Israel has prevented journalists from traveling into Gaza to report on the horrors unfolding there. And yet despite this effort, they have finally broken through.
Watch this deeply disturbing video of Israeli broadcaster Shlomi Eldar holding a cell phone on air with a Palestinian doctor crying in shock. Reuters explains what’s taking place:
cries for help from a Palestinian doctor on Friday after his children
were killed in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip and troops later
helped surviving members of the family.The telephone calls
created extraordinary scenes during evening news broadcasts as the
doctor, a Hebrew-speaking physician who spoke regularly on Israeli
television, said three of his children were killed in a tank strike and
others were wounded.
“My girls were sitting at home planning
their futures, talking, then suddenly they are being shelled,” he said
in a voice shaking with emotion. “I want to know why they were killed,
who gave the order?”
who worked in one of Israel’s main hospitals before Gazans were
effectively sealed off behind an Israeli-led blockade on the
Hamas-controlled enclave. He often gave interviews to Channel 10
television.
With Israeli journalists unable to report from the
Gaza Strip independently, Aboul Aish acted as a Hebrew-speaking witness
who told of the Palestinian civilians’ suffering under fire during
Israel’s three-week-old offensive there.
The deaths of more than
1,150 Palestinians, some 700 of them civilians by one independent
count, have left the Israeli public largely unmoved. An overwhelming
majority backs a war to end Hamas rocket fire that, before the
offensive, had killed 18 people and disrupted life in southern towns
over recent years.
Channel 10 correspondent Shlomi Eldar, who
said he had planned a live on-air interview with Aboul Aish on Friday
evening, produced a mobile phone in the studio, letting viewers here
the voice of Aboul Aish: “My God, my girls, Shlomi,” he said. “Can’t
anybody get to us, please?” Eldar told his audience: “They have killed his family”.
He said three of Aboul Aish’s children were killed and two were
seriously wounded. Building up the sense of drama, cameras followed him
as he left the studio, saying he would try to help arrange for their
transfer for treatment, and safety, in Israel.
Surviving members
of the family were later shown being transferred to Israeli ambulances
and taken out of Gaza. Aid agencies have complained that Israel has not
done enough to help Gaza’s hospitals and allow the transfer of some
wounded people.
Aboul Aish’s brother was also wounded and Eldar said two of his brother’s children had also been killed in the incident.
The Israeli army said troops fired on Aboul Aish’s house because a sniper had fired on soldiers from the building.
Aboul Aish responded: “All that was ever fired out of our house was love, hugs and acts of peace, nothing else, ever.”
Is it possible that 92% of Israeli Jews will continue to “justify the air force’s attacks
in Gaza despite the suffering of the civilian population in the Strip
and the damage they cause to infrastructure” after watching this video?
(Update: There is a post on this story over on Daily Kos, which includes more on the story and a translated transcript of the video. Richard Silverstein has a good post on the story here.)
