A damaged car from the Israeli bombing that killed Issam Al-Batish and Sobhi Al-Batish (Photo: Reuters)
I was half-asleep, half-awake when hearing my younger brother’s voice murmuring, “an Israeli airstrike hit a car next door, the bodies were burnt and torn apart and the pass-byers say the dead belong to the al-Batish family,” he said.
“What family..? al-Batish what?” I remember that I jumped up out of my bed and hurried to the radio. The first thing that came to my mind was the picture of my friend Mohammed. I imagined him torn into pieces, thrown at the asphalt, and muddied with blood.
A sudden voice broke the rash of my thoughts. It was my mum supplicating to Allah to give their family ‘patience’. “How dare the Israelis bomb a car that is zero meter away from the Baladia Garden and Playground,” blared mum with a furious tone that I have never heard but in very few stances. Yes, how dare they! “There, hundreds of Palestinian children mass to live their early, distorted childhoods,” continued mum. It is, at the end of the day, a playground, not a battlefield. It is where they TRY to forget about all the actions of the brutality of the Israelis they have witnessed over the last course of the decade. Probably they are not destined to grow up children, er..er, or they might be stoning the Israeli fight jets that stained Gaza’s sky with huge, broad, white gas lines that the jets left behind.
Breaking news says the dead are Issam al-Batish and his cousin. But the names no longer matter for me because whoever the dead are, they are Palestinians. I am pretty sure that a Palestinian family has lost a father, or a son, or a brother, or a cousin. It is quite obvious now that the Palestinians are a part of the Israeli conspiracy: they hit us, wound us, kill us, and breed us with rage. And what is the outcome of this ongoing process? The Israeli actions continue, and rage grows. We always pay.
This dramatic play never stops!
Later on I logged in to my Facebook account to assure my friends abroad that my family and I are safe and sound. But the photos of the dead bodies shocked me. At some point, I realized that human morals are doomed! No longer does man respect man. The bodies were recollected and engulfed with the black-and-white Palestinian Keffiyh. The same two colours that tell the whole story of our people; the same two colours that depict the reality we live in and our aspiration; the same two colours that speak both mourn and peace.
very powerful writing. clear and direct.
welcome to mondoweiss Waleed al-Meadana.
two cousin from two different party Which means that members of the Fatah terror group and the Hamas terror group really do love to cooperate!
Batash, IDF officials claimed, was a senior figure in the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and was behind the imminent terror threat in the south.
Very sad interview given to The Jewish Channel by Newt Gingrich: “Gingrich says Palestianians are an ‘invented’ people”
Now we’ll hear all about the “constant rocket attacks for no reason whatsoever.”
This is only a part of the story of a single day in Gaza. Thanks Waleed for sharing your feelings with us.
Another day begins in Gaza.