Safa Joudeh writes from Gaza City to a Palestinian friend in the U.S.:
It was just before noon when I heard the first explosion. I rushed to my window, barely did I get there and look out when I was pushed back by the force and air pressure of another explosion. For a few moments I didn't understand, then I realized that Israeli promises of a wide-scale offensive against the Gaza Strip had materialized. Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzpi Livni's statements following a meeting with Egyptian President Hussni Mubarak the day before yesterday had not been empty threats after all.
What followed seems pretty much surreal at this point. Never had we imagined anything like this. It all happened so fast but the amount of death and destruction is inconceivable, even to me and I'm in the middle of it and a few hours have passed already passed.
6 locations were hit during the air raid on Gaza city. The images are probably not broadcast in US media. There are piles and piles of bodies in the locations that were hit. As you look at them you can see that a few of the young men are still alive, someone lifts a hand here, and another raise his head there. They probably died within moments because their bodies are burned, most have lost limbs, some have their guts hanging out and they're all lying in pools of blood.
Outside my home (which is close to the 2 largest universities in Gaza), a missile fell on a large group of young men, university students. They'd been warned not to stand in groups, it makes them an easy target, but they were waiting for buses to take them home. 7 were killed, 4 students and 3 of our neighbors' kids, young men who were from the same family (Rayes) and were best friends. As I'm writing this I can hear a funeral procession go by outside, I looked out the window a moment ago and it was the 3 Rayes boys. They spent all their time together when they were alive, they died together and now they're sharing the same funeral together. Nothing could stop my 14 year old brother from rushing out to see the bodies of his friends laying in the street after they were killed. He hasn't spoken a word since.
What did Olmert mean when he stated that WE the people of Gaza weren't the enemy, that it was Hamas and the Islamic Jihad who were being targeted? Was that statement made to infuriate us out of out state of shock, to pacify any feelings of rage and revenge? To mock us?? Were the scores of children on their way home from school and who are now among the dead and the injured Hamas militants? A little further down my street about half an hour after the first strike 3 schoolgirls happened to be passing by one of the locations when a missile struck the Preventative Security Headquarters building. The girls bodies were torn into pieces and covered the street from one side to the other.
In all the locations people are going through the dead terrified of recognizing a family member among them. The streets are strewn with their bodies, their arms, legs, feet, some with shoes and some without. The city is in a state of alarm, panic and confusion, cell phones aren't working, hospitals and morgues are backed up and some of the dead are still lying in the streets with their families gathered around them, kissing their faces, holding on to them. Outside the destroyed buildings old men are kneeling on the floor weeping. Their slim hopes of finding their sons still alive vanished after taking one look at what had become of their office buildings.
And even after the dead are identified, doctors are having a hard time gathering the right body parts in order to hand them over to their families. The hospital hallways look like a slaughterhouse. It's truly worse than any horror movie you could ever imagine. The floor is filled with blood, the injured are propped up against the walls or laid down on the floor side by side with the dead. Doctors are working frantically and people with injuries that aren't life threatening are sent home. A relative of mine was injured by a flying piece of glass from her living room window, she had deep cut right down the middle of her face. She was sent home, too many people needed medical attention more urgently. Her husband, a dentist, took her to his clinic and sewed up her face using local anesthesia
200 people dead in today's air raid. That means 200 funeral processions, a few today, most of them tomorrow probably. To think that yesterday these families were worried about food and heat and electricity. At this point I think they -actually all of us- would gladly have Hamas sign off every last basic right we've been calling for the last few months forever if it could have stopped this from ever having happened.
The bombing was very close to my home. Most of my extended family live in the area. My family is ok, but 2 of my uncles' homes were damaged.
We can rest easy, Gazans can mourn tonight. Israel is said to have promised not to wage any more air raids for now. People suspect that the next step will be targeted killings, which will inevitably means scores more of innocent bystanders whose fate has already been sealed.
This doesn't even begin to tell the story on any level. Just flashes of thing that happened today that are going through my head.
Related posts:
- Evidence of malicious destruction is everywhere in Gaza– from olive trees to roads to a bullet fired sideways through a closet, piercing every article of clothing
- A playground, a marketplace, girls walking home from school (and calls for revenge)
- Adam Shapiro, who will speak tonight in NY, is subject of extremist death threat
- ‘An earthquake on top of your head’
- In first mention of destruction of Gaza’s flour mill, NYT’s Bronner serves up Israeli claims
{ 24 comments }
What Olmert meant was that people was not the enemy, but the regime is.
And, so long as Hamas retains a willingness to unilaterally shell civilians, that Israel will NOT tolerate it.
While the point is wildly overstated, it is a CRITICAL point.
Will Hamas change? Will Israel change?
How do you see change happening?
IN FACT, and without ruthless violence.
But, of course, we couldn't possibly criticize the actions of our "best friend",
the "only true democracy in the region."
After all, Jews can only ever be innocent victims of the machinations of their enemies, and are thus always on the side of right.
I just hope I live long enough to see Richard Witty and his whore Tzipi Livni lying by the side of the road, disemboweled. There will be no peace in the Middle East until that murderous, self-righteous gang of murderers in that cesspool called izzyland and their enablers are wiped off the face of the earth. Just remember, izzyland has no friends other than America, and America is fast becoming history.
A truly benevolent sentiment, frankenstein.
Are you in fact Sword of Gideon, in drag, justifying Jewish defensiveness?
After kulaks, legal clarion call for the others…parasites need blood…
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/883536.html
Garlic anyone?
I looked at the Al-Jazeera English video report on youtube and it looks like the majority of the dead were uniformed Hamas police.
"I looked at the Al-Jazeera English video report on youtube and it looks like the majority of the dead were uniformed Hamas police."
While minority were Ethiopians who were invited to live in a booming community of Sderot, just to add 'vibrancy'….
http://www.gvanim.org.il/eng/Immigrants/Independence_Ethiopian_immigrants.htm
Luckily for them, local 'Niggers' have an important role to play in the great scheme of things…like waiting for the rocket to land on their home and add valuable PR points.
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FROM ABOVE: "I looked at the Al-Jazeera English video report on youtube and it looks like the majority of the dead were uniformed Hamas police."
ME: Well, that makes it all quite kosher!
Not to worry, be happy–on talk radio and cable TV news the POV on Gaza happeings today is the Israeli boilerplate line. The breaking news getting out to the American masses might as well have been written by Israeli marketing experts.
So long as this is so, as it is happening now on your cable news and
talk radio stations, Witty's plea for reason does nothing but support
the status quo, which this latest GAZA episode is just another marker
along the long line.
Bush and Obama are towing that line.
No news at all in the MSM for the masses, cable TV, network TV, and local print regarding what has been happening in the Palestinians' Warsaw ghetto for months–now suddenly, breaking
news, the terrorists are attacking Israeli towns with rockets, right after Israel let in a few trucks of health aid, yet, and righteous
Israel, our buddy, can't take it any longer, so let's bring in the
America made and funded F-16s and Apache helicopters to equitably selected targets–exactly while the kids are passing to and from school.
I was watching BBC, and they had Mark Regev , an Israeli spokesman, on. The anchor put to him some pretty challenging questions, referring to the death toll and the fact that many if not most of the victims were in fact civilians. Regev's reply was ridiculous, and even he did not appear convinced by it. He said the claim that so many people had died "sounds propagandaish", and that Hamas was staging the whole thing to gain sympathy, and that anything coming out of the mouths of Palestinians should be taken with a grain of salt. He also said that Hamas was like the Taliban. Wow. Can you say desperate?
Here is a Hamas terrorist , for example:
"I looked at the Al-Jazeera English video report on youtube and it looks like the majority of the dead were uniformed Hamas police."
Nonsense. There is no such thing as a "Hamas police." They are Palestinian policemen (policemen by definition do not fight, and these men are not trained to fight, but to keep law and order in Gaza, guard prisons, guide traffic, etc.), and they are not by default members of Hamas. Many have nothing to do with Hamas. Not that it would've made any difference if they were members of Hamas, as that would not automatically make them legitimate targets under international law. They were policemen, not military targets. Israel committed a war crime, a massacre of massive proportions that will blow up in its face, very very soon.
Also, it is not true that most of the victims were policemen. I would put the number of policemen killed at around 40-50, based on what I've seen. I've been watching the footage all day long, and most of the people being taken into the hospital were in civilian clothing, not uniformed, many of them women and children.
Anyway, Israeli warplanes are buzzing over my head here in Lebanon as I write this. Warmongering zionazis cannot live without a war and it seems they are looking for one on two fronts to satisfy their blood lust.
Finally, Huffpo has something of the truth, though the headline is misleading,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/freddy-deknatel/hysteria-in-gaza_b_153711.html
Children's bodies are being covered with cardboard boxes in Gaza — the hospitals have run out of sheets — as Washington and London urge Israel to use restraint and avoid civilian casualties.
Palestinians on the West Bank are organizing in protest, but this was Israel's plan all along. Less than two weeks ago some 50 Israeli policemen injured each-other in "gloves-off" training that a spokesman described as "a huge police training exercise to prepare for riot control and to deal with different scenarios."
Israel is trying to decapitate Hamas in Gaza, to use an favorite expression of military spokesmen and a docile American media, and the bodies are piling up. What is the limit? As it stands, over 200 Palestinians are dead. One Israeli died today from a rudimentary rocket fired from the Gaza, the supposed impetus for all this.
When the "operations" subside — after how many days? — what will have changed? More Palestinians will have died because Israeli "security" is sacrosanct in the current international system but Arab lives are not. But it goes beyond American-made bombs and jets and stonewalling in the Security Council. Blame falls also on the supportive Arab regimes in America's orbit — perhaps Egypt most of all — as Gaza is blockaded, bombed, blockaded, and bombed again, this time among the worst in its history….
Guys, let's not lose sight of the fact that only a very tiny number of people carried out these murders, and an even smaller number ordered them. Most folks allow themselves to be carried along with the tide of emotion, and believe the most outrageous crap when they feel immediately threatened that they would ordinarily dismiss with disdain. Angry and frightened people have very, very poor judgment. Don't blame all Israelis for the crimes of a few, and certainly not all Jews for the crimes of a few. You may be thinking "Well, they ALL support it!" I answer: most people are sheep, what do you expect? Are your people any different? I'm American, and the last eight years has blown away all illusions that I had that the majority of my people are not sheep. I'm not saying that people who wave flags cheering on baby-killers aren't guilty, I'm just saying that they are not anywhere near as guilty as the baby-killers themselves. And while baby-killers, which I use in a literal rather than a pejorative sense, should be put to death, the rest are NOT guilty of capital crimes, and we still have to find a way to get along with them after the smoke clears. This is a time for measured words and actions, in the hope that some viable way to move forward towards peace may yet be preserved. Embracing turmoil and indulging in hatred lets the baby-killers win. Is that what you want?
arent you proud to be a jew today….call it univeralism…
israel ought to make jews around the world happy today.
the people of the book commit genocide on a helpless population while the world looks on afraid to speak.
maybe now you all can relate to how it was during world war 2 while the nazis anihilated europes jews…nobody spoke up for you …and you in turn do the same shit to another helpless people.
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"Eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind" — M. Gandhi
"There ain't no sanity clause." — Chico Marx
"Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues." – Thomas Hobbes
"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves." – Bertrand de Jouvenal
@CM: "Don't blame all Israelis for the crimes of a few, and certainly not all Jews for the crimes of a few."
Colin Murray is right. One should distinguish between the Jewish Zionists in Israel plus the Jewish Zionists in America (both of which have methodically gone about enabling the conditions for just such an assault) and the sane Jews worldwide who want nothing to do with the maniacs. It is important not to allow the Jewish Zionists to hide behind the others, which is a common historical ploy carried out by Jewish ideologues to both dodge accountability for the crimes they have perpetrated, plus punish the innocent Jews for refusing to join them in their various acts of terrorism.
Well said Colin, and welcome back Charles. Enjoy the ten minutes or so you have before Bill Pearlman starts impersonating you again. If there's one thing racially intolerant, religiously ideological halfwits have over the rest of us, it's relentlessness. He's been wearing Jim Haygood's clothes again lately, but they are a few sizes too big for him. Happy New Year to you.
Samuel is right about the Nazi comparisons. They are coming out of the closet now, driven by a sail full of ugly reality, and cannot plausibly be ascribed to antisemitism anymore. I make the point again – I would do time rather than serve alongside the IDF anywhere, but I would happily be conscripted into any global force the UN mustered to beat them back behind the Green Line. Informed people felt the same about the Germans in the thirties.
I can remember at a resort in North Queensland twenty years ago, sitting around with perhaps 30 or 35 other young people from many parts of the globe each night after dinner. People strummed guitars, flirted and got a bit tipsy together. All except the Germans. They sat off to the side, nodding and smiling warily whenever anyone spoke to them or passed by their group. There was never any unpleasantness, just reserve on their part, and a pretence of normality on ours.
Thing was, there were some Israelis there too, and they joined in with the main group, just like the Aussies, the Yanks, the Pommies, and the Kiwis. Not a skerrick of subterranean opprobrium toward them.
To my mind, the chances of this scenario being replayed now are very slim indeed, and that ought to worry not just Israelis, but Jews in general.
I remember the anti-german sentiment in Norway after the occupation. For a long time people had an aversion for all Germans, not just the people who supported the Nazi-regime. And I can feel anti-semittism growing. It’s a scary feeling, and I know that many jews are appalled by the events taking place in Gaza…Still too many remain silent, and in the silence lays their complicity.
Mark Regev is an Australian traitor from Melbourne. Indyk is from Sydney. We breed our own AIPAC more genuine than Washington.
does not one love the euphemism "urging to use restraint". read: please keep the war crimes and atrocities below the media threshold to publish in our grey lady.
and we all know the Times publishes the perfect cypher on the atrocities of the Zionist state.
My Daga, what are you implying? That Norwegians, who displayed unspeakable cowardice by sucking up to Hitler during World War Two, are now demanding that the surviving Jews of Norway denounce Israel?
Were I a Norwegian Jew I would spit in your face.
@"Daga Quisling"
(not a relative I hope ?)
:-))
No, I'm not demanding that the surviving Jews of Norway should denounce Israel. Not yet anyway. But I expect every decent Jew to openly and forcefully say to the leadership of Israel : NOT IN MY NAME.
You use the usual mudslinging as defence of Israel's actions-how predictable, how low-how stupid. -and you speak of our " unspeakable cowardice by sucking up to Hitler during World War Two".
President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke differently in sept -42:
So- I'm not offended. Being called a coward by a "man" who's heroes just now are busy bombing defenceless people in Gaza.? To me that a Hallmark, and I thank you.
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