 "Protesters rename Columbia's Hamilton Hall 'Hind's Hall': Who was Palestinian girl Hind Rajab?")
The chaos continues at US’ Columbia University.
According to reports, protesters have taken over the university’s Hamilton Hall, hung a Palestinian flag out of the window and renamed it ‘Hind’s Hall’ after a six-year-old girl who died in Israel’s bombing of Gaza earlier this year.
This comes after Columbia president Nemat Minouche Shafik said that negotiations had failed and warned protesters to disperse.
Columbia’s Hamilton Hall became a symbol of student activism during the Vietnam war.
But who is Hind Rajab? What do we know about her and how she died?
Let’s take a closer look:
‘Please come’
Hind’s story gained traction on social media after the phone call she and her family made went begging for help went viral.
“I’m so scared, please come,” were among last words Rajab said to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Hind and her family on 29 January were attempting to flee approaching Israeli forces.
According to Le Monde, Hind had been given by her family to her uncle who was trying to leave Gaza in a car with his wife and children.
Hind’s parents and siblings ventured out separately on foot.
It was Hind’s cousin Layan Hamada who first reached out to the Palestinian Red Crescent for help when their car in Tel Al-Hawa, in the south of Gaza City, came under fire.
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By then, everyone else in the car except Layan and Hind were already dead.
“Are you able to hide?” came the response.
Layan said she was in the car. Then, she screamed amid heavy gunfire.
Hind, the only survivor left in the car at that point, spent the next few hours begging for help.
“Come take me. You will come and take me?” Hind asked as per The Guardian.
“For more than three hours, the little girl desperately begged our teams to come and save her from the [Israeli] tanks surrounding her, enduring the gunfire and the horror of being alone, trapped amid the bodies of her loved ones killed by Israeli forces,” Red Crescent was quoted as saying by Le Monde.
By the time the paramedics got the go-ahead to move into the area, the Red Crescent had lost contact with Hind and its ambulance.
Then, nearly two weeks later on 10 February, the bodies of Hind and her relatives were found in the area.
Le Monde quoted Hind’s relatives as saying that the little girl had been shot in the back, hand and foot.
“Hind and everyone else in the car is martyred,” her grandfather, Baha Hamada, told Agence France-Presse. “[Family members] were able to reach the area because Israeli forces withdrew early at dawn today.”
Hind’s mother, Wissam Hamada, was quoted as saying by The Guardian: “I will question before God on Judgment Day those who heard my daughter’s cries for help and did not save her.”
‘Deliberately targeted’
According to The Guardian, the Red Crescent said it had found the bodies of its paramedics Yusuf Al-Zeino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun just a few metres away.
“The occupation deliberately targeted the Red Crescent crew despite prior coordination to allow the ambulance to arrive at the site to rescue Hind,” it said in a statement as per Le Monde.
This, it claimed despite coordinating its rescuers’ movements with the Israeli Army prior to the mission.
The newspaper quoted Red Crescent spokesperson Nebal Farsakh as saying, " We contacted the ministry of health and they coordinated our safe access with the Israeli authorities. We were given the green light to move the ambulance.”
“First [the paramedics] said the Israeli forces are putting laser lights on them … And then we heard a gunfire sound before we lost the connection. It was like a gunfire or explosion, we were not sure of what happened.”
“We have very clear red cross emblems on top of all of our ambulances,” she said. “This is horrible because when we have waited so many hours, leaving Hind appealing to us, crying, saying please come pick me up, and then, unfortunately, although we have waited all of these hours to guarantee our safe access, it wasn’t a safe access.”
“The occupation deliberately targeted the Red Crescent crew despite prior coordination to allow the ambulance to arrive at the site to rescue Hind,” it added.
“We heard gunfire, we couldn’t imagine [they] would fire at them,” Rana Faqih, the Red Crescent official on the line with Hind told Al Jazeera.
‘Troops not in area’
But Israel has insisted its troops were not in the area.
“It appears that … troops were not present near the vehicle or within firing range of the described vehicle in which the girl was found,” a statement from the Israeli army read as per Al Jazeera.
“Also, given the lack of forces in the area, there was no need for individual coordination of the movement of the ambulance or another vehicle to pick up the girl,” the statement added.
However, Al Jazeera claimed its investigation of satellite images at midday on 29 January backed up Hind and Layan’s statements.
It showed that there were at least three Israeli tanks just 270 metres away from the family’s car with their guns pointed at it.
The outlet reported that the car in which Hind and her families’ bodies were found was rife with bullet holes.
With inputs from agencies
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