The excruciating pain of identifying the dead in Gaza
“All I want is to honour them with a burial.”
Every time the Palestinian resistance finds the body of a dead Israeli among the millions of tonnes of rubble that the Israelis have reduced Gaza to over the past two years, the Israelis, in return, send 15 Palestinian bodies — of those they abducted from Gaza and then brutally murdered in their notorious rape and torture dungeons over the past two years of the ongoing genocide. Most of the bodies are missing organs and bear clear signs of torture and abuse. A vast majority have been sent still blindfolded, with their hands and feet tied. The bodies are returned by the Israelis with no identification. It forces the families of those missing from Gaza to sit through painful slideshows of photographs in a hospital courtyard, searching for any sign that a body might belong to their loved one.
Israa al-Areer, in Deir al-Balah, is one of those unfortunate people forced to go through this grotesque routine every few days. Israa, a journalist and mother of a four-year-old daughter, has been making trips to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis since October 14 — when the Israelis started shipping bodies of the Palestinians it tortured and murdered — in the hope of finding her missing husband and brother.
Her tragic story highlights how, even with a supposed “ceasefire” in place, the torment for Palestinians remains a near constant. Even their dead are deformed beyond recognition and dumped without identification. They have to go through another ordeal just to give their dead a dignified burial.
Of the 285 bodies that the Israelis have sent so far, only 84 have been identified, while more than 100 have had to be buried without identification. Israa has been unable to find her husband, Yasser al-Tawil, and brother, Diaa al-Areer, among the dead. “My mother and mother-in-law entrusted this painful mission to me, along with my brother and brother-in-law, saying they couldn’t bear to see the scene,” Israa told Al Jazeera. “I couldn’t believe I had reached this point in my life: searching among the dead for my husband and brother, just to bury them and have a grave and a memory.”
What she witnesses as part of her heartbreaking ordeal is pure horror. “They were the hardest moments of my life. Each image made me gasp in horror at what they did to the bodies,” Israa said after going through the first set of 45 bodies. “I nearly lost my mind comparing the image of my beautiful husband in my memory with the horrific photos on that screen.”
“I saw bodies with stones, sand, and nails stuffed into their mouths. Some were blindfolded and handcuffed. Some had their fingernails or fingers cut off. Some had limbs missing. Others looked like they’d been run over by tanks,” she added. “It was savage, inhuman torture, nothing I ever imagined seeing. I cried all the way home, feeling my heart had burned completely.”
Her husband and brother have been missing since the day of the Al-Aqsa Flood; they both disappeared from the area around the fence with the Israeli occupation forces. “The situation that day was chaotic; many civilians crossed the border areas with Israel on October 7,” Israa recollected.
Her life has been totally upended since that fateful day. “Our life was happy, rosy in every sense. Yasser was a loving husband and a kind father, very generous with us. Losing him broke my heart completely,” Israa said as she wept.
“There may be a small chance that the two have been detained, but Israa and her family believe it is more likely they are dead,” the Al Jazeera report added.
Israa described the painful process of identifying the bodies:
“We would ask the staff to go back to a photo, to zoom in on a hand or a body part to be sure. Everyone was on edge, clinging to the faint hope of finding their loved one,” Israa said.
“There was a mother next to me who screamed when she recognised her son from his clothes. She collapsed in tears, but there was relief; they had finally found him,” Israa recalled. “I was happy for her, even through my pain. I kept looking carefully at the hands of the bodies, searching for my husband’s wedding ring.”
During one of her painful visits, Israa thought she identified her husband’s body, but ultimately it turned out to be someone else’s: “I examined every detail and was sure it was him. I went to the hospital full of hope to finally bury him. But when they checked the body, the underwear and body shape didn’t match.”
Due to Israeli intransigence in allowing specialised equipment to enter Gaza, those with missing relatives must endure mental anguish. “I witnessed three families arguing over one body, each convinced it was their son,” she said. “Finally, one father proved it was his, showing evidence of an old injury on the foot. The forensic doctors confirmed it and handed it over.”
“It’s an unjust world,” Israa added. “To identify the Israeli bodies held in Gaza, full excavation and detection equipment were brought in, yet not even a single DNA testing device is allowed to enter here, while dozens of bodies are buried every day without identification. What kind of logic is that?”
Israa has been advised by friends and relatives to quit what has so far been a futile search for the sake of her peace, but she persists. “They told me, ‘Have mercy on yourself, we’ll bury you before we bury your husband. Stop this,’” she said. “But deep down, I couldn’t. What if my husband or brother were among those bodies and no one recognised them? I could never forgive myself.”
“All I want is to honour them with a burial.”
Since the Israelis allowed some heavy equipment into Gaza, explicitly for the purpose of exhuming buried Israelis, the resistance has been able to locate bodies. Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, highlighted this in a message on Tuesday: “We confirm that the entry of engineering equipment and the accompaniment of teams from Al-Qassam Brigades to the Red Cross during the search operations for the bodies inside the Yellow Line contributed significantly to the speed of retrieving the bodies and led to the discovery of many of them.”
There are now just six Israeli bodies remaining in Gaza, with the resistance trying its best to “close this file,” as it said in another message last month. The Israelis, however, have no such compunctions about the thousands of Palestinians they have murdered and whose corpses they have then defiled. They continue to add to the suffering of Palestinians they have subjected every imaginable — and unimaginable — horror to over the past two years.
Having been denied a dignified life on their own land, Palestinians are now being denied the honour of a dignified burial after being tortured and summarily executed by their anti-human Israeli occupiers. Moreover, their loved ones, such as Israa, must suffer through the trauma of never finding closure. If the shoe were on the other foot, the whole world would have been turned upside down, but there is no compensation for the wretched of the earth.
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I see in the photo that Israa's husband is wearing a suit. He was probably a high-level professional. Many Americans fail to recognize, when they see Palestinians scramble for a crust for their children to eat, how many of these people hold advanced degrees. There was an article about this on Substack. In fact, there was more than one article in the Washington Post before Trump's actions forced it to the right. I remember, especially, one girl who was a physical therapist and whose smile was so radiant that her picture was used in advertisements for the business she worked for. This was in an article profiling a random sample of those who had been killed.
I would like to see more of this on Substack, since apparently our corporate media no longer dare to print it.
Monsters.