Israeli Doctors and a Bereaved Father Saved a Gaza Baby. His Mother Said She Hoped He’d Become a Martyr.

An Israeli hospital saved the life of a four-month-old Gaza boy born without a working immune system, and an Israeli father who had lost his own soldier son paid the bill. Then, on camera, the baby’s mother said she hoped her son would one day become a suicide bomber. That scene, from the 2010 documentary “Precious Life,” is drawing attention again in October 2026, and it still lands like a punch.

The film is not new. But the questions it raises about Gaza, Israel and what each side teaches its children have only grown sharper since October 7.

A baby nobody in Gaza could save

Mohammed Abu Mustafa was about four months old when Israeli doctors met him. He had a severe genetic immune disorder, the same condition that, according to the Jewish Chronicle, had already killed two of his sisters. Without a bone marrow transplant, he would die. The transplant he needed was available in Israel.

Israeli pediatrician Dr. Raz Somech set out to save him. He reached out to Shlomi Eldar, a prominent Israeli television journalist, and Eldar’s on-air report helped bring the boy and his mother, Raida, from Gaza to the Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, according to Ynet.

The procedure was expensive, and the family could not pay. After Eldar appealed to viewers on national television, an anonymous Israeli man stepped forward and donated $55,000 to cover the costs. According to Fox News, he had lost his own son in the conflict; PopMatters reported that the son was a soldier killed in the war and that the father gave the money in his memory.

Think about that for a moment. A grieving Israeli father, whose child died wearing an IDF uniform, paid to save the life of a Palestinian baby from Gaza.

“Life is precious, but not to us”

Eldar kept filming as the treatment went forward. Then, as Ynet and J. The Jewish News of Northern California reported, the documentary takes a dramatic turn during Israel’s war in Gaza, when Raida says she hopes her son will become a suicide bomber.

Reviewers who watched the film recorded what she said. According to PopMatters, she told Eldar: “Life is precious, but not to us.” She added: “None of us fear death, not even our children.” The Jewish Chronicle quoted her this way: “You [Jews] worship life, but it means nothing to us [Palestinians.] To us, death is normal.” Fox News reported that she told him “we will all sacrifice ourselves for the sake of Jerusalem,” and, when he reacted, “You’re free to be angry, so be angry.”

Eldar was shaken. “My first reaction was to stop filming,” he told Fox News. According to Ynet, he did stop for a time, and returned to the project as the boy’s condition worsened.

Nobody forced those words out of her. She said them while Israeli doctors were fighting to keep her son alive, in an Israeli hospital, on an Israeli stranger’s money.

The rest of the story

Honesty requires telling the rest, too. The transplant worked. Eldar later said Raida’s views shifted over the course of filming. He told Fox News that she moved from believing life meant nothing to seeing it as precious, and that she began asking “why can’t we stick together to solve our problems?” “It made me realize that both Palestinians and Israelis can change their minds about the future,” he said.

After a UK Jewish Film Festival screening in November 2011, Eldar told the audience that the boy was by then a healthy four-year-old, according to the Jewish Chronicle, and said he believed the parents were “ambassadors for peace” in Khan Yunis.

The film itself was widely honored. It won the Ophir Award, the Israeli Academy Award, for best documentary, and in November 2010 it was named to the 15-film shortlist for the Academy Award for documentary feature, the only Israeli film on the list. HBO backed it and aired it in the United States in May 2011.

Why the clip still matters

It would be comforting to treat Raida’s words as a single mother’s moment of anger during a war. Eldar’s account suggests there was more to her than that scene. But she was not inventing a worldview on the spot. She was describing one: that death is normal, that children should not fear it, and that dying for Jerusalem is a goal worth raising a son toward. That is a creed, not a mood, and it is the creed of Israel’s enemies in Gaza.

And the contrast she drew herself, Jews who worship life and Palestinians to whom it means nothing, is the whole story in one sentence. Israel’s doctors fought for one Gazan baby’s life. An Israeli father who had already buried a son paid for it. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists crossed from Gaza and slaughtered Israeli families in their homes.

The people of Gaza deserve leaders who teach them that life is precious. Until they get them, Israelis will keep saving Palestinian children while those children’s rulers plan to send them to die.

Israel spent its doctors’ skill and a bereaved father’s money to save one Gaza baby, and his mother’s first answer was that his life was meant to be spent on martyrdom.

Editor’s note: This article covers the 2010 documentary “Precious Life” and the events it filmed, which drew renewed attention in October 2026.

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