A textbook genocide wiped out over 900 Gaza families. Others were destroyed

More than a year has passed since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza, and bodies of innocent Palestinians continue to pile up.

In the dystopian wasteland, where the rubble of concrete and twisted metal form mountains, the stench of death and gunpowder hang heavy.

So does grief.

Each person killed by Israel left behind their own stories, their dreams and hopes. Dry numbers can’t capture the tragedy and the unbearable pain of those who have survived.

But they do put the story of Gaza in context.

Out of over 42,000 people killed by Israeli bombs and bullets, over 900 families have been completely wiped off the face of the earth, the Palestinian Media Office in Gaza revealed last week.

“As part of the ongoing genocide carried out by the Israeli occupation army with full American support, the occupation army has exterminated 902 Palestinian families, erasing them from the civil registry by killing all their members during a year of genocide in Gaza,” the media office said a year into Israel’s ongoing war since October 7, 2023.

The official number of 42,000 plus dead, however, does not include thousands of others whose bodies are yet to be recovered, believed to be buried under millions of tonnes of rubble.

To put the numbers in perspective: the pre-war population in the besieged Palestinian enclave – barely 260 square kilometres – was an estimated 2.2 million.

Other numbers are as much staggering.

The media office said that the Israeli army “exterminated 1,364 Palestinian families by killing all their members, leaving only one individual per family, and similarly wiped out 3,472 Palestinian families, leaving just two individuals per family.”

Iman Amer Radwan, 47, is the only member left of her extended family to tell the story of the massacre that changed her life.

Her story is but a small chapter in the collective tragedy unfolding in Gaza.

The day that changed everything

Married to a Palestinian man from Jenin, Iman relocated to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, but her roots remained firmly planted in Gaza City, where her family stayed behind in the Tel al Hawa neighbourhood.

Iman’s father, Hajj Amer Hussein Radwan, 82, held a history degree from Beirut Arab University, class of 1974.

Her mother, Hajja Naima Radwan, 77, was a retired teacher and a heart patient who could not move on her own, relying on medication to survive.

Her brother, Hussein Amer Radwan, 38, had a master’s degree in management.

Also living with the family was a relative, Ramadan Abu Al-Khair, 52, when death came calling.

On the evening of October 9, 2023 – two days after Israel started the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, Iman spoke with her family over the phone. She urged them to leave their home and seek safety.

Her father’s words still echo in her mind: "We left our land once in 1948 and could never return. We will not repeat that and leave our homes this time, even if we would be buried in it."

Her brother Hussein shared the same sentiment, telling her, "We will not leave the house." Despite Iman’s pleas, the family stayed.

“My family’s building in Gaza was once destroyed in the 2014 war, and my father never cared about material losses,” Iman says.

“He worked with my mother in Saudi Arabia for 55 years, always telling us, “We will return to Palestine and die there.”

Tel al Hawa, home to international organisations, embassies, and relief agencies like the Turkish Red Crescent, had not been targeted in previous wars, leading the family to believe it was one of the safest places to be.

But this time, Israel spared not an inch of Gaza.

Their neighbourhood was hit hard – homes were reduced to rubble, and many of their neighbours were killed.

Back in Ramallah, Iman could no longer reach her family. For days and nights, she was gripped by anxiety as she desperately tried to contact them or their neighbours.

She tried to comfort herself, convincing herself that perhaps they had managed to escape, that their home hadn’t been bombed.

That night, Iman dreamed of her mother. She saw a mountain of sand, with her mother standing behind it, telling her brother, "How can we get out from under this thick sand?"

The next morning, her sister-in-law called. Iman remembers the gut-wrenching moment vividly—their home had been destroyed, and no one had been found alive.

“Despite everything, I held onto hope that they had escaped or were still alive,” Iman recounts.

Hopes shattered

Iman’s cousin went to search for their bodies. “I stayed on the phone with him the entire time,” she recalls.

"I will never forget his words when he found my brother Hussein's body. It had been blown several metres from the house."

Ramadan’s body was found intact, but the discovery of her mother’s remains brought new waves of grief. "My mother’s body was in pieces," Iman says, showing a picture of her mother’s mutilated remains, her voice tight with sorrow.

“This is my mother.”

Finding a place to bury them was also difficult. After searching for graves, they could only find two.

Hussein and her mother, Naima, were buried in one, and a second was reserved for her father. "I knew that even if my father was dead, he was at home, so he wouldn’t feel the loneliness of being buried somewhere else.”

Two days later, they found her father’s body beneath the rubble, where the family’s cat, Loco, had been sitting, refusing to leave the spot.

"I’ll never forget the sight of the bulldozer lifting him," Iman recalls, tears in her eyes. "It was one of the hardest moments of my life."

This is what Israel has done to Iman's family and to hundreds of other families like the Radwans.

It’s a textbook genocide.