I first heard the story of Hind Rajab a few days after her voice had gone silent. CNN published an article on February 10, 2024, that I came across while doing research for the daily updates I and the team at Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) produced about what was happening on the ground in Gaza and in Israel. The article was entitled, “Where is Hind? Calls for answers more than a week after rescuers go missing trying to save the trapped five-year-old.” 

Below is the account that I provided in my daily video update on Saturday, February 10, 2024. You can still view this video on our YouTube channel:

“Many around the world have followed Hind’s story these last few weeks as BBC and other international news outlets have told how she went missing in North Gaza.

She was last heard from in a phone call to aid workers. ‘I’m so scared, please come,’ were some of the last words five-year-old Hind Rajab said in a telephone call to rescuers after her family’s car came under fire in Gaza City. Trapped in the vehicle and surrounded by her dead relatives, for three hours she pleaded with the Red Crescent to save her.

It took several hours for the Red Crescent Society to be able to get permission from the Israeli military to be able to send an ambulance that was only about eight minutes away to rescue her on January 29, 2024…but days later both Hind and the ambulance were still missing.

The aid agency had lost contact with the ambulance dispatched to her aid on January 29, and the fate of its crew and Hind remained unknown. For days, the world waited to hear about her fate as aid workers sought to rescue her. Twelve days later, the picture became clear. 

Pictures in the news and media showed a small child wearing a dress with a purple tulle skirt and a multicolored flower headband over her dark curls. Her smile seemed shy, and her pink toy necklace reminds people that she’s a child just like any other - this child just happened to have the misfortune of being born in Gaza. 

Today, after 12 days, Hind’s family has said that she was found dead inside the car in the Tel al-Hawa area of Gaza City on Saturday morning.

Her family was finally able to reach her because Israeli forces withdrew from the area. Hind and everyone in the car were dead - her family said. 

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) added that it had located its bombed-out ambulance just meters away, and that its two paramedics had also been killed.

This is a small glimpse of what reality is like in Gaza … when we talk about the death of more than 11,000 children [as of January 2026, this death toll is much closer to 20,000 children] and an overall death toll approaching 30,000 people [as of January 2026 this has now surpassed 70,000 people] we need to tell and hear the stories about the people who are being killed.

Stories like this are why we must oppose the invasion going further south into Rafah and prevent more and more Palestinians from being displaced.”

This was the verbal report that I shared in February 2024. Over subsequent months, more information about Hind’s case was revealed. On April 16, 2024, the Washington Post published a harrowing report with forensic analysis that summarized the known details of what happened to Hind Rajab and the two paramedics, Yousef Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun. Hind was killed alongside her 44-year-old uncle, Bashar Hamada, and his 15-year-old daughter, Layan, in addition to four other family members. Prior to Hind’s voice recordings with the Red Crescent Society, one can hear the voice of Layan as she screamed for help amid sounds of intense gunfire. “They are shooting at us. The tank is right next to me. We’re in the car, the tank is right here,” Layan cried out in Arabic. She then screamed, and the phone went silent; the sounds of gunfire ended. 

The Washington Post investigation, according to their publication, “found Israeli armored vehicles were present in the area that afternoon. The Post additionally found that the gunfire audible as Hind and her cousin Layan begged for help and the extensive damage caused to the ambulance were consistent with Israeli weapons. The analysis is based on satellite imagery, contemporaneous dispatcher recordings, photos, and videos of the aftermath, interviews with 13 dispatchers, family members and rescue workers, and more than a dozen military, satellite, munitions, and audio experts who reviewed the evidence, as well as the IDF’s own statements.” 

Just over a month ago, January 29, 2026, marked the two-year anniversary of Hind’s death. To mark the occasion, Hind’s mother, Wesam Hamada, published an opEd in the New York Times called “No Child Deserves to Die Like My Daughter.” Wesam tells of being on the phone with her daughter hours before her death, and about how the ambulance was only minutes away. She tells of Hind’s intelligence and how she was “smart beyond her years” and loved her younger brother fiercely. Wesam writes about Hind that she “loved her little brother, Iyad, with a tenderness I can hardly put into words. She cared for him in ways far beyond her age – a true older sister, a protector. Even now, he asks, ‘What am I supposed to do without her?’” Wesam’s conclusion? “No child deserves to die like Hind did.” By September 2025, Save the Children put out a report about how 20,000 children had been killed in Gaza. Children were dying at a rate of one child per day. 

In 2025, the film The Voice of Hind Rajab was nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards (2026). It highlights the circumstances around Hind’s death and utilizes the audio recordings of Hind’s voice and her desperate plea for help. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2025 Venice Film Festival. Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) is working with the producers of the film to host screenings in cities and other locales, and eventually smaller church and community settings. Reach out to CMEP if you are interested in hosting a screening event ([email protected]). 

What would Jesus say about this story? To Hind, her mother, and her brother, who have lost so much? What does the Good News of the Gospel look like amid such brokenness, despair, and devastation? Jesus talked regularly about “Good news for the poor” (Luke 4:18), “comfort for those who are suffering” (Matthew 5:4), and “rest for the weary” (Matthew 11:28-30). Certainly, for those of us who choose to follow Christ, we remember the words of Jesus when he said, “let the little children come to me” (Matthew 19:14). Christ called us to love and protect children, to honor them, and protect them as beloved children of God. 

These past two years, we have failed the children of Palestine. All of the children in Gaza experienced grave suffering and trauma over the past two-plus years. The Palestinian Authority reported the estimated number of children under 18 years old in the Gaza Strip to be more than half a million males (544,776) and half a million females (523,210), with about 15 percent being under the age of five years old (341,790). Each and every one of those children has been emotionally or physically traumatized. 

Because of the horrific attacks of October 7, 2023, perpetrated by Hamas and other militant groups in the south of Israel, 56 Israeli children lost their lives, and 3,000 Israeli children were left emotionally or physically disabled. Our inability to prevent war and violence demands that we, as Christians, grieve the devastation caused to the thousands of children who have lost their lives, and the thousands of children who now must grow up having lost either one or both parents. 

Christians cannot ignore that peace has not yet come to the Holy Land. There is much work to be done. Children face the most horrific effects of violence and war. Might we do everything in our power to advocate and work to bring about a comprehensive and permanent peace between Israelis and Palestinians so that all children may live in safety, and so that no child has to die like Hind Rajab.