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5,918
Reaction poured in Thursday to Israel’s admission that its troops fired on the car carrying five-year-old Hind Rajab in January 2024. Hind’s grandmother, also named Hind Rajab, told the Associated Press the Israeli probe “is not enough.” She called instead for an international investigation, not just into her granddaughter’s death but into the deaths of all of Gaza’s children. Dyab Abou Jahjah, director of the Brussels-based Hind Rajab Foundation, told Al Jazeera he considers the investigation “a charade meant to whitewash the culprits instead of convicting them.” Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour told CNN he does not expect this investigation to differ from Israel’s past ones, which he called “not independent and not credible.” In the same announcement, Israel’s military separately cleared its own troops of criminal wrongdoing in the April 2024 killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers. World Central Kitchen publicly disputed that finding. The group called it “inconsistent with the full truth and deeply offensive.”
France 24’s Jerusalem correspondent, Noga Tarnopolsky, said the timing of Wednesday’s announcement came as a surprise inside Israel itself, given how much time had passed since the killing. She called the delay “extremely late.” But she said the decision to refer the case to criminal investigation at all amounts to an implicit acknowledgment that something had gone deeply wrong.
Hind Rajab’s death has never been just a single case. A Haaretz investigation into the Gaza Health Ministry’s own death list found her name in row 5,918. The list is a document more than 2,000 pages long, translated from Arabic and sorted by age. Her position means 5,917 children killed over the course of the war were younger than her when they died. The same investigation found 115 children died before reaching one month old, and 1,054 died before their first birthday.
Israel’s initial denial that its forces were even present near the car did not hold up. The Washington Post and Sky News separately investigated using satellite imagery and visual evidence. Both concluded Israeli tanks were in the area, with one likely firing around 335 rounds at the vehicle and a clear line of sight to the children inside. Forensic Architecture, working with Al Jazeera, later reached a similar conclusion using open-source analysis. Wednesday’s admission is the first time the Israeli military itself has acknowledged opening fire on the car.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Israel’s own military just admitted, two and a half years late, to something outside investigators had already documented using satellite imagery. Her family, her foundation, and the Palestinian ambassador to the UN all say they don’t expect this investigation to produce real accountability. The bigger number in this story isn’t the one making headlines. It’s the 5,917 other children killed in this war who were younger than she was.
Sources: AP via NPR (US wire — grandmother’s quote, Abou Jahjah “charade” quote, 150-incident review detail); CNN (US — Mansour quote, military’s prior denial language, WCK dispute); France 24 (France, public broadcaster — Tarnopolsky “extremely late” quote and analysis); Haaretz (Israel, centre-left — death list methodology, row 5,918 detail, infant mortality figures); Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — Forensic Architecture findings, tank distance detail); Wikipedia (secondary/tertiary use only, corroborated by Al Jazeera and NPR reporting — Washington Post and Sky News satellite investigation summary, 335-round figure)
A NEW FRONT OVER SYRIA
Israel carried out eight airstrikes on Syria’s Abu al-Duhur military airbase in Idlib province Tuesday, hitting the runway and storage facilities. Syria’s state-run Ekhbariya television, citing a military source, reported no casualties. It was Israel’s first strike on Syrian government assets since March.
Israel’s stated justification was specific: preventing Turkish troops from deploying at the base at all. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said late Tuesday that Syria had been “on the verge” of violating a status quo agreed with Israel on security matters by allowing Turkish forces to deploy there. Türkiye’s foreign ministry rejected the characterization, saying the strikes violated Syria’s “territorial unity and integrity” and calling for a stronger international response to what it called Israel’s escalating aggression. Syria’s foreign minister, Asaad al-Shibani, separately condemned the strikes as “an unjustified provocation.”
The United States broke publicly with Israel’s account. Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Türkiye and special envoy for Syria and Iraq, wrote on X that he was “deeply concerned” the strikes amounted to an unnecessary escalation. Türkiye’s presidential communications office went further, accusing Netanyahu of pursuing “expansionist and destabilising regional policies” ahead of Israeli elections.
Analysts see Tuesday’s strike as a repeat of a pattern, not an isolated incident. In April 2025, Israel struck Syria’s T4 and Hama airbases after Turkish military delegations visited both sites to inspect them for potential use, a move widely read at the time as Israel warning Ankara against establishing an air presence deep inside Syria. Researchers at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project count more than 1,700 verified Israeli strikes on Syrian targets since January 2025 alone, evidence the campaign has continued steadily since Assad’s fall.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Israel and Türkiye, both partners the US relies on in the region, are in open conflict over who gets a military foothold in Syria’s future. Washington’s own ambassador just publicly criticized Israel’s strike as unnecessary. This is a live, recurring flashpoint between two NATO-adjacent powers, not a one-off incident, and it has drawn far less American attention than the Iran war unfolding alongside it.
Sources: Middle East Eye (UK-based, pro-Palestinian editorial lean — ACLED strike count, Turkish presidential communications office quote, election-timing framing); Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — analyst commentary, April 2025 T4/Palmyra precedent); MEO/Middle East Online (regional — eight-strike confirmation, Turkish Foreign Ministry statement, Barrack’s “unnecessary escalation” quote); Ynetnews (Israel — Netanyahu office’s full “status quo” statement, Barrack’s role confirmed); ACLED (US-based conflict data project, primary source — April 2025 T4 strike detail, Turkish delegation visit timing)
THE BLOCKADE HAS A WORKAROUND
Saudi Aramco quietly resumed loading oil from inside the Strait of Hormuz last week, three weeks after halting sales entirely following attacks on its tanker fleet during the Iran war’s escalation. The world’s top oil exporter is offering Asian refiners spot cargoes of Arab Medium and Arab Heavy crude, according to shipping data and trade sources. It’s using ship-to-ship transfers off Fujairah in the UAE rather than sending its own vessels through the strait’s most exposed stretches.
Shipping data showed seven very large crude carriers operated by Saudi firm Bahri floating off the UAE and Oman this week, with two more heading toward Fujairah. Three VLCCs, named Malaysia Prosperity, Algeria Prosperity, and Singapore Prosperity, have already loaded two million barrels each from Saudi terminals. Traders told Reuters that Aramco may deploy its own tankers for future Hormuz transits alongside vessels operated by South Korea’s Sinokor. Some shipment details are deliberately being kept quiet for security reasons.
The workaround is partial, not a return to normal. Saudi Arabia diverted much of its export capacity to the Red Sea port of Yanbu earlier in the war to avoid the strait entirely, only to run into a separate blockade there from Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Aramco has since offered additional cargoes from Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Sidi Kerir as a second workaround. That route is moving roughly 670,000 barrels a day, a fraction of the 4 million barrels a day Yanbu handled before the Houthi blockade began.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: The world’s largest oil exporter has spent the last several weeks routing around not one but two separate blockades to keep crude moving to Asia, without ever forcing the Strait of Hormuz to formally reopen. Markets are adapting to a war that diplomacy hasn’t resolved, which is a different thing than the war actually ending.
Sources: Reuters via gCaptain (international wire — shipping data, VLCC names and volumes, Bahri and Sinokor detail); OilPrice.com (US, energy trade outlet — Fujairah ship-to-ship mechanics, Yanbu/Houthi blockade context); The Times of Israel via Reuters (Israel, liveblog — Sidi Kerir volume figures, Kpler data); Business Recorder (Pakistan — Juaymah and Ras Tanura terminal detail)
NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION
🇮🇷 Iran: 3,636 killed
🇱🇧 Lebanon: 4,333 killed
🇮🇱 Israel: 1,200+ killed, ~5,400 wounded (includes 472 killed, 3,004 wounded in Gaza)
🇺🇸 US military: 18 killed, 687 wounded
🇵🇸 Gaza: 73,399+ Palestinians killed, 174,310 wounded
🛢️ Brent crude: $93.80/barrel
⛽ US gas: $4.10/gallon
Sources: HRANA (Iran), Lebanon MOPH, INSS (Israel), DCAS (US, disputed — see Aug 4 story), OCHA/Haaretz (Gaza), OilPrice.com, AAA.
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789
