Death Of Moral

Harun Abu Aram grew up in the South Hebron Hills, in the small village of Al-Rakeez. His family, like many others in the area, lived under constant threat—home demolitions, land seizures, and military raids were part of daily life. In late 2020, Israeli forces demolished his family’s house, erasing the future he had planned for himself. He was supposed to get married, start a life of his own, build something permanent in a place where permanence was never guaranteed. A month later, he was shot at point-blank range while trying to stop soldiers from taking a neighbor’s generator. The bullet severed his spine and left him paralyzed from the neck down.

For two years, Harun lived in a cave. The Israeli authorities refused every request his family made to build him a clean room where he could receive proper care. His mother, Shamiya, never left his side. She washed him with buckets of water, tended to his wounds, and sat awake through long nights as he struggled with infections and pain. The cave became his world, a place where he could only watch as the land outside changed, as homes were torn down, as soldiers returned again and again to make life impossible for his family and neighbors.

Through the camera, I tried to capture the weight of it all. Harun had lost the ability to move, but his presence filled the space. His mother’s hands adjusting his blankets, the shadow of his sisters leaning in to check on him, the way he turned his face away when journalists and activists came to visit. He didn’t want to be a symbol of suffering. He had been a builder, a worker, someone who moved through the world with strength, and now he was trapped in a body that no longer responded.

He died at 26. His family fought for years to keep him alive in impossible conditions, but the neglect and lack of medical care caught up to him. The same system that left him paralyzed ensured he wouldn’t survive. Now, his mother speaks of justice, of what was taken, of the many other families facing the same violence, the same slow erasure. In his absence, the cave remains, the land remains, and the struggle continues.