‘They see us as human animals,’ says Palestinian journalist grieving 21 family members killed by Israel

By Muhammed Enes Calli

ISTANBUL (AA) – Death, pain and devastation is all there is in the Gaza Strip today. Everyone has their story of loss and grief as the death toll of Israel’s incessant attacks keeps mounting by the hour.

It is the same for Ahmed Alnaouq, a man who is grieving the death of 21 family members killed by the thousands of bombs that Israel has rained down on the besieged Palestinian enclave since Oct. 7.

Alnaouq is a Palestinian journalist now based in London, miles apart from his loved ones, but everything he does today is for Gaza and the millions trapped there under the shadow of death.

He is the co-founder of We Are Not Numbers, a storytelling project dedicated to human stories of Palestinians in Gaza.

He uses his substantial social media clout to shed light on the atrocities being committed by Israel – and to tell the world about those who are falling prey to them.

In the early hours of Oct. 22, Israel bombed the Alnaouq home in Gaza, killing 21 members of his family, including his father, two brothers, three sisters, and 14 nieces and nephews.

“In normal days, the people who live in my house are my father, my two brothers, and the family of my older brother,” Alnaouq told Anadolu in a video interview.

“But during this war, my sisters, who are married and live in different areas, decided to move to my home because they thought it is one of the safest areas and they maybe could survive the war there.”

The reality of the Gaza Strip, however, is that there is not a single building safe from Israeli attacks.

“It was 4 or 5 a.m. in the morning when they were targeted. And I was sleeping then, but I woke up suddenly, panicked for some reason in my sleep,” he said.

“I woke up and turned on the phone and heard the news from a friend who lives there. He told me that my house was bombed and my family were killed.”

His two other sisters were not at home on the day of the attack, but he has lost contact with one of them because of the power and communications cuts.

What Alnaouq, 29, went through is something that he – like any other human – simply “can’t put into words.”

“It’s a feeling like no other. My heart was broken. It was very, very, very difficult, and it is very difficult to describe it right now.”

But Alnaouq, who has also previously lost two family members to Israeli violence, knows well that he is not alone in feeling this pain.

“My family is just one of another 900 families who were targeted and killed. All of them were killed,” he said.

“Israel doesn’t have a justification to bomb any house and they don’t have any reason. They didn’t say why they bombed my home. And we are used to hearing from the Israelis that they are targeting areas where militants are. But I know my family, I know my people. We don’t have any militant in my home and there is no military activity even around the area where my father and my brothers lived.”

He said Israeli forces are “just targeting civilians because they want to inflict damage on the Palestinian people and they don’t need a justification to kill the Palestinians.”

“They want to kill as many Palestinians as possible in order to intimidate others to leave the Gaza Strip and move to Sinai. This is a plan that they are putting in motion to displace the Palestinians and kick them out of the Gaza Strip, the same way that it happened in the Nakba in 1948,” he added.

- ‘Western media complicit in war crimes against Palestinians’

For Alnaouq, Western media “is and has been complicit in war crimes against the Palestinian people for a long, long time.”

He believes that Israel could not have carried out these massacres “without a cover and a green light from the Western media.”

“They have provided Israelis with the right atmosphere to commit as many massacres as possible against the Palestinians. And they always cover and give justification for the Israelis when they commit these massacres against the Palestinian people,” he said.

“Not only since Oct. 7, but since the establishment of Israel, since the Nakba of the Palestinian people, they have been spreading a lot of misinformation, a lot of lies about what’s actually going on in Gaza."

Israel cares a lot about how it is viewed by people in the West, he added.

“I believe that the media, if they were doing the right job, if they were doing what their task is, really what their task is, I think the Israelis wouldn’t dare to do such massacres against the Palestinian people,” he said.

“They always exclude very important information that would make a huge difference for the audience. But they intentionally or sometimes unintentionally provide false information and lie about Palestinians.”

Alnaouq, however, still gives credit to citizens of Western nations for their support to Palestinians, pointing to the massive protests regularly being staged in countries like the US and UK.

“They are pro-peace and they want a cease-fire. Unfortunately, the governments do not understand the will of their people and they do not listen to what their people actually want,” he said.

But he believes that if the protests continue, politicians will be forced to listen to the people.

“Their governments will have to do something to satisfy their people because these people are very sad, they are very angry at their government,” he added.

- ‘Israeli army and regime are inherently racist’

Alnaouq pointed out that this is not the first time that Israel has wrought such devastation on Palestinians or Gaza, but he believes it is now bent on causing “damage that we haven’t seen before.”

More than 10,000 people killed in just a month is an unprecedented level of casualties, he said, adding that Israel claims it is still in the early stages of this conflict and that it might continue for a year until they eliminate Hamas.

“And of course, I disagree with them. They are not there to eradicate Hamas. I think they are after all the Palestinian people. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have seen this much damage on the civilian people and the civilian institutions,” he said.

For Israel, everything right now is about revenge for Oct. 7, he added.

“I think the Israeli army and Israeli regime are racist. They are inherently racist and this is what they said. They said that now they are dealing with the human animals. They see us as human animals,” he said, referring to statements by top Israeli leaders such as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

If the international community does not intervene, there will be more “massacres” and “genocide” in the coming days, he said.

“I am not optimistic, to be honest. I wish I could tell you I am optimistic and that there could be a cease-fire,” he added.