The Voice of Hind Rajab

In the early hours of 29 January 2024, Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl, left her home in Gaza with six members of her family. Twelve days later, on 10 February 2024, her body and those of her family members were recovered from their car. Using visual evidence sourced from Al Jazeera and the Gaza Civil Defence, it was later determined that 335 bullets had been fired into the car, a black Kia Picanto, that the family had been travelling in to comply with an evacuation order issued by the Israeli army.1 Nearby, the ambulance sent by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) was found burnt out with the bodies of two medics, Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, who had been dispatched in an ambulance from Al-Ahli Hospital to rescue Hind. 

On the 19 July 2024, UN human-rights experts, investigative journalists, and several independent legal experts filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC), arguing that the death of Hind Rajab and her family may constitute a war crime under international humanitarian law (IHL). They warned: ‘The wilful or indiscriminate killing of protected persons, including civilians, medical personnel and humanitarian workers, amount to war crimes, and if systematic, crimes against humanity, and should be prevented at all costs.’2 The Hind Rajab Foundation, along with partner groups, likewise filed complaints with the ICC alleging war crimes and, as of May 2025, has submitted evidence identifying the Israeli military unit and commander whom they hold responsible for Hind’s death.3 These cases are active and under consideration, but the ICC has not yet issued any arrest warrant, indictment, or judicial finding.

To date, these are the known facts of the matter concerning the killing of Hind Rajab, her cousin Layan Hamada, her uncle Bashar Hamada, and four other members of her extended family. The question we face thereafter is far from straightforward: what do we do with these facts; what do we do with this knowledge?

According to the most recent UNICEF State of Palestine humanitarian update, published 5 February 2026, at least 21,289 children in Gaza were reported killed between 7 October 2023 and 3 February 2026.4 As of December 2025, it has been estimated by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs that at least 70,117 people in Gaza have been killed, although this is likely to be an underestimate.5 Despite a ceasefire that came into effect in October 2025, it has been estimated that – as of 6 February 2026 – 574 people have been killed and 1,518 injured in Gaza.6 Amid unprecedented levels of death and merciless destruction, Hind Rajab’s death nevertheless stands out. Part of the reason why she is remembered today is that her voice and final moments were recorded in real time by the PRCS Emergency Call Centre in Ramallah, about 52 miles from Gaza. For three and a half hours on 29 January, Hind spoke alternately to Rana Hassan Faqih (a dispatcher coordinating rescue), Omar A. Alqam (a PRCS call-taker), and Nisreen Jeries Qawas (a logistics officer negotiating military clearance), among others.

It was the original recording of Hind’s voice, captured on that fateful day in January 2024, that the filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania heard on social media during an airport stopover. Recounting, in the conversation published here, the moment when she was first confronted by Hind’s voice, Ben Hania observes a profound feeling of anger and sadness, a range of emotions that prompted her to ask a simple question: ‘What can I do?’ She knew the facts and had the proof, so to speak, of the death of a child who, in her final hours, desperately held out hope of rescue, but Ben Hania struggled to understand what she could now do with the so-called facts-of-the-matter. ‘Hind Rajab was one child among thousands,’ she says, ‘I thought maybe I can honour her voice by putting it in a cinematic form where people can sit, listen, and bear witness.’ In her own moment of searching, Ben Hania resolved to make a film and draw as much attention to Hind’s voice, and death, as possible. The result was The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025).

In the opening scenes of the film, we learn that the Israeli army has ordered the evacuation of the Tel Al-Hawa neighbourhood, where Hind was living with her extended family in January 2024. Following an attack on the car, Layan Hamada managed to ring the PRCS, and it is the recording of this call and the subsequent conversations with Hind that form the pivot around which The Voice of Hind Rajab revolves. Although relatively nearby, the ambulance and her rescuers never arrived. 

Cinema, in the broadest sense, is a visual form, designed to narrate through images and dialogue. Hind’s voice ‘appears’ on the screen as sound waves, so that we can both see and hear her actual voice. We can also hear the voice of her cousin Layan Hamada and the sound of the estimated 62 bullets that killed her. We can hear Hind plead to the PRCS team to rescue her. We can also hear her final words before she goes silent at 7:30 pm on 29 January 2024.

At a key moment in The Voice of Hind Rajab, the PRCS turns to social media to publicise Hind’s plight. Mahdi, an operations coordinator arranging the ambulance, suggests to his colleague (Leila) that they post the recordings of Hind’s voice on social media and send them to the press. These recordings were then released, with English captions to aid the broadest possible circulation, and we again hear Hind’s voice saying the Israeli army is shooting and she is hurt. ‘Publish that she’s hurt and she’s bleeding,’ Mahdi suggests to Leila. It is at this point that the unimaginable pressure faced by members of the PRCS, which is in evidence throughout the film, shifts into hopelessness. Omar A. Alqam (the call-taker who speaks with and tries to comfort Hind throughout her ordeal), finally despairs and, pulling out his phone, beckons his colleagues to look at social media feeds: ‘Look at them,’ he says, ‘children’s bodies ripped apart on the side of the road. Do you really think the voice of a terrified little girl will spark their empathy?’ Omar’s despondency is understandable – no one seems to either looking or, indeed, listening – and he rightly notes that the one thing Hind needs most is an ambulance: she needs, above all else, to be rescued. 

When the ambulance is finally dispatched to rescue Hind, we see its movements on a screen in the background of the emergency call centre. Minutes away from Hind, it pauses and Mahdi puts it down to signal failure. Resolving to correct the route, he redirects the two PRCS paramedics, Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun. Now only a matter of metres away from Hind, Yusuf confirms that he is near. This is his final communication between the PRCS and the call centre in Ramallah, and it is swiftly followed by the sound of gunfire. A colleague in the PRCS office asks Hind if she has heard a shot fired nearby to which she replies, ‘Yes.’ It is one of the last times we hear her speak.

Outlining her methods below, in conversation with Selma Dabbagh, Ben Hania notes that the original recordings – captured by the PRCS in January 2024 – were not only the prompt for her to make this film but also the means to explore how the role of acting and filmmaking could rise to the challenge of hearing Hind’s voice. This is not, to be clear, just about representing the voice but challenging how we, the audience, hear it and how the actors hear it too. Although Ben Hania worked from the original recordings and conversations with PRCS employees to develop the script for the film, and the actors learnt their lines from that script, they did so without hearing, in the first instance, the voice of Hind Rajab. When filming began, Ben Hania played the actual recording in the actors’ headsets so that they were hearing the voice of Hind Rajab, some of them for the first time, as they act out the script. The actors, in sum, had rehearsed and knew their lines in advance, but their reaction to hearing Hind’s voice is immediate and genuine.

Inherent in those original recordings, in the voice of Hind Rajab, is not only her testimony but a call for a response. Her voice is therefore directed not to the past facts of her death, but to the present day, to the here and now, and to the future. The call for a response has been met, in part, in the detailed published analyses of the killings that is currently available, in the legal complaints filed with the ICC, in the findings of the Hind Rajab Foundation, also submitted to the ICC, and, inter alia, in Ben Hania’s film. The responsibility for Hind’s death, to be clear, lies with the Israeli army, but the responsibility to respond to her voice –emotionally, politically, legally, or otherwise – lies with all those who hear it.