Editor’s Note: The article is part of our series Gaza Diaries which shares firsthand accounts of Palestinians who lived through the 11-day Israeli attack on Gaza in May 2021, and are now dealing with its aftermath. You can read the entire series here.
I am writing this while Civil Defense fighters are still retrieving bodies from beneath the rubble of the buildings that were brought down on their residents’ heads on Al-Wehda street in Rimal one of the most crowded, and affluent, neighborhoods of Gaza city. So far, 34 bodies have been recovered, all of whom are civilians, including children and women. This has brought the death toll since apartheid Israel has started its massive onslaught on Gaza four days ago to 188, including 55 children, 33 women, and 1,230 injuries.
Every time apartheid Israel commits a horrendous massacre in Palestine, in general, and in Gaza, in particular, some liberal Western journalists try to make us explain as to why it, the colonial power, is doing this. And “how do we respond” to its claims that it is “us” who are to blame? Mind you, these mostly white journalists, never tried to ask Nelson Mandela what he had to say about apartheid South Africa’s outrageous lies that he was a terrorist. Or Martin Luther King Jr. as to why he was accused of being an “agent provocateur!” In fact, the reason we get this question is a combination of racism, Islamophobia and Orientalism. And this is partly how apartheid Israel gets away with its crimes against humanity and war crimes.
It is not a coincidence that Israel decided to remind us of its original sin, namely, the Nakba, by celebrating its “independence” in Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza. By committing the Wehda Street massacre, it has taken the so-called “conflict” to its origin.
Israel is an apartheid, settler-colonial entity that, not unlike other settler colonies, denies the humanity of the native. It is one that is ideologically based on the “annihilation” of the “savage” Arab whether in 1948, or 73 years later. It is not a coincidence, then, that it decided to remind us of its original sin, namely, the Nakba, by celebrating its “independence” in Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza. By committing the Wehda Street massacre, it has taken the so-called “conflict” to its origin, dealing a blow to the two-state solution, the Oslo accords and the “peace industry.”
Three years ago, we, Palestinians of Gaza, decided to remind Israel and its Western backers, of our existence by marching very peacefully on the eastern barbed wire surrounding the Gaza ghetto. More than 300 of us were killed by Israeli Gestapo-like snipers stationed on the other side of the wire. Many more were maimed and injured. The American administration, at the time, decided to reward its ally by moving its embassy to Jerusalem after recognizing it as Israel’s eternal capital. We do understand that our humanity does not register in official American, and Western, consciousness. We are simply the victims of their victims. We are expected to pay for all the pogroms committed by white Europeans against Jews! It is, alas, as simple as that. We are not lucky enough to have been born to Jewish mothers so as to get Israeli citizenship and become the spoiled kids of the mighty colonial powers of the world. No wonder, then, that president Joe Biden supports “Israel’s right to defend itself,” but he didn’t accept South African apartheid’s “right” to defend itself against indigenous Africans.
I keep thinking about where we are heading what with apartheid Israel’s daily crimes against the sons, daughters, and grandchildren, of the victims of its original sin. I don’t belong to the Nakba generation, but my parents did. They both died in a refugee camp dreaming of returning, or at least of being buried in their village. That didn’t happen. This is why I joined the Great March of Return. And every single time I joined the Great March of Return on the eastern barbed wire surrounding besieged Gaza and separating Palestine from Palestine, my shadow would leave me and cross the line to the other side! When it returned, it was sad and silent as if it was the shadow of another man, until one day it went and never came back.
Since that moment, I have been living without my shadow.
I am here, it is there!
And this is why Israel committed the Wehda Street massacre, trying to annihilate us, together with our shadows on the other side of the barbed wire!
We will bury our martyrs, sing songs of freedom for them and promise to bring the shadow back to the body! This is the least we can do for the memory of those killed last night.
On Sunday 16 May 2021 Dr Ayman Abu al-Ouf, the head of internal medicine at Gaza’s biggest hospital al-Shifa, was killed along with members of his family in a night time Israeli airstrike in Al-Wehda Street in the Rimal district of Gaza City.
The same air strike also killed 66 year old psychiatrist/neurologist Dr Mooein Ahmad al-Aloul at his home in Al-Wehda. I understand that he was killed along with his 5 children!
Apart from the unacceptable loss of civilian life the medical community and the population of the Gaza Strip as a whole have suffered a grievous loss. My wife and I are both health workers who have worked and lived in the Gaza Strip (al-Ahli Hospital). Internal medicine specialists and neurologists in the Gaza Strip are like gold dust, because they are so thin on the ground and their services are so badly needed.
There is no justification whatsoever for targeting residential buildings in the middle of the night. This is indiscriminate killing, a war crime! I hope that the human rights organizations will investigate this in great detail. It cannot be that those responsible are allowed to escape their responsibility for this appalling act.
At the same time I urge medics/health workers from all over the world to go to Gaza to assist the people there and give testimony.
Thank you for writing this. May you stay safe.