Dunya Abu Muhsen
Age 12
Dunya was also 12. Before the Israeli airstrike that killed her parents, cousins Mohammad and Dalia, and her younger siblings Kenzi, Ahmad, and Shadi, she was a dedicated student who dreamed of becoming a doctor to help all of the sick children everywhere around her. Her family had gone exactly everywhere Israeli soldiers had ordered them to go, leaving their home in Al-Qarara and seeking safety in a relative’s house in the Al-Amal neighborhood—only for the men to launch an American-adult missile there, murdering her family and ripping through Dunya’s right leg and hip.
Even after that explosion tore her family apart and stole her right leg from her, Dunya spent her painful hours in a hospital bed at Nasser Hospital desperately repeating her dream to reporters for anyone who would listen online and on TV. She told reporters she only wanted to leave Gaza and walk again so she could go back to school, eventually become a doctor, and “treat other children, like those who treat us.”
Dunya needed to reach a hospital abroad where she could receive a prosthetic leg and the physical rehabilitation that the Israeli blockade made impossible in Gaza. Her doctors submitted her name for medical evacuation, but Israeli officials denied her pleas. Even as an amputee whose face was broadcast on international news, and even as the only person left in her family, she was kept down in the violence.
Dunya was murdered on December 17, 2023, while lying in her bed in the maternity and children’s ward. Israeli men in a tank purposefully fired a heavy 120mm M830A1 anti-tank (HEAT) shell—the kind the U.S. government “quietly” bypasses Congress to sell—directly into the hospital ward. The shell struck Dunya in the head, killing her instantly, spraying her blood on the wall, and severely cutting and burning many other little kids, babies, and their mothers. She was murdered in the same bed she had been confined to while waiting for the world to care about her and her dream.
On December 9, American politician Antony Blinken used the Arms Export Control Act to unlock $106.5 million worth of 120mm tank shells for “emergency” use by Israeli soldiers in Gaza. From December 10–16, the anti-tank shells were delivered and distributed to Israeli tank units surrounding families in Khan Younis and the Nasser Hospital. On December 17, one of these groups of men deliberately shot their high-explosive, anti-tank shell into one of the children’s rooms of the hospital. The anti-tank shell directly exploded against Dunya’s head while she was lying in her bed, still hoping to escape.
The votes that paid for the weapons
House Bill, H.R. 6126 (House): Emergency supplemental appropriations for Israel