Silent extermination: The assassination of writers and intellectuals in Gaza

In his home in the Nasr neighborhood of Gaza City, the Israeli occupation army targeted the Palestinian poet and novelist Salim al-Naffar, bombing his house with a missile fired from a warplane. He remained buried under the rubble for months before being pulled from the wreckage along with his wife, daughters, only son Mustafa, his sister, her husband, and their children.

The attack on al-Naffar occurred on December 7, 2023, and was a direct result of a targeted assassination operation carried out by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian novelist and former member of the General Secretariat of the General Union of Palestinian Writers and Authors.

Al Jazeera.net was unable to find any of his immediate family members alive to interview or hear their account of what happened, as they were all killed in the Israeli bombing of their home.

The literary biography of the martyr Al-Naffar is filled with cultural contributions; he studied Arabic literature at Tishreen University in Syria, and there he founded the annual “Abu Salma” forum for young creators in 1986, and then he contributed to the founding of the Cultural Creativity Association in Gaza in 1997.