Echoes of burning flesh: From ‘The Napalm Girl’ to Hind Rajab

What happened to six-year-old Hind Rajab on 29 January, 2024, is a haunting echo of the horror that befell nine-year-old Kim Phuc in the Vietnamese village of Trảng Bàng more than half a century ago.

In both cases, the victims were children — those whom international law and basic morality demand their protection at all times.

The world painfully remembers the image of Kim Phuc — running naked, her skin scorched — after her thatched home and entire village were engulfed in napalm, from which the media created the nickname, “The Napalm Girl”. Neither Kim Phuc nor everybody else in her home and entire village could have survived the inferno except by sheer luck, as they lacked any of the protective equipment, prevention, rescue or civil defence known today. Kim Phuc lived on to become a symbol of tragedy and suffering as she had to undergo 17 surgical operations to restore her burnt body.

Hind Rajab did not have that stroke of luck, which is one in a million chance compared to Kim Phuc’s. She was killed despite surviving the initial attack for hours, in horror and suffering. One of the reasons that helped “The Napalm Girl” survive is the fact that she was outside her hut-home which could have trapped her. Hind Rajab was actually trapped in a Kia Picanto with her six loved ones, for over three hours. Luck also helped Kim Phuc in having been seen by Associated Press photographer, Nick Ut, who took her picture while she ran down the road in sheer horror, before taking her to hospital.

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In Hind’s case, many people knew where she was. Her pleas for help were heard. A rescue team was even sent — only for an Israeli tank to ensure she never got out alive. Her potential rescuers in their ambulance vehicle were also killed in cold blood.  The idea is simple: the outside world should not know a thing about what happened. No journalist was around to take pictures of Hind and no witnesses survived the horrific scene. The Israeli army is professional in hiding its crimes, particularly when the victims are helpless innocent children, newborn, mothers and the elderly. They are there to ethnically cleanse, “mow the lawns” in order to clean the place of its inhabitants and announce it to be completely lifeless and rubble-strewn, otherwise their “triumph” is incomplete. Soldiers are also keen to get some “nice” shots and video memes to disseminate publicly as evidence, if any evidence is needed, of their devotion to their military doctrine and their precise and faithful implementation of orders. Without that, they will not be able to boast to their peers that they killed and destroyed without mercy!

The anonymous pilot, who gave the world “The Napalm Girl” likely, most sources say, did not know what was below him. Many say he was led to believe that he was bombing enemy positions. Not the soldiers in Tel Al-Hawa where Hind was murdered. They were protected in their tanks, just meters away from Hind and her family members. They could not only see them but also hear their screams and cries for help. When the rescue team arrived in their Ambulance, they were less than 100 meters away from the tank which fired on them with guarantees to score a precise hit— the precision strikes that the Israeli army has always boasted about performing with great professionalism that has, so far, left over 51,000 people dead!

In the aftermath of such tragedies, military commanders and politicians try to “justify” and “clarify” what happened and why, and if any investigation is due for potential accountability.

In the case of the “The Napalm Girl”, President Nixon himself had the audacity, impudence and shamelessness to try to cast doubt on the authenticity of the Kim Phuc photograph when he saw it, declaring, “I’m wondering if that was fixed.” In the case of Hind, the Israeli military, field commanders, politicians and their American backers did not really see the need to say much. Israel denied that it ever had any troops or tanks in that spot in Tel Al-Hawa on that specific date and time. Yet, the US State Department asked Israel for additional details and Israeli responded, after “investigation”, by repeating its denials and the State Department fell silent, since what Israel says is the God-given truth and should not be doubted, not even by the US which arms, finances and diplomatically protects Israel.

The hopeless United Nations believed the tragedy of Hind’s murder may “amount to a war crime”. But to Israel, that was nonsense, coming from an organisation they have already identified as being anti-Semitic and Jew hater! Indeed, the Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, and his boss, Benjamin Netanyahu, under whose leadership Hind was murdered, have been formally indicted by the International Criminal Court and are now considered as fugitives. But that is hardly enough since the complacency in such tragedies are not even mentioned. In this case, and in that of Kim Phuc, the complacent partner in horror is the US, whose money and arms have made such horrors possible.

If Kim Phuc came to symbolise the suffering of war’s brutality on children, Hind Rajab now stands as a symbol of the world’s moral failure — where justice is not only absent, but mocked by the very powers that claim to uphold it. The former US President said he was “outraged” when the two Israeli leaders were indicted by the ICC. Instead of seeing what they have done, he only saw that their acts did not qualify for accountability at all.

Hind, in her final moment, talking to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) dispatcher, said, “I’m so scared. Please come. Please call someone to come and take me.” Someone sincerely and desperately tried, but what can anyone do when faced with a tank which is under orders to shoot indiscriminately? The world that once failed “The Napalm Girl” is bound to fail Hind, too — unless it rediscovers its humanity. Until then, more children like Hind and Kim will be murdered for nothing more than being innocent.

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