I Saw the Children Hamas Beheaded With My Own Eyes. Shame on Queen Rania | Opinion

By Qanta Ahmed

physician, senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum

I was in scrubs from the wet morgue at Abu Kabir when I learned Queen Rania of Jordan questioned whether Israeli children had verifiably been killed by Hamas on October 7. Hugely appealing to the West, ranked among Forbes's 100 most powerful women, among the top ten most followed international leaders on Instagram, dressed routinely by Valentino, Schiaparelli and Dior, and of Palestinian origin (her family is from the West Bank's Nablus), Queen Rania is undeniably a global icon. And her powerful voice became the opening salvo to a chorus of innumerable deniers, a further barbarism dehumanizing the victims of Hamas' atrocities targeting women and girls.

Hearing her strident tone, even as I was surrounded by Israeli Jews, Israeli Christians, and Israeli Muslims still reeling with shock, cut to my core.

The alacrity with which Queen Rania demonized Jordan's treaty nation, Israel, her contextualization of October 7, her supplanting of Israeli suffering with Palestinian suffering, and her extraordinary silence in place of condemnation of Hamas (despite her prior vocal condemnation of ISIS) were not just immoral; they were a betrayal of her position as Queen of Jordan and the responsibility that comes with it.

Days after the attacks, as a Muslim woman committed to combating Islamism and a physician, I traveled at my own expense to the Gaza envelope to view the aftermath of Hamas' butchery. I examined the cadavers of the murdered and defiled; the corpses of the decapitated and immolated. I spoke with the victims of Hamas, including a former hostage—a Muslim physician—and numerous witnesses to Hamas' express barbarity against women, children, girls, and infants, brutally violated in life, in utero and in death.

In Abu Kabir, I examined incinerated remnants of teeth and bones; charred remains of children; and physical cadavers of victims. I read CT scans of children and adults bound together and burned alive. I viewed images of a decapitated young girl, her child skull tethered to her trunk by only a sliver of decaying skin. Her facial expression, surrounding milk teeth, haunts me still. Across the boundaries of death, her Edward Munch-like scream still echoes.

I inspected bodies that had been repeatedly stabbed, shot, and crushed. I examined mutilated bodies, restrained with cables, electrical cords, and zipties, still in place post-mortem, and those that had been decapitated and incinerated at temperatures approaching 3,000 degrees Celsius.

Back in New York City, Israeli criminal prosecutor Ayelet Razin Bet Or shared with me evidence compiled in Israel's ongoing investigation into Hamas' crimes. Michal Yaniv, Head of Foreign Affairs on Israel's National Security Council, provided me testimonies recorded by Israeli security officials.

One account, far from unusual, is especially harrowing: A woman who survived the Nova music festival in Re'im witnessed a young woman encircled by Hamas, stripped naked, violated, and manhandled by multiple Hamas terrorists as they gang raped her, repositioning her by the waist and hips, moving from one rapist to the other.

Shuddering at the memory, covering her face, with difficulty, the eyewitness continued: One terrorist pulled the woman's long hair, forcibly arching her neck backwards, fully exposing her naked torso, only to sever both her breasts from her chest with his commando knife. Her entire torso fell backwards, slackened in agony. She may have fainted, though she lived through the mutilation. The disembodied breasts fell to the ground, where terrorists casually played with them.