Men who once were, or would have been

In the last thirteen days, the Israeli army has killed more than 700 people in Gaza, 210 of them children. (Source: Democracy Now) The motivation for thir deaths is apparently to protect against and/or take revenge for the rudimentary qassam rockets fired from the Gaza strip into Israel. 10 Israelis have died in the same period, a couple of them civilians killed by qassam rockets and the rest soldiers.
In the three years between the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the recent attack, 11 Israelis were killed by qassam rockets fired from Gaza. Meanwhile, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza. (Source: Avi Shlaim)

Anyway, this is all statistics. But behind the numbers are individual fates. Here are two men from Gaza who were killed by the Israeli army - one of them once was a handsome young man, and the other would surely have grown up to be one if he had not been killed.


According to the caption at the Boston Globe, this is the body of a Palestinian security force officer, who lays in the rubble after an Israeli missile strike on a building in Gaza City, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2008. The Photo is by Fadi Adwan/AP.
It is unclear what his exact age was, but his hair is mostly black, so he was not very old, and from his wedding ring we can tell that he was married. Maybe he had children. While most of his face is hidden, what we can see hints at handsome features.


This teenage boy is 13 year old Na'el Zohair Abu-`Oun, who was killed March 1st, 2008 in the Eastern Jabalyah camp in the northern Gaza Strip. As he and six school mates were curiously watching clashes between Palestinian fighters and Israeli army forces, an Israeli reconnaissance plane fired a missile at them, and Na'el, along with two of his friends, was killed on the spot.
According to Islamonline.org, Na'el liked to draw and to swim, and he wanted to be a lawyer like his father.