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At around 5 A.M. on Thursday, Dec. 14, I received a WhatsApp message that I was hoping desperately never to receive. My mother informed me that a deadly Israeli airstrike had hit her family's home in Rafah, the southernmost city of the Gaza Strip, which was supposed to be a safe area, in Rafah's "Brazil" neighborhood, a few hundred feet from the borders with Egypt. The airstrike had leveled the entire three-story building. The house had recently become home to 50 people. My uncle, Dr. Abdullah Shehada, and his sister-in-law, my aunt Zainab Shehada, had opened the house for family, friends, and neighbors seeking shelter, fleeing from northern Gaza. And then it was gone.
There were no armed clashes, no Israeli ground troops, and no verified Hamas presence nearby. My family, on both my dad's and mom's sides, come from a long line of technocratic professionals who are independent and not involved with any political party.
Over the next three days, a soul-crushing drip of text messages, online news reports, and conversations would reveal to me the extent of the carnage.
The death toll surpassed 31. All five of my aunts and uncles who were in the building were instantly killed. Additionally, nine children as young as three and four months old, along with their parents and almost all of my cousins were killed in the airstrike. My brother and surviving cousin Yousef worked tirelessly for three days to extract the remains of our family from under the rubble, almost all of whom came out badly maimed, their bodies shredded and dismembered, or as headless bits and pieces.
The destroyed house was my second home growing up in Gaza. I regularly visited my cousins, aunts, and uncles, especially on weekends and holidays. My grandmother kept chickens, ducks, and pigeons, and the family had three massive olive trees and a giant palm tree that produced olives and dates and fed the household for the entire year. My cousin Yousef and I would routinely play complex PC video games, which was how I expanded my English vocabulary.
Barely a month and a half before this tragic attack, my childhood home, where my immediate and extended family on my Dad's side lived in Gaza City, had also been leveled by a massive Israeli airstrike while 33 people were inside. Miraculously, most survived. My brother, his wife, and four children had somehow pushed their way out of the rubble with only minor injuries. Sadly, my 13-year-old cousin was killed, and 10 other aunts, uncles, and cousins sustained varying degrees of serious injuries. Later, in a follow-up airstrike, my uncle Riyad, Dad's youngest brother, was killed.
After the Dec. 14 strike, I received a large amount of support and love from friends and allies, including many Israelis and Jews. But there was also hatred, mockery, and coldhearted comments from people on both sides of this dehumanizing war. This included pro-Israel supporters who questioned the authenticity of the event, celebrated the death of my family members whom they accused of being Hamas, and mocked my sadness. Dozens of Palestinian supporters shared equally distasteful and horrible remarks and messages telling me that I deserved to be attacked by pro-Israel supporters. My vocal opposition to Hamas has drawn the ire of some of the pro-Palestine community, which finds my critiques of the Islamist group untimely, undue, unhelpful, or quite frankly inconvenient to their resistance narratives.
I have long sought to engage both sides in the Israel and Palestine conflict to learn as much as possible about people's perceptions, motivations, interests, goals, and aspirations. My strength comes from my ability to calmly, rationally, and reasonably connect with diverse opinions, including those that are truly difficult to hear and understand. After Oct. 7, I was alarmed by the unprecedented dehumanization being carried out by both parties to the war.
Desperate to reverse this trend, I sought to humanize the people of Gaza, particularly with Jewish and Israeli audiences, to convey the urgent need to maintain the other's mutual humanity.
I have also struggled to balance my deep sorrow and anger with Israel's actions and my desire to keep the focus on both people's mutual humanity. It has been difficult to reconcile my pain over the loss of my family members and homes with the need to keep connecting with more Israelis and Jews. Multiple balanced, fair, and objective assessments have cast serious doubt over the efficacy and morality of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza. The systematic destruction of schools, hospitals, and entire neighborhoods and the killing of thousands of civilians is not only wrong but will fail to make Israel safe in the long term. This is not just my opinion but that of seasoned counterinsurgency military experts like Ret. General David Petraeus, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and other U.S. military leaders. Even if Hamas operates in a manner that disregards conventional war norms, the IDF, as a conventional military force, has a political, international, and moral responsibility to operate with the utmost regard for international humanitarian law and principles of the Just War Doctrine.
Faulty intelligence, inconsistent rules of engagement, the use of massive ordnances in crowded and dense civilian areas, and the application of overwhelming firepower to support advancing troops are regularly causing the needless loss of Gazans' lives. If the IDF mistakenly killed three Israeli hostages waving white flags and screaming in Hebrew, imagine how many Palestinian civilians were killed due to poor or erroneous targeting and reckless battlefield decisions.
Hamas must never rule Gaza again, and the people in the coastal enclave deserve political change. I wish that the group would heed the calls for the immediate release of Israeli hostages and the initiation of a political process that ushers in a different reality for both Palestinians and Israelis. However, given that Hamas is ruthless and willing to sacrifice its people's lives for narrow, nefarious goals, practical and compartmentalized approaches are needed to release the hostages and effectuate change.
The humanitarian condition of Gazans must be front and center to reverse the unfolding catastrophe, unprecedented hunger, the spread of disease, the lack of drinking water, the collapsed medical system, the proliferation of crime, and the excruciatingly slow death of innocent people.
While Hamas' horrendous Oct. 7 attack seriously set back hopes of a lasting peace, it is indisputable that the security and well-being of Israelis are inexorably linked to the dignity and prosperity of Gazans.
I will never know why the Israeli military killed dozens of my family members, maimed others, and destroyed both of my childhood homes in the Gaza Strip. I have to live with this pain and injustice for the rest of my life.
I will continue to reject hatred and violence, advance the peaceful coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians, promote the humanization of Gazans, and advocate for practical solutions that assure Palestinians freedom, prosperity, and self-determination.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is a non-profit administrative professional who is a naturalized American from Gaza and writes extensively on Gaza's political and geostrategic affairs.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
