The Last Lunch Table

On a calm afternoon, father Mahmoud Abu Daff gathered with his children and grandchildren around the lunch table. Their laughter was the last sound heard before the family’s final moment turned into tragedy.

At dawn on Wednesday, August 13, Israeli warplanes of the “F-16” type targeted the family’s home in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood south of Gaza with a devastating missile. The four-story building collapsed directly on its residents, resulting in a massacre that claimed the lives of 11 family members — including the father Mahmoud, his children, and his sisters — while his mother and another sister sustained varying degrees of burns.

The martyr’s son, Moataz Abu Daff, recounted details of the day before the bombing to Palestine Online, saying: “It was an ordinary invitation, but it carried a strange warmth. We exchanged laughter and conversations, then the mood suddenly changed as if they were bidding me farewell without saying it outright.”

This was not the first time the family had been targeted. In October 2023, six of its members were martyred in a previous bombing. Despite this, they refused to leave Gaza, instead repairing the ground floor of their home to live in temporarily.

Today, Moataz Abu Daff lives as a witness to the catastrophe, having buried most of his family members in mass graves. Remembering their faces and their tears, he asks: “Why is a home full of displaced civilians targeted? Where is the conscience of the world?”

Do you want me to keep future translations of Gaza reports in this same formal-journalistic tone, or would you prefer a slightly more emotive style that mirrors the Arabic wording more literally?