The Smell Of Death

The soldiers told them to come out but forced them to crawl, she said, poking their rifles with flashlights attached in the faces of the children, laughing and spitting on them. "I said, 'There are no Hamas here,'" Zahwa said. "We beg you, in the name of the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, there are children here, please pity them, we love you, please." Finally the soldiers ordered them to leave the house, and she carried the wounded Ahmed in her arms--he had been hit in the head and chest by bullets; they took refuge at a cousin's house not far away, but were unable to leave or reach medical help, despite repeatedly calling Red Cross and Red Crescent ambulances. "Ahmed died on the second day," she said. "When we finally got out, we found that there were no more Samounis." She had her sleeping toddler Mohanad in her arms as she spoke. "What am I to tell this child? He is asking all day for his father, Dada, Dada. How will I bring his father to him?"

Around the same time, Rafiq Samouni said, the soldiers were going from house to house, searching for weapons. "They didn't find any weapons, we swear, there were no rockets fired from here. Then they packed us all in this one house and said we'd be safe there." That was the home of Wael Samouni, 39, which is now so flattened that its concrete slab roof is pancaked on the ground. Within hours, he said, they opened fire on the house with tanks and air strikes, completely destroying it and killing many of those inside. Others apparently remained in the rubble, gravely wounded. The Red Cross was given limited access and took nine badly wounded out shortly after the incident, but many others remained. On Sunday, after the Israelis pulled their tanks back from Zeitoun, Red Crescent crews began sifting through the rubble, uncovering 47 partially decomposed bodies Sunday, and a final body today, 17-year-old Wahid Samouni. "We are all farmers," said Rafiq Samouni. "We have nothing to do with Hamas. Until this day we have no idea why they targeted us."

Later that morning on Jan. 4, as people were being herded from their houses, some of them passed Imad Iyat Samouni, 35, lying in the earthen street, his hands tied with a plastic band, bleeding from several bullet wounds. No eyewitnesses emerged who knew what had happened. One of the passersby was neighbor Zuhair Arafat, 40. "He was crying to us for help and we tried to pick him up and [the Israelis] fired at us, [saying] 'Don't touch him, leave him,'" he said. "Can you imagine how we felt, leaving him like that? It still haunts me. They were just monsters in human clothing." By the time it was all over, Samounis from 2-year-old Azar Salar to 82-year-old Hamdi Mohammed lay dead. "My brother Ahmed was four; they shot him and they knew he was a child," said Faraj. "Was he Hamas? Hamdi Mohammed, was he firing rockets? Azar Salar, was she firing rockets?"

The Israeli Defense Force spokesperson said they had abundant evidence that Hamas hid its fighters in civilian areas, near schools and hospitals, forcing Israeli troops to open fire to protect themselves and sometimes killing civilians as a result. "We tend to forget that in 2000 we had suicide bombers in Israel, on the street and in cafes and on buses and 50 percent of these bombers were Hamas," Leibovich said.

She was more forthright on the issue of anti-Arab graffiti. "This is against any code of behavior of the IDF or moral values. We'll investigate this matter and, if it's true, the soldiers will be punished."

With Joanna Chen in Jerusalem

© 2009