LETTER READER | No peace without justice in Gaza

I recently watched the haunting docudramaThe Voice of Hind Rajab. The film takes place in January 2024 inside a Palestinian Red Crescent emergency call centre in Gaza. It uses recordings of Hind’s actual voice as the five-year-old pleads for help from a car in which she is surrounded by her dead relatives.

Hind’s body was later found in the car riddled with an estimated 335 bullets, believed to have been fired by Israeli forces. The ambulance sent to rescue her was blown up, killing the paramedics. The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem contends that since the “ceasefire” started on October 10 last year, the Israeli army has killed at least 609 people in Gaza, including at least 100 children.

At the Cinema for Peace gala in Berlin, Germany, on February 16, the film’s director, Kaouther Ben Hania, noted that Hind’s killing is not an exception. She refused an award, insisting that “if we speak about peace, we must speak about justice. Justice means accountability.” Her words remind us that peace without accountability is not reconciliation — it is denial. — Terry Hansen, Grafton, Wisconsin