A mother in Gaza hasn't seen her daughter since Israeli troops raided their home

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A mother in Gaza hasn't seen her daughter since Israeli troops raided their home

2024-12-11 13:03 Last Updated At：13:21

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Reem Ajour says she last saw her husband and then 4-year-old daughter in March, when Israeli soldiers raided a family home in northern Gaza. She is haunted by those chaotic last moments, when the soldiers ordered her to go – to leave behind Talal and Masaa, both wounded.

Eight months later, the 23-year-old mother still has no answers about their fate. The military says it does not have them. Troops leveled the house where they were staying soon after the raid.

“I am living and dead at the same time,” she said, breaking down in sobs.

Ajour is one of dozens of Palestinians that an Israeli legal group, Hamoked, is helping in their search for family members who went missing after being separated by Israeli soldiers during raids and arrests in the Gaza Strip.

Their cases — a fraction of the estimated thousands who have gone missing during the 14-month-long war — highlight a lack of accountability in how the Israeli military deals with Palestinians during ground operations in Gaza, Hamoked says.

Throughout the war, the military has conducted what amounts to a mass sifting of the Palestinian population as it raids homes and shelters and sends people through checkpoints. Troops round up and detain men, from dozens to several hundreds at a time, searching for any they suspect of Hamas ties, while forcing their families away, toward other parts of Gaza. The result is families split apart, often amid the chaos of fighting.

But the military has not made clear how it keeps track of everyone it separates, arrests or detains. Even if troops transfer Palestinians to military detention inside Israel, they can hold them incommunicado for more than two months – their whereabouts unknown to families or lawyers, according to rights groups.

When people vanish, it’s nearly impossible to know what happened, Hamoked says.

“We’ve never had a situation of mass forced disappearance from Gaza, with no information provided for weeks and weeks to families,” said Jessica Montell, the director of Hamoked. Israel’s High Court of Justice has refused to intervene to get answers, despite Hamoked’s petitions, she said.

Asked by The Associated Press about the cases of Ajour and two other families it interviewed, the Israeli military declined comment.

The Ajours were sheltering at a home in Gaza City that belonged to Talal’s family after being displaced from their own house earlier in the war. Israeli troops raided the home on March 24, opening fire as they burst in, Ajour said.

Ajour, who was three months pregnant, was shot in the stomach. Talal was wounded in his leg, bleeding heavily. Masaa lay passed out, shot in the shoulder – though Ajour said she saw her still breathing.

As one soldier bandaged the little girl’s wound, another pointed his gun in Ajour’s face and told her to head out of Gaza City.

She said she pleaded that she couldn’t leave Masaa and Talal, but the soldier screamed: “Go south!”

With no choice, Ajour collected her younger son and went down to the street. “It was all in a blink of an eye. It was all so fast,” she said. Still bleeding, she walked for two and a half hours, clutching her son.

When they reached a hospital in central Gaza, doctors treated her stomach wound and found her fetus’ pulse. Weeks later, doctors found the pulse had gone. She miscarried.

Ajour said that several weeks later, a Palestinian released from a prison in southern Israel told her family he had heard her husband’s name called out over a loudspeaker among a list of detainees.

The rumor has kept her hope alive, but the military told Hamoked it had no record of Masaa or Talal being detained.

Another possibility is that they died on the scene, but no one has been able to search the rubble of the family’s building to determine if any bodies are there.

The storming of their building came as Israeli forces were battling Hamas fighters in surrounding streets while raiding nearby Shifa Hospital, where it claimed the militants were based. Troops cleared families out of nearby homes and often then destroyed or set the buildings ablaze, according to witnesses at the time.

The military itself may not know what happened to Ajour’s husband and daughter, said Montell of Hamoked.

“That illustrates a broader problem,” she said.

Ajour and her son now shelter in a tent camp outside the central Gaza town of Zuweida.

Masaa, she said, “was my first joy” — with blond hair and olive-colored eyes, a face “white like the moon.”

Masaa’s fifth birthday was in July, Ajour said, sobbing. “She turned five while she is not with me.”

Under a wartime revision to Israeli law, Palestinians from Gaza taken to military detention in Israel can be held for over two months without access to the outside world.

Israel says the law is necessary to handle the unprecedented number of detainees as it seeks to destroy Hamas following the Oct. 7 2023, attack on Israel that killed 1,200 and took around 250 people hostage inside Gaza. The military has transferred some 1,770 of its Gaza detainees to civilian prisons, according to rights groups, but it has not revealed the number still in its detention.

Milena Ansari, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said Israel is obligated under international law to document what happens during every home raid and detention. But the military is not transparent about the information it collects on detainees or on how many it is holding, she said.

Hamoked has asked the military for the whereabouts of 900 missing Palestinians. The military confirmed around 500 of them were detained in Israel. It said it had no record of detaining the other 400.

The group petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice seeking answers in 52 cases, including that of Masaa and two other children, where witnesses testified that the missing were handled by troops before their disappearances.

“The judges just dismiss the cases, without even inquiring what measures might be necessary to prevent such cases in the future,” said Montell.

A court spokesperson said it often asks the military to provide additional information but isn’t authorized to investigate if the military says it is not detaining them.

El Deeb reported from Beirut, and Frankel from Jerusalem.

'The Brutalist,' 'Emilia Perez' triumph at Golden Globes

2025-01-06 12:57 Last Updated At：13:03

Two wildly audacious films — Brady Corbet's 215-minute postwar epic “The Brutalist” and Jacques Audiard's Spanish language, genre-shifting trans musical “Emilia Perez” — won top honors at the 82nd Golden Globes on Sunday.

The Globes, which are still finding their footing after years of scandal and makeover, scattered awards around to a number of films. But the awards group put its strongest support behind a pair of movies that sought to be unlike anything else.

“The Brutalist” was crowned best film, drama, putting one of 2024’s most ambitious films on course to be a major contender at the Academy Awards. The film, shot in VistaVision and released with an intermission, also won best director for Corbet and best actor for Adrien Brody.

"I was told that this film was un-distributable," said Corbet. “No one was asking for a three-and-half-hour film about a mid-century designer in 70mm. But it works.”

“Emilia Pérez” won best film, comedy or musical, elevating the Oscar chances of Netflix’s top Oscar contender. It also won best supporting actress for Zoe Saldaña, best song (“El Mal”) and best non-English language film. Karla Sofía Gascón, the film's transgender star who plays a Mexican drug lord who undergoes gender affirming surgery, spoke for the film.

“The light always wins over darkness," said Gascón, gesturing to her brightly orange dress. “You can maybe put us in jail. You can beat us up. But you never can take away our soul or existence or identity.”

“I am who I am. Not who you want.”

Though the Globes audience was particularly starry, including nominees Zendaya, Timothee Chalamet, Angelina Jolie and Daniel Craig, most of the winners hailed from smaller, less seen films.

That included some surprises. One was Demi Moore's win for best actress in a comedy or musical. Her comeback performance in “The Substance," about a Hollywood star who resorts to an experimental process to regain her youth, landed the 62-year-old Moore her first Globe — a victory that came over the heavily favored Mikey Madison of “Anora.”

"I’m just in shock right now. I’ve been doing this a long time, like over 45 years, and this is the first thing I’ve ever won as an actor," said Moore, who was last nominated by the Globes for a film role in 1991 for “Ghost.” “Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress.”

Best actress, in a drama film, was a surprise, too. The Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres won for her performance in “I’m Still Here,” a based-on-a-true-story drama about a family living through the disappearance of political dissident Rubens Paiva in 1970s Rio de Janeiro. Torres dedicated the award to her mother, the great actress Fernanda Montenegro, who appears in “I'm Still Here,” too.

“She was here 25 years ago. And this is like a proof that art can endure through life even through difficult moments.”

Best supporting actor in a musical or comedy went to Sebastian Stan for another movie about physical transformation: “A Different Man,” in which Stan plays a man with a deformed face who's healed. Stan, who was also nominated for playing Donald Trump in “The Apprentice," noted that both films were hard to get made.

“These are tough subject maters but these films are real and they're necessary,” said Stan. “But we can't be afraid and look away.”

Comedian Nikki Glaser kicked off the Globes, with a promise: “I'm not here to roast you.”

But Glaser, a stand-up whose breakthrough came in a withering roast of Tom Brady, made her way around the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on Sunday picking out plenty of targets in an opening monologue she had worked out extensively in comedy clubs beforehand.

While Glaser might not have reached Tina Fey and Amy Poehler levels of laughs, the monologue was mostly a winner, and a dramatic improvement over last year’s host, Jo Koy. Last year's Globes, following a diversity and ethics scandal that led to the dissolution of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, were widely panned, but delivered where it counted. Ratings rebounded to about 10 million viewers, according to Nielsen. CBS, who waded in after NBC dumped the Globes, signed up for five more years.

Hosting the Globes two weeks before the inauguration of Donald Trump, Glaser reserved perhaps her most cutting line for the whole room of Hollywood stars.

“You could really do anything ... except tell the country who to vote for,” said Glaser. “But it’s OK, you’ll get ’em next time ... if there is one. I’m scared.”

The Globes are now owned by Todd Boehly’s Eldridge Industries and Dick Clark Productions, which acquired the award show from the now defunct Hollywood Foreign Press Association. After diversity and ethics scandals, the HFPA sold off the Globes and dissolved. However, more than a dozen former HFPA members are seeking to have the sale to Eldridge Industries and Dick Clark Productions rescinded.

This year's best picture race, unlike last year's when “Oppenheimer” rolled, has been seen as uncertain. Most of the movies that are seen as having a chance — “Conclave,” “Emilia Perez,” “The Brutalist,” “Wicked” and “Anora” — came away with at least one award. The exception was Sean Baker's Palme d'Or-winning “Anora,” which went home empty handed.

The Globes' award for cinematic and box-office achievement went to Jon M. Chu's “Wicked,” which has nearly collected $700 million in theaters. In a heavily arthouse Oscar field, “Wicked” is easily the biggest hit in the best picture mix. Accepting the award, Chu argued for “a radical act of optimism” in art.

Though few awards have been predictable this season, Kieran Culkin is emerging has the clear favorite for best supporting actor. Culkin won Sunday for his performance in Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain,” his second Globe in the past year following a win for the HBO series “Succession.” He called the Globes “basically the best date night that my wife and I ever have,” and then thanked her for “putting up what you call my mania.”

The papal thriller “Conclave” took best screenplay, for Peter Straughan's script. “Flow,” the wordless Latvian animated parable about a cat in a flooded world, took best animated film, winning over studio blockbusters like “Inside Out 2” and “The Wild Robot.” Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross won best score for their thumping music for “Challengers.”

Most of the TV winners were oft-awarded series, including the Emmy champ “Shōgun." It won four awards, including best drama series and acting wins for Hiroyuki Sanada, Anna Sawai and Tadanobu Asano. Other repeat winners were: "Hacks" (best comedy series, actress for Jean Smart), “The Bear” (Jeremy Allen White for best actor) and “Baby Reindeer” (best limited series).

Ali Wong won for best stand-up performance, Jodie Foster for “True Detective” and Colin Farrell for his physical transformation in “The Penguin.”

“I guess it's prosthetics from here on out," said Farrell.

For more coverage of the 2025 Golden Globe Awards, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/golden-globe-awards