Israel's military admitted Wednesday its soldiers opened fire on a car carrying five-year-old Hind Rajab and six family members as they fled an Israeli offensive in Gaza City in January 2024 — after months of denying its troops were even in the area. American tax dollars funded the war. The American press looked the other way.
Hind died alone, trapped in a stranded Kia Picanto, after a desperate three-hour phone call to the Palestinian Red Crescent in which she pleaded for rescue. Her 15-year-old cousin Layan Hamada had called paramedics first, telling them her family had been killed — then gunfire erupted and Layan's screaming stopped, according to a Red Crescent recording cited by NPR. Two paramedics dispatched in an ambulance to save the girl were also killed. The military admitted Wednesday that troops fired at that ambulance too. All eight bodies weren't recovered for 12 days.
The IDF had repeatedly denied its soldiers were in the area. It took independent media investigations proving otherwise to force the admission. Now the military says it's opening a criminal investigation — one of just two such probes announced Wednesday out of 150 incidents reviewed. The other involves 15 Palestinian paramedics whose bodies were bulldozed into a mass grave after they were shot in March 2025.
But here's what the accountability theater conceals: criminal investigations into Israeli troops over the killing of Palestinians rarely lead to convictions. A UN report in February described what it called "a pervasive climate of impunity" by Israel in occupied Palestine.
The same day, Israel announced it would not open a criminal investigation into the April 2024 drone strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers — including Australian citizen Zomi Frankcom — even though the convoy had coordinated its route with the Israeli military. The vehicles were struck successively as survivors moved between them. "This was not a single, instantaneous strike," Frankcom's family said in a statement. The IDF concluded the commanders' decisions "did not raise reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct." Two officers were removed from their positions; three were reprimanded. No criminal charges.
Frankcom's family called the timing — announced on World Humanitarian Day — "an insult." Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called it "an outrage." World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés condemned the decision on X as "wrong and painful." Israel also declined to investigate the killing of Doctors Without Borders workers, and made no mention of other high-profile killings it had previously pledged to probe, including a hospital strike that killed five journalists in August 2025.
The pattern writes itself: deny until the evidence is undeniable, then announce a review that goes nowhere. NPR reported that Israel's campaign has killed more than 73,000 people, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Israel denies genocide and war crimes allegations, blaming civilian deaths on Hamas.
Hind's grandmother is demanding an international investigation. "We call for justice, not only for Hind, but for all Gaza children," she told the AP. The Hind Rajab Foundation's director called the military investigations "a charade meant to whitewash the culprits instead of convicting them." The question for Americans is simpler: how many billions more with no conditions and no accountability before someone in Washington asks what they're paying for?
