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The war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas marked its grim six-month anniversary on Sunday, and one of the most jarring things about this very 21st-century conflict has been the almost daily headlines about Israeli airstrikes obliterating the homes of notable Palestinians—sometimes known Hamas operatives, but often journalists or physicians or aid workers. In many of these attacks, large numbers of family members, including young children, die under the rubble.

In one of the war’s most notorious incidents, the prominent Palestinian poet and professor Refaat Alareer—so haunted by the daily devastation and the likelihood he and his own family would be targeted that in his final weeks he wrote a poem called “If I Must Die”—had sought refuge at a family home when an Israeli airstrike killed not only him but his brother, sister, and four children.