Erik
Fosse, a Norwegian cardiologist, worked in Gaza hospitals during the
recent war."It was as if they had stepped on a mine," he says
of certain Palestinian patients he treated. "But there was no shrapnel
in the wound. Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had
been sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have
never seen such injuries before."
People have asked me, since I returned from Gaza, how people manage? How do they keep going after being traumatized by bombing and punished by a comprehensive state of siege? I wonder myself. I know that whether the loss of life is on the Gazan or the Israeli side of the border, bereaved survivors feel the same pain and misery. On both sides of the border, I think children pull people through horrendous and horrifying nightmares. Adults squelch their panic, cry in private, and strive to regain semblances of normal life, wanting to carry their children through a precarious ordeal.
When I am asked about Palestinian identity, one idea keeps coming to mind. I was told it would be translated into English as "steadfastness." I looked up what a steadfast person would be like and the dictionary says, "One marked by firm determination or resolution--not shakable--of firm convictions and strong resolve. A man of unbendable perseverance and unwavering loyalty."
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi: A leading Palestinian politician defends his people and their nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation.
GAZA CITY - We are a delegation of 8 American lawyers, members of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States, who have come here to the Gaza Strip to assess the effects of the recent attacks on the people, and to determine what, if any, violations of international law occurred and whether U.S. domestic law has been violated as a consequence. We have spent the last five days interviewing communities particularly impacted by the recent Israeli offensive, including medical personnel, humanitarian aid workers and United Nations representatives.
"The boss has lost it," many Israeli military and political officials, and people on the street, were reportedly joking after their army's recent devastation of the Gaza Strip. As Israeli journalist Uri Avnery observed, the jest means that: " ... in order to deter our enemies, we must behave like madmen, go on the rampage, kill and destroy mercilessly."
In fact, the "boss has lost it" is an unselfconscious admission of policies that violate international law, and could at some point be used against Israeli leaders in a criminal prosecution.
Yesterday, Rayburn 2203 felt a bit like Gaza.
Or the West Bank.
It was occupied territory.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) was doing what he could to lob a shell at the occupier.
Holding a hearing, as it were, about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Kucinich invited his colleagues, but only one showed up - Congressman Brian Baird (D-Washington.)
Maybe the others were fearful of disproportionate retaliation?
Or collateral damage?
US President Barack Obama's
appointment of former Senator George Mitchell as his new Middle East
envoy is a good choice. Mitchell showed even-handedness
uncharacteristic of US officials when he led a fact-finding mission to
the region in 2000.
So that's that then, is it? Gaza is done and dusted? Very satisfying, I'm sure, for the Israeli leadership and their devoted allies at the BBC. But not so fast. For the one and a half million traumatised and wounded souls in that small strip, unendurable agony goes on. The very earth they stand on burns and cracks. And I am not here indulging a writer's tendency to hyperbole or neat metaphor.
"Every bomb ever made falls on all of us." -- Alice Walker
Israel has dropped tens of thousands of pounds of U.S.-made and/or U.S.-paid-for munitions on one of the most densely populated regions on Earth. Israel has been firing on known United Nations schools, killing dozens of civilians.
A Spanish judge has instituted a judicial inquiry against seven Israeli political and military personalities on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The case: the 2002 dropping of a one ton bomb on the home of Hamas leader Salah Shehade. Apart from the intended victim, 14 people, most of them children, were killed.
