The director of the Oscar-nominated docudrama The Voice of Hind Rajab has criticized the Israeli military investigation announced this week into the death of the 5-year-old Palestinian girl, who was killed after Israeli forces fired on her family’s car in Gaza City.
“This announcement is a smokescreen,” Kaouther Ben Hania said on Instagram, questioning why it took so long to launch the investigation.
“For more than two years, the evidence has been there: independent investigations, satellite imagery, ballistic analysis,” Ben Hania wrote. “And there was the most devastating evidence of all: Hind’s own voice, describing the Israeli tanks circling around her. What more did we need? Did we really have to wait for the accused to decide to investigate itself (yes, itself!) before these facts could finally be taken seriously?”
She added, “Look at the cases the Israeli military is choosing to speak about today: they are precisely the ones that international public opinion has made impossible to ignore. And what about all the others? Those whose names we will never know because their deaths never broke through the wall of international indifference? Meanwhile, the Israeli military continues to kill Palestinians in Gaza, while the occupation intensifies in the West Bank.”
