JENIN, Palestine—In the dead of night, gunfire ripped the stillness of Jenin, echoing through narrow streets. Inside one home, a young boy lay asleep with his family, unaware that his world was about to be torn apart. He can still hear the shots, feel the fear in his chest, and see the look on his father’s face when the phone rang.
“I woke up to the sound of gunfire. It was terrifying,” the boy recalls. “Then, all of a sudden, my dad’s phone started ringing. It was late, and the number wasn’t familiar. My father answered, and his face went pale. It was an Israeli officer on the line. He told my father that we had to leave our home immediately. My dad tried to argue, saying it was too dangerous to step outside, and that the soldiers could shoot us. But the officer didn’t care. He said, ‘You have no choice. Get out now.’”
The boy’s heart raced as his father hung up the phone. He rushed to wake his mother and siblings, fear gripping him tighter with every passing second. But what he saw next sent a chill down his spine—a drone, hovering right outside their window, at eye level, like a ghost silently watching them. Its small red lights blinked in the darkness, casting eerie shadows across the room.
“It was like a nightmare,” the boy says. “That drone was right there, staring into our home as if it was waiting for something to happen. It felt like it was alive, like a ghost watching us, waiting to see what we’d do. I knew then that we were trapped.”
After what felt like an eternity, the soldiers came, storming into their house, shouting orders and pointing their guns. The family had no choice but to leave. The boy remembers the fear in his mother’s eyes as they were forced out of the only place they had ever known as home.
“They told us they were going to blow up our house,” the boy says, his voice trembling with the memory. “The soldiers spread through the house like a flood. There were so many of them, and their faces were cold, empty. They didn’t care that we were just a family.”
The soldiers didn’t stop at the one home. They swept through the neighborhood, barging into house after house, rounding up families. The boy remembers being herded into a neighbor’s home, packed in with other families. The soldiers tied some of them up, their hands bound tightly. Then came the dogs—large, snarling beasts that sniffed through their belongings and growled at the children, adding to the terror.
“They brought these huge dogs with them,” he says. “They were scary, barking and snapping at us. We were all so scared, and the soldiers didn’t care. They took our phones, ripped them right out of our hands. We had no way to reach anyone, no way to call for help.”
As the hours dragged on, the soldiers ransacked their homes, smashing furniture, overturning cabinets, leaving chaos in their wake. They arrested one of the neighbors, a man who wouldn’t survive the night.
“We stayed like that, locked in that house, for more than seven hours,” the boy recalls. “No one knew what would happen next. We just waited and prayed.”
The boy’s personal encounter with the soldiers was brutal. One of them grabbed him by the arm, hard enough to leave bruises, and threw him violently to the ground. His small body hit the floor, but he made a silent promise to himself in that moment.
“I didn’t cry,” he says with quiet determination. “I wouldn’t let them see me cry. I wasn’t going to give them that.”
When asked how he feels now, days after the raid, the boy’s face hardens with a mixture of sadness and resilience. “I feel okay,” he says after a long pause. “But I’m sad. Sad that our neighbor died, sad that our home is gone.”
Despite everything he has endured, the boy refuses to be consumed by fear. “I’m not afraid of the soldiers,” he says firmly. “I worry about my mother, about my siblings. I’m scared they’ll hurt them. But I can’t let fear control me. This is our life now. The enemy is always around, and fear won’t help us. It won’t make us strong. Only our determination can do that.”
In the face of overwhelming terror, this boy has found a strength beyond his years. His story is a testament to the resilience that grows in the hearts of those forced to live under constant threat. He knows that the enemy may always be near, but so too is his courage—an unbreakable force that no raid, no soldier, and no drone can take away.
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