Account of the two Boys, Gaza victims of Nazi ‘unmanned drones’)

Please also send people the facebook page where they can get updated and also help out the two families. There’s also a video report on the boys from a few days ago. The address is:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Ibrahim-Mohammad-Palestinian-children-from-Gaza/ 157492681006348?sk=info

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxMdU9OAEAI

dear All,

This afternoon, Ibrahim’s heart stopped beating. We don’t have words
right now. Allahu yirhamu, may he rest in peace.

Hi all,

This is the unfortunately rather long account I wrote after our first
visit to the hospital on August 7. Here it is fyi.

Furthermore, please continue to follow events in occupied Palestine to
stay aware of the daily human rights abuses, and please choose the form
of action that suits you best to try and help.

Mohammed is 15 year old. He is Ibrahim’s cousin. Mohammad is very tall
for his age. He has big hands, large feet, and beautiful dark eyes.
Today, his head is shaven. In a few years, he will grow into a handsome
young man.

When we first met him, Mohammad’s face was rigid and tense. He didn’t

 speak. His eyes only appeared to take notice of us. His eyes moved and

stared at us in a way that made me wonder whether he was still terrified
and in shock or whether he’s able to speak.

His father Atef moved to the end of the bed to show us Mohammad’s
bandaged legs. Before he even touched the blanket, Mohammad’s body
turned more rigid, and he started screaming. It was a terrible sound, a
sound I have never heard before, a sound that made me doubt whether I
was strong enough to witness this.

Like a chilling alarm-bell, the sound ebbs off, only to start again
whenever Mohammad suspects anyone might be about to touch him, when he
hears Nazi airplane, during his sleep when he has nightmares.

Again and again he screams without any external triggers, from
unbearable attacks of pain. Mohammad cries that he wants to die, he
cries that he wants to go back to school, that he wants to see his
friends, that he wants to go home, he cries when he talks to his mother
on the phone.

Again and again, he begs his father to make sure he is given pain killer
injections before his bandages are changed, but his doctor has ordered
to cut back on injections, Mohammad could get addicted to them.

Where it is not covered in bandages – along his arms, on his fingers,
toes and his face – Mohammad’s skin is layered in various colors. The
oldest layer is dark brown, the next layer appears very pale and soft,
and the last layer is the angry, bright pink of his flesh. On his nails,
there are the rests of Henna, from a wedding he went to recently.

On his long fingers and toes, there are several rough, black spots. It is hard

 to grasp that these are patches of scorched flesh.

When we talked to him, when we told him that people are asking about
Ibrahim and him, Mohammad briefly calmed down. With visible effort, he
tries to tell us things, he wants to tell us what happened and how it
happened, and he wants to tell it on his own.

About an hour before the Iftar on August 19, Mohammad got bored. He goes
out to play with his 12 year old cousin Ibrahim on the street in front
of his family home and the Wafa hospital in Sija’iya, in Gaza. The boys
are hungry and try to distract themselves until it is time to eat.
Mohammad’s uncle tells him to bring his baby brother Khamis (1 year and
a half old) inside. Mohammad does so and goes back out to play with
Ibrahim. He doesn’t remember hearing something out of the ordinary, he
only remembers playing, and then his memory gets blurred. He keeps
shutting his eyes and his speech cuts off, he has difficulties
concentrating. He remembers his cousin Ibrahim lying on top of him, and
he remembers a burning feeling like fire inside his chest. And above
all, he remembers pain, he is still feeling pain, sometimes all he can
say is pain.

Atef is Mohammed’s father. Atef didn’t see the singleNazi missile from the
unmanned drone that hit his son and his nephew. That single targeted
both children specifically. That single missile from the unmanned drone
was not mistakenly fired amidst a barrage of attacks but was the sole
attack in the entire area at that time. Atef remembers being called and
seeing both boys covered in blood. Since that day, his life has turned
upside down.

He was told the boys were lucky that the missile exploded on soft
ground; had it been on asphalt, they would have been killed, like the
seven others that were killed in air strikes that day. Instead, they are
two of five people that survived and were left injured.

After 10 days at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, Atef and his brother Adnan
accompanied their sons to the Israeli Kaplan hospital in Rehovot. Both
men received permission to move inside the hospital compound only. Their
ID’s have been taken away from them. They were granted a little room in
the hospital building, where they can sleep and take a shower. But the
brothers spend most of their time with their sons. When they first
arrived at Kaplan hospital, Mohammad underwent an eight-hour surgery,
Ibrahim a five-hour surgery.

Atef translates for Mohammad and functions as his son’s nurse. Every few
hours, he helps four nurses amid pained screams of his son to change his
position and spare him bedsores.

Atef explained to us about his son’s condition. ( All medical
information are according to the information given by Adnan and ‘Atef,
we were unable to speak to the medics ). His son sustained burns of
various degrees on his face, along his left arm and hand, and on both
lower legs. The missile blew off the flesh of his right hand, abdomen
and both thighs. The medical team at Kaplan hospital replaced these
parts with flesh taken from the back of Mohammad’s thighs. The thighbone
on one of his legs is fractured four times and was pushed out of the
leg. The medics reset it. It is now fixed with a splinter and screws.

Both legs are twisted with his swollen feet pointing sharply to the
right. At Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, the medical staff had performed a
horizontal incision along the lower end of his abdomen to check for
shrapnel and other injuries. At Kaplan hospital, the procedure was
repeated with two vertical incisions along his lower abdomen. Mohammad
doesn’t know this yet, but one testicle had to be removed.

Until a few days ago, Mohammad was mostly sedated, but now, he remains
awake until he gets more painkillers. Atef spends most of his time in
the small room with his son, feeding him cold water whenever Mohammad
asks for it, adjusting pillows, blankets, and a fan, calling for the
nurse, and mostly watching helplessly as his son screams in pain. At
night, he barely sleeps. Mohammad has nightmares of missiles attacking
him again, he thinks he is burning up from the inside, and the pain
becomes intolerable. This morning, Atef finally shaved off Mohammad’s
thick hair to prevent him from tearing out more chunks in bouts of pain.
Gradually, Mohammad makes attempts to eat, so Atef feeds him soft white
bread dunked in cold milk.

Atef would like to install a TV above Mohammad’s bed to distract him
from his pain and fears, but he cannot afford the 700NIS the hospital
asks. Sometimes, he calls in random visitors of other patients just so
Mohammad can see other people beside his father, uncle and the medical
team. And indeed, when we got up to leave the room in order to visit
Ibrahim, Mohammad got anxious, and he begged his father to tell us to
stay, to not leave him alone. He calmed down only when we left our bags
with him to guarantee him that we will return.

Like his brother Adnan, Atef looks worn out, exhausted. On top of the
daily turmoil at the hospital that has become his life, he worries about
his 11 children and his wife back in Gaza. He knows that, like Ibrahim’s
siblings, the younger ones have nightmares, too. They have seen their
brothers covered in blood.

Days ago, Atef ran out of credit on his mobile phone, and he hasn’t been
able to talk to his family – or anyone else – since. When we gave him a
telephone card, he immediately called his wife and passed the phone to
Mohammad.

When we asked Atef and Adnan what they need, they replied “money”. Like
the majority of the adults in Gaza, Adnan and ‘Atef are unemployed and
have been living off the meager Gazan equivalent of social security
(wakala). The medical care of their sons is fortunately covered by some
agreement between the PA and Zio-Nazi authorities, both men can sleep at
the hospital and eat the food prepared for the patients, but after 11
days, they cannot bring themselves to touch it any more. They cannot
afford to refill their mobiles phones to call their wives and children
back in Gaza, they cannot afford the sandwiches or drinks at the
Hospital cafeteria, and even if they could pay the considerably higher
prices of Zionist supermarkets, they are not allowed to leave the
hospital to shop. When we met them, they have run out of essentials,
such as soap (which they use in lieu of shampoo/shower gel).

They worry how they can possibly sustain their extremely difficult lives and
conditions at the Zionist hospital for the next few months.

We first heard about 12 year old Ibrahim in an article that detailed
that he lost both of his hands while playing football due to a missile
attack. It turns out Ibrahim’s condition is much more severe than that.

After eight days in coma at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, where medical
staff were unable to treat his hands due to lack of adequate equipment,
so they had to cut them off to avoid gangrene, Ibrahim finally regained
consciousness. He was still awake when he passed through Erez crossing
two days later together with his cousin (Mohammed who suffered from the
same attack) his father and uncle. When they arrived at Kaplan hospital,
he had fallen back into a coma. He immediately underwent a five-hour
surgery. Since then, Ibrahim has not regained consciousness.

Ibrahim sustained various degrees of burns all over his body. The bones
in both of his legs are fractured, and an alarming portion of his flesh
was blown off in the explosion. After seven days at Kaplan hospital, he
needed blood transfusions due to internal bleeding. Ibhrahim’s liver is
damaged, his lungs are punctured, he has shrapnel in one eye, he is deaf
in one ear, he sustained burns of various degrees all over his body.

When we went to see Ibrahim at the intensive care, his condition was
very critical. We were not allowed into the room to avoid infection,
although only a few days earlier, a visitor had been able to see him.
Ibrahim’s doctor explained: “you don’t want to see him, he looks worse
than what you could imagine”. The doctor also said it was unclear
whether Ibrahim will come through in the end.

Adnan is the father of seven children. Adnan is Ibrahim’s father. Adnan
disclosed that the physical condition and the smell of Ibrahim were so
shocking and distressing it cut off anyone’s appetite for days. He said
the doctors encouraged him to talk to his son, and so he tries. Adnan
tells his son that he is there with him, but most of the time he doesn’t
know what to say any more. Adnan is traumatized and physically and
mentally exhausted. He is just waiting and hoping.

We are fund raising to buy essentials (food, cigarettes, clothes,
telephone cards, etc.) for Atef, Adnan (the fathers who are brothers)
and for Mohammad and Ibrahim (the two children who are cousins).

If you’d like to contribute to that, please send an email to
supportibrahimandmohammad@autistici.org or contact one of the page
admins. In addition, please help us spread this story with the knowledge
that these are two children that we only found out about by chance.

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, between August 19
and August 21 alone, two children were killed directly – as was a
physician and 14 other adults – and at least 20 were injured, of which
six were children. One of these six children – apart from Mohammad and
Ibrahim – was thirteen year old Haitham Ahmed Marouf who died a few days
later in the hospital: http://palsolidarity.org/2011/09/20058/ .

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