Social media users circulated a text by Algerian poet and writer Abdel Moneim Amer, which he wrote after the massacre of the al-Tabi’een School, claiming that the text was written by the father of one of the victims in the Gaza Strip.
The text reads: “I came searching for the remains of my son, who preceded me to the dawn prayer. Someone gave me 23 kilograms and said, “This is your son; bury him.” As I carried him, I remembered a day when I was coming home with him from the market, carrying a heavy bag. He, with the full innocence of a child, asked if he could carry it for me. He had come in to his mother, happy with his manliness, boasting in front of his siblings that he had carried all that weight alone for his father, while his sisters kissed him and his mother prayed for his long life and righteousness.
Here you are once again, my son, ahead of me with the bag home. But how can I convince them that you are inside it, and that your laughter that used to fill the house, your thin arms that you would playfully wrestle with your siblings, your head that used to rest in grandmother’s lap, and your pointed feet from walking in search of water and aid packages—how can I tell them that all of this has become one bag? When your mother asks me in a bitter Gaza accent, “Do you know there’s no electricity, Abu Saleh? Where will I hide all this goodness? Should we give it to the neighbors?” How will I tell her, my son, that what is in this bag is not fit for charity, and that 23 kilograms of remains is our share of death this week?”
Kashif verified the claim and found that it was incorrectly linked. Kashif contacted the Algerian writer, poet and journalist Abdel Moneim Amer, who confirmed that the text does not belong to one of the fathers of the children in the Gaza Strip who were killed in al-Tabi’een massacre, but rather was written by him based on his imagination of the scenes and images that spread after the massacre, and as an embodiment of his conversation with one of his friends in the Gaza Strip. Amer added to Kashif that the goal of writing the text was “to embody and document through writing the massacre committed by the army in targeting the Al-Tabi’een school.”
The Israeli occupation army targeted the Al-Tabi’in School in the Al-Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City at dawn on Saturday, 11 August 2024, resulting in the killing of more than 100 Palestinians. According to the latest update issued by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the Israeli occupation army has committed 3,486 massacres since 7 October, which led to the killing of 39,897 citizens and the injury of 92,200 others.