Hind Rajab’s Family Says Israel’s Investigation Into Hind’s Death Just a PR Ploy

“Even now, all I hear is her crying, ‘I’m scared,’ and her plea: ‘Come here, Mama, take me,’” Hind’s mother said.

By Sharon Zhang , 

Truthout

August 21, 2026

The grandmother of Hind Rajab holds a mobile phone displaying a picture of Hind on August 20, 2026.Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP via Getty Images

Hind Rajab’s mother has dismissed the Israeli military’s announcement this week that it is opening a supposed criminal investigation into the killing of her 5-year-old daughter, saying that it is nothing more than a PR move meant to distract from Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

“Why did the investigation and the acknowledgment of the shooting at Hind’s car and at the paramedics come only after more than two years?” Wesam Hamada, Hind’s mother, told the Associated Press on Friday. “It’s an attempt to distract from what’s happening in Gaza and improve the [Israeli] army’s image to the world. That’s it.”

On Wednesday, Israel’s military acknowledged that its soldiers played a role in the horrific series of events in January 2024, in which Hind, her 15-year-old cousin, and five members of their family were killed.

The military admitted to the slaughter of her adult family members, but did not take responsibility for the killing of Hind or her cousin Layan Hamada specifically, despite numerous independent investigations finding that they were shot by Israeli soldiers in a tank. Israeli soldiers have been found to be targeting children in Gaza, often with gunshots to the head, countless other times since Hind’s killing.

“I don’t trust the Israeli authorities, I don’t trust their government, and I don’t trust any justice system they have,” Hind’s mother said in an interview with NBC. “I don’t want an investigation used to whitewash anyone’s image.”

After Years of Denial, Israel Finally Admits to Role in Killing of Hind Rajab
Israel has maintained a PR campaign for years, supported by the US, denying its soldiers’ role in the brutal killing. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout  August 19, 2026

Hind’s grandmother, who is also named Hind Rajab, similarly dismissed the investigation. “For us this is not an admission but rather an attempt by the Israeli army to justify to the world how it committed the crime and how they executed Hind,” she told AFP. “The army is trying to justify its position to the world, claiming that what happened was a mistake and that the soldiers who committed it will be prosecuted.”

An Israeli tank sprayed the car carrying Hind and her family members with hundreds of bullets, despite having a clear line of sight to the children inside, an investigation by Forensic Architecture found.

After her family was killed, Hind remained trapped in the car with their bodies for hours, a tank looming nearby, as Palestinian Red Crescent workers waited for the Israeli military to give clearance for them to rescue her. In those hours, she spoke with rescuers and her mother on the phone. Recordings from the Palestinian Red Crescent documented the terrifying last hours of the little girl’s life before she was gunned down.

“I’m so scared, please come. Please call someone to come and take me,” Hind said to emergency dispatchers.

Rajab noted that Israel only acknowledged Hind’s killing because her harrowing phone call to rescuers became so widely known, pointing out that there are many other similarly horrific killings that Israel will never follow up on.

Hind’s family still mourns her death.

“She died with the most heartbreaking sound I’ve ever heard,” Hamada told NBC. “Even now, all I hear is her crying, ‘I’m scared,’ and her plea: ‘Come here, Mama, take me.’”

Hamada has demanded an independent investigation that will actually lead to answers. “I want to know who killed my daughter, who killed my family members, and who killed the paramedics who went to rescue her. Who gave the orders? Who fired the shots?”

 Islam Beyond Phobia

Hind Rajab, the 5-year-old killed in Gaza, should have been enough

(RNS) — Hind Rajab was killed while pleading for help in a car with her six dead relatives. On Wednesday (Aug. 19), the Israeli military acknowledged for the first time its firing on the car. 

Hind Rajab. (Photo courtesy of Palestine Red Crescent Society)

Omar Suleiman

August 20, 2026 

RNS

(RNS) — One child. Five years old. Trapped inside a car in Gaza City surrounded by the bodies of her dead relatives, pleading into a telephone for someone to come save her.

“Come take me. Please, will you come?”

The world heard Hind Rajab’s voice. We heard her fear. We knew rescuers were trying to reach her. The Palestine Red Crescent Society dispatched two paramedics after coordinating their passage to reach her.

They never reached Hind.

Twelve days later, Hind was found dead in the bullet-riddled car alongside six members of her family. The two paramedics were found dead in their destroyed ambulance roughly 50 meters away. A subsequent forensic investigation, conducted in collaboration with Al Jazeera, mapped 335 bullet holes in the family’s vehicle and concluded that the damage to the ambulance was consistent with Israeli munitions and that Israeli military vehicles were nearby.

On Wednesday (Aug. 19), more than two and a half years after she was killed, the Israeli military acknowledged that its troops had fired on the car and announced a criminal investigation into the family and medical workers’ deaths. The announcement comes after the military initially denied that its forces were even present near the vehicles or within firing range. The Hind Rajab Foundation, which has pursued the case internationally, dismissed the investigation as an attempt to create the appearance of accountability after years of impunity.

But there is a question before the question of whether this investigation will produce justice. That is: Why did we need thousands more dead children before Hind’s death was treated as something worthy of accountability?

Hind should have been enough because one child should always be enough.

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RELATED: Hind Rajab: The Anne Frank of Gaza’s genocide

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The Quran teaches that “whoever unjustly takes a single life, it is as though he has killed all of humanity, and whoever saves one life, it is as though he has saved all of humanity.”

I have reflected on that verse countless times during these years of mass death. God does not allow us to hide the individual inside the statistic.

One life contains a world. One child contains a world. One terrified little girl waiting for an ambulance should contain enough humanity to stop armies, move governments and awaken consciences.

Instead, Hind became one name among thousands. Her story was later dramatized into the award-winning film “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which moved audiences to tears with the audio of Hind pleading for rescue. The film received a lengthy standing ovation at its Venice Film Festival premiere and won the festival’s Grand Jury Prize.

The emotional response was overwhelming — but it also raised a harder question: If we needed a film to feel what was already happening in real time, what does that say about what we ignored? And if we had to make a film for every Palestinian child, or stand and pray a funeral (janaza) prayer for every one of them, would the world still be able to function, still be able to look away?

UNICEF reported that as of Feb. 3 of this year, at least 21,289 Palestinian children had been killed in Gaza since October 2023. Even after what the world called a ceasefire, Palestinian children continued to die. This month, UNICEF reported at least 300 children were killed during the 300 days following the ceasefire announcement in October 2025.

Bodies of members of the Hassayna and Abu Sharia families, killed in an Israeli strike in 2023 and recently recovered from the rubble, are draped in Palestinian flags during their funeral in Gaza City, Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

One child a day, even after a ceasefire was announced.

What does it say about us that Hind was not enough?

There is another Quranic passage I cannot stop thinking about when I think of Hind.

In describing the Day of Judgment, God paints a haunting scene: “And when the girl-child that was buried alive is asked for what sin she was killed.”

The verse is striking because God does not ask the murderer first. He asks the murdered child. The girl whose life society decided was disposable is brought forward before all of creation. The crime that people normalized on Earth becomes an indictment before God.

For what crime was she killed?

I imagine Hind being asked that question.

What was your crime, Hind?

Was it being Palestinian? Was it being born in Gaza? Was it sitting in a car? Was it surviving the bullets that killed the people around you? Was it asking someone to come get you?

There is no military justification that can make that question disappear. No internal investigation can bury it. No press release can answer it. Criminals can’t investigate themselves or issue statements to make it better.

One day, Hind herself gets to put her criminals on trial before God. But will we also be on trial for indifference? 

Hind Rajab should have been enough.

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RELATED: Israel is building a miles-long earthen barrier inside Gaza, entrenching its division

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And accountability has certainly not been enough. It is not merely whether a soldier is disciplined or a government publishes an investigation. Accountability means believing that no victim disappears simply because the powerful have moved on.

The Quran’s insistence on the value of a single life is especially necessary in an age of mass death because numbers can become their own form of anesthesia.

Twenty thousand children. Two hundred journalists. Thousands of amputees.

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NEW: Bring more puzzles and play to your week with RNS Games

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Eventually, the human mind protects itself by turning people into arithmetic.

But Hind was not arithmetic.

She had a voice. We heard it. She was afraid. We heard that too. She waited for adults to save her. And we know how the story ended.

The question now is not merely whether the Israeli military can credibly investigate itself. Human rights organizations and journalists will rightly scrutinize that process. Israel’s record gives ample reason for skepticism. The more important question for the rest of us is why the killing of one little girl was not enough to force a moral reckoning in the first place.

If Hind had been enough, perhaps thousands of children would be alive.

The Quran does not say whoever kills thousands has killed humanity. It says whoever kills one. It also says whoever saves one life, it’s as if they’ve saved all of humanity. So perhaps that’s what we can now hold onto.

Saving another child from Hind’s fate should be enough to keep acting.

Because God knows something about us that we repeatedly forget: Once we permit ourselves to explain away the destruction of one innocent life, we have already crossed the moral boundary that makes the next one easier to explain away.

And when the girl who waited in that car is finally asked, “For what crime were you killed?” the rest of us should fear the questions that will be asked of those who heard her voice and still allowed thousands of children to follow her.

Shaken Baby Syndrome Has Been Largely Debunked. Courts Are Still Catching Up.


Katie Smith, whose murder conviction was based on what’s increasingly seen as junk science, is fighting for her freedom.

By Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg , 

Truthout/TheAppeal

August 22, 2026

mstroz via Getty Images

By the time Mason Tucker Smith was 2 years old, his mother, Mary Katherine Smith, had taken him to the doctor dozens of times.

Tucker had frequent ear infections, high fevers, and episodes of vomiting. On at least six occasions, he had seizures, but the doctors repeatedly reassured his mother, who goes by Katie, that these were benign “breath-holding spells” that would resolve on their own.

On the day of his collapse, July 30, 2014, Tucker had another seizure while Katie’s housemate, Jeremy Kitchens, was watching him in their bedroom and Katie was making dinner, according to her statement to the police.

As she approached the bedroom door, she heard a “thud.” Katie entered the room and Kitchens told her that Tucker was having another “episode.” Katie told police that she found Tucker unconscious on the ground. Believing that this was another breath-holding episode, she picked him up and put him on the bed. She left him in Kitchens’s care while she drove her daughter to meet a friend. While she was gone, Tucker vomited.

She returned to the house about 20 minutes later and checked Tucker’s oxygen level. When it began to drop, she called 911 and attempted to resuscitate him.

At the hospital, a physician concluded Tucker had been shaken. He was declared dead on August 2 and Katie was charged with his murder.

Two years later, Katie went to trial in Richmond County, Georgia, and was found guilty. The judge sentenced her to life in prison.

Shaken baby syndrome (SBS), also known as abusive head trauma (AHT), has been largely debunked, with one New Jersey judge calling it “akin to ‘junk science.’” While some courts have started to take a more critical look at SBS/AHT cases, prosecutions have continued and many people are still fighting their convictions.

The so-called triad of symptoms associated with SBS/AHT — bleeding around the eyes, bleeding between the skull and brain, and brain swelling — can be caused by strokes, short-distance falls, seizures, and disease, among other things.

Katie’s attorneys with the Southern Center for Human Rights say their investigation has revealed that she was convicted of a crime that never occurred.

Experts retained by her legal team — a neurologist and a forensic pathologist — have concluded that Tucker died of undiagnosed epilepsy, which was caused by an undetected arteriovenous malformation (AVM) in his brain. AVM is a life-threatening condition that typically develops in utero, in which a person has abnormally tangled blood vessels that disrupt blood flow, deprive tissue of oxygen, and face risk of rupture.

Forty-four people have been exonerated in SBS/AHT cases, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Katie’s attorneys have filed a motion for a new trial and, on August 24, they will present their new evidence before the Superior Court of Richmond County. The Augusta District Attorney’s Office is opposing Katie’s petition. The office did not respond to emails or calls seeking comment.

“Tucker’s death was a tragedy, not a crime,” Katie’s lawyers wrote in their motion. “Tucker was sick from birth, and was living with an undiagnosed and untreated deadly brain condition.”
Tucker’s Medical Records

Truthout reviewed Tucker’s medical records, which total about 278 pages. They reveal that Katie took him to the pediatrician more than 25 times, in addition to visits to specialists and the emergency room.

The physicians reassured Katie that Tucker was a healthy child. They told her that when he became upset he held his breath until he passed out, but that this was nothing to be concerned about.

Tucker’s first witnessed seizure occurred at daycare when he was five months old. Katie picked him up from daycare and took him to the pediatrician.

“Patient was reported to have had eyes roll back and lose consciousness while eating baby food in a highchair (sort of slumped),” the doctor wrote.

The pediatrician sent him to the hospital for an overnight observation. During the observation, Tucker “ate and slept well,” according to the medical records. Katie told the doctor that Tucker’s father, who had died shortly after Tucker’s death, and nephew each had experienced one seizure. The report does not recommend any further evaluation.

After his second seizure, which also occurred at daycare, his pediatrician referred him for an electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures electrical activity in the brain. The EEG report states that it was normal.

In her affidavit to the court, defense expert Heather Ravvin McKee, a neurologist who specializes in epilepsy, says research shows that “a single routine EEG only has an approximately 29-55 percent chance” of showing abnormal brain waves.

Despite the results of the EEG, Tucker should have been treated for epilepsy after the second seizure at the latest, she wrote.

Tucker had another seizure a few months later in March of 2013. Then, on July 20, 2013, when Tucker was 15 months old, he experienced a seizure that lasted between 15 and 20 minutes. He was still seizing when he and Katie arrived at the hospital, according to his medical records.

Notes from the hospital state that he “was bedridden” because he “could not rise from the bed without assistance, could not ambulate, and could not sit in a chair or wheelchair without support restraints.” Yet, he was discharged the next day. Katie was instructed to make a follow-up appointment with Tucker’s pediatrician.

Less than two weeks later, Katie took Tucker to see a pediatric neurologist. His report is riddled with errors. He wrote that Tucker was born full-term (he was premature) and that he had never been hospitalized, although he had been admitted to the neurologist’s own institution just 11 days earlier.

He diagnosed Tucker with breath-holding episodes and told Katie that Tucker would grow out of them. “I do not think these are seizures or epilepsy,” he wrote in his report.

On July 23, 2014, a week before Tucker’s final collapse, Katie and Tucker returned to the pediatrician. Tucker had been vomiting, was nauseous, and was experiencing headaches. The doctor told Katie to keep him hydrated. However, this may have been a sign that something more serious was at play. Vomiting can occur as part of a seizure, following a seizure, or can be a sign of increased pressure in the brain, according to neurologist McKee, the defense expert.
The Prosecution’s Case

Misogyny and junk science collided at Katie’s trial. Katie was a single parent working as a hospice nurse. Her husband, Tucker’s father, died by suicide when Tucker was just two months old. After his death, Katie and her children moved in with Kitchens, a friend from high school.

At trial, prosecutors portrayed Katie as an uncaring mother who neglected Tucker’s medical needs and prioritized her friendship with Kitchens over her children. Katie did not take the stand.

Vilifying mothers is a common prosecutorial tactic in cases where women are accused of crimes that likely never occurred, according to Valena Beety, author of Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity.

“The woman is wrongly convicted based on that confluence of [false] forensic evidence and gender bias,” Beety recently told The Appeal.

Katie and Tucker Smith on August 12, 2012.Provided by the Southern Center for Human Rights

Kitchens testified for the prosecution and relayed essentially the same account that Katie had provided to the police. The prosecutor asked Kitchens if he had not killed Tucker, who did? Kitchens replied, “I guess Katie did … She was the only other one there.” On cross-examination, the defense accused Kitchens of killing Tucker.

Emergency personnel testified that Katie was “unnaturally calm” when they arrived.

“We’ve had kids locked in cars on cool days and the parents were much more emotional about the situation than that day,” a sergeant with the fire department told the jury.

Prosecutors and police often make assumptions about how a person should respond to a crisis. Among wrongful convictions, there are numerous examples of law enforcement presuming that too much or too little emotion was indicative of an innocent person’s guilt.

Katie’s attorney, Mark Loudon-Brown, noted in a phone interview with Truthout that Katie was a nurse who is trained to remain calm in crises.

The centerpiece of the prosecution’s case was the testimony of two medical experts who told the jury that Tucker had been shaken.

Mary Lynn Sheram, the hospital physician who first diagnosed Tucker with SBS/AHT, testified that Tucker’s symptoms are “shown in the literature to be 100 percent as non-accidental trauma.” The bleeding around his eyes “makes it a hallmark for abusive head injury.”

Nearly identical statements have been made in numerous SBS/AHT cases that have resulted in exonerations.

Timothy Gonzalez was convicted in an SBS case in 2016, the same year as Katie’s conviction, and was exonerated earlier this year. At his trial, a child abuse pediatrician testified that there was no “accidental explanation” and no “medical explanation” for his daughter’s injuries. In 2022, the court tossed out his conviction. At his retrial earlier this year, his attorneys presented evidence that Gonzalez’s daughter had suffered from a respiratory infection that led to encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, which then developed into sepsis. On March 11, the jury acquitted Gonzalez of all charges.

The second medical expert for the prosecution in Katie’s case was Lora Darrisaw, the director of pediatric forensic pathology at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

“[W]e have no plausible accidental event that would account for the findings that I had,” she told the jury.

Several years before Katie’s trial, Darrisaw was the star witness in the murder trial of two Georgia parents, Ashley and Albert Debelbot, who were accused of killing their three-day-old newborn. She ruled the death a homicide by blunt force trauma. In 2021, the parents were exonerated after their attorneys uncovered evidence that their baby had been born with abnormalities in the brain which led to her death.
Openings for Exoneration

The medical community’s understanding of SBS/AHT has changed significantly in the years since Tucker’s death. Since 2014, 27 people convicted in SBS/AHT cases have been exonerated, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Last year, in a first-of-its-kind decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court banned testimony on SBS from the state’s courtrooms. In July, in another Georgia case, Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Kimberly A. Gallant granted Danyel Smith’s request for a new trial, noting SBS/AHT is no longer treated as a “presumptive diagnosis,” and that “current medical and scientific standards” require providers to consider “alternative, non-abusive causes before concluding abuse.” (Danyel is also represented by the Southern Center for Human Rights. He and Katie are not related.)

“Today, the diagnostic approach is different,” Katie’s attorney, Loudon-Brown, told Truthout. “You might keep the idea of non-accidental trauma in your head, but you would have to go further. You would have to look at what’s going on with Tucker.”


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg is an independent journalist and founder of The Carceral Report. Follow her on Bluesky @elizabethweill.bsky.social and Instagram @elizabethweillgreenberg.

Trump Envoy Tom Barrack in Hot Seat for Admitting Israeli Occupation of Golan Heights

Barrack’s comments—since retracted amid Republican calls for his resignation—directly contradicted the president’s recognition of Israel’s illegal occupation of Syrian territory conquered in 1967.


US Special Envoy Tom Barrack (left) speaks with Syrian Foreign Minister Assad al-Shaibani in Ankara, Türkiye on April 9, 2026.
(Photo by Tom Barrack/X)

Brett Wilkins
Aug 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Türkiye and special presidential envoy for Syria and Iraq, on Sunday retracted his acknowledgment of Israel’s illegal occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights amid mounting Republican calls for his resignation.

Directly contradicting Trump’s formal recognition of Israel’s unlawful 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights, Barrack said during a Friday interview with podcaster Mario Nawfal that Israel would face difficulties if it moved to unlawfully annex parts of southern Lebanon it invaded and currently occupies.
nate Dem Says Huckabee Must Step Down for Groveling to Israeli Government

“In the Golan with Syria, they still occupy the Golan against the [United Nations] resolutions, against all of the international order, which has said the Golan is Syria’s,” Barrack noted. He also floated the possibility that last week’s Israeli strike on an air base in northwestern Syria may have been an attempt at “baiting” Türkiye.

Israel invaded and captured the strategically important Golan Heights during the Six-Day War in 1967, ethnically cleansing more than 100,000 Syrians and eventually annexing the conquered territory, a move unanimously rejected by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 497. Since then, tens of thousands of Israeli settlers have unlawfully colonized the Syrian territory.

UN Security Council Resolution 242 demands that Israel withdraw from the Golan Heights and all occupied Palestinian territories as well.

No country recognized Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights until US President Donald Trump did so during his first term. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed his appreciation for the move by naming one of the dozens of illegal Jewish settlements in the territory Trump Heights.

Barrack subsequently reversed himself, telling The Associated Press on Sunday that “United States policy on the Golan was set by President Trump in 2019 and is unchanged.”

This, as Israeli leaders denounced Barrack’s remarks and Republican politicians and pundits called for his firing or resignation.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said the ambassador’s comments were “full of inaccuracies” and “contradict the position of Trump himself regarding the Golan Heights.”

US Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said on X: “The Senate confirmed [Barrack] to enact the PRESIDENT’S AGENDA, which millions of Americans voted for. It seems the ambassador forgot that or failed to do his research, so here’s a refresher for him… President Trump has been CLEAR about Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights for years!”

Far-right provocateur and Trump confidant Laura Loomer called Barrack “absolutely brain dead.”

“Tom Barrack is hands down the most retarded ambassador nominated by President Trump,” she contended. “He should resign for his lack of understanding of US foreign policy.”

Meanwhile, some experts positively noted Barrack’s short-lived acknowledgment of what the international community has long maintained.

“[Barrack] said the Golan is occupied Syrian land under UN resolutions. That is simply what the UN says. It has said it since 1967. Most of the world agrees,” political analyst Michael Arizanti said on X.

“Israel’s foreign minister said his remarks were full of inaccuracies,” he continued. “Professional lunatic Laura Loomer demanded he resign and claimed he was compromised by Arab money, with no evidence at all! Sen. Rick Scott told him to do his research. And because Barrack had criticized Israel’s strike on a Syrian air base the week before, he was accused of siding with the bad guys.”

“Four attacks,” Arizanti added. “Not one about the actual policy!”

From Iraq to Gaza, We Are Failing in Our Debt to the Child

What heart refuses to protect and even worse, intentionally targets “the child” along with the people and institutions that provide the care and protection necessary to sustain the child’s life?


Palestinian children hold a press conference outside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Palestine on November 7, 2024.
(Photo: Institute for Middle East Understanding/X)

Claudia Lefko
Aug 26, 2026

Common Dreams


“Whereas mankind owes to the child the best it has to give…”—United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child, 1959

There were Iraqi children before Gaza, before Hind. Before Iran and the Minab School bombing. Iraqi children dying by the thousands, as many as 500,000 as a result of US-supported UN economic sanctions and wars in Iraq. Governments expressed “concern.” International scholars and lawyers called it a genocide. Former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, called it a price worth paying.

Who are we; what universe is this where one writes again and again in support of children, of “the child” as if they were some political cause. It’s the new abnormal, where everyday brings news of children suffering, injured and dying, in Iraq, in Ukraine, and Sudan. In Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, in Iran and Lebanon to name a few.

The child is trapped in a car, shot dead; they are buried under the rubble of their bombed-out house, of their school or the hospital where they have just been born. They’re wounded, missing eyes, arms, and legs; missing parents and siblings, aunts and uncles.They’re missing all the little as well as the significant “stuff” that is, that should be, a child’s life. They’re sick and there are no doctors or medicines; they’re hungry and there’s no food or clean water. There’s no school, no mosque, no church, and no more neighborhood. Out of a house, in a tent or on the street, forcibly moved from here to there. What sort of world is this, what kind of culture. What heart refuses to protect and even worse, intentionally targets “the child” along with the people and institutions that provide the care and protection necessary to sustain the child’s life?


We know, everyone knows this is not the world “fit for Children” promised by global leaders at the UN some 30 years ago, yet it continues.

While instinct—some call it maternal—helps insure the future of a species, caring about and for one’s own offspring doesn’t necessarily translate to caring about all children. This enormous responsibility has been taken up by governments and international organizations; children need guaranteed special protections because they are “…innocent, vulnerable, and dependent.” The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1990), the most widely endorsed human rights document in history, committed world leaders to giving children the “first call” on human and financial resources and know-how to address critical issues such as: poverty, education, child and maternal health, and protection during armed conflicts. With great fanfare, they reaffirmed these aspirations, calling for a world “fit” for children in 2002 at the UN Special Session on Children, the largest ever gathering for a UN Special Session.

The disconnect of words to actions and to the actual situation for children in 2002, as the Special Session convened, was not lost on those of us who cared about Iraq and Iraqi children. An estimated half million had died. The alarming increase in birth defects and childhood cancers was stressing a medical system under siege. The overall health of Iraqi children as measured by the Under 5 Mortality Rate (U5MR) “…the single most significant indicator of the state of a nation’s children…” had declined by 160% in the decade since the CRC. It was the largest decline in well-being by far for children in any country in the world. And this, like the overall destruction of Iraq and Iraqi society was brought on by war and sustained by the severe US-supported UN economic sanctions imposed by the very agency pledging to take responsibility for the world’s children.

International law failed to protect Iraqi children; it has failed Palestinian children for decades despite their well-documented fragility under Israeli occupation. And now, we watch as the already precarious “child” in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank suffers unimaginable atrocities.“Atrocity in the ordinary sense of the term, as evoking simply the shock and horror that most would feel in the face of such enormous and gratuitous human damage; a circumstance in which we would be hard-pressed not to disparage the justifications” (Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions, 2010).

UN and human rights organizations wring their hands and issue condemnations. Some do not call this a genocide. The majority that might help to end this catastrophe has stood by—including women, mothers, and global health and human rights organizations—and watched the occupation and genocide kill and maim thousands and thousands of Palestinian children and their extended families. Watched as the very country is rendered uninhabitable. Stood silently by as the very ones seeking to protect Palestinian children are treated and prosecuted as terrorists.

The moving promises of UN declarations and their aspirations on behalf of children have come to nothing. We’re being subjected to a form of global violence Joy Gordon warned about, that of “a single nation,” or in today’s world, two nations—the US and Israel—“hijacking an institution of international governance, substituting their own agenda in place of the interests and will of the international community.” This should not stand.

According to the Ministry of Health, 73,386 Palestinians—including 21,000 children—were killed in the Gaza Strip and another 174,256 were injured between October 7, 2023 and August 9, 2026. This includes 1,258 fatalities and 4,295 injuries between the announcement of a ceasefire agreement on October 10, 2025 and August 9, 2026. We know, everyone knows this is not the world “fit for Children” promised by global leaders at the UN some 30 years ago, yet it continues. I’m at a loss. What can be said that hasn’t been said, or written that hasn’t been written. What poem or investigative article, what personal narrative could possibly bring an end to this carnage.

In 1915 Henry James declared, “The war has used up words, they have weakened, they have deteriorated…” Dr. Salma Al-Hadad, head of the pediatric oncology unit at Children’s Welfare Teaching Hospital in Baghdad since 1992, shared his view. After years of interviews revealing the struggles to save increasing numbers of patients with increasingly difficult cancers without even the most basic medicines and technology, she went silent. “The very hard times I’ve experienced over these years,” she wrote sometime in a mid-2000 email, “have rendered me silent. I find no comment.”

The moral universe owes a deep debt to the people of Palestine who have not gone silent, or ceased to document the atrocities against them. They pay for this every day with their lives, and in many cases the lives of other family members. I urge myself on. We have to repay that debt by breaking the silence even when we feel there is nothing more to say. Silence cannot be an option for those who are suffering under the weight of the atrocities being committed against children.

“All people,” wrote Leo Tolstoy, “live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people.” If we truly care about “the child,” we have to increase our efforts on their behalf.



Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Claudia Lefko
Claudia Lefko, a long-time educator, activist and advocate for children, is the founding director of The Iraqi Children's Art Exchange and its project, Baghdad Resolve: An International Collaboration to Improve Cancer Care in Iraq.
Full Bio >

Hormuz Crisis Boosts Appeal of $42-Billion Tanzania LNG

By Charles Kennedy - Aug 25, 2026

Equinor sees a multi-billion LNG export project in Tanzania becoming more attractive for development amid the Middle East conflict that has crippled liquefied natural gas supply through the Strait of Hormuz, a senior executive at the Norwegian energy major said on Tuesday.

However, Equinor and its co-operator of the project, Shell, have been locked in difficult negotiations with the government and authorities in Tanzania for years and the provisional Tanzania LNG project has not advanced much this decade.

“You don't want to wait too long to put new LNG volumes on the market, so maybe now is a good time to get on with it,” Philippe Mathieu, Executive Vice President, Exploration & Production International, at Equinor, said at an energy conference in the Norwegian city of Stavanger, as carried by Reuters.

The Hormuz crisis and the now-dead assumption that Qatar and other Gulf producers are the most reliable suppliers of oil and gas make the project in Tanzania, estimated to cost $42 billion, more attractive, the executive said.

“It means you are producing LNG in an area which is not exposed to these kinds of geopolitical challenges,” Mathieu added.

Shell and Equinor, the joint operators of the project, have been pursuing for years agreements to start developing the planned $42-billion LNG export project in Tanzania. The project for connecting natural gas discoveries offshore Tanzania with an export terminal on its coast has been a decade in the making.

But the international oil and gas majors have failed to reach so far detailed and definitive agreements with Tanzania’s government about the terms and conditions in what could be the country’s biggest-ever foreign investment.

After buying BG Group in 2016, Shell became the operator of two offshore blocks in Tanzania, Block 1 and Block 4, together with its partners Medco Energi (Ophir Energy) and Pavilion Energy. A total of 16 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas has been discovered in the blocks.

Equinor, for its part, started exploration drilling activities in Block 2 offshore Tanzania in 2011 and has made nine discoveries with estimated volumes of more than 20 Tcf of gas in place.

TotalEnergies Backs Two Major Oil Pipelines to Bypass Hormuz

By Charles Kennedy - Aug 24, 2026

TotalEnergies will invest in two major oil pipelines designed to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, backing Abu Dhabi’s expansion of its Fujairah export route and a planned pipeline carrying Iraqi crude through Syria to the Mediterranean.

CEO Patrick Pouyanné announced the commitments Monday at the ONS energy conference in Norway, two months after saying investment in alternative Gulf export routes had become an “absolute priority” for TotalEnergies following the paralysis of Hormuz during the Iran war. The company has not disclosed how much it will invest or what stakes it will take in either project.

“We will become partners of the pipeline moving from Baghdad to Syria, but I will also invest in Abu Dhabi, in doubling the Fujairah pipeline,” Pouyanné said, according to Reuters.

The UAE’s existing Habshan-Fujairah pipeline can carry up to 1.8 million barrels per day from Abu Dhabi’s oil fields to the Gulf of Oman, allowing those barrels to reach international markets without passing through Hormuz. Abu Dhabi plans to roughly double its bypass capacity by next year as the Iran war exposes the limits of the existing system.

TotalEnergies is making a similar hedge in Iraq, proposing an Iraq-Syria pipeline that would give Baghdad a Mediterranean export route for crude that currently leaves predominantly through its southern Persian Gulf terminals. The project could cost around $15 billion and take at least four years to complete, according to recent estimates.

“We are today probably the largest trader of oil from Iraq or from Qatar … and it’s clear to me that I need to put a certain amount of equity to invest in an alternative route,”  Pouyanné told the conference. 

Before the war, roughly a fifth of global oil supply moved through Hormuz. Six months of severely disrupted tanker traffic have now spurred project development into overdrive.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

Ukraine Hits Another Russian Refinery as Fuel Crunch Worsens

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Aug 25, 2026

Ukraine continues to pound Russian refineries in nearly daily drone attacks that damage refining infrastructure, deepen the fuel crisis in Russia, and tighten global fuel markets.

In the latest attack on Monday night, Ukrainian forces hit the 180,000-barrels-per-day Afipsky refinery in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar.

A fire broke out at the refinery as a result of the strike, the governor of the Krasnodar region, Veniamin Kondratiev, wrote in a post on Telegram on Tuesday.  

At least 10 homes were damaged in the Afipsky village and drone debris killed two people at the local railway station, the governor added.

The Afipsky refinery, owned by privately-held firm ForteInvest, has been targeted by Ukrainian strikes before. The most recent attack on the refinery was last month as Ukraine has intensified its campaign to reduce domestic fuel supply in Russia.

Russia has been suffering from a gasoline and diesel crunch since the spring, when Ukraine intensified its drone attacks at Russian refineries, aiming to cripple fuel supply to the front lines and to the domestic Russian market.

The drone hits on refineries, including deep into Russian territory more than 1,000 miles from the border with Ukraine, have become a nearly daily occurrence.

Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who is in charge of energy issues including Russia’s OPEC+ talks, sought to alleviate concerns on Monday, saying that some oil refineries in Russia have resumed operations after repairs, which could soon raise supply on the domestic market. 

Russia has been scrambling to ease concerns amid the crisis that has seen fuel rationing in many regions, gas stations in big cities running out of fuel, and long queues at many gas stations.

Russia’s diesel and gasoil exports have crashed so far this month to the lowest in many years, as Moscow extended restrictions on diesel exports amid the fuel crisis. The lack of Russian diesel adds to Middle East supply disruptions to tighten the global middle distillate market.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Ship's Cook Survives Drone Attack, Then Dies in Attack on Rescue Vessel

A Ukrainian strike drone flies past the Ural (Russian social media)

Published Aug 24, 2026 10:11 PM by The Maritime Executive

A series of Ukrainian drone strikes on two cargo ships off Novorossiysk left eight injured and one dead, according to local media in Turkey. The victim was the cook on the first vessel to be hit, was rescued by the second vessel, then was killed in a later strike on the second vessel. 

On August 18, the Turkish-owned, San Marino-flagged freighter Necibe (IMO 9548732) came under attack by Ukrainian drones while loading wheat off Tuapse. The 18 crewmembers abandoned ship safely and were rescued by the Turkish-owned ro/ro cargo ship Ural (IMO 7725386), an aging vessel flagged in Cameroon. 

On August 21, Ural - still located in the region - also came under attack by Ukraine's drone forces. This time the crewmembers were not so lucky: eight were injured and one, Ilker Lazoglu, lost his life. 

Lazoglu, 47, was the head cook aboard the Necibe and had been rescued from the initial attack by the crew of the Ural. 

"He called me when the ship [Necibe] was bombed. He said he was alive and that I shouldn't worry. He said that another ship would come soon to rescue him and that he would transfer to that ship [Ural]," Ilker Lazoglu's uncle Faruk told Turkish outlet Cumhuriyet. 

On the night of the 21st, Faruk Lazoglu got a call from a company official, who said that the Ural had been bombed as well and Ilker had been seriously wounded. He passed away before he could receive medical attention. He leaves behind two young daughters, his uncle said. 

The Ural has returned to Turkey to disembark the survivors and repatriate Ilker Lazoglu's remains. 

The repeat attacks illustrate the high risks for Turkish shipping in the Black Sea. Small Turkish coasters carry much of the region's cargo, and serve both Russian and Ukrainian routes. Turkish vessels have been hit by both of the belligerents, with multiple fatalities.

Ukraine has warned shipping interests to stay away from Russia's Black Sea ports, and says that these areas are inherently dangerous. 

“Our aim is not to kill civilians; civilians are not our target. Unfortunately, they are victims of war,” Ukrainian Ambassador to Ankara Naryman Dzhelialov told Turkish outlet Yetkin Report. “Before Russia attacked Ukraine, the Black Sea was a zone of peace. The Black Sea is not a safe place. Shipowners need to take this into account as well.”