(Photo by Sameh Habeeb, from his show Victim's Victims at Dadabase)
My wife's friend in Gaza has sent me another report on life there, following on from my earlier challenge to her to tell me how it feels there, and to compare it to a book or film:
I cant say that it reminds me of any book or movie, because nothing can capture the feeling of living in a giant open air prison, and you really feel it, you feel so cut off here, the seige is really tangible. Life is as normal as it was before the war, but since 2006 life here has been very difficult. Many items like certain types of medicine, machinery equipment, lightbulbs, etc. are impossible to find, andthere is no way of ordering them, or bringing them in. The unemployment rate is somewhere between 50-80%, though no one knows exact numbers. Between Israel and Hamas the people here live in constant fear. Most children are suffering from traumas of different kinds. My friend, who lives next to the central police station, which is now gone–during the war the whole family stayed in one room in the house which they thought was the safest, because it was the furthest away from any windows. Now the daughters refuse to go back into that room. I have heard other children refuse to go to bed because they think that when they fall asleep there will be more bomb attacks and their parents might die while they are asleep.
This weekend I cried as I heard about the death of 6 members of the Batran family:
In the last major attack in Al Boreij refugee camp, on January 16th, six members of the Batran family were killed. The father is a Hamas official, and happened to be in the living room while his wife and five of his children were in the dining room and this is where the bomb hit. The youngest son (1.5 yrs) survived, as did his father, who ran with one daughter to the hospital, though she died soon afterwards. The other 4 children and his wife were immediately killed. I met their aunt, who is now taking care of the youngest son. He is not speaking yet, but when he sees the pictures of his mother, he keeps grabbing at the image of her. The aunt described to me how they had to search for the body parts of each child so that the hospital could sew them together so the bodies could be presentable for the funeral. They were finding hands, legs, feet, not knowing which child
they had belonged to. The oldest son's head was found on a tree outside the house. The doctors needed to use wooden sticks to hold the parts together. The aunt was hugging her daughter, and kept repeating how her daughter had wanted to have dinner at their house that night, and she had said no. This was the only reason that she could be holding her daughter right now. "You can only go through so much as a human being, I feel as though I have fallen apart and can never recover from this."
I must say that living in Haifa for half a year before this and seeing how the Israelis treated my Palestinian friends there made me really hate the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. I would go to restaurants and bars with my friends and I would walk through the door first and be welcomed, but when the hostess saw my friends she would say that the place was full, even though many empty tables were in plain view.
And at work I was dealing with cases of discriminatory laws in Israel, and just seeing the accepted institutionalized racism was awful. I was often attack by Israelis when they found out that I was working at a law firm that deals with human rights violations of the Palestinians within Israel, or when they found out I spoke Arabic and had Palestinian friends.
Here in Gaza, because the situation is so hard on a daily basis, and there is so much work to do, I don't have time to concentrate on hating Israel. And this is the same for most of the people I have met here. They are angry at Israel as well as Hamas, but they don't spend time talking about it. They are just trying to wake up each morning and be able to feed their children.
"Better thee than me."
The postscript to the Churchill play.
A secret disclosure of the human heart?
Or more often, the Jewish heart?
Bibi's father on how the Pals don't exist as a group except in reaction to Jews, as if the converse has not been the glue for Jews for centuries:
It's a shame the sentences:
"Between Israel and Hamas the people here live in constant fear."
and:
"They are angry at Israel as well as Hamas, [...]"
weren't contextualised a bit. We hear much about how support for Hamas remains very strong and little about Gazan anger at them. I can certainly understand how many of those who didn't vote for Hamas in the first place will now be angry at them. But what about the many that did and still do support Hamas?
Any suggestions as to how to actually stop the mutual infliction of traumas?
yeah, send you for both sides to use as a trauma cushion.
Witty
Oh, a simple suggestion like – Stop the Jewish Holocaust of the Palestinians and stop your lame rationalizations
Sorry , did I use a word here I am not allowed to use in any other context but what you scribes allow ?
*NEWS ON ARMS SHIPMENTS TO ISRAEL
From: Amnesty International USA (alerts@takeaction.amnestyusa.org)
Sent: Fri 4/03/09 4:20 PM
New information obtained by Amnesty researchers this week confirmed a massive shipment of U.S. weapons was delivered to Israel on March 22nd.
The administration allowed the delivery, despite clear evidence of Israeli human rights violations, some amounting to war crimes, including the controversial use of U.S. made white phosphorous munitions over densely populated areas. That's the white phosphorous that sticks to flesh and sears it until completely deprived of oxygen.
You and I need the State Department to know that they can't just plop tons of weapons into the hands of a known serious human rights violator without getting grilled.
Please ask State Department officials why the U.S. would deliver these arms to Israel.
*TO SEND A PREPARED E-MAIL –
Witty, why do you always have to equate things when they are not equatable?
Trauma on "both sides"? Superficial truth. Superficial rhetoric. Dishonesty.
Go fuck yourself, Witty.
In any case the numbers at the Gaza Community Mental Health Project show things got much worse of late: at the moment 1.3% of the children is free of PTSD symptoms. This study from mid 2006 shows that an impressive 35% were still PTSD-free at that time. I'd drop the "Now" from the title. The UN should have data on this too.
Imagine a Witty in mid-30s Germany. Call him Witt. Witt writes constantly, equating each brown shirt in the street with every bent jew he meets. Pull his beard, kick his ass, make him stand there for hours… Witt begins his daily article, " Any suggestions, dear Reader, as to how to actually stop this mutual infliction of traumas?"
Witty
please read this
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/student-merna-foils-israeli-bid-to-wreck-family’s-education-hopes/
and remind me again – what court is it you say should litigate these title issues – or is it sovereignty – I can never remember which it is in your doublespeak.
Save your ink – I realize that you are probably right – it's just more ProPaliProp
You don't think Hamas' history of terror was traumatic for Israelis? Or, that shelling Sderot, Ashkelon or Beersheba wasn't traumatic?
Or Hezbollah shelling multi-cultural Haifa?
Like in Gaza, there is disagreement as to how to deal with it. Some say, bomb them to oblivion. Some say, talk to them to find mutual concerns and form agreements based on those mutual concerns.
Hotheads don't look for that, don't look for peace. They look for the fruits of anger, to humiliate, to ignore.
If you don't understand that the conflict is a conflict, and created by mutual harms, then you are doomed to failure at resolving it.
So, you unanimously have no suggestions, no proposals, only name-calling. Such an elevated political consciousness. How full a concensus?
Traumas don't recede quickly. Palestinian traumas, Jewish Israeli traumas (WW2 and re: Arab rejectionism), Hamas and Hezbollah terror.
ALL violence bears unintended consequences, at LEAST two steps back for every 3 forward.
Even verbal violence.
I can only imagine what the residents of Gaza are suffering. I only saw a portion of the pictures of the carnage and the images are burned into my brain.
If you claim you don't understand that Uncle Sam arms and gives Uncle Hymie welfare dole up the tukas,
and that this doesn't represent a problem for average Americans, including the 9/11 attack, then, you Witty, are simply disingenuous.
Phil's Pal:
"However I have seen countless pictures of victims tortured for being members of opposition parties, art schools ransacked and closed for teaching inappropriate subjects, and heard the stories of wives whose husbands were kidnapped and murdered by the secret police. Hamas’ trademark is ‘shooting your kneecap to the ceiling’; this is reserved for those that criticize the government’s practices too openly: a gun is fired from under the knee upwards and blows one’s kneecap out of one’s leg."
Where is AI or HRW? Why isn't the UN investigating? Where's Richard Falk and the new self hating Jew from South Africa?
This is actually pretty typical conduct for the Arab world. Phil's friend should leave before Hamas discovers what she has written.
HAMAS exists as a reaction to Israeli aggression. First things first, Julian.
Witty
What court is that again ?
Citizen:
"HAMAS exists as a reaction to Israeli aggression. First things first, Julian."
All the Arab countries act like Hamas. Even the wealthy ones.
Women are treated like shit in all of them.
Is Israeli agression responsible for the rest of the Arab world?
Julian, have you resorted to quoting yourself now? What's this crap about "knee-capping"?
Enlighten us Julian.
1967 borders will only occur when Israel is confident (through negotiation +) that they are not dangerous, when the communities DECIDE to co-exist.
ANY direct or indirect support for terror as means, distorts that possibility.
Its a sequence.
There are things that Israel can do and should do to convey goodwill, but "get the fuck out" is not one of them, UNTIL the possibility that removing the means of occupation is confidently safe for Israel as Israel.
It is confusing. Before x can happen y must happen. Before y can happen z must happen. But before z can happen, x must happen.
This sequence as well applies to nuclear reduction, to Iran's stance on nukes, etc. It also applies quite obviously in reverse, that is, "There are things the Palestinians can do and should do to
convey good will, but…" You fill it out.
@ Julian
"All the Arab countries act like Hamas. Even the wealthy ones.
Women are treated like shit in all of them.
Is Israeli agression responsible for the rest of the Arab world?"
So they are all shelling Israel with home-made rockets in feeble resistance to occupation, to being forced to live in an open-air prison, a prison where women and babies are attacked
by Apache helicopters and F-16s?
As I said, first things first.
That's not the way it works though Witty.
Israel is obligated by law and by the international community and basic human values to vacate the areas it stole and destroyed. The reason it faces any danger is because of these actions.
Israel has to get the fuck out.
And if it doesn't it will eventually be destroyed.
Which ever way you want it, Witty….