A huge portrait of five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab was unfurled on a beach in the Spanish city of Barcelona on Thursday, two years after she was killed by Israel, with her mother appealing for international attention to the plight of Gaza's children.
Hind's anguished final pleas for help while being trapped in a car under Israeli fire in Gaza have been retold in the film "The Voice of Hind Rajab" that won the Silver Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival last year, and is nominated for an Academy Award.
During Israel's genocidal offensive, Hind was pinned down in the car for hours, begging Palestinian medics over a mobile phone to send help, while her aunt, uncle and three cousins already lay dead.
When an ambulance finally arrived, contact with the girl and the rescuers themselves was lost. Twelve days later, the bodies of the girl, her relatives and two ambulance workers were recovered from the area.
In Barcelona, several hundred people held up a 55-meter-long (180-foot-long) tarp with Rajab's face next to a large Palestinian flag and the message, "Free Gaza's Children."
"The children of Gaza do not ask for pity. They ask for their right to live, to sleep without fear, to play without bombs, to grow up, just to grow," said Hind's mother, Wesam Hamada, 29, as she watched the hoisting of her portrait.
"The voice of Hind Rajab did not stay in the car; it travelled across borders," said Jordanian-Canadian actress Saja Kilani, who played a Palestinian Red Crescent first responder in the film and attended the beach protest.
Asked this week about the deaths of Hind and her relatives, the Israeli military said the incident remained under review, and it declined further comment.
The United Nations has said the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains "dire" three months into a cease-fire following Israel's two-year military campaign that demolished the territory. Children are among the hardest hit by shortages of shelter, food and basic services including healthcare, aid officials say.
Israel has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children, during the two years of attacks.
In Spain, there was significant outrage over the relentless actions of the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip. Last August, a privately organized flotilla with aid supplies set off from Barcelona toward Gaza. The flotilla was intercepted by the Israeli army shortly before reaching its destination.
