Parkour In Gaza War Zone: image via Dr. Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 3 October 2014
School girls do morning exercises in their damaged school during the first day of school in #Gaza @ahmedrawhi1: image via Dr Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 14 September 2014
A boat filled with Palestinian and Syrian immigrants sank and immigrants drowned near Alexandria, #Egypt, reports of numerous Gazans dead: image via Dr Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 13 September 2014
Mosque after bombing in Shijaia neighborhood: image via Dr Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 1 September 2014
Existence is resistance and survival is victory. Gaza has decided it has won: image via Dr Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 29 August 2014
Palestinian students attend the second day of school in a quarter of the Shujaiya neighborhood east of Gaza City: photo by Anne Paq / Actve Stills, 15 September. 2014
A Palestinian woman inspects her house which was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike during this summer’s seven-week offensive in the east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip: photo by Abed Rahim Khatib / APA images, 13 September 2014
Palestinians inspect their farmland east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, near the boundary with Israel. The land was damaged during Israel’s massive summer assault on Gaza: photo by Abed Rahim Khatib / APA images, 2 September 2014
#UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says the destruction in #Gaza is “beyond description": image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 14 October 2014
Ban Ki-Moon: Gaza is a source of shame to the international community
UN chief visits under tight security to view destruction from the 50-day
conflict and demand justice for shelling of UN facilities
Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem and Hazem Balousha in Gaza, The Guardian, Tuesday 14 October
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, described the destruction in Gaza from the recent conflict with Israel as “beyond description” and a source of “shame to the international community” as he visited the war-devastated coastal strip on Tuesday.
“I am here with a heavy heart,” Ban told a press conference. “The destruction which I have seen coming here is beyond description,” he added.
Ban said the damage was far worse than what he had seen after the previous conflict –- Operation Cast Lead –- that took place in 2008-09.
The UN chief was driven through the ruins of Gaza City’s Shuja’iya neighbourhood and visited a school in nearby Jabaliya refugee camp, scenes of some of the heaviest Israeli shelling in this summer’s conflict.
Two classrooms at the UN school were hit by shells, killing at least 14 people sheltering there. Relatives of the dead held up posters showing their loved ones, while waiting to catch a glimpse of the UN head.
Ban saved his strongest language for the deaths of about 500 children during the war. “I met so many of the beautiful children of Gaza. More than 500 were killed in the fighting -– many more were wounded. What did they do wrong? Being born in Gaza is not a crime.”
The war is still in #Gaza kids' minds and thoughts. The drawing by a child I met today in beach refugee camp: image via Hazem Balousha @HaZeMi, 20 September 2014
School year has started today in #Gaza after 3 weeks of delay due to the impacts of 50 days war: image via Hazem Balousha @HaZeMi, 13 September 2014
Eid in #Gaza Children play, enjoy & celebrate amongst the rubble, surrounding their homes, schools, land and rights!: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014
Eid in #Gaza Children play, enjoy & celebrate amongst the rubble, surrounding their homes, schools, land and rights!: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014
Eid in #Gaza Children play, enjoy & celebrate amongst the rubble, surrounding their homes, schools, land and rights!: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014
Barely hold my tears when he was telling me how scared he was when gunboats targeted them & killed his relatives #Gaza: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 3 October 2010
Do you remember him from that day? Working on psychological therapy for him and other kids With Almezan Loving them!: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 3 October 2014
During our psychological therapy for the children, we asked them to point where they are still feeling pain the result was...: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 23 September 2014
During our psychological therapy for the children, we asked them to point where they are still feeling pain the result was...: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 23 September 2014
During our psychological therapy for the children, we asked them to point where they are still feeling pain the result was...: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 23 September 2014
Fighting for survival at #Gaza's zoo attacked by #Israel. 86 animals died and 20 survived the deadly attacks. @Alraypsen: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 22 September 2014
Fighting for survival at #Gaza's zoo attacked by #Israel. 86 animals died and 20 survived the deadly attacks. @Alraypsen: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 22 September 2014
Fighting for survival at #Gaza's zoo attacked by #Israel. 86 animals died and 20 survived the deadly attacks. @Alraypsen: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 22 September 2014
Sunset in #Gaza...: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 12 September 2014
#UNRWA school buildings, every 5th building in #Gaza is now a shelter for 63K+ displaced people: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 12 September 2014
Despite ceasefire, the number of displaced in Gaza is rising again: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 5 September 2014
When school starts in #Gaza
students will miss their friends beside them as they were killed during the aggression: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 2 September 2014
Even kindergartens in #Gaza were targeted during the last #Israeli aggression #FreePalestine: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 7 September 2014
Killed in #Gaza: 1 principal, 4 teachers and 2 guards at UN schools; 22 Education Ministry employees: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 7 September 2014
This is what schools in #Gaza look like #FreePalestine: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 5 September 2014
This is what schools in #Gaza look like #FreePalestine: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 5 September 2014
Good morning from #Gaza 1 in 4 (475k) are displaced 338k are taking shelter in schools 100k are homeless: image via Dr Bassel Abu Warda @DrBaselAbuwarda via @UNICEFPalestine, 28 August 2014
School started in Gaza vs School in Israel: Don't all children deserve the same chances of a future? @ayaztaj1 #Gaza: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014
School started in Gaza vs School in Israel: Don't all children deserve the same chances of a future? @ayaztaj1 #Gaza: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014
School started in Gaza vs School in Israel: Don't all children deserve the same chances of a future? @ayaztaj1 #Gaza: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014
Remember her? injured during the aggression on #Gaza Now she is fully recovered AT LEAST PHYSICALLY and attending school: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014
First day at school in #Gaza children crying as it's the first time for them without their family and friends being around: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 14 September 2014
First day at school in #Gaza children crying as it's the first time for them without their family and friends being around: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 14 September 2014
Harrowing, Tom; meanwhile, life goes on in the playground called America.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/10/15/rich-guys-try-kick-poor-kids-off-their-own-playing-field-get-life-lesson-video/
Those corporate tech startup dweeb babies have taken over that town. They're used to having things their own way. It's either an executive birth right or an app, I forget which.
ReplyDeleteThat's the thing -- how could there ever occur anything resembling a knowable community of value in such a place?
What continues to be so moving about Gaza, and by by now we really shouldn't be surprised -- is the impression given that the place, the community, something above the individual -- might actually be worth fighting for, worth suffering for.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteThe photograph of the overloaded boat in the middle of the ocean - more than a hundred sinking-feelings at the same time. How have we managed to not drown so far? Or is it that the sea won't take us. The country next to us won't take us. It is a piece of land just like mine where different things grow. Am I american, indian, syrian, palestinian, before human ? Does the Indian die before the human? Is that why the I in India is capitalized, so the bigger bricks fall first. Humans die all the fucking time but kill one American, one Israeli, one Indian and shit hits the celestial fan.Sometimes I think what a load of crap we have become, or always were.
Israel's laying out the grounds for their own destruction; the woman in the fifth picture does well to raise her hand up.
ReplyDeleteGaza's not done yet. They are there, in the blown out classrooms and below the roofless mosques, more of a people than ever before.
Manik,
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for taking the time to look at what's left of Gaza now that the mechanized murder gang has paused to oil up the lawn mower before the next precautionary trim -- doubtless to begin once the mayfly attention span of the great world has moved on.
As you've generously offered the (hypothetical) choice, we're tempted to opt for "always were".
Surprised you've left "one Brit" and "one Aussie" off that otherwise pretty accurate inventory of the functionally untouchable.
Even as that boat full of refugees was plummeting to Davy Jones' locker, Bibi was busy pouting and sulking his way through the hallowed (hollow) chambers of the great world's highest powers -- the UNGA, the Casa Blanca... pursuing again of course that awful piece of all-too-familiar business, the endless kvetching and moaning about the fantasy persecution he and his fellow thugs have been imagining themselves experiencing... which reiterative toting up of imaginal projections, not, obviously the massive real suffering they have coldly and shamelessly inflicted on everything in their gunsights, was what got reported by the limitlessly credulous, obedient press.
It should not be hard to understand that by September there were those in Gaza who had concluded from recent events that there was literally no longer any place to hide from the latest merciless IOF onslaught. Those people along with others displaced from other war zones in the sealed-off region (blockaded, fenced-out, walled-in) were reduced to taking to the boats. The fate of those boat people was not kind.
Devil and the deep blue sea: how the Mediterranean migrant disaster unfolded: Guardian, 1 October 2014
But what happened to those boat people, or what happened to the maimed and mutilated children of Gaza -- I don't think anyone much cared, what with the massive celebrity events of the season unfolding gloriously in the brilliant chateaux of Brangelina's Provençe or upon the effervescent canals of GeorgioAmal's Venice or inside the tender workings of the overloaded camera phones of the stars, jammed to the vanity-congested gills with all that pathetic celebrity selfie flesh. (Agh, where's the decontamination chamber?)
And then there's the fate of all those sad zoo animals -- bombed, shelled, abandoned. Displaced creatures deprived of even the minimal dignity that supposedly comes with personhood. Doubtless their squalid cages were concealing RPG launchers. In a target-rich environment. anything that breathes or moves is a target. Even if it doesn't attend a UN school.
Perhaps what's needed is a three-state solution. Giving the creatures with more than two feet a bit of equal ground for once.
__
Duncan,
The woman's sign of beleaguered defiance amid the ruins, in that fifth picture, perhaps concentrates all there is finally to see here: courage, anger, deprivation, misery, a refusal to surrender a violated yet still tenacious humanity in the face of a brutal ongoing inhumanity.
"They are there... more of a people than ever before..."
That has the ring of truth. May the people there, if not also some few of the rest of us, who can only guess and wonder and weep and marvel, live to see the day.
Such difficult photos to look at, each and every one of them. And very rarely acknowledged in this country.
ReplyDeleteThanks very, very much for that, Kevin -- and yes, spot on, perhaps it took a photographer's eye to discern the key information here -- i.e. that it's photos like these we were never "meant" to see. The wire services and major news outlets made pretty sure of that.
ReplyDeleteAs you know, it's somewhere beyond, or beneath, their official sanctioned viewfinders, we'd have to be looking, to find out anything resembling the truth of history.
By the way, the boy photographed with Dr AbuWarda and then again seen in the immediate aftermath of horror with his shrapnel-riddled cousin, in photos #17 and #18 here ("Barely contain my tears..." and "Do you remember this boy...") was among a group of children playing on the beach in Gaza that day in July (feels so long ago now) when the IOF targeted them and opened fire wantonly, as though all the world were their private shooting range.
ReplyDeleteJust another forgotten day in another barely-noticed war upon The Forgotten...