Shadi was lost / and the snow came and went / twenty times, the snow came and went / and I grew older / and Shadi remained young / playing in the snow
As the Palestinian singer Amal Murkus, who had come to pay her respects, recited Fairuz’s words, the mothers’ weeping ripped our already broken hearts into pieces smaller than we ever knew possible. Three days earlier, on July 27, catastrophe struck our town, Majdal Shams, in the occupied Golan Heights.
Children mourn the deaths of the twelve martyrs, who were their friends and relatives, during a memorial held on July 31, 2024. (Photo: Naji Safadi)
The Israeli warning sirens went off far too late: within five seconds, an explosion of fire enveloped the football pitch. The children could not react in time. Immediately, hundreds rushed to the scene, sprinting, cycling, driving. The paramedic Adham Safadi arrived only to find his daughter Venice’s lifeless body. He covered Venice up and kept searching for survivors. Ambulance sirens cut through the crying and screaming as the wounded and dead were transported to the Mujamma’a medical center, where doctors and nurses had mobilized. Adham later told me the medical workers performed “miracles” and that “everyone who writes about this story must mention them.”
Majdal Shams was in a state of agonizing shock and fear. Every child here plays on the football pitch and the playground beside it. My family and I scrambled to call our loved ones, and every second until they picked up was a hellish eternity. Simultaneously, the news channel on our TV began showing pictures of our town. Call after call, we heard of another martyr’s name. All were children. The feeling I experienced in these moments was so surreal I still cannot put it into words.
Wadea Ibrahim holds a picture of his son Johnny, walking in front of his coffin during the funeral held for the martyrs in the town center on July 28, 2024 (Photo: Naji Safadi)
Our community is extremely tight-knit — one family’s child is everybody’s child; nobody is a stranger. In its darkest hour, the Jawlani community has shone the brightest, uniting in a collective outpouring of tears, pain, love, and solidarity. Thousands wearing black attended Sunday morning’s funeral. Everyone personally expressed their condolences to the bereaved families. Eleven coffins shrouded in white were lifted through a sea of people chanting: “The mother cries, where is my son? / don’t say he is among the victims / the Golan’s tears are flowing / for the boys and girls.” The 12th martyr, Guevara, was still missing at the time. His family, supported by countless helpers, searched everywhere. On Sunday evening, DNA tests crushed our hopes for his return, and on Monday morning, we held his funeral.
Candles are lit for the martyrs at a memorial in the town center on July 28, 2024. (Photo: Naji Safadi)
In the Golan, nobody grieves alone. There are daily grieving ceremonies for a whole week, which people attend repeatedly to show support. They also visit every bereaved family’s home. Candlelit memorials with pictures of the martyrs adorn our squares, and black flags our streets. The names, stories, and passions of Alma, Milar, Venice, Guevara, Izeel, Yazan, Johnny, Ameer, Naji, Fajer, Hazem, and Nazem are shared all over social media. They will never be forgotten. Support has also poured in from outside the Golan. We have received thousands of messages from people in the region and the rest of the world. Busloads of Palestinians and Israelis also came in person to express their sympathies. We appreciate every act of solidarity, but we also see those who shed no tears for the children of Palestine and Lebanon.
Guevara’s father, Guevara’s friends on July 31, 2024. (Photo: Naji Safadi)
Our human tragedy is deeply political. Israel and Hezbollah blame each other for the strike. There is no conclusive evidence, and on the ground, rumors are plenty. Some believe it was a misfired Iron Dome rocket, or even a calculated Israeli strike creating a pretext to attack Lebanon. Others are convinced Hezbollah was trying to hit a military target but missed. Ultimately, nobody really knows what happened. But even those charging Hezbollah are furious at Israel — not only because the warning sirens and Iron Dome failed, but because there would be no rockets without Israel’s horrific war on Gaza. Our children died because Israel is killing Gaza’s children.
A ceremony is held in Markez al-Sham in the town center on August 3, 2024, marking one week since the catastrophe. Grieving mothers hold pictures of their children. (Photo: Naji Safadi)
As if our loss isn’t difficult enough to bear, we have not been allowed to grieve in peace. Instead, we have had to fight for our name. Immediately after the catastrophe, the Israeli political and military establishment began circling over us like vultures, attempting to exploit our pain by portraying us as Israelis and framing its violence against Lebanon and Palestine as revenge in our name. Israel’s military spokesman called our children “Israeli citizens” and the Golan “northern Israel,” and condemned Hezbollah for “target[ing] and murder[ing] children.” None of the martyrs were Israeli citizens, the Golan is not Israeli but occupied Syrian land, and Israel has targeted and murdered over 15,000 Palestinian children since October 7. Because of the Majdal Shams attack, Netanyahu delayed the transfer of 150 sick Palestinian children from Gaza to the United Arab Emirates for treatment and vowed revenge against Lebanon. We quickly understood the game being played. We know Israel does not care about us. Last year, Israeli police brutally attacked protests against Israeli wind turbine construction on our Indigenous agricultural lands. For decades, the settler-colonial occupation has violated international law and discriminated against us, as documented by Al-Marsad. Now, our occupiers who are killing children daily were claiming our children as their own to legitimize more slaughter.
Mourners surround the statue of Sultan Al-Atrash, the Syrian Druze leader of the 1925 revolt during the funeral held for the martyrs on July 28, 2024. (Photo: Naji Safadi)
Honoring our history of anti-colonial resistance, anchored in the 1925 Syrian revolt against the French and the 1982 strike against Israeli annexation and citizenship, we did not stand by idly. Initially, Sunday’s funeral ceremony was to be partly held on Majdal Shams’ biggest open space, the large football pitch beside the smaller one which was struck. Volunteers stayed up all night bringing thousands of plastic chairs, water bottles, and sunshades. But during the night, rumors spread that Israeli officials wanted to attend. The funeral was moved back into the town center’s protected, narrow streets. After the funeral, far-right minister Smotrich — born in an illegal settlement in the Golan — visited the football pitch and was sent away by people accusing him of “dancing on our children’s blood.” Netanyahu attempted to organize a meeting with the bereaved families. They rejected him — yet after the second funeral on Monday, we received news of his imminent arrival in Majdal Shams. No, we could not grieve in peace. Hundreds quickly gathered, our hearts shattered by grief, our blood boiling in rage. “Zionist leave, the Arab land is free,” the protesters chanted outside the building where Netanyahu was meeting local councilors, adding: “criminal,” “murderer,” “fascist.”
A protest sign hung during a protest in front of a sports hall, located by the impacted football pitch in Majdal Shams. The protest was held a few hours after the second funeral held in town for the child Guevara, on July 29, 2024. The hall was used by the local council for the meeting with Netanyahu. The Arabic text on the sign reads: “12 candles, you are the killer… criminal.” (Photo: Naji Safadi)
Most importantly, we have raised our voices to spread a message of peace, fighting back against Israel’s instrumentalization of our grief. After Netanyahu’s visit, religious and secular community leaders issued a statement rejecting “the shedding of even a single drop of blood under the pretext of avenging our children.” Ibrahim Ibrahim, who lost his son Guevara, demanded an end to the war. Maya Eldin, who lost her cousin, Alma, urged the world to “take our grief not as a sign for escalation, but as an invitation for peace.” At the ceremony marking a week since the catastrophe, children released doves into the sky to call for peace. Thousands of Jawlanis posted stories on Instagram declaring the same position.
Despite our pleas, on Tuesday, Israel bombed a residential building in a densely populated area in Beirut, targeting the commander it blames for the Golan attack — five civilians, including two children, were murdered. Another Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon on Thursday murdered four Syrians. The people of the Golan do not stand for these crimes. If you take only one thing away from reading my words, do not let it be our pain, for even we cannot understand it ourselves. Let it be our message: no killing in the name of our children!