Ammar Sawan
Age 6
Ammar—whose name means “moon”—was 6. She asked questions about everything: why the sea is salty, why birds fly, why people cry when pigeons die, and why there have to be “martyrs.” Some of the questions annoyed her big sister Manal (8), and some made Manal laugh. But even more than that, some of Ammar’s words made Manal wonder as well. Her teacher said she asked questions adults didn’t ask. She loved to gaze at everything she carried in her hands, turning it over and contemplating.
Ammar’s and Manal’s family was also raising money to evacuate Gaza. Leaving Gaza had become Ammar’s biggest wish. Her grandmother was keeping them alive while searching for a way out. Even though little Ammar and Manal truly wanted to go free, the world said it would be “ethnic cleansing” if Ammar got her wish and left her “land.”
Months later, on June 19, 2025, an Israeli trooper playing with a drone in the Al-Shati tent shelter looked inside multiple families’ tents and saw Manal and Ammar playing with their grandmother. The two of them were in matching yellow dresses because they insisted on being twins together. Manal was holding her grandmother’s right hand and Ammar was holding her left, a red apple still in Ammar’s pocket. Ammar had looked up at the sky, saw the man’s drone, and asked while grabbing the apple for her sister: “Manal, what’s that iron bird?” Manal quickly let go of her grandmother and reached for Ammar’s hand as the lady told them to run. The man shot a missile into the tent at the little girls. The explosion came before she could run with her sister.
Their grandmother barely survived the murders. Among the rubble of the destroyed tent, rescuers found the red apple, nearly intact, in Ammar’s small hand that no longer moved.
The votes that paid for the weapons
House Bill, H.R. 6126 (House): Emergency supplemental appropriations for Israel