Banal Ennui

March 26, 2024

The story of Gaza abductee Hadeel al-Dahdouh

Sanad News Agency:When her picture appeared in a truck carrying dozens of naked detainees in Gaza, it ignited a state of anger and condemnation that spread from Palestine to the world, without knowing her identity.

However, those events seem mild compared to what this Palestinian woman faced during the ordeal of her detention—which lasted for weeks before her release from the occupation forces—details of which she revealed in a testimony that exists as documentation to condemn the criminality of the occupation, which went so far as to try to bury her with other detainees while alive, in addition to subjecting her and her children to genetic analysis because of the color of her children’s hair and skin.

Hadeel Yousef al-Dahdouh, 24, a married mother of two from the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza, recounts the details of the horrors she and her family went through during the bloody war on the Gaza Strip.

Hadeel and her family suffered from the first day of the war from heavy shelling, but what happened on the morning of October 16, when she was in her apartment, standing in the window looking out, holding her baby Zain, 9 months, and her other child Mohammed, 4 years old, made her face the danger directly.

Buried alive & genetically tested with her children

PART 2

In a testimony published by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and reviewed by Sanad News Agency, Hadeel said:

The occupation bombed the house with a missile, causing extensive damage to half the house. Thank God I was in the other half of the house and not in the bombing area, but the force of the shelling pushed me inside as if a ball of fire had blown in my face and knocked me to the ground.

I thought my two children were dead as the glass broke over our heads, and my hands and feet were filled with small glass because the windows and the protection on the window were broken and the ring on the window was ripped off. I picked up my two sons and ran to the ground floor out of fear and in search of my husband. I went

down barefoot with my 4-year-old son, and the stairs were full of stones and glass.

When I went down to the ground floor, I found that my brother-in-law had been seriously injured in his stomach and his entrails were visible to anyone who saw him, as his injury had split his stomach in half.

In the other room, my husband’s brother’s wife was in her bedroom, a 9-month pregnant woman with iron shrapnel in her back, face, and sides, she was full of blood and said, “I don’t feel my body,” and my husband’s mother was hit in the head by shattered glass.

I can’t explain how difficult the situation was and the fear that gripped us. My children were screaming with fear and I was crying and shaking from fear and the scene in front of me. I was screaming in search of my husband, and I found him also injured by the shelling, but he could only feel his hand.

There was no ambulance at the scene and no communications were available at the time. The only people who helped the injured were the neighbors of the house in their private cars and took them to al-

Shifa Hospital.

Forced displacement

After the house was bombed, Hadeel fled to her husband’s aunt’s house in the Shamaa area of the Old City.

We stayed there for 20 days, then fled after the occupation forces threatened a house next to my husband’s aunt’s house.

I went to my father’s house, which was a few meters away from my house in Zeitoun, and it was crowded with displaced people from our relatives. I stayed there until one day before the armistice was announced (23/11/2023), then I returned to my house again and we slept on the ground floor. My in-laws returned to the house during the armistice.

At that time, the Zionist occupation army was penetrating Tal al-Hawa near the Omar bin al-Aas Mosque. The messages of displacement have been ongoing since the first day of the war on Gaza, increasing with each passing day.

Buried alive & genetically tested with her children

PART 3

After the truce, the shelling resumed

After the truce ended, the violent bombing returned to the areas in the vicinity of Hadeel’s house. The force of the Intense fire belts and the sounds of shelling shook the house.

My father-in-law decided to go to the house next door to us to sit with them in the basement, but I refused to go with them and asked my husband to go with my parents.

The next day, my parents’ home, which is located on the fourth floor, was shelled with the occupation army’s artillery, which hit the hall and broke the glass in the house.

We weren’t in that part of the house, as we were in the living area next to the one that was bombed, so we ran to the ground floor of my father’s uncle’s house.

It was a very difficult night for all of us. None of us slept because of the intensity of the shelling around us. The occupation army’s artillery shelled my father’s house and the surroundings. Stones and glass flying over our heads. We were watching and entrusting it to God until the morning came and we managed to escape from the house.

Terrifying moments

My husband told me to go back to our neighbor’s house in the basement next to his parents, so we went to the basement and spent the whole day there. The next day I told my husband that there was no bread to feed the children and that I wanted to go home and bake, and my brother-in-law and his wife were going to wash their clothes and their children’s clothes at home, so we went together.

My brother-in-law went with his wife on the ground floor and I went upstairs to get flour, but I was afraid to stay and finish kneading in the house because it was completely exposed, walls destroyed by the shelling.

I carried the flour and went down to the ground floor with my brother-in-

law and my husband. We lit a fire in the oven. The smoke filled the place, and my brother-in-law was calling us to relieve the fire and smoke.

My brother-in-law went out on the balcony to see where the shelling and shooting was taking place, and he was shot by an occupation army sniper in the center of his forehead and martyred immediately.

Then we heard his wife screaming at my husband that her husband Yasser had been injured. We looked at him and when my husband wanted to go in to get his brother out, we were shot at, so my husband and I stepped back and my husband told me to go and call his family from the basement and tell them that Yasser had been martyred.

Hadeel went out barefoot and ran down the street crying until she arrived and picked up his family and ran back home, she said:

My husband’s other brother-in-law, thinking that he would save his brother and take him to the hospital, rushed to the side of his martyred brother Yasser and was shot by the occupation army snipers.

As soon as he entered the balcony, he was shot twice in the shoulder and hand and fell to the ground, and the occupation army snipers were firing heavily at us as we were screaming and crying about what happened.

She said they fled to the basement again because of the intensity of the gunfire and thought the house would be bombed over their heads.

My husband pulled his injured brother and carried him in his arms, risking his life, and headed to the Baptist Hospital on foot, while the occupation army vehicle was shooting at them, but God was kind enough to deliver his brother to the hospital.

My husband returned to the basement, and as soon as he arrived, he lost consciousness due to the fatigue and fear he experienced on the way. We cried for those who were martyred and those who were injured, a state of panic and fear mixed with weeping and oppression for those who were martyred, and the sound of the Israeli occupation army bulldozers could be heard close to us.

Buried alive & genetically tested with her children

PART 4

The Arrest

On the afternoon of December 6, 2023, the occupation army entered the area in which we were located with the sounds of tanks in the street and gunfire everywhere. They threw gas bombs everywhere in the street until they suffocated us and the children from the smell.

We were in a state of terror and trying to close our children’s mouths to prevent them from crying and screaming so that the army wouldn’t know we were there, but an Israeli soldier appeared with his weapon with a laser mounted on it and pointed it at us.

At that moment, we all screamed out of fear, and the soldier called out to the other soldiers while we were screaming.

She stated that her father-in-law knew Hebrew and was telling them in Hebrew that they are civilians, so he ordered him to take the women and children out first.

They put us in the middle of the street and ordered us to raise our hands and sit on our knees, with me holding my 9-month-old baby in one hand and my 4-year-old son next to me, sitting on my knees and raising one hand.

The men were taken to a warehouse opposite us, and we were taken to a warehouse belonging to the Hajjaj family.

She said that the house had two warehouses, one where the women were held and the other where the men were severely beaten and their hands and feet were tied.

Before the sunset call to prayer, my baby was with me and the other child was with his grandmother behind me, so the occupation soldiers called me to move to them.

I was terrified and very scared to be called out of all these women. I went to him and he asked for my name, how many children I had and where

they were, and I told him and he took me back to my place.

After the Maghrib call to prayer, an Israeli officer called me. [I saw] the men were tortured by the occupation soldiers and appeared to be severely beaten while they were restrained.

They ordered me to sit down. There were dogs with the occupation soldiers that advanced towards me and I was screaming that I was afraid of dogs.

My children were asleep when I was taken away, but little Zain cried and I heard him crying, so I asked them to bring him. They allowed me to get my baby and I went back to them again, sat down and breastfed him.

Genetically analyzed

A soldier came and told her father-in-law that we will take her for half an hour to do tests on her and bring her back again, explaining that when the soldiers saw her two children, they found them to be white with blonde hair, so they suspected that they were Israeli children.

They took samples from my young children and the female soldier dragged me and I screamed from fear, “where are you taking me?” The soldier told me that ‘we’ll take you half an hour to do an analysis and bring you back again’, so I asked them to take my baby son with me because I didn’t want to leave him and they insisted that he stay.

My husband’s father told me to give the child to his grandmother, but I refused, so my father informs my husband that they told him that if I did not, they would kill us all here. I had to leave my child to his grandmother.

She describes the difficulty of what happened at the time:

My baby was clutching my headscarf and crying very hard and didn’t want to be separated from me. I left him with his grandmother and his grandmother was crying and I was crying.

They put me in the tank and they also put my father-in-law, my husband, his brother and more than 15 other people in there.

They tied my hands behind my back with handcuffs and blindfolded me, so I couldn’t see, and we were taken in a tank to a two-story house in the Zeitoun area that the occupation army was using as a barracks.

Buried alive & genetically tested with her children

PART 5

Frequent beatings

They took me and sat me on my knees with my hands tied behind my back and forbid to raise my head, and I stayed in this state for three days while being beaten.

I went upstairs and smelled an odor exactly like an operating room, and indeed it was a place that looked like an operating room. They injected the men with an anesthetic until they fainted.

They gave me an injection of an anesthetic, apparently, and before giving it to me, the soldier asked me if I was affected by the anesthetic. I told her that I was affected because I didn’t want to lose consciousness like other men, so she gave me a needle in the back and they took a

sample from my back and a sample from my husband for a DNA analysis.

If I moved, [the soldier] would yell at me not to move, the men were unconscious and I could see a little bit under the blindfold and I was not completely unconscious from the anesthesia, and I felt very dehydrated and was trying to wet my lips from thirst.

The Israeli soldier hit me with the butt of his weapon on my back, hands and sides. I asked him to loosen my handcuffs and he refused and tightened them even more.

I was feeling very cold and I asked him to remove the blindfold from my eyes and he tightened it more and more, so my eyelashes entered my eyes from the strength of the binding, I felt that I was blinded, and I screamed and cried, and blood was pouring from my eyes from the intensity of the pain, and whenever my father-in-law asked them to loosen the blindfold, they beat him severely and beat me and pressed the handcuffs more.

The next day they moved us to another house on foot and there were all the detainees from the area in the house, all of them without clothes except boxers, and I was the only woman among them, and they put me in front of them and beat us, and my chest began to harden, and I am tied up and cannot bear it, and I cried and ask them to feed my baby, and they beat me with their feet.

On the third day, with my hands tied behind my back, they beat me with their feet on my back, stomach and sides, and cursed at us with profanity, and a soldier threw dirt at me and hit me with his

foot.

Trapped in a hole

They moved us with our hands tied behind our backs and blindfolded and put us in a large pit with a tank inside and a large number of soldiers outside the pit and the tank next to me and the bulldozer outside ready to bury us.

I could see from under my blindfold a little of what was happening outside and the men were all drugged for the whole 3 days.

The tank approached me little by little and I was trying to pull myself away from it, but there was an occupation soldier behind me and he hit me with the heel of his weapon on my back with force while cursing profanity.

They took off my headdress while I was crying and begging them to cover my hair and they laughed and refused to put it on me. My father-in-law shouted towards me, “Come dear, the sand is suffocating us.”

I was crying for them and trying to move myself towards them, and the soldier hit me with his foot and his weapon. The tank is getting closer to me, the bulldozer is getting closer. They took a detainee and threatened him that if he did not confess, they would kill us all.

Then they took my husband and put him under the tank’s tires and fired two shots in the air.

The soldier told me that he killed my husband, and I screamed and cried for my husband and had a breakdown.

I asked him what he was going to do to us and he told me, “I’ll bury you and let the dogs eat you while you live.”

I told him to shoot us and I cried and watched, and we stayed like that for half an hour while they threatened to bury us alive.

Buried alive & genetically tested with her children

PART 6

Transportation in the truck

After about half an hour, they moved us to a big truck and put me in the corner and threw men on top of me naked, about 100 men on top of me, and they filmed me and the young men were crying about my condition and the soldiers were laughing at us while I was in a state of collapse over what happened to my husband.

I was the only woman among them, without a headscarf, and the men were on top of me the whole way, and the road was very long.

After we arrived, we were separated into two tents, one for men and one for women, and I was moved to the women’s tent.

From the intensity of pain and fatigue when they brought me into the tent and its floor was stones (Zalat) and wet with water, I lost consciousness until the detainees thought I had died, and I learned later from the detainees that they were trying to shake me to wake up, but I did not respond and remained in this state on the wet floor, this was on December 8, 2023, until I woke up the next morning

Torture and beatings

December 9, 2023, they brought female detainees and we became 19 female detainees inside the tent, then the occupation soldiers tied our hands with plastic handcuffs and our feet with chains, blindfolded us, and beat us on our heads with their hands.

It was about 8:30 a.m. and they beat us with the heel of the weapon and they had iron cuffs in their hands and they hit us on the head with them and said, “Don’t move your head, don’t raise your head.” We arrived at Antut prison and spent 9 days there.

She added that during her detention, she was tortured and beaten and had to pray.

The occupation soldiers would play songs loudly, dance in front of us, put food and drinks in front of us, laugh at us and insult us.

She noted that after the end of the nine-day period in Antut Prison, they were taken by bus to an area in Beersheba to make identification cards amid severe beatings.

I told him that I had given birth by caesarean section, he hit me more on my stomach, and at this time my surgical wound opened (her c-section wound had not yet healed). Over time pus and a foul odor came out, and the operation site became a very red area and I felt a prick in it. I was very tired.

Then they carried us back to the bus and returned to beating us with their hands on our heads and my blindfold was pulled so hard that I felt my head would split in half while I was crying in pain and the soldiers were beating us repeatedly.

Buried alive & genetically tested with her children

PART 7

She stated that they were transferred to Damon Prison, where she was repeatedly interrogated, strip-searched and tortured, and where she was told that her husband and her entire family were dead.

Hadeel al-Dahdouh was released on January 26 and was crying heavily because she thought she had lost her family and children, but after her release, she learned that her husband had been released.

He came to pick me up from the crossing and I did not know him, he had changed a lot.

It was a painful meeting with long waves of crying while he hugged me on his hands and could not stand on his feet.

He took me to the Kuwaiti hospital to treat me. My wound was examined and treated. My hands and feet were tested so far. I do not feel my hands. I always feel as if I have been anesthetized, my back hurts and my eyes hurt until now.

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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ March 28, 2024 5:37 am

Tags: Palestine, State violence, Zionism