Sunday 10 August 2025.
This is the story of Youssef, a boy who only just managed to survive a summary execution by Israeli soldiers. There have been a lot of them since the Gaza invasion began. But rarely do the victims live to tell the truth about these war-crimes.
I met Youssef in the place where his parents have taken refuge. He told me all the details. At sixteen, he’s the eldest of four siblings, three boys and a girl. Youssef’s father was a chicken farmer who made a good living. The family company owned several farms in West Chajaya, located in the north end of the Gaza strip. They were all destroyed, along with their homes. Like hundreds of thousands of Gazans, Youssef’s family was obliged to relocate several times: to Rafah in the south, then to Al-Mwassi; then back north to Gaza City where they settled in the Sheikh Radwan district. Like most of the population, the family has spent all its savings and now depends on humanitarian aid which as you know arrives in dribs and drabs. On 23 July, Youssef did what every young person does in Gaza: he set out to get some aid. He’d heard that some lorries loaded with sacks of flour were going to come in via the Zikim terminal up North. Here is his account in his own words:
“I saw bits of flesh flying through the air.”
"When I came across people coming away with bags of flour, I knew I was too late. But they told me other lorries were on their way, not on the coast road this time but on a side street, through the Al-Moudi district. So I went there along with hundreds of other people. But instead of lorries, we saw an Israeli tank arriving. I ran to hide in the ruined building. There were a dozens of us trying to hide in there. That tank didn’t stop, it went straight for another half-ruined building where other people were hiding. A second tank arrived ; it opened fire. Then a third tank, but it stopped opposite the place where we were trying to hide.
It saw us, aimed its canon at us. Three soldiers were standing on top of it, one of them motioned to us with his M-16 rifle to come out in the open. He spoke good Arabic. I said to myself it would just be the usual thing: they’d tell us to take our clothes off, purportedly to check we weren’t carrying guns, then they’d let us go. We all stripped down to our underpants and walked towards the tank. It was then that the tank’s heavy machine-gun opened fire at the four guys who were just in front of me. I saw them being cut in half by the bullets, I saw bits of flesh flying through the air, I saw blood spurting everywhere. It was horrible. I was terrified. I was in a group of six or seven people, I was the youngest and the smallest, I hid behind the others. I didn’t know what else to do.
The soldier who had ordered us out was shooting at us with his M-16. The men in front of me fell. I felt a violent blow on the chest and fell to the ground. Right away I knew I had to play dead because that soldier really wanted to kill everybody. I was scared he would shoot again to finish me off. I could smell the blood running out of my mouth and chest, and also from my back. Then I heard whispers and I realised it was two guys who’d stayed hidden in the ruin. The Israelis hadn’t noticed them. They said to me very softly that they didn’t dare come out and I should keep playing dead, otherwise the soldiers would come back and kill me. I stayed on the ground. The three tanks surrounded the other building and opened fire from time to time.
After a couple of hours, they left. The two men came out of hiding, carried me on their shoulders. Then they met two other men. I could feel they were laying me out on a mattress. The four of them carried me that way, walking as fast as they could. We came to a round-about at the end of the main street running at right angles to the sea-front. There they said to me: “We can’t keep carrying you, we have to get away from here in a hurry”. I asked them to ring my father, I gave them his number. They phoned him, told him I was badly wounded and exactly where I was. Then they left. I don’t know how long I lay there till my father arrived."
“You are life, that’s what matters most to us”
Youssef’s father already knew his son was in danger. One of his other sons was going to wait at the round-about with a bike to carry the bag of flour if there was one, but he had seen the tanks down the road and had gone back home. The father walked the 15 km from sheikh Radwan ; he was taking a great risk : the area where his son had been left was ruled out of bounds by the Israeli army. When he saw his father, Youssef fainted. “I tried to stop the bleeding by tying my t-shirt over the wound,his father told me. Then I took him across my shoulders and walked to the clinic in the Sheikh Radwan district.” Another 15 km, this time carrying his unconscious son.
"A the clinic, they told me they weren’t equipped to treat him. They called an ambulance which took him to the Baptist hospital (Al-Ahly) which is still working a little. Youssef woke up. They stuck tube everywhere, in his nose, in his belly, to soak up the blood and stop the bleeding. He spent hours in surgery. Thank God, he came out alive. But the bullet was still in his chest, not far from the heart. The surgeon told me he wasn’t equipped to perform that micro-surgery.
He told Youssef that for the time being he’d have to live with that bullet in his chest, which meant he mustn’t move too much. And he added: “Now you have to go home. We can’t keep you here. You are life, that’s what matters most to us. But there are many other priorities, many other patients with serious wounds whom we have to save.”
Hundreds of rotting bodies
Now Youssef is in his parents’ home, bed-ridden. There is a fear that the bullet will shift, cause more bleeding, or touch the heart. Youssef is traumatised, physically and emotionally. He’s in shock. He’s still afraid. He trembles when he talks. He has lost control of his muscles. He is incontinent. He’s sixteen years old and can barely keep alive. A sixteen year-old boy who saw a machine-gun tear human beings to bits, saw men fall dead right in front of him and expected to die just as they had.
Youssef needs an emergency medical evacuation to have an operation abroad. There are hundreds, thousands of wounded like him, who can be really saved only in properly equipped hospitals.
We hear every day about summary executions of civilians. Youssef says that in that area, deserted by its inhabitants, he saw hundreds of rotting bodies that no one has come to collect. The corpses are devoured by stray dogs and cats, or reduced to skeletons. Last week the Israeli army authorised a temporary opening of that area. Volunteers collected the corpses, the bones, the skeletons. Many more bodies are still lying there.
Other eye-witnesses say the Israelis are digging mass graves to bury the victims of these executions, most of whom are non-combatants. Many are young people who, like Youssef, just wanted to bring home a bag of flour so their families to keep them from dying of hunger.
Hunger is a deadly weapon, deadlier than the bombs. It drives people to risk their lives. They have no choice. Almost all the Gazans are in the same situation as Youssef’s family, whatever their social background. Those that had savings have spent them and are completely dependent on the humanitarian aid. And since that aid can’t come in, either people are going to participate in thehunger games, trying to grab some food in the distribution centres of that Israeli-US company Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) where the army will shoot at them. Or else they await the arrival of the rare lorries allowed into the Gaza strip, which they storm in a crowd, with only the strongest coming away with a bag.
That’s the life we’re forced to live. Massacred by bombs, massive killed, our houses destroyed, murdered when we go for food. Just because we are Palestinians who don’t want to die.