'The Voice of Hind Rajab' shows cries for justice are only getting louder

Against this backdrop, the film stands not just as a solemn commemoration but as a confrontation with the present and the future. On the very day the film premiered, as on every other day, an average of 100 civilians were killed, most of them children, some from enforced starvation. This figure doesn't even account for the amputees, injured or orphaned. Those who survive live in constant fear of the next brush with death, either by bombs, bullets, disease or starvation.

What makes Hind Rajab's story, and her voice, most harrowing is the terror she endured—one still being endured by hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children. At its core, genocide deprives individuals of their due attention and mourning—their names and stories swallowed up by the rising and staggering death toll.

Growing cries of conscience

But the name Hind Rajab—and every artistic, historical, or documentary work dedicated to her—upends this dynamic, reaffirming that every name matters. Every life lost carried a story—a story that doesn't end with their death.

This is where the millions of voices around the world become vital. Not only do they condemn and protest, but collectively, they serve as a powerful force to pressure their leaders to stop this maddening "war" and rescue justice and accountability, even if they cannot rescue the lives already taken.

Without these cries of conscience, there would be no Hind Rajab Foundation, nor other humanitarian and rights organisations that have since emerged. These groups not only shed light on the victims but are actively—and in some cases successfully—pursuing accountability.

The Hind Rajab Foundation has gone on the offensive, exposing the names of guilty Israeli soldiers and officials alike. It even exposed the names of the soldiers who fired 355 bullets into the car that Hind Rajab was in when she was killed.

We are now hearing calls to arrest Israeli soldiers and officers suspected of involvement in genocide as they travel abroad. This, too, is unprecedented. As calls for accountability grow, so do Israel's efforts to suppress the truth, as seen by its stepped-up attacks on journalists in recent weeks.

Read more: Israel's killing of journalists is an attack on truth itself

Fear of accountability

The United States—Israel's chief ally—now understands it has to double down on its support beyond the avenues of military, economic, diplomatic and media backing. It is now actively going after groups and individuals who are pursuing justice and accountability for the victims of Israel's genocide.

Not only have they sanctioned the ICC and the UNHRC Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese, but they have also moved to sanction three Palestinian human rights organisations. This signals the extent of the damage suffered by Israel and its allies, and their growing fear of accountability for their complicity in them.

None of this is ordinary. Typically, such reckonings take years. This may be the first time in the history of warfare that truth emerges in the very moment the lie is being manufactured, where the victim is named and the killer identified, not as a faceless soldier "just following orders," but as a cog in a criminal machine of unlimited violence.

From the statements and frenzied conduct of Israeli soldiers involved in this war, we have ample evidence to condemn each one individually. The facts suggest they do not require orders to kill; rather, the higher-ups simply enable a culture of slaughter, extermination and impunity already deeply ingrained in Israeli society.

Without the relentless pursuit of accountability by these groups and individuals, Hind Rajab's voice—a testament to Israel's ongoing genocide—would be stifled under the weight of Gaza's horrifying death toll. We will never get back Hind's voice, but perhaps we can save the voices of thousands of children who are still alive, and who refuse to become just another number in the holocaust of our time.