Israeli soldiers shot three-year-old Rayyan Abu al-Ajeen in his father’s arms and mocked his father’s pleas as he cried for his dying son. The father says they were in the part of Gaza designated as “safe” for civilians during the “ceasefire.”
After three-year-old Rayan was shot, Abu al-Ajeen said that he immediately began screaming, “My son, my son.”
“My leg was bleeding, and my child was dying in my arms, taking his final breaths. I begged them to let me die but to save my son. They refused and offered no assistance,” Abu al-Ajeen recounted. “The soldiers told me, ‘Leave your son.’ I told them I wanted to save him, but they kept ordering me to leave him.”
The father also said that while soldiers discussed his leg injury, he heard some of them speaking Arabic amongst themselves. “Leave him. Cut off his leg,” they said, according to Abu al-Ajeen.
Abu al-Ajeen recounted that the soldiers did tie his bleeding leg in the end, after which they placed him in a military jeep with his son’s body beside him. “They drove off at high speed over bumps and potholes while I sat in the back, handcuffed.”
“Every time I spoke or asked for help, the soldiers shouted at me, ‘Be quiet.’ They would not allow me to make a sound, even if I were crying from pain,” he said.
The father said that while he repeatedly pleaded for help for his son, some soldiers mocked him. “Are you so worried about your son, calling out ‘Aboud, Aboud’ all the time?” they told him, according to Abu al-Ajeen. “They left me bleeding for six continuous hours.”
They drove him and his son from one place to another inside the vehicle while he bled, Abu al-Ajeen continued. Close to midnight, they abandoned them near Kissufim, a crossing point between Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
As the soldiers dropped him off, Abu al-Ajeen lost track of his son and kept asking them where he was. “And they answered me, ‘your son is next to you,’” he said. “I was shocked to discover that they had wrapped him in a black plastic bag and thrown him beside me.”
Animals run on instinct and are not capable of anything close to this kind of stuff. This level of cruelty is only possible with humans and any attempt to equate the perpetrators with animals in Western discourse is an attempt by humans not doing shit about the horrors our fellow humans are committing to feel better about themselves by insinuating that the people committing atrocities are somehow “not” human like us.
Don’t get me wrong, animals are fucking brutal to each other, but they are not cruel for the sake of being cruel. Unduely cruel animals are selected out of the gene pool. A predator that constantly hunts for sport will wipe out their prey and go extinct. Individuals that waste energy torturing their prey for their own enjoyment will be out competed by members of their own species that simply do what they need to survive. Animals actually have mechanisms to prevent excessive cruelty in an overwhelmingly cruel existence, meanwhile we actively encourage and send resources to support cruelty and allow it to expand. This is a choice, not nature. We have the unique ability to build a safe, thrivable world for every member of our species through our technology. We choose not to.
Calling them animal is an insult to animal. Israels destruction cannot happen soon enough.
Animals run on instinct and are not capable of anything close to this kind of stuff. This level of cruelty is only possible with humans and any attempt to equate the perpetrators with animals in Western discourse is an attempt by humans not doing shit about the horrors our fellow humans are committing to feel better about themselves by insinuating that the people committing atrocities are somehow “not” human like us.
Don’t get me wrong, animals are fucking brutal to each other, but they are not cruel for the sake of being cruel. Unduely cruel animals are selected out of the gene pool. A predator that constantly hunts for sport will wipe out their prey and go extinct. Individuals that waste energy torturing their prey for their own enjoyment will be out competed by members of their own species that simply do what they need to survive. Animals actually have mechanisms to prevent excessive cruelty in an overwhelmingly cruel existence, meanwhile we actively encourage and send resources to support cruelty and allow it to expand. This is a choice, not nature. We have the unique ability to build a safe, thrivable world for every member of our species through our technology. We choose not to.