People whispered that Nasser al-Astal had come undone, dazed by grief. Weeks after the Israeli airstrike that he said had crashed into his family’s home, his words came in loud, quivering spurts, darting frantically from memory to memory, from loss to loss — his wife, two of their sons and four of their daughters, all dead.
A daughter-in-law and a son-in-law, dead. His elder brother and his family, dead. His first grandchild, dead, he said, his second never born: His elder son’s wife had been pregnant.
“When I look at photos of my family on my phone, I cry to myself at night,” Mr. al-Astal said in a phone interview a few weeks after his loss. “But men hide their tears, so I try to do it away from people, alone.”
All of their names were there in black and white on a list of 6,747 Palestinians who Gaza health officials said had been killed by Israeli attacks in the first 19 days of the war. No. 14: his wife, Marwa al-Astal, 48. No. 84: their granddaughter, 1, also named Marwa.
The first 88 people on the list were all from the extended al-Astal family. The next 72 were Hassounas. The next 65 al-Najjars. The next 60 al-Masrys. The next 49 al-Kurds.
Such numbers capture the magnitude of Gaza’s loss like little else: family trees dismembered, whole branches of them obliterated.
It has been almost two months since the list was released on Oct. 26, and the death toll given by Gaza’s Health Ministry has nearly tripled, approaching 20,000.
A ministry spokesman, Ashraf al-Qudra, said early last month that more than 100 people in the Astal family alone had been killed in Israeli attacks. Of 88 family members on the Oct. 26 lists, 39 were identified as children and 25 as women.
Israel’s war in Gaza is killing women and children at a faster pace than in almost any other conflict in the world this century.
…
…