The wreckage of a car targeted in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011
(Photo: AP)
December 9, 2011
Yesterday, my six year old son Ali went to his swimming hour after school in Wafa hospital for the elderly in the eastern part of the town. It contains the only heated and covered swimming pool in Gaza.
Ali must swim as often as possible by doctors orders because of what is called ‘Perth’s disease ‘ which affects his pelvis joints. So he goes to the pool every day. His doctors are confident that as long as he gets his exercise there will be a spontaneous recovery and no further specific treatment is needed. I was told that Messi, the famous football player, also had this ailment.
Suddenly we heard an explosion from afar. I was getting a little worried. Ali must have arrived to the pool, I told myself. Then Hammam, my assistant, rushed in and announced that two people were killed by an Israeli missile. He said that the attack was in the middle of ‘Omar Mokhtar,’ the main street of Gaza.
I was very worried and started to call everywhere. Ali and his coach were in the water and there was no answer. I learned the names of the people who were killed – Israel later claimed they were ‘thinking’ of attacking Israel!
It was lucky that there were no other victims in the usually busy street. Sometimes Israeli missiles are not always precisely guided. Time and time again they deliberately or mistakenly err, such as when they destroyed seventeen houses surrounding the house of the presumed target, Khalil Shihada. During the last war on Gaza there were reports that the Israeli military actually targeted civilians. And they even killed each other with friendly fire!
As if to make the point, Israeli drones or F16s launched another missile attack early this morning killing one man and injuring some seven children. While I am writing this, I heard some explosions.
Where is Israel heading? What is it trying to achieve? Is it provoking retaliation by some Palestinian fighters in order to justify a new war on Gaza? Is it trying to sabotage the reconciliation efforts of the Egyptian government that is pushing Hamas and Fatah to negotiate? Is intending to occupy the Philadelphia road running along the border that divides the Gaza Strip from Egypt in order to turn the Gaza Strip into a prison cut off from the world? Does it bomb Gaza in order to prepare for an onslaught on Iran?
And can I dare to send Ali to swim tomorrow?
Israel is a Mad Dog that is fed very well by its Amercian supporters/Lobby .
Without them. the mad dog would /die of hunger in no time.
Now, the dog is barking loudly towards Iran, and its treacherous US supporters chant happily the barking chants with him.
If they support the mad dog, does it make them mad as well??
Mad and crazy??
Eyad, I am so glad that your son wasn’t hurt. My thoughts and my prayers are always with you and with all of the people in Gaza. I don’t know if there was any motivation for this other than to kill yet more Palestinians.
sometimes it occurs to me there is a minimum number of palestinians they must kill every decade in order to keep the demographics from soaring out of their control. it’s just perpetual ethnic cleansing. day after day after day. and if they skip a day or two or three, they make up for it later. and then when it still isn’t enough they make a massacre. perhaps someone is in the background doing the numbers. they treat palestinians like vermon. they are racist, the designers of this cruel cruel game are racists and we will stop this manifestation of zionism.
sorry for being so cold and impersonal, but this is what i think is happening. i read stories like this and when i’m not crying, i turn cynical and cold as ice, steel my heart and face reality. an inhumane system must be addressed, at least sometimes with dispassion and all eyes open. it is cold calculated elimination of a people, and those people are you.
you are holding up the world and we’re watching now and many of us are taking action. this crime speaks for what passes as acceptable and promoted for the governments of the US and IS. but i have faith in the global consciousness. somehow, someway we will end this crime against humanity. palestine will live, just hang in there please.
Eyad Sarraj,
If you give in to the fear that Israeli terrorists are trying to instill in you and your family, then the terrorists win. Though the concept of Freedom may be alien to those who are oppressing you, show them that you value freedom more than they do.
Eyad Sarraj ‘s brief One Day In My Life article needs to be multiplied 365 days; it’s horrible merely to imagine what this kind of daily fear does to a human being. How many years now? This is state-sponsored terror torture on a really grand scale. I’m just more amazed every day at how the Palestinian people soldier on in the face of it every morning like some glaring sun god oppressor. And they still retain, make their happy moments despite the overwhelming heat. Its my own country that makes this evil sun in their sky, that fuels it. And our plutocratic system of authorizing our crappy leaders disgusts me. I voted for Ron Paul before, I will vote for him again. He’s not perfect in my eyes, but the rest of the candidates and Obama–they will make the bad sun hotter and we will all die of skin cancer.