Ra’ed Ibrahim Khamis al-Rantisi

Ra’ed Ibrahim Khamis al-Rantisi, 29, was a victim of a targeted Israeli airstrike on a civilian home during the May 2021 escalation in Gaza. He lived in the al-Jneina neighborhood of Rafah, a city in the heavily besieged southern Gaza Strip.

His life was brutally cut short on the evening of May 13, 2021. As Israeli bombs fell across Gaza, Ra’ed was gathered with his family inside their home for safety. Shortly before 8:30 p.m., an Israeli warplane fired a missile directly at their three-story house, obliterating it. The attack was not an isolated incident but part of a wider night of intense bombardment targeting residential areas across Gaza.

The strike on the al-Rantisi home was devastatingly precise in its toll on Ra’ed's immediate family. He was killed alongside his mother, Siham Yousef Mohammad Rantisi (66), his wife, Shaima’ Diab Mohammad Rantisi (21), and his young nephew, Ibrahim Mohammad Ibrahim Rantisi (2). Fifteen other individuals were injured in the same strike, seven of whom were children, indicating the attack's severe impact on the extended family and surrounding community.

Ra’ed's death occurred within the first five days of an 11-day Israeli military assault that would ultimately kill 247 Palestinians, including 66 children and 39 women. His story is particularly poignant as it exemplifies the Israeli tactic of striking family homes, often without warning, leading to multi-generational massacres. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights documented his death and the deaths of all other civilians killed in this offensive, using their cases to call upon the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Ra’ed al-Rantisi is remembered not as a solitary casualty, but as a son, a husband, and an uncle whose life was extinguished alongside his loved ones in a moment of profound violence.