Following Sunday’s Israeli attack on Rafah in the Gaza Strip, which left more than 45 people, including children, dead and 200 injured, the phrase “eyes on Rafah” has been trending on social media, including in posts by celebrities and activists.
About the attack
The airstrikes targeted the Tal as-Sultan area, a designated “safe zone” northwest of the city of Rafah where thousands of Palestinians have taken refuge in tents. Media reports said the area was hit by at least eight Israeli missiles, sparking large fires and burning several tents.
The attack drew widespread outrage from human rights groups and the international community, including Israel’s closest allies.
Israel went ahead with the attack despite an order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to “immediately cease military attacks in Rafah.”
The Israeli attack came after Hamas fired rockets at Tel Aviv, most of which were intercepted.
What is Spotlight on Rapha?
Soon after the attack, the phrase “Pay attention to Rafah” began trending on social media as a slogan to call for support for Palestinians caught in the war between Israel and Hamas.
In recent days, social media has been flooded with photos of charred bodies – some headless – in the Tal As-Sultan area of Rafah, burning tents and crying children watching their parents burn.
Also going viral is an image of tents seemingly lined up to form the phrase “Pay attention to Rafah,” which is fast becoming a symbol of the genocide taking place in Palestine.
The image is suspected to be not real, but generated by artificial intelligence.
“It doesn’t look very realistic, there are strange shadows and the tent camp is unnaturally symmetrical – some of the telltale signs that it’s an AI-generated image,” said Mark Owens, who studies media misinformation. NBC.
The phrase was reportedly first used in February by Rick Pieperkorn, director of the World Health Organization’s office in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered plans to evacuate Rafah ahead of an attack on the city, believed to be Hamas’ last remaining stronghold.
Human rights activists and celebrities raise slogans
The slogan is an attempt to rally support for more than 1.4 million Palestinians who have been scrambling in search of safe shelter, scraping together food and struggling to meet basic human needs since they were forced from their homes when war broke out.
Several humanitarian organizations, including Oxfam, Americans for Justice in Palestine, Save the Children, Jewish Voice for Peace and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, used the phrase to condemn the Israeli attack on Rafah, considered the last safe haven in the Gaza Strip despite the presence of thousands of displaced Palestinians in the area.
The #AllEyesOnRafah hashtag was used in more than 200,000 posts on social media, and images of tents bearing the slogan were shared more than 29 million times on Instagram in just 24 hours.
Several Indian celebrities, including Madhuri Dixit, Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Tripti Dimri and Varun Dhawan, have used the “Spotlight on Rafa” image on their Instagram stories to show solidarity with the Palestinians.
Why is Rafa important?
Rafah, the main entry point for humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, is no longer a safe place for civilians since Israel seized the checkpoint earlier this month and launched an offensive on the Gaza side of the border.
The renewed Israeli offensive has forced roughly one million Palestinians displaced by the war and seeking refuge in Rafah, who are now seeking shelter in squalid tent camps and other war-torn areas.
Satellite images from shelters displaced by the attacks show new tent camps clustered along the coast from just north of Rafah to the outskirts of Deir Bahra. The ramshackle tents and shelters are crammed into a maze of corrugated metal sheets, plastic sheets, blankets and bedsheets draped over wooden poles for privacy.
The United States and other Israeli allies have warned against a full-scale attack on the city, and the Biden administration has refused to provide offensive weapons for such an effort, saying it would cross a red line.
But Netanyahu vowed to move forward, saying Israeli forces must enter Rafah, dismantle Hamas and return hostages taken in the October 7 attack that sparked the war.
Israel says the strikes in Rafah are crucial to its war objective of destroying Hamas in the Gaza Strip after an Oct. 7 Hamas attack killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250 from southern Israel. The strikes sparked an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip that has killed about 36,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Aid groups have warned for months that attacks on Rafah would worsen Gaza’s humanitarian disaster. So far the Israeli operation has stopped short of the planned full-scale invasion, but fighting has spread from eastern Rafah into the city center over the past three weeks.
Israel says it is conducting limited operations east of Rafah on the Gaza-Egypt border, but residents reported heavy shelling overnight in Tel al-Sultan.
What’s Israel’s response to Sunday’s attack?
The Israeli army said an initial investigation into the attack, which sparked a fire at a tent camp in the Tal as-Sultan area, blamed a secondary explosion.
Military spokesman Daniel Haghari said on Tuesday that troops fired two 17-kilogram (37-pound) bullets at two Hamas officials. He said the bullets were too small to ignite by themselves and that the military was investigating the possibility that weapons were stored in the area.
It is believed the fire at the camp may have ignited fuel, cooking gas cylinders and other materials in a densely populated area.
The attack sparked widespread outrage and Prime Minister Netanyahu said it was the result of a “tragic accident.”
Meanwhile, new attacks in the same area were reported on Tuesday to have killed at least 16 Palestinians. Residents also reported intensifying fighting in a southern Gaza city once seen as the territory’s last refuge.
