By now, apart from her family and friends, the short life and terrible death of 10-year-old Fatima Abdallah Jaafar will likely have been forgotten.
But the painful circumstances of how, where and why Fatima was killed need to be recalled.
It is worth remembering, because his sudden and disfiguring death provides a searing antidote to the almost dizzying celebration of the “ingenious” ways Israel has devised to murder its adversaries.
It is also a harbinger of the deaths of dozens more innocents, who are likely to perish as the Middle East appears destined to be engulfed in an even wider war. In just 48 hours, 50 children have been killed in Lebanon – all victims of the latest Israeli strikes.
Fatima and an 11-year-old boy, Bilal Kanj, were killed in the first wave of Israeli attacks targeting Hezbollah fighters, involving pagers containing explosives that detonated simultaneously at 3:30 p.m. on September 17 across Lebanon and Syria.
Fatima had just come home from school. She was in fourth grade. Her aunt remembered her burning desire to learn English.
“Fatima was trying to take English classes,” she said. “She loved English.”
Fatima was in the kitchen when a pager on a table started ringing. She picked up the device with the intention of giving it to her father. On the way, the device exploded.
Fatima’s little cherubic face instantly transformed into a mangled mess. The room was now awash with the schoolgirl’s blood—a terrible testament to the lethal power of the improvised bomb.
At her funeral in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, mourners carried a large photo of Fatima into the air. Her mother, walking alongside a small coffin covered in flowers, wept.
Mourners stopped in the town square before heading to a nearby cemetery. There, they prayed as a religious leader implored God “for justice.”
Fatima’s death was of little, if any, importance to the multitude of Western journalists and so-called “security experts” who “marveled at the complexity” of Israel’s secret “plot” to infiltrate Hezbollah on such a “colossal” scale.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the attacks. However, it is widely believed that the country’s security services are responsible for organizing and carrying out the attacks.
It is a familiar story. Children – whether orphaned, traumatized, dismembered or killed in Gaza, the occupied West Bank or Lebanon – are treated as cannon fodder as Israel continues to unleash its “murderous rage” without restraint.
Fatima and the thousands of children in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon who have already been killed and will continue to be killed have been reduced to an inconvenient asterisk in the myopic minds of Israel’s legion of supporters abroad.
Among them is Artur Wilcynski, a former Canadian ambassador and senior security official, who quickly took to X to describe Israel’s ruthless scheme that claimed the lives of Fatima Abdallah and Bilal Kanj as “brilliant.”
“The targeting of Hezbollah members was brilliant. It dealt a major blow to a terrorist group that fired thousands of rockets at civilians while the useless UN mission in Lebanon stood by. There is a price to pay,” Wilcynski wrote.
The fact that the deaths of Fatima and Bilal were a shocking measure of the “price” that Lebanese civilians had to “pay” did not stop Wilcynski from posting what the retired Canadian diplomat apparently considered a concise GIF just hours after the deadly explosions began.
The GIF features two popular Looney Tunes cartoon characters. In the short scene, Road Runner scares Wile E Coyote. The caption reads: “Beep beep.”
Later, in response to a tweet from acclaimed Palestinian writer Mariam Barghouti, pointing out that the victims of Israel’s “premeditated” attack included children, Wilcynski posted another GIF – this time of a movie star in character, applauding.
Wilcynski’s scandalous posts sparked a sustained and violent reaction, especially since just months earlier he had been appointed “special advisor” to the University of Ottawa on anti-Semitism.
In a farcical attempt to explain his damning messages, Wilcynski claimed that the cartoon GIF was, in fact, “a statement about the persistent attempts to kill Jews over the centuries that have failed.”
No, sir. Publishing an excerpt from a cartoon to make “a statement” about the murderous pogroms that Jews endured “over the centuries” is a scandalous affront to the memory of millions of victims – girls and boys, women and men.
Please remember that the author of this obscene nonsense was a decorated career civil servant who promoted Canadian values and interests at home and abroad and was tasked with combating anti-Semitism on a university campus.
My God.
Not done embarrassing himself, Wilcynski turned amateur psychoanalyst by suggesting that his online critics – who chastised him for “joking” about the children’s deaths – were guilty of “morbid projection”.
Wilcynski then brought out the predictable, exculpatory platitude that he found “the loss of innocent lives… abhorrent.”
“There has been a significant misunderstanding regarding my use of the word ‘brilliant,’” he wrote on X. “The loss of innocent life in any conflict is abhorrent and must be avoided. As a retired national security and intelligence official, my use of the word was in reference to the complexity and sophistication of an operation.”
Whether Wilcynski is willing to admit it or not, the shadowy architects of Israel’s “complex” and “sophisticated” operation are guilty of the murders of Fatima and Bilal.
They bear responsibility for these crimes. They are guilty. The murders should haunt their consciences, for they will never be held accountable. Instead, they may win medals and promotions. They will be praised by Wilcynski and his callous colleagues for their “service” and inventiveness.
Wilcynski’s hasty and self-serving clarification didn’t work.
On September 18, he again took to X, a social network known for its seriousness, intelligence and nuance, to announce his resignation.
“My posts about the Hezbollah-Israel war have caused harm and have affected my ability to help combat anti-Semitism at the University of Ottawa. My intention to share this information is irrelevant when it is clear that many people have been harmed by it. I apologize. I have resigned from my position as special advisor on anti-Semitism,” he wrote.
Wilcynski’s posts that caused so much “hurt” and “harm” remain, as I write this, online on X.
Meanwhile, Fatima and Bilal have been buried. They will never graduate. They will never marry. They will never have a family to love.
And Fatima will never learn English.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
