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CNN Profiles Two Children Injured in Gaza Offensive

Children of Conflict: (L-R) Bisan al-Aghram, 8, from Gaza and Yosef Scharf, 4, of Kiriat Malachi.

CNN reporter Sara Sidner profiled two children that were injured in the latest unrest in Gaza, where Hamas terrorized much of Israel. The children, 4-year-old Yosef Scharf who lost his mother Mira and was injured himself, and 8-year-old Bisan al-Aghram from Gaza who was injured.

Four-year-old Yosef lies in a hospital bed with curiosity gleaming in his eyes as he listens to a family friend tell him the age-old story of Jonah and the whale.

The young boy is surprisingly bright-eyed after the traumatic ordeal he’s endured as a result of the latest outbreak of warfare between Gaza and Israel.

He and his parents were staying in an apartment in Kiryat Malachi in southern Israel when a rocket sailed over from Gaza and slammed into it, leaving a gaping hole in the building.

The blast sheered off several of Yosef’s tiny fingers, badly wounded his father, and killed his mother, Mina Scharf, one of the first to die on the Israeli side of the border.

Yosef learned about his mother from his father, Shmuel, who is recovering in the same hospital.

“He was saying, ‘My mother is not here; she’s with God.’ He knows it will be a hard time,” his grandmother, Chaya Sarah Scharf, said.

Hard is putting it mildly. Doctors at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer hospital re-attached four of his fingers, but in the end they had to re-amputate two of them.

“He lives in the South and there are rockets all the time in that area. Hamas doesn’t even think about where the rockets are going,” his grandmother said.

While nurses attended to Yosef in Room 12, one room away nurses were attending to on another child with nearly identical wounds from the most recent chapter of this conflict. What sets them apart is that the second child is from Gaza.

Eight-year-old Bisan al-Aghram lost three fingers when the war came to her home.

“I heard the sound of a missile that hit. I didn’t even have time to ask what happened and then the second one (hit),” said her mother, Soad al-Aghram.

When the dust cleared, she could see the bones of her child¹s fingers in small pieces on the floor.

The girl was taken to Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, but it was too crowded and couldn’t give her the best care. So the family asked Israel for permission to cross the border.

Initially, her mother was terrified at the prospect of people considered an enemy in her country handling her wounded daughter.

“It¹s a strange situation and it’s my first time entering Israel. I was afraid, but they treat me and my daughter in a very nice way, and I understand that medicine has nothing to do with politics,” al-Aghram said.

That’s the philosophy the hospital tries to adhere to — no matter what.

“All the tension is blocked outside of the hospital here. There is an island of sanity in the stormy water of the Middle East. Here we actually treat people. We don’t actually look from where they are, what they do and what they did before coming here, and what they are going to do after leaving us,” said Zeev Rotstein, CEO of Sheba Medical Center.

The same doctor is treating the two children of conflict who both lost fingers from rocket blasts.

“It will affect her life from now on, and his life from now on, in choice of profession … or in choice of future partners for life, everything. And this kind of injury, although it seems minor, it’s affecting the person for life,” hand surgeon Dr. Batia Yaffe said.

Yaffe has worked in this Tel Aviv hospital nearly her entire career. She has treated everyone from soldiers to suicide bombers and the civilians in between.

“I come to think about what is it about this piece of land that everybody is fighting about it all the time. This is what comes to my mind: whether this is our lot for eternity from now on. Always have injuries on both sides, always fighting — what’s the point?” she asks.

If there is a point, it is lost on a 4-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl from either side of the Israel-Gaza border who just want to be children, but whose innocence has been interrupted by a war they had nothing to do with.

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22 Comments

  • A JEW

    There is nothing similar in the stories. One child lost his mother and was injured, while the other one was only injured. I don’t get why we are always compared to the Arabs. They are the instigates. There is no such thing as an innocent Arab.

  • Child abuse?

    Is it child abuse to keep children in a dangerous situation?

    I say YES …if the parents want to be heros fine but send the children far away.

  • zees!

    Little Scharf boy has such a sheine punim, so sweet and innocent. And beautiful. May Hashem comfort him…
    Refuah Shleima.

  • Rachmonim, gomlei chasodim

    It would not be true the other way around – no Jew would be admitted to an Arab-run hospital and live to retell his/her experiences!

  • Not a valid comparison

    One was hurt and his life ripped apart by cold blooded haters/monsters

    The other was hurt when a country tried to defend itself from these cold blooded haters/monsters who would be willing to convince this same child that she should kill herself for the sake of their cold blooded agendas

    May Hashem bring peace to the world already

    Please Hashem, Moshiach NOW

  • There is NO comparison.

    Experience shows that on average, most “civilians” in Aza were injured or killed by their own, no matter what they say.

    If a Jewish child was taken there, they would have done to him/her what the animals in Germany did, YM”S.

  • Refua Shleima

    Refua Shleima to all the innocent ones, especially the children, hurt in the fighting.

  • Liberalism is a mental disorder!

    Liberalism at its best CNN!! How can you compare the two?? I nearly vomited! This is the media for you! Twisting everything! Find me one injured Israeli in Gaza hospital?!!!! Making these parallels sicken me to no end.

  • Trigger Finger

    It is unfortunate that the Arabs use their children as human shields and train their young to use firearms. This girl must be taken off the “shahid” list as a sniper. Perhaps she would enlist as a suicide bomber…

    Any comparison between these two children is criminal, or ignorant at best!

  • what!!!!!

    No comparison, Arab child grows up to intentionally kill will Jewish child grows up to pray, learn, and live

  • Peace Activist

    How fair, how cute.

    Little Jew, little palistinian.

    Between the lines, CNN viewer is meant to exclaim:

    Look at what ISREAL has done!!!!!!!!!!! Dismantle the IDF!!!

    (but CNN didn’t say it – they were fair. The viewer said it)

  • where is one supposed to run?

    I can only believe the person in commented in #2 is naaive or a fool. Abuse? Where exactly should people run when the missles are falling? where is there to run when a bomb goes off on a bus? where were teenage boys hiking were brutally killed? Where were the people in the Twin Towers in 9/11 supposed to run? Where were people praying at the kotel supposed to run when the siren went of or when the Arabs throw stones??
    This is insult to injury

  • The next suicide bomber

    #5 I am almost sorry you published the link to Israeli news station. This is old news in Israel . The media works hard at psychologically justifying Amalek. I was in a bus that the day before on the same route the Arab Egged bus driver decided to become a martyr Y“S and drive his full bus off the road into a valley.The news psychoanyalysed his motives. Yidden are rachmanimebnai rachmanim..it is difficult for them to accept the concept of pure evil. It’s a missed opportunity that they didn’t ask the girl in the video if asked would be proud to be the next suicide bomber to give her worried mother ”nachas” I’m sure the mother would with great pride put the explosives on her body.

  • Anonim

    That girl and her mother do not look like they are starving.

    The government should subtract the cost of her medical care, at full American-style prices, from any money it transfers to the yishmoelim yemach shmam.

    I am sure that this picture will one day run on some Hamas site with a caption that the girl’s organs were harvested for transplant to Jews.

  • no to CH

    this is not some sort of contest for suffering!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    the comments u make toward the arab girl are disgusting. the problem is not just Hamas and Israeli government, it’s adults like u on both sides of the fence who corrupt, fill childrens minds with filth and hate toward outsiders. perhaps the positive experience the girl has at the hospital will change something in the long-run for the better for her people will be a blessing but no, u have to sully it with your foul remarks and cynicism.

    jews “pray learn and live”

    tell that to the family of the unarmed Palestinian who was shot by the IDF after the cease fire or the Palestinian farmers who have had their olive trees torn out and burned the boy who was beaten by at least four Israeli youth for no reason

    ur remarks show u are hypocrites, arrogant and corrupt like anybody else and are not ready for Moshiach’s return

  • no to leftists

    Keep your holier-than-thou remarks in your leftist sewers, please.

    When someone rises up to kill you, you kill him first.

    You do not treat his wounded, especially when chances are that this girl was wounded by an errant Hamas missile.

    When a Jew kills an Arab, it’s self defense.
    When an Arab kills a Jew, it’s murder
    When an Arab kills an Arab, it’s one less Arab.

    That’s just how it is in the Middle East. The Arabs do not value life. They want death, and that is what they must get.

    By the way, most of those olive tree incidents have been proven to be inside jobs. The rest were done in self-defense because the trees were planted only as a cover for snipers.