Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar was performing her duties as usual in the pediatric ward at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis. She was accustomed to receiving wounded and sick children, fighting silently for every small life that entered her care crying.

On a harsh day, she did not know that ten of the children being brought to the hospital would not be strangers — they would be her own.

Their ages ranged from two to twelve years. They arrived to her as charred bodies after an Israeli airstrike targeted her home.

The moment of shock was not enough to comprehend the scene. The hospital she had always known as a place of healing had, before her eyes, turned into a room of farewell.

She was not prepared to see her children like this, and her heart was not equipped to bear this much pain all at once. Even her husband arrived — not carrying the children as he used to, but carried alongside them into the intensive care unit. She still does not know if she will lose him too.

Time froze, logic vanished, and words collapsed. Who tells a doctor that her task is no longer to save lives, but also to bury them?

This tragedy is not an exception. In Gaza, the same stories repeat every day: families erased in an instant, homes leveled on their inhabitants, and mothers searching through the rubble for remnants of life.

Despite all this, condemnation is rarely heard, and statements of solidarity are scarce. Alaa received no official condolences, as if her loss was less painful, or as if the lives lost were not worthy of remembrance.

In a cruel irony, several Arab leaders rushed — both publicly and privately — to offer condolences to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the killing of Israeli diplomats.

But when an entire family was killed beneath the rubble in Khan Younis, not one dared to issue a statement of condemnation, or even to offer condolences to the doctor devastated by the loss of her seven children.

Each time a family is targeted, a new page is torn from the book of international justice — whose words remain imprisoned on paper while reality screams without answer.

Alaa will carry this pain for a long time. Her children’s faces will remain with her in every hallway and every bed, a reminder that some wounds never heal, and some stories must never be forgotten.

Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar lost her children in a clear crime, yet she found no one within the international justice system willing to name the crime or demand accountability for its perpetrators.

As thousands of families in Gaza continue to suffer, the gap widens between what international conventions proclaim and what is practiced on the ground.

The shame will not haunt the killers alone — it will also pursue the silence of the international community, its hollow legislation, and its double standards that grant impunity to the powerful while depriving the victims even of the right to mourn with dignity.

Unless this moral and legal collapse is confronted with genuine action, international law will remain synonymous with falsehood, and humanity will remain suspended at the doors of conferences, soulless.