By Haida Dzulkifli
I did not watch The Voice of Hind Rajab.
My daughter, Nadyn did.
She is 13, and like many children her age, she is still learning how to make sense of the world.
After watching the film, she came to me with quiet sadness and asked a simple question:
“Why didn’t anyone save her?”
I did not have an immediate answer. I still don’t. I only know that the question stayed with me.
My daughter did not need explanations about geopolitics. She saw a ‘younger sister’–Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl–who was scared, unprotected, and desperately waiting for help that never came. She understood instinctively that what happened was wrong. A child’s understanding does not begin with politics; it begins with empathy. She did not see it as a religious issue, but as a human one.
As a parent, that understanding mattered deeply to me.
Explaining the Palestinian struggle to children is never easy. The violence is real, the injustice is heavy, and the pain can be overwhelming even for adults. Yet it is important for children to understand through their own eyes, rather than through narratives handed down to them.
Watching the struggle unfold on screen can touch us more deeply than reading about it. It reminds us that sometimes words are not enough. The human cost of war becomes unmistakable when seen through a child’s eyes–the fear, the loneliness, the desperation.
Perhaps The Voice of Hind Rajab speaks to children in a way that news reports and adult discussions cannot.
Perhaps it allows them to learn through empathy, which hopefully will help them grow into adults who understand that justice and humanity are values worth defending.
Perhaps this film could remind us that the Palestinian issue is not about religion, but about the failure to protect innocent lives and uphold basic human rights.
Sometimes, the biggest lessons come from the smallest hearts.
Haida Dzulkifli
Director of Administration
International Movement for a Just World
2 February 2026