In mid-October, Ayman Alsayed received a devastating call from his brother Diaa in Gaza. An Israeli airstrike had obliterated their family home in Jabalia, killing their mother and several relatives.
The survivors were trapped under the debris. Among them was Diaa and Ayman’s brother, Ashraf– badly injured and unable to move.
Desperate, Diaa begged Ayman, thousands of miles away in the US, to do something — anything — to get help to the wounded.
Ayman, grappling with guilt and helplessness, turned to every avenue he could think of, The Intercept reported.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “We know it’s impossible to find somebody to help from here. But we did our best.”
Eventually, a friend connected him to a nonprofit director in Washington.
The director had a contact in the White House.
So, Ayman passed on the address and coordinates of the home to this contact. The hope was that the information would allow ambulances safe passage to rescue the injured.
Hope, however, is a fragile thing in Gaza.
In Gaza, Diaa was in touch with his surviving family in Jabalia. Some of his loved ones, trapped under the debris, had been bleeding for hours, The Intercept reported.
No ambulance had been able to reach. There was no safe passage assured.
Then, around 7:30 am, a local doctor finally managed to get into their house. He pulled the injured children out and said he would return to help the adult survivors.
There was hope, again– for around 15 minutes. For hope, was still a fragile thing in Gaza.
Around 7:45 am, Diaa received heartbreaking news that the doctor as well as most of the children, had been killed after the house was struck again. There were only two remaining survivors.
Diaa, who had already lost his wife and six children in a previous airstrike, now faces the unrelenting task of caring for his only surviving child, Tala, who suffers from severe burn injuries. Ashraf, paralyzed from the attacks, remains in a Gaza hospital, where medical supplies are critically scarce.
Ayman and his wife Rachel got the news quickly. On a group chat with the nonprofit official who had given the family’s coordinates to the White House, Rachel wrote, “Did you give them the coordinates?? They just hit the house again!”
This tragic chain of events is part of a grim pattern of Israeli behaviour in Gaza. Here, requests for humanitarian aid often culminate in more attacks.
Attempts to secure safe passage for ambulances, doctors, and civilians have repeatedly resulted in their targeting. Humanitarian organisations and UN agencies have documented similar cases, where the Israeli military struck locations despite being given prior GPS coordinates.
Such actions by Israeli forces serve to remind Palestinians constantly that no safety exists for them.
According to Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the second attack, despite the White House’s involvement, speaks to Washington’s inability to deal with allegations of civilian harm by the Israeli military.
For Ayman, the consequences of his efforts are unbearable. “I hurt my family, not helped them, by giving this information,” he said.
In the U.S., Ayman’s anguish is compounded by the Biden administration’s unwavering support for Israel’s military campaign. “I helped kill my family by paying taxes,” he said.