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‘Why are you silent?’ heartbroken mother Gila Tragerman, whose four-year-old son Daniel was murdered recently by Hamas, asked UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in a letter.
A letter written to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon by Gila and Doron Tragerman, the bereaved parents of four-year-old Daniel, has been published online by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the letter, Gila Tragerman described the day her eldest son was killed and asked why the UN is only investigating Israel while ignoring Hamas’s crimes.
Gila and Doron Tragerman at son Daniel’s funeral (Photo: Hadas Parush/Flash90)
Daniel was murdered on Aug. 22 when a Hamas missile struck his family’s home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz near the Gaza border. He had been playing inside the home with his three-year-old sister Yoval under the watchful eye of their parents and with four-month-old brother Uri nearby. The young couple, married just five years, thought they could keep their three children safe from terrorist rockets by keeping them indoors, Gila wrote. They were wrong.
‘We Couldn’t Protect our Baby’
“We failed,” she lamented in the letter. “We couldn’t protect our beautiful and talented baby. Daniel was killed [by] a mortar shell that was fired by Hamas members from an elementary school for boys in Gaza City. It wasn’t a stray shell. It wasn’t accidental death. From that school terrorists fired deliberately at the kibbutz to murder civilians – children, women, old people. This time, they…achieved their goal.”
In the week following Daniel’s death, his family sat shiva for him, in keeping with the Jewish tradition for mourning the passing of a loved one. During that solemn week, the young child’s grieving parents learned that Ban had “informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu half an hour after our Daniel was killed, perhaps while he was lying dead in our living room, covered [by] a blanket” that the UN intended to investigate Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
UN Accuses Only Israel
Resolution S-21/1, which was passed by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on July 23, “condemns in the strongest terms the widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms arising from the Israeli military operations carried out in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 13 June 2014.”
The resolution called for the establishment of an international commission to investigate Israel’s military actions in Gaza. The commission will report its findings at the UNHRC session to be held Sept. 8-26 in Geneva.
Hamas or terrorism were not mentioned once in Resolution S-21/1. Aside from “two Israeli civilians” who were killed “as a result of rocket fire,” the resolution focused only on Palestinian suffering.
Daniel’s parents want to know why.
UN Ignores Abuses by Hamas
“The investigation committee will examine the ‘crimes of Israel’ during the fighting,” Gila wrote. “The investigation committee is not asked to investigate how terrorists shoot out of UN buildings and schools. The committee is not asked to investigate how – inside buildings of the United Nations and in hospitals in Gaza – terrorist infrastructure flourishes and is maintained over time….
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
“It won’t investigate how Hamas abuses the Palestinian people and how its members force residents of Gaza, even children, to dig tunnels aimed only for terrorism against Israel. It won’t investigate how, after these excavations – carried out under duress and in slave-like conditions – the Hamas murdered the diggers, even the children, just to be sure they won’t be able to pass information to Israel.
‘Why are you Silent?’
“Why are you silent? Does your silence indicate consent with the abuse of the Palestinian people and the Israeli people?”
She concluded the letter by saying she and her husband weren’t asking the UN to find the people responsible for their son’s death.
“We only wish your response and your voice against this crime and the crime Hamas has committed against their own people.”
Author: Joanne Hill
Staff Writer, United with Israel
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