Almost a month ago, The Independent ran the harrowing story of a Gazan man killed in an IAF strike. He happened to run a popular YouTube channel with over 280,000 subscribers.
Don’t be afraid, keep playing, it’s almost done, the Palestinian father repeats to his two girls as they scramble for cover when the Israeli war planes roar overhead.
“Daddy,” they scream, hiding their heads under cushions.
Just a few minutes before the strike, Ahmed al-Mansi, 35, films his two daughters, aged six and 12, playing with a magnetic fishing toy he had just bought them for Eid to distract them during Israel’s ferocious bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
The video was posted last Wednesday on the family YouTube channel called “Sarah and Hala stars”, which over the last four months has documented the life of the girls in Gaza, including more recently the heavy airstrikes.
The channel has garnered tens of thousands of views and elevated the family to a kind of celebrity status in the Strip, with many people saying it brought them comfort.
But this video, where Ahmed films himself buying toys for the children, would be his last.
Three days later he was killed in an Israeli strike.
“I wish you happy Eid,” al-Mansi says with a smile. “We will not be able to follow the usual traditions of Eid since … it is very dangerous to drive the car in the streets.
“Hala is feeling upset. I want to do something that makes her happy. I’ll buy her something that makes her happy.”
Despite efforts to comfort his daughters and reassure them they are safe, Ahmed was killed in a ferocious slew of air raids over his town in the north of the Strip at the weekend.
Videos taken by his surviving family members of that night are harrowing.
The barrage is relentless: there are at least 10 strikes in just 15 seconds.
In the dark, the children can be heard screaming and vomiting.
Israel said that night they were targeting the underground networks of tunnels that militants use in the fighting.
Ahmed is among the 213 killed, most by Israeli fire in Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry. Some 61 children and 36 women are among that number.
In Israel the death toll rose to 12 on Tuesday, after two Thai workers were killed in a massive rocket attack on Eshkol, according to police.
Despite intense international efforts to broker a ceasefire, with a US envoy present and Egyptian mediators shuttling between the two sides, the fighting has continued.
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Ahmed’s older brother Hamed, 36, a well-known photographer in Gaza, told The Independent that the day before Ahmed was killed, he threw a birthday party for Hala, his six-year-old daughter.
“He was trying to do everything to make them feel happy, to distract them from the nightmare,” Hamed said.
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On the day of the fatal air raids, Ahmed moved his own family; then, with his other brother, Youssef, he came to help Hamed move his children further way from the worst of the bombing.
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Hamed said he was eventually able to move his wife and children and returned back home to find his brothers, who were waiting in the street.
“I was 10 metres away from them when the Israeli missile hit them,” he said with a shake in his voice.
“My brothers were not carrying rockets or stones. They came only to make sure I was OK. I was screaming and crying for help for the ambulance, that’s why I have no voice now.
“Why would they do this?”
The answer to that last question has, funnily enough, been answered by anti-Israel propaganda site The Electronic Intifada, in their piece on his death entitled Gaza father tried to console his children, then Israel killed him.
Ahmad al-Mansi was reportedly a member with the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.
Yup, that’s him.
This speaks volumes about The Electronic Intifada’s whitewashing of those trying to murder Israeli civilians. Despite knowing he was a Hamas terrorist, they still try to paint him in a sympathetic light.
In the meantime, join me in contacting The Independent to have them add this crucial information to their piece on his death.
