🩵 A Baby Girl in Gaza Froze to Death in Her Tent During This Fake Thing They Call a “Ceasefire”

Rahaf was born into this genocide and died in a flooded camp while the world pretended things were getting better

An infant girl, born into this genocide earlier this year, died from hypothermia this week in a flooded tent in Gaza. Her name was Rahaf Abu Jazar. Her parents held her tiny body in their arms and walked her through the mud and the cold to say goodbye. All of this is happening during what the world is calling a “ceasefire.”

We were told this pause would mean real shelter, mobile homes, caravans, a chance for people to rebuild something that feels human. Instead, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are still sleeping in thin, torn tents that collapse when the rain comes and rip open when the wind blows.

Before I tell you Rahaf’s story, I need to ask you, from the heart, to become a member today. I keep this reporting free for the world — for families in Gaza reading on a cracked phone, for students in public schools, for elders on fixed incomes, for people living in deep poverty who will never be able to pay for it. That is only possible because a smaller circle of people who can afford it decide to carry a piece of this weight. If you’re one of those people, I’m asking you to click here to become a member or click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member. Your support keeps this work free for them, and even for you when you can’t afford to pay.

Now let me tell you what was done to Rahaf.

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She was an infant from a displaced family in Khan Younis — born into the genocide, not before it. Her parents did not get to introduce her to a normal world. She opened her eyes under bombardment, under siege, in a Gaza that was already being strangled.

In the past few days, torrential rains and a brutal cold wave have hit the strip. Tents have filled with water. Floors have turned into mud. Blankets have been soaked through. People are literally sleeping in puddles. Videos from the ground show families trying to scoop water out of their tents with plastic bowls, only for more to flood back in.

In one of those videos, shared and translated by Translating Falasteen (@translatingpal) from footage by @ibrahim._.mohareb on Instagram, you see Rahaf’s mother holding her baby, wrapped in white. You hear her say through tears, “My heart aches, my daughter.” In another image, Rahaf’s father carries her small, still body through the camp, wrapped for burial.

According to reports from Gaza Notifications and others, Rahaf died from the cold in a tent in the Mawasi/Khan Younis area — a thin, worn piece of fabric with no insulation, no heating, rainwater seeping through the roof and walls. There was nothing between her and the winter but canvas and prayer. Medical staff at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis have warned that more infants could die from the same cold and collapsing tents.

This is not a natural disaster.
This is not “just winter.”
This is what it looks like when a people are driven from their homes into flimsy tents and then denied the basic materials they need to survive the very weather everyone knew was coming.

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We were told that this “ceasefire” would finally allow real shelter to enter Gaza — mobile homes, caravans, pre-fab units, anything sturdier than fabric on poles stuck in loose sand. That was one of the supposed humanitarian deliverables. Let people out of the rain. Let babies sleep on something other than wet ground.

Instead, what we see is row after row of tents wrecked by storms, people clutching their children as the wind rips through, elders trying to hold up the walls with their hands. We see kids standing knee-deep in brown water where their beds used to be. We see families who were already displaced three, four, five times, now displaced again inside the same camp by flood and cold.

The genocide has simply shifted forms.

When the bombs are quieter for a week, the violence doesn’t stop. It becomes starvation. It becomes disease. It becomes exposure to the elements. It becomes hypothermia in a tent that was never meant to be anything more than an emergency stopgap.

International law doesn’t just forbid mass killings. Under the Genocide Convention, it also forbids “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”Forcing a whole people into tents, blocking or delaying real shelter, and then leaving them to freeze and drown in winter storms is exactly that: violent conditions of life, not an accident.

Under the Geneva Conventions, people who control territory and movement have clear obligations toward civilians — especially displaced civilians. They are required to ensure adequate shelter, medical care, and protection from the elements. If you control the border, control the sky, control what goes in and out, and you still choose tents over real homes while winter storms barrel down, that’s not a bureaucratic hiccup. That’s a weaponization of the weather.

When a baby like Rahaf freezes to death in a soaked tent that could have been replaced by a solid caravan months ago, that is part of the genocide. It is part of the ethnic cleansing. It is part of the project to grind Palestinians down until their very existence seems impossible.

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Some people will hear this story and say, “That’s tragic, but war is harsh,” as if war explains why hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians are still in tents during a so-called ceasefire that was supposed to bring them something better.

But this is not a war between equals. Gaza doesn’t have jets, drones, tanks, a navy, or control over its own borders. This is one-sided extermination. One side decides whether construction materials, caravans, heaters, and blankets are allowed in. One side decides how many trucks of aid enter and where they’re allowed to go. One side can bomb a camp and then prevent it from being rebuilt as anything more than plastic and cloth.

Rahaf did not die because her parents failed her. She did not die because her people are poor or unlucky. She died because the systems of power that surround Gaza have chosen to keep Palestinians in conditions where an infant can freeze to death in a tent in the middle of a “pause” in bombing.

I need us to sit with that.

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Family, I’m asking you to carry this story into your conversations, your churches, your mosques, your group chats, and refuse to let it be softened into “winter-related deaths” or “humanitarian challenges.”

Say it plainly:

• An infant named Rahaf, born into this genocide earlier this year, froze to death in a flooded tent during a ceasefire.

• Her mother held her and said, “My heart aches, my daughter,” while the world turned away.

• Real shelter was promised and never delivered.

And then ask the people you love: What do we call that?
Because if we can’t call that genocide, then the word has no meaning.

I’m writing this not just to document a tragedy, but to insist on a moral line. If your theology, your politics, your patriotism, or your media diet makes you numb to a baby freezing in a tent that never should’ve been her home, then something has gone terribly wrong.

I refuse to be numb to her.

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If this moved you, if it helped you see Rahaf and her family more clearly, I’m asking you again: stand with us so we can keep telling these stories. I keep this work free so that anyone in the world can read it, but that only works if some of you decide, “I’m going to help carry this.” If you can, please click here to become a member or click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member today.

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

Don’t Stop Here

If you’re still with me, don’t let this be the last thing you read today. Here are three other free pieces I want you to sit with and share widely:

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Share those with at least three people who care about truth. That’s how we push back against the silence.