In Memory of Mohamed Al-Durrah

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Assalaamu Alaykum Wa Rahmatullaahi Wa Barakaatuh
 اللهم صل على محمد وآل محمد

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The day Mohammed Al-Durrah, 12, was killed is a day that is eternally engraved in my heart. It is a day that I think about everyday.On the second day of the Second Intifada, or uprising, Mohamed Al-Durrah was caught in a crossfire between Israeli Occupation Forces and Palestinian resistance fighters. Trying to hold onto life, Mohamed Al-Durrah held onto his father. He held on tighter as the seconds passed, his face growing more terrified as the seconds passed, and then the camera shook. When the camera regained focus, he was dead. All of his pain, gone. All of his suffering, gone. All of his stress, gone. That was it.My grandfather took me to the Arabic store with him the next week to buy bread, the store was handing everyone a picture of Mohamed Al-Durrah. This wasn’t the first time a Palestinian child has been killed by Israeli Occupation Forces, I used to see pictures of dead Palestinian children on Al Jazeera all the time. This time, however, everyone witnessed exactly what happened. We all witnessed his face going from pain to peace.I was a little girl who enjoyed television shows like Dora the Explorer and Rugrats at the time Mohamed Al-Durrah was killed. After watching that tape, I stopped playing with toys and watching “little kid” shows. I matured very fast. Mohamed Al-Durrah is the reason for my choice of studies. His death opened my eyes to injustice, and now I can’t close them.Mohamed Al-Durrah would be 22 years-old if he was alive right now. Maybe he would have been married, maybe not. Maybe he would have become a doctor, maybe an engineer. We will never know. We will never know what the twelve year-old boy would have grown up to be.