Nine-year-old Mira Hamad witnessed a bomb destroy her next door neighbour. She now lives with the trauma. Green Left’s Jude Alexander spoke to Hamad, her father and NSW Greens Senator David Shoebridge about the bomb and Australia's connection.

Hamad has been displaced 11 times and lives in a tent with her family.

She told me her favourite food is a shawarma kebab. “My favourite piece of clothing is a tracksuit and leggings, and I like playing hopscotch with my friends.” She also has a new kitten, which she loves. “She plays with me every morning and sleeps next to me at night.”

In August last year, the tent beside Hamad’s family was bombed. She saw her neighbours cut to pieces. It changed her life.

On the day of the bombing, Hamad’s father told me he was shocked to hear the distant sounds of the drones getting much closer. “The smell of gunpowder was distinct, amid the usual smell of the dust. Moments later, I heard people screaming and saw everyone rushing to the tent beside us.

“Mira was terrified by the sight of our neighbour Arbaba’s mangled corpse. The shock was clearly visible on her face; she said nothing. She did not sleep well, and suffered from bet-wetting for some time.”

Children should not have to deal with terrible things like this, which is why I asked Shoebridge about that particular bomb and the infrastructure behind it.

That bomb is the link between military equipment and the life of one child. I thought that reducing the overwhelming enormity of the genocide to just one bomb might reveal something about the methods of those responsible for it.

I asked Shoebridge, who holds the defence portfolio for the Australian Greens, about the bomb the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) dropped on the tent next to Hamad.

What he said was horrifying; nothing like what I was expecting.........

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