Hind Rajab, the 5-year-old killed in Gaza, should have been enough

(RNS) — One child. Five years old. Trapped inside a car in Gaza City surrounded by the bodies of her dead relatives, pleading into a telephone for someone to come save her.

“Come take me. Please, will you come?”

The world heard Hind Rajab’s voice. We heard her fear. We knew rescuers were trying to reach her. The Palestine Red Crescent Society dispatched two paramedics after coordinating their passage to reach her.

They never reached Hind.

Twelve days later, Hind was found dead in the bullet-riddled car alongside six members of her family. The two paramedics were found dead in their destroyed ambulance roughly 50 meters away. A  subsequent forensic investigation , conducted in collaboration with Al Jazeera, mapped 335 bullet holes in the family’s vehicle and concluded that the damage to the ambulance was consistent with Israeli munitions and that Israeli military vehicles were nearby.

On Wednesday (Aug. 19), more than two and a half years after she was killed, the Israeli military acknowledged that its troops had fired on the car and announced a criminal investigation into the family and medical workers’ deaths. The announcement comes after the military initially denied…