My Word: When children are massacred in Israel - opinion

The warhead of the Iranian-manufactured Falaq-1 rocket that slammed into a soccer pitch in Majdal Shams on Saturday weighed 50 kilograms.

The rocket probably weighed more than most of its victims, 12 children and young teens taking part in a local tournament in the picturesque Druze village on the Golan Heights.

The rocket launched by Hezbollah terrorists was so large and deadly that only on Sunday was the last victim identified and named: 11-year-old Jifara Ibrahim. 

In the meantime, emergency forces and members of Israel’s renowned ZAKA rescue and recovery organization continued to search for body parts, and to clean the area of the children’s blood – while the family, village, community, and country prayed that Ibrahim had somehow survived the massacre and gone missing in the aftermath.

On Sunday, thousands attended the mass funeral of the children: Alma Ayman Fakhr al-Din, 11; Millar Maadad al-Shaar, 10; Finis Adham al-Safadi, 11; Izil Nashat Ayoub, 12; Yazan Naif Abu Salah, 12; Johnny Wadie Ibrahim, 13; Amir Rabi Abu Salah, 16; Naji Taher Halabi, 11; Fajr Laith Abu Salah, 16; Hazem Akram Abu Salah, 15; Nazem Fakher Saeb, 16; and Ibrahim. Wedding songs were sung – the saddest tribute to the children who would never grow up and marry. 

The Druze believe in reincarnation. Like all religions, their beliefs can offer consolation but cannot erase the pain. You can clean and fix a football pitch, replace the grass, re-erect a fence and goalposts; but you can never mend the gaping hole in the lives and hearts of a community that suddenly lost 12 children.

The nearby school also suffered in the blast. That, too, can be cleaned up before the start of the school year in September, but there will be emotional scars that affect staff and pupils for the rest of their lives.

There was a concrete shelter next to the pitch – and take a moment to consider the fact that Israeli children routinely need shelters next to their playgrounds – but with the rocket launched from so close by, just over the border with Lebanon, the “incoming rocket” siren sounded at the same time as the projectile slammed into the children. 

Communities on the border, in the North and South, have just seven seconds to run for cover when the siren is heard. Most Olympic runners wouldn’t make it. The young soccer players and their friends didn’t stand a chance.

A different headline everywhere you look 

THE LETHAL rocket attack on Majdal Shams was headline news. The question is: What type of headline? The HonestReporting media watchdog noted that Sky News “reported it as an ‘attack on a football pitch in the Israeli-occupied Golan’ that killed 11 people.” Mention “of the ‘occupied’ Golan seemed to legitimize Hezbollah’s indiscriminate attacks. More tellingly, Sky News didn’t mention that all the victims were children and even implied in the subheading that the attack was retaliatory.”

Similarly, HonestReporting noted, “the BBC used the less emotive term ‘young people’ to describe the victims in their headline, which also emphasized Israel’s response to Hezbollah’s attack... And CNN shifted focus from the many victims of the attack – the single deadliest strike on Israel since the October 7 Hamas massacre – to Hezbollah’s denial that it was responsible.”

The Guardian also led with “Israel strikes Lebanon as diplomats try to prevent regional war” with the sub-headline: “Jets strike south of country after rocket attack that killed 12 children in Golan Heights blamed on Hezbollah.”

The Guardian later stated: “The Golan Heights was taken from Syria by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in 1981 in a move not recognized by most countries.” 

That would be the 1967 Six Day War in which the Arab world attacked Israel with the aim of eliminating the Jewish state – and lost. The same thing happened in the Yom Kippur War in October 1973. And 50 years later, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and myriad other terrorist groups nurture – with Iranian support – the same dream and declared intent.

Dave Bender, a veteran newsman and co-administrator of the Life on the Border With Gaza Facebook group, noted The Washington Post’s presentation of the story. 

Under a large, front-page photo showing grieving relatives at the mass funeral in Majdal Shams, the prominent headline declared: “Israel Hits Targets in Lebanon.” As Bender pointed out: “This gives the unfamiliar reader the impression that they were ‘Lebanese’ killed by ‘Israeli’ bombing and not the near-exact opposite. And just so you wouldn’t get the wrong message, they ‘helpfully’ added: ‘Strikes against Hezbollah installations muted amid international calls for restraint.’”

INDEED, IT didn’t take long for the international community to call on Israel to act with “restraint.” The term “a proportional response” was thrown around. What is proportional to the murder of 12 children in a tight-knit community, whose only aim was gathering for their favorite sport and pastime on a Saturday afternoon in a village on the Israeli side of the border?

Hezbollah, usually quick to boast of its successful attacks against “the Zionist entity,” this time realized it had gone too far and soon denied its rocket was to blame. As a The Jerusalem Post editorial noted on Sunday: “Hezbollah has somehow managed to reframe its hateful, terror-filled campaign against Israel as a humanitarian campaign for justice for Palestinians. “Needless to say, this makes little sense; how is killing civilians in northern Israel saving Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip?”

The terrorist organization, which sits in the fractured Lebanese government, also realized that it had made a mistake in hitting a Druze community. The tension between the Druze communities in Lebanon and Syria with the governments that control them is evident.

Turkey desires escalation 

NATO-member Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as usual, seeing an opportunity to be exploited for his own domestic political purposes, threatened to consider invading Israel, “Just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya.”

Even before Israel’s military response to the Hezbollah atrocity was becoming clear, the response among civilians was evident. Hundreds rushed to the site of the massacre to pay their respects. One powerful photo caught a priest and an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man facing each other and praying amid the charred reminders of the carnage.

Tzvi Zussman, the father of fallen soldier Ben Zussman, initiated mass prayers at Jerusalem’s Heichal Shlomo – Jewish Heritage Center in solidarity. My neighborhood WhatsApp groups published initiatives to send gifts and messages of support to the children of Majdal Shams. The five-colored Druze flag appeared on buildings and social media.

On Tuesday evening, Israel confirmed the targeted elimination of Hezbollah’s most senior commander, Fuad Shukr aka Hajj Mohsen, in Beirut. 

Mohsen was effectively Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s chief of staff and directly responsible for the Majdal Shams massacre. He is also believed to have masterminded the 1983 bombing of United States barracks in Beirut that claimed the lives of more than 240 US servicemen.

Later that night, in a stunning operation for which Israel did not immediately take credit, Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an apartment in Tehran, having met the newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian earlier in the day.

As I write these lines, it’s too early to determine how their elimination will affect the current war – including negotiations for the release of the hostages. Both Mohsen and Haniyeh were mourned by their terrorist supporters as martyrs; neither was a saint.

Those calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza – leaving Hamas able to return to control – should remember that the October 7 mega-atrocity that sparked the war took place during a ceasefire. That truce was broken when thousands of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members invaded southern Israel, killing 1,200, wounding thousands, and abducting some 250.

Similarly, calls for an international presence to prevent future attacks should raise questions about the role of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) ahead of the current conflict in the North. UNIFIL was meant to ensure that Hezbollah didn’t build up its presence and weapons in the area bordering Israel. We’ve seen how that worked out.

The name Majdal Shams means “tower of the sun.” Majdal Shams is part of the global village, Hezbollah is part of global jihad. 

The sun will continue to rise in the east and set in the west, but with terror-sponsor Iran on the verge of a nuclear breakout, there is still a shadow hanging over the Middle East and the world.