Which side of history are you on?

From Ryan Grim at the Intercept:

"By now you probably know the heartrending story of Hind Rajab, and if not, I hesitate to be the one to tell you about her. But her story needs to be as widely known as possible. Two weeks ago, on January 29, Hind, a 6-year-old girl, climbed into a car with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. They were doing what so many Palestinians have been doing for the past four months: trying to find the least unsafe place possible. Safe zones are dangerous. Moving toward safe zones is dangerous. Staying put can be fatal. With Israeli troops approaching, the family decided to flee, some in the car, some on foot.

Hind and her family quickly came under fire. Her older cousin called the Red Crescent, pleading to be rescued. The call was cut off as she was killed along with the rest of her family by Israeli gunfire. Only Hind remained alive. Wounded, she called the Red Crescent back, begging to be rescued. She was scared of the dark, she told them, and it was getting late. “I’m so scared, please come,” she said.

The distraught dispatcher told her over the course of a three-hour call that they couldn’t dispatch rescuers until they had approval from the Israeli forces. Without that approval, the rescuers could be struck. As we reported earlier with the killing of Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa, often those approvals can be fatally slow to come.

Finally, permission was granted, and two medics were sent in an ambulance. Dispatchers heard a terrible noise, and then lost contact with the medics. Since then, the world has been on edge, praying for news of Hind’s successful rescue, but fearing the worst. Finally, Israeli forces withdrew from the area, and on Saturday morning, Hind’s surviving family ventured back to the neighborhood. There, they found the decomposing victims of the Israeli attack. Hind was dead. Just yards away were the charred ruins of the ambulance and the impossibly heroic medics.

Hind’s life and death, her courage and her fear, had captivated the globe. Her killing was also an unspeakable war crime. The Israel Defense Forces can’t say it was the unfortunate but unintended consequence of a strike on a terrorist, because we know that the Red Crescent was in direct communication with the IDF, which therefore knew that an ambulance was heading to those precise coordinates to rescue a little girl. Somebody pulled the trigger — or pressed the button — that ended their lives. Somebody higher up signed off on it, if the snippets of cockpit and drone operator recordings from previous Israeli assaults represent standard practices. As we speak, somebody — perhaps many people — inside the IDF knows who committed this spectacular atrocity and is staying silent.