Tuesday, 5 August 2014

The Toll: Asmaa Al-Ghoul: Never ask me about peace again


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 An Israeli drone circles over Gaza City on Sunday, August 3, 2014: photo by Dusan Vranic / AP, 3 August 2014



Asmaa Al-Ghoul: Never ask me about peace again

A first-hand account of the aftermath of an Israeli strike that killed nine members of the author's family
 
via Al-Monitor, 4 August 2014

Tears flowed until my body ran dry of them when I received a telephone call on Aug. 3, informing me that my family had been targeted by two F-16 missiles in the city of Rafah. Such was the fate of our family in a war that still continues, with every family in the Gaza Strip receiving its share of sorrow and pain.

My father’s brother, Ismail al-Ghoul, 60, was not a member of Hamas. His wife, Khadra, 62, was not a militant of Hamas. Their sons, Wael, 35, and Mohammed, 32, were not combatants for Hamas. Their daughters, Hanadi, 28, and Asmaa, 22, were not operatives for Hamas, nor were my cousin Wael’s children, Ismail, 11, Malak, 5, and baby Mustafa, only 24 days old, members of Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or Fatah. Yet, they all died in the Israeli shelling that targeted their home at 6:20 a.m. on Sunday morning.

Their house was located in the Yibna neighborhood of the Rafah refugee camp. It was one story with a roof made of thin asbestos that did not require two F-16 missiles to destroy. Would someone please inform Israel that refugee camp houses can be destroyed, and their occupants killed, with only a small bomb, and that it needn’t spend billions to blow them into oblivion?




Rescue workers search for victims as Palestinians gather around the wreckage of a house destroyed in an Israeli airstrike that killed at least nine members from the al-Ghoul family, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, August 3, 2014: photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / Reuters, 3 August 2014


If it is Hamas that you hate, let me tell you that the people you are killing have nothing to do with Hamas. They are women, children, men and senior citizens whose only concern was for the war to end, so they can return to their lives and daily routines. But let me assure you that you have now created thousands -- no, millions -- of Hamas loyalists, for we all become Hamas if Hamas, to you, is women, children and innocent families. If Hamas, in your eyes, is ordinary civilians and families, then I am Hamas, they are Hamas and we are all Hamas.

Throughout the war, we thought that the worst had passed, that this was the pivotal moment when matters would improve, that they would stop there. Yet, that real moment of pain, of extreme fear, was always followed by something even worse.

Now I understood why the photographs of corpses were so important, not only for international public opinion, but for us, the families, in search for an opportunity to bid farewell to our loved ones, so treacherously killed. What were they doing in those last moments? What did they look like after their death?




Palestinian man carries a body of Palestinian kid from Goul family -- killed while he was sleeping in his house: photo by Anadolu Agency via Dr Bassel Abuwarda on twitter, 4 August 2014


I discovered the photos of my dead relatives on social networking sites. The bodies of my cousin’s children were stored in an ice cream freezer. Rafah’s Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital was closed after being shelled by Israeli tanks, and the Kuwaiti Hospital that we visited just a day earlier had become an alternate venue, where this freezer was the only option available.

Al-Najjar’s director, Abdullah Shehadeh, said, “We decided to move the patients when shells hit the main gate. Some patients, out of fear, ran out, despite the gravity of the security situation. We are now working out of this ill-equipped hospital.”

The Emirati Red Crescent Maternity Hospital, west of Rafah, has been transformed into a large container for corpses, with fruit and vegetable freezers filled with dozens of bodies.


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Israel massacred so many in Rafah that we had to use cooling trucks and ice cream refrigerators to preserve bodies: photo by Dr Belal Dabour via twitter, 3 August 2014


I saw corpses on the floor, some with nametags on their chests, while others remained unknown. We held our noses, for the stench was unbearable, as flies filled the air.


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Israel massacred so many in Rafah that we had to use cooling trucks and ice cream refrigerators to preserve bodies: photo by Dr Belal Dabour via twitter, 3 August 2014

 
Ibrahim Hamad, 27, removed his five-year-old son’s shroud-wrapped body from a vegetable freezer. Fighting back tears, he said, “He died as a result of a reconnaissance drone missile attack. His body has been here since yesterday. The dangerous situation prevented me from coming to take him any sooner.”


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 this photo touch your humanity? Does it touch your love for ice cream at least?: photo by Dr Belal Dabour via twitter, 3 August 2014


I thank God that my relatives were quickly buried, and that my cousins Mustafa, Malak and Ismail did not remain long in a freezer, lest their bodies freeze, and their souls now rest in peace, leaving us with nothing but the silence of death and bodies forever trapped in the postures of their passing.

On the fifth day of the war, when I went to write my Rafah report about the shelling of the Ghannam family, I stopped by to visit my cousin’s house. I saw my relatives and we took photographs together. During the war, my cousin Wael’s wife had given birth to twins, Mustafa and Ibrahim, who were like two tiny angels, harbingers of hope and joy.

How could I have known that this would be our last meeting? I wish I had stayed longer and talked to them some more. Hanadi, Asmaa, my uncle and his wife laughed as they joked about the twist of fate that brought us together in the middle of a war, at a time when Israeli occupation forces had not yet begun perpetrating their wanton war crimes against Rafah.

Endings are so strange, as are living moments that suddenly become relegated to the past. We will never see them again, and the pictures that I took of the twins are now so precious, as one of them, Mustafa, was killed, while the other, Ibrahim, remained alive.

I wonder how they could differentiate between them, for they looked so much alike. Who identified them when their father died and their mother lay wounded in intensive care? Who was Mustafa, and who was Ibrahim? It was as if they had merged upon one twin's death.



A relative carries the body of a young girl during the funeral of at least 9 members of the same al-Ghul family who died after their house was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on August 3, 2014.

A relative carries the body of a young girl during the funeral of at least 9 members of the same al-Ghul family who died after their house was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on August 3, 2014: photo by PressTV, 3 August 2014


In the photos taken after their death, my family looked so peaceful, asleep with their eyes closed. None of them were disfigured or burned, unlike hundreds of dead children and civilians that US-made weapons killed before them. We wondered if they died in pain. What happened when the missile, carrying tons of explosives, impacted their modest house and exploded, creating air pressure so fierce that their internal organs burst? Their suffering was perhaps lessened by the fact that they were sleeping.

I didn't see them when I went to Rafah on August 2. I wrote about the death of the Ayad Abu Taha family, which was targeted by warplanes, and saw the corpse of Rizk Abu Taha, one year old, when it arrived at the Kuwaiti Hospital.

I observed him at length. He looked alive. One could see that he had been playing when he died, dressed in his pink pants. How could he be at such peace? The bodies of war victims look so different from how they appear on television. They are so real, so substantial, suddenly there before you, without any newscast introductions, music or slogans.



Angelina Jolie is heart-broken about the suffering in Gaza: photo by Dr Basel Abuwarda via twitter, 3 August 2014


Bodies lay everywhere, and it was if everything in life had been to prepare us for this moment. Suddenly, the dead left their personal lives behind: their cell phones, homes, clothes, perfumes and daily chores. Most importantly, they left the fear of war behind.



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Under what law this is acceptable?! A child waiting for his dead mother to wake up. HEARTBREAKING
: photo by Dr Basel Abuwarda via twitter, 3 August 2014


Distances in the small Gaza Strip have grown larger, distances and time expanding as a result of the fear and death that shrank the life expectancy of the populace. We were unable to join the family for the funerals. My uncle, Ahmad al-Ghoul, later told me over the phone, “Because of the inherent danger, our goodbyes to them lasted mere seconds. Malak’s eyes laid open, as if to ask, 'What wrong did I commit?'”

 

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Displaced kids at UN shelter looking at the warplanes in the sky with no FEAR. They get used to them! THIS IS NOT NORMAL
: photo by Dr Basel Abuwarda via twitter, 3 August 2014


I was born in 1982, in that same house in Rafah’s refugee camp, where the family’s large household expanded. I grew up there, and everything else grew with us: the first intifada, the resistance, my nearby school that I walked to every day. There, I saw my first-ever book library. There, I remember seeing my grandfather fall asleep as he listened to the BBC. And there, I laid eyes on the first Israeli soldier in my life, striking my grandfather to force him to erase the national slogans that adorned the walls of our refugee camp home.

Now, the house and its future memories have been laid to waste, its children taken to early graves. Homes and recollections bombed into oblivion, their inhabitants homeless and lost, just as their camp always had always been. Never ask me about peace again.


Asmaa al-Ghoul is a columnist for Al-Monitor's Palestine Pulse and a journalist from the Rafah refugee camp based in Gaza


AP Photo/Khalil Hamra

Palestinians grieve over the death of their relatives killed in an Israeli strike, in the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, August 3, 2014: photo by Khalil Hamra / AP, 3 August 2014

The bodies of the Al Ghoul family, killed early Sunday morning, were lined up on the floor of the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah. Doctors wiped dried blood from the faces of three men. Outside the hospital, men and children shed tears while sobbing women cradled the smallest of the dead, kissing their faces. In another hospital room at the hospital, at least four children were piled into an ice cream freezer, all wrapped in white cloth drenched in blood. Doctors say that morgues in Rafah are at maximum capacity.




"don't be afraid I'm still alive to protect u, Allah with us" he whispered
: photo via Isra Elaila on twitter, 4 August 2014



   Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Sunday, August 3, 2014: photo by Dusan Vranic / AP. 3 August 2014

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Israeli army summarily executed fleeing civilians in southern Gaza
: photo by Joe Catron via twitter, 4 August 2014



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Only in Gaza, you let the sky to be your limit
: photo by Inas Safadi via twitter, 3 August 2014




Put yourself in his shoes, what would you do if you lose your child?: photo via Anonymous on twitter, 4 August 2014


Ya Allah ease their affair: photo by Nafeesa Suleiman via twitter, 4 August 2014



Death toll in Gaza Strip reaches 1,865: photo via ISM Palestine on twitter, 4 August 2014



"Sitting in what used to be my living room": photo by FreePalestine via twitter, 4 August 2014



Israeli soldiers shoot and kill fleeing civilians
: photo by FreePalestine via twitter, 4 August 2014



What more cruelty do we need to see to stand up for Humanity!
: photo via Omar Salem on twitter, 4 August 2014


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This boy lost all his family and both his eyes. Plastic surgeons at Shifa reconstructed his face, but he won't see it!
: photo by Dr Belal Dabour via twitter, 3 August 2014



Reborn: photo by Dr Belal Dabour via twitter, 3 August 2014


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al-Nada Towers. This photo should give a clue as to why UNRWA estimates that Gaza reconstruction requires 30 years
: photo via Dr Belal Dabour on twitter, 3 August 2014

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First Israel denies it, media adopts their story. Now Israel admits targeting UN school in Rafah this morning. Media?
: photo by Dr Belal Dabour via twitter, 3 August 2014


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Dr. Moataz Harara, a friend, a classmate and a fellow doctor at Shifa. This is his father checking on what WAS their house
: photo by Rami Abu Marahil via Dr Belal Dabour on twitter, 3 August 2014


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This house once sheltered the young talented poet Anas Abu Samhan. Don't despair my friend.. this too shall pass
: photo via Dr Belal Dabour on twitter, 3 August 2014



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This famous building lies at the very heart of Gaza City. It's now being shelled with artillery, I hear it from Shifa!
: photo via Dr Belal Dabour on twitter, 3 August 2014
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One of today's martyrs. I am sure he was handsome; Israel didn't like that
: photo by Dr Belal Dabour via twitter, 2 August 2014


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I woke up to find that Israel has bombed my university. They've also killed another 50 Palestinians overnight!
: photo via Dr Belal Dabour on twitter, 2 August 2014



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Used to be a civil society organization in Beit Hanoun; Israel didn't like that
: photos by Dr Belal Dabour via twitter, 2 August 2014

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But first, let me take a selfie
: photo by Dr Belal Dabour via twitter, 2 August 2014

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This was a famous biscuits and ice cream factory in Gaza, before/after Israel left its mark: photos via Dr Belal Dabour on twitter, 2 August 2014

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Sleeping on the floor at Shifa hospital was this kid. The only thing that survived from his home was his cat: photo by Dr Belal Dabour on twitter, 31July 2014

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Five month old baby was severely injured by an Israeli attack to his family house while sleeping. HE'S TRYING TO SURVIVE NOW
: photo by Dr Bassel Abuwarda via twitter, 4 August 2014


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Ministry of Health: 17 hospitals and 36 ambulances have been targeted since the beginning of the Israeli aggression
: photo by Dr Basel Abuwarda via twitter, 3 August 2014


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Eleven journalists and nineteen medical staff have been killed so far.  They are trying not only to hide the truth but also to bury it
: photo by Dr Basel Abuwarda via twitter, 3 August 2014


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Israel continues targeting civilians' houses: today in the Saudi Quarter in Rafah: photo by Dr Basel Abuwarda via twitter, 3 August 2014


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Even ambulances have been damaged by Israeli rockets:  picture today from Northern Gaza
: photo by Dr Basel Abuwarda via twitter, 3 August 2014

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UN spokesperson: We need 30 years to rebuild Gaza
: photo by Dr Basel Abuwarda via twitter, 3 August 2014

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UN spokesperson: We need 30 years to rebuild Gaza
: photo by Belal Khaled via Dr Basel Abuwarda on twitter, 3 August 2014

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UN spokesperson: We need 30 years to rebuild Gaza: photo by Safa Images via Dr Basel Abuwarda on twitter, 3 August 2014

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UN spokesperson: We need 30 years to rebuild Gaza: photo by Mohamed Abed / AFP via Dr Basel Abuwarda on twitter, 3 August 2014

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Israel is creating a generation of disabled adults … and for these kids, there is no one left to care for them: photo by Dr Basel Abuwarda via twitter, 3 August 2014

15 comments:

  1. Not forgetting that those "after" photos were taken two weeks ago... that is, only about one-third of the way into the present state of devastation in the particularly target-rich neighborhoods... the sight of which might wring a tear from even the robot eye in the sky.

    And just imagine what Rafah must look like from up there, having been reduced to ruin in the course of the enactment of the Hannibal Protocol... ya gotta love that cold-blood-drunk lust when it really gets into gear! Weapons manufacturers everywhere happier than butchers at a barbecue!

    And by the by, talking of our new robot pets, just wondering, do you suppose at drone college they have Civics classes?

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  2. Tom,

    "What were they doing in those last moments? What did they look like after their death?"

    "baby Mustafa, only 24 days old"

    "Palestinian man carries a body of Palestinian kid from Goul family -- killed while he was sleeping in his house"

    "The bodies of my cousin’s children were stored in an ice cream freezer"

    "so many in Rafah that we had to use cooling trucks and ice cream refrigerators to preserve bodies"

    "A relative carries the body of a young girl during the funeral of at least 9 members of the same al-Ghul family who died after their house was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on August 3, 2014"

    "In the photos taken after their death, my family looked so peaceful, asleep with their eyes closed."

    "A child waiting for his dead mother to wake up."

    "Put yourself in his shoes, what would you do if you lose your child?"

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  3. Baroness Warsi has shown herself to be that most rare of creatures: a principled Tory.

    "If it is Hamas that you hate, let me tell you that the people you are killing have nothing to do with Hamas. They are women, children, men and senior citizens whose only concern was for the war to end, so they can return to their lives and daily routines. But let me assure you that you have now created thousands -- no, millions -- of Hamas loyalists, for we all become Hamas if Hamas, to you, is women, children and innocent families. If Hamas, in your eyes, is ordinary civilians and families, then I am Hamas, they are Hamas and we are all Hamas".

    There have been similar recruitment drives by proxy in the past (and no doubt the old imperial whitewash will come out some years hence).


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  4. WB, on that note (re Northern Ireland), on 29 July there appeared a curious piece -- interesting not so much because revelatory in itself (merely a reasonable exposition of inarguable truth), but because it appeared in, of all places, The New Yorker, by Rashid Khalidi:

    "In the past seven or more years, Israel has besieged, tormented, and regularly attacked the Gaza Strip. The pretexts change: they elected Hamas; they refused to be docile; they refused to recognize Israel; they fired rockets; they built tunnels to circumvent the siege; and on and on. But each pretext is a red herring, because the truth of ghettos -- what happens when you imprison 1.8 million people in a hundred and forty square miles, about a third of the area of New York City, with no control of borders, almost no access to the sea for fishermen (three out of the twenty kilometres allowed by the Oslo accords), no real way in or out, and with drones buzzing overhead night and day -- is that, eventually, the ghetto will fight back. It was true in Soweto and Belfast, and it is true in Gaza. We might not like Hamas or some of its methods, but that is not the same as accepting the proposition that Palestinians should supinely accept the denial of their right to exist as a free people in their ancestral homeland.

    "This is precisely why the United States’ support of current Israeli policy is folly. Peace was achieved in Northern Ireland and in South Africa because the United States and the world realized that they had to put pressure on the stronger party, holding it accountable and ending its impunity. Northern Ireland and South Africa are far from perfect examples, but it is worth remembering that, to achieve a just outcome, it was necessary for the United States to deal with groups like the Irish Republican Army and the African National Congress, which engaged in guerrilla war and even terrorism. That was the only way to embark on a road toward true peace and reconciliation. The case of Palestine is not fundamentally different."

    (Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and was an adviser to the Palestinian delegation at the Madrid-Washington Palestinian-Israeli negotiations of 1991-93. His most recent book is “Brokers of Deceit.”)

    And yes, when its first representation of conscience turns out to be coming from a Tory, that can't be a very solid government you're having there. Oh, Cameron lost something from his cabinet. Too bad it was the wrong something. I thought that's where he kept those fossilized miniature testicles.

    The supposed "wave of relief" now washing over the world seems very much a wave of continuing irresponsibility, the relief mainly a matter of being pleased to have this potentially troubling, guilt-making story removed to the back pages, so that the proper businesses of lies and entertainment may resume.

    And by the way, as you're climbing back into your tanks, O Light Unto the Nations, dare we mention the little matter of reparations? Or have you not heard of that term.

    When the bill for the first payment (now estimated to come in at c. $6-8b) on the reconstruction of the ruins of Gaza, I doubt we will be seeing a single soul-searching think piece, whether in the relatively elevated aerie of Haaretz or in the Times of Israel or Jerusalem Post, as to how Israel ought to be ponying up every last shekel of that tab, and please multiply that by about ten for the p & s, thanks very much.

    As for the present peace on the ground...

    Would Queens I wonder feel peaceful with the electricity out, vast fleets of killer Mershava tanks milling about along the East River, and hundreds of robot craft still buzzing with menace in the dark skies above?

    For it seems the drones did not receive the "pull back" order, but you know how it is with these brilliantly precise new technologies, a few bugs still to work out, just a matter of small details.

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  5. Finding out what's happening in Gaza today is not easy. But if you check it out, you will find that there are literally thousands of terrorized, stranded people in Gaza who continue, in the face of an assault that will one day be ranked among the most salient calculated state atrocities of a period of history not noted for kindness, to communicate with each other -- and, with us, the "outside world".

    Here for example are the notes sent over the past 90 minutes or so by Sarah Ali.

    Here's how Sarah Ali describes herself:

    "Muslim. Literature. Linguistics. Nature. Kids."

    (Typical terrorist, yeah?)

    Sarah Ali @Saritah_91 · 39m

    Earlier today my nephew told me to charge my phone "before electricity goes out". He's 5 & he thinks this is normal.

    45m

    Never saw Gaza this dark, even during pre-attack daily power cuts. Small lights are turned off; batteries dying. Darkness is all I can see.

    54m

    It's so dark I can't see my hand. I stare at the stars outside my window. An object (drone or F16) hovering. No bombing, just terror.

    57m

    Drones cause headaches, insomnia, buzzing thru' your head that drives you crazy. They remind you that Israel's always there, always watching

    1h

    Ceasefire or not, Israeli drones never go away. And they are the most horrible of all.

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  6. Oh well, I had so wanted to believe Hilton's comment yesterday re. the brutal conduct of the rogue terror state Israel, self- appointed Gestapo of the world, in overseeing the concentration camp which is occupied Gaza, causing minds to change in the American Jewish community.

    I understand that American Jews are somehow "different".

    My wife's family suffered dispossession, displacement, beheading, gas chamber, at the hands of the Nazis.

    Those who survived remained compassionate people. Committed to peace. But of course, they were Europeans, they'd known actual suffering -- something quite apart from persecution mania.

    Of course everyone knows but fears to come out and say that it's only the massive pressure of American Zionists upon the American government that allows the Israeli occupying force in Palestine to continue to behave with impunity.

    After all, quite apart from any possible moral issues, that annual $3.1 billion injection of "military aid" -- including the redundant supplying of the most devastating and inhuman "experimental" "conventional" weapons ever known, not to mention the countless further costs in supplementary armaments, available at all times in support of the Total Hasbara (bombs plus lies = Israeli conception of military strategy), if directed instead to a few of this country's present crying needs (health care, public transport, the list is long) -- might well have a chance of actually doing some good.

    But who's kidding whom?

    Now that talk of reconstruction has begun, which countries are stepping up to volunteer to help with the staggering costs?

    Well, Norway for one. Norway, which has already provided the incredible Dr. Mads.

    Today I was talking with the other two residents of this block who have survived life on the freeway feeder the longest.

    One was the guy next door, whose dad was killed attempting to cross it (run over, as was I, though in my case without the bonus of ending up dead -- merely crippled), the other a woman down the block, who'd been born and raised in Germany.

    She said that the Gaza situation has deeply affected her. "Every time I hear a plane going over, I imagine what it would be like to be in Gaza. Every time I feel hungry, I imagine what it would be like to be in Gaza."

    She said that to people in Germany, the stage of offering reparations to the victims of their particular brand of state terror had been a necessary first step in coming to terms with collective guilt resulting from having wrought collective punishment upon a people. "So, of course, the Jews had to be compensated."

    She was saying -- reparations, yes, of course, first step, absolutely necessary.

    But since when has the ultimate Schnorrer State, Israel, reimbursed any of its victims?

    No, with these charmers it's "We destroy, you pay."

    So, to think that minds are changing... a shred of hope.

    Then I see this in the morning paper:

    Marchers gather to support Israel at S.F. rally (SF Chronicle)

    Right.

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  7. A word about the author of this piece: a Gazan secular feminist writer, not so old in years but obviously steeped in the experience of this world. Much of what she says can perhaps be viewed in a somewhat different light when her background is taken into account, along with the personal journey that seems to have brought her to this point from that suggested in this Mother Jones piece of three-and-a-half years ago.

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  8. Israeli peace movement spat at and marginalised in a time war--Giles Fraser in Tel Aviv talking with Gideon Levy and Amos Oz: Guardian 6 August 2014

    Levy's unpardonable crime is vocal opposition to the war and to the bombing of Gaza. According to recent polls support for the military operation in Gaza among the Jewish Israeli public stands somewhere between 87% (Channel 10 News) and 95% (Israel Democracy Institute). Even those who are secretly against the war are cautious about voicing their opinion openly.

    "What is different this time is the anti-democratic spirit. Zero tolerance of any kind of criticism, opposition to any kind of sympathy with the Palestinians," says Levy. "You shouldn't be surprised that the 95% [are in favour of the war], you should be surprised at the 5%. This is almost a miracle. The media has an enormous role. Given the decades of demonisation of the Palestinians, the incitement and hatred, don't be surprised the Israeli people are where they are."

    "The young people are the worst. More ignorant. More brainwashed. They have never met a Palestinian in their lives".

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  9. Thank you, Tom, for keeping the heinous crimes of Israel before our eyes--it's revolting to think the powers that be simply turn and look the other way when faced with such atrocities.

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  10. Vassilis,

    Can't keep out of mind this past month the words of Thoreau to Emerson, from Staten Island, 8 June 1843 -- I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it.

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  11. (Of course he was talking about New York not Gaza, still... that feeling. Burn out my eyes. The photo of the boy with eyes gone, taken by the doctor who had somehow saved his face -- but just as well the boy was never going to have to see it.)

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  12. I am ashamed down to the core of my soul...that this country I have always loved Could turn into such a bloodless Beast as This . For Why ? For Who ? Where does it All END ? Can This Possibly ever be forgiven In a million years of repentance ? I don`t believe so. This Monstrosity has TO Go. Even if it requires An obliteration of This Country And Every other War-mongering Entity on the face of This EARTH. Won`t we ever learn there is Going to be A Reckoning That Will never END /

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  13. In the long run I don't think it will be forgiven or forgotten quite so easily as seems to be assumed now among those who are responsible.

    But that doesn't help with the present or near future, alas.

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