Israel Murders Yaqeen Hammad, Child Journalist and 21st-Century Anne Frank
Recent days have seen an intensification of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Israeli atrocities and crimes against humanity are now taken for granted. Still, the Zionist state manages to reach new heights of barbarism. Dr. Alaa al-Najjar, a pediatrician in Gaza, saw Israel kill nine of her 10 children May 23. Another video this week shows paramedics pulling charred, shredded corpses of nine children out of the rubble.
Though the Gaza genocide encompasses countless tragedies, one recent example stands out in part due to how Zionists have cynically weaponized the Nazi extermination of European Jews to defend their own crimes. On May 23, Israel killed Yaqeen Hammad, an 11-year-old child journalist and humanitarian activist who had documented the genocide taking place around her through Instagram videos. The Zionist regime has now forever silenced Yaqeen.
Yaqeen’s murder made me think of Anne Frank. Like Yaqeen, Frank was a young girl who gained renown for documenting the genocide taking place around her. Public education in the same western states currently supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza have often used Frank’s story to teach the Holocaust. I vividly remember watching the 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank in high school.
Frank was a German-born Jewish girl whose family emigrated to the Netherlands after Hitler’s rise to power. In her diary, she described her family’s efforts to hide from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic. Eventually the Gestapo discovered the Frank family, arrested Anne, and transported her to their concentration camp at Auschwitz and then to Bergen-Belsen, where she died presumably of typhus.
Hammad spent her entire life living under Israel’s siege and brutal occupation of the Gaza Strip. She managed to reach tens of thousands of people through her Instagram videos, in which she highlighted efforts to help orphans and displaced families. Israel killed her in an airstrike on her neighbourhood of Deir al-Balah.
Don’t let Israel’s apologists tell you that Hammad’s death was an accident, mere “collateral damage” in their “war against Hamas.” Western states routinely conduct surveillance flights over Gaza and share their intelligence with Israel, which has blatantly targeted anyone who threatens to expose its war crimes.
Israel, let’s recall, assassinated Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh of Al Jazeera and sent police to attack mourners at her funeral. They killed Fatima Hassouna, a 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist, and 10 of her family members after the announcement that a film focused on her life in Gaza, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, would premiere at Cannes. Masked Israeli settlers attacked Basel Adra, the first Palestinian to win an Oscar for co-writing and directing the documentary film No Other Land, and Israeli military forces subsequently kidnapped and detained him. Israel has openly targeted children and journalists.
Still, Israel’s murder of Yaqeen Hammad speaks volumes about the nature of the Zionist state. Muhammed Shehada, a visiting fellow of the European Council on Foreign Relations, noted, “Someone in the Israeli leadership thought it was a good idea to bomb this activist; an entire chain of command executed this strike.” Israel has forfeited the benefit of the doubt thanks to its civilian and military leaders, starting with Benjamin Netanyahu, openly stating their genocidal intentions.
In that context, Israel killing Yaqeen Hammad parallels the Nazi killing of Anne Frank. If anything, it’s more conscious and deliberate. Zionism, like Nazism, is a far-right ideology based on extreme nationalism, racism, militarism, and subjugation of “inferiors”. There is one difference between Frank and Hammad: Frank wrote her diary purely as an expression of her own thoughts and never meant for it to be published. Hammad shared the stories of Gaza on Instagram as a media activist and youngest member of the Ouena Collective, a Palestinian charity dedicated to alleviating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by Israel’s genocidal war.
The response of Zionists to this 21st-century Anne Frank was to kill her, because that’s how Nazis operate. We can’t let Zionists keep exploiting the murder of European Jews to justify their own atrocities. Truly honouring Jewish victims of the Holocaust means that “never again” applies to everyone.