Avner Gvaryahu

The killing of more than 100 Palestinians by the Israeli Defence Force during recent protests in the Gaza Strip is the latest example of routine violence and abuse by the military and part of an aggressive strategy to control the occupied territories.

That is the view of a former Israeli sergeant and paratrooper who now serves as the executive director of Breaking the Silence, a not-for-profit organisation founded by former soldiers known for documenting “the reality of everyday life in the occupied territories”.

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Layla Ghandour’s body in her grandmother’s arms

Rarely does the photo, four columns wide, of a dead baby appear on page one of The New York Times as it did on May 17. The sorrowful death of Layla Ghandour became, for the Times, “fodder for competing narratives.” But, in fact, a dead Palestinian baby is grist for a newspaper eager to blame Israel first.

The accompanying article was written by Times Cairo bureau chief Declan Walsh. He told the poignant story of an eight-month-old Gaza girl with sparkling eyes that he actually never saw. Held “in the arms of her grandmother when a cloud of tear gas engulfed them” at Monday’s Gaza protest, when 50-plus Palestinians were killed as they attempted to breach the border with Israel, Layla supposedly inhaled “acrid gas.” Dying several hours later, her story “shot across the globe, providing an emotive focus for outrage” not directed at the politically zealous family members who brought her there but, predictably, at Israel.

Layla’s photo was taken by Gaza photographer Mahmud Hams, who described his specialty as “shots of children crushed in the rubble. Parents weeping beside lifeless little bodies. Death. Destruction. Funerals of men, women, children, sometimes very young children.” It is, by implication, always Israel’s fault. Walsh describes “the pressures of life” in Gaza under “an Israeli blockade” that contributed to Layla’s death.

But he inadvertently describes a family’s tragic, zealous dysfunction. Layla was dozing at home when the call sounded from a nearby mosque that a bus awaited passengers heading to the Gaza border fence. Her 12-year-old uncle, assuming that her mother was already on board, took Layla with him. Later that afternoon, when she began to cry, the boy carried her toward the border to find her grandmother, who was busy shouting at Israelis across the fence. Tear gas fell nearby, an hour later Layla died.