Even though Sabreen Alrouh Joudeh was only a baby, her swaddled body looked too small to be real.
Sabreen was buried in the dusty ground with a tiny hole that matched her short time in the world. She was covered in a white funeral shroud that represents Gaza’s huge number of civilian deaths.
She was born last Saturday, after her mother died in an Israeli attack in Rafah. The strike also killed her father and her sister, who would have been 3 years old at the time. Doctors were able to bring Sabreen back to life, which was a glimmer of hope in their otherwise very sad jobs, but her life was fragile and short. After five days, her family got the call that she had died.
NBC News has been covering this story of loss, hope, and then loss again for a week. They caught the moment Sabreen was born and the doctors’ hurried efforts to save her. The only people at Sabreen’s funeral on Thursday were our cameras. It was a sad and sometimes angry event.
“What did that kid do?” Did she make a tank explode? Did she make an aeroplane go off? Uncle Ali Joudeh, 30, yelled at the sky as he took off Sabreen’s shroud to show her lifeless, doll-sized face. “She didn’t have time to do anything!” “Oh my God. “She’s like a bird in heaven.”
This family isn’t the only one who has been hurt by the war.
Israeli officials say that the attack on Oct. 7 by Hamas killed 1,200 people and captured another 340. Israel’s reaction has killed almost 35,000 people in Gaza so far, with about 13,000 of them being children, according to Gaza officials. The United Nations says that 180 babies are born every day in the worst conditions possible in Gaza, where women and children have been hurt the most.
The international community is criticising Israel’s military operation more and more. Even its closest ally, the US, has asked it to do more to protect civilians while it goes after Hamas.
There is a lot of tragedy here. But Sabreen’s story caught people’s attention because, even if it was only for a short time, it gave them the faintest hope in the horror.
Last weekend, Israel increased its airstrikes on Rafah, the southern city where most Palestinians have fled. One of the strikes hit the home where Sabreen’s family was getting ready to welcome her into the world in less than two months.
Sabreen Sakani, her mother, was 30 weeks pregnant when the bomb went off. It also killed her father, Shukri Joudeh, and Malak, her 3-year-old sister, whom she would never get to meet.
When NBC News asked the Israel Defence Forces to comment on the strike, they said in a statement last week, “At certain times, the IDF struck several military targets of the terrorist organisations in Gaza, including military compounds, launch posts, and armed terrorists.”