks including a Friday airstrike on the Khan Younis home of Drs. Hamdi
and Alaa al-Najjar that killed nine of the couple’s 10 children, former Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wrote that his country’s relentless obliteration of
Gaza amounted to “war crimes.”
“What
we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained,
brutal, and criminal killing of civilians,” said Olmert, who led Israel during
the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead war on Gaza. “We are doing this not because of
an accidental loss of control in a particular sector, not because of a
disproportionate outburst of fighters in some unit—but as a result of a policy
dictated by the government, knowingly, intentionally, viciously, maliciously,
recklessly.”
While
Israel has nominally allowed a trickle of aid to enter Gaza—where officials say
hundreds of people, mostly children and elderly, have starved to death in
recent days—officials said Sunday that only around 100 of the 46,200 trucks
scheduled to enter Gaza over the past 84 days have actually made it into the
besieged enclave.
Hamas
said Sunday that “the occupation orchestrates the crime of starvation in Gaza
and uses it as a tool to establish a political and field reality, under the
cover of misleading relief projects that have been rejected by the United
Nations and international organizations, due to lack of transparency and
minimal humanitarian standards.”
On
Sunday, Jake Wood, who led the controversial U.S.- and Israel-backed
organization established to distribute aid in Gaza, resigned, citing concerns
that the mission would violate basic “humanitarian principles.”
The
U.N.’s International Court of Justice is currently weighing a genocide case
brought by South Africa against Israel that cites the “complete siege” among
evidence of genocidal intent.
More
than 190,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israel’s 598-day
annihilation of Gaza, including at least 14,000 people who are missing and
feared dead and buried beneath rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
However, a peer-reviewed study published in January by the prestigious British
medical journal The Lancet found Gaza fatalities were likely undercounted by
41%.
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