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.”
Suggesting that Israel’s move to launch a criminal investigation into Rajab’s death is a “public relations operation,” Ben Hania wrote, “What is needed is justice (delivered by an independent authority) for Hind and for all the victims of the genocide in Gaza.”
Israel’s military this week said it fired at the Rajab family’s car and an ambulance dispatched to help them — all six people in the car and two paramedics were killed — as the family was trying to flee an Israeli invasion. The military has launched an investigation into its troops’ conduct.
Like Ben Hania, Rajab’s mother Wesam Hamada has also called for an independent investigation and questioned the delay on Israel’s probe.
“Why did the investigation and the acknowledgment of the shooting at Hind’s car and at the paramedics come only after more than two years?” Hamada told the Associated Press. “It’s an attempt to distract from what’s happening in Gaza and improve the (Israeli) army’s image to the world. That’s it.”
The voices of Rajab and her 15-year-old cousin Layan Hamada calling for help from January 2024 were released by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and excerpted in The Voice of Hind Rajab.
The film received numerous accolades, including Oscar and BAFTA nominations and a Venice grand jury prize win.
When asked earlier this year if she thought there would someday be justice for Rajab, Ben Hania told The Hollywood Reporter, “I hope so, because we can’t live in a world without accountability. … I don’t have a crystal ball, but my hope is that this film can be part of the change. Because we can’t live in a world where just because you have the biggest gun, you rule the world. “