All of
the suffering in Gaza - indeed, all of the suffering endured by
Palestinians under Israeli occupation for the last eight years - could
have been avoided if Israel negotiated a peace agreement with Yasser
Arafat when it had the chance, in 2001.
They have buried many children in Gaza the past two weeks. One, a little girl, was buried a week ago last Tuesday. She was only four. She was a beautiful child, long dark hair and a sweetly innocent face, far too early for such promise as she to die.
She died in a most horrific way. She was huddled in terror when a bomb landed near her, throwing her from her bed. Shrapnel tore viciously into her tiny body.
War is traumatizing for anybody,
but it's especially devastating to children caught in the crossfire.
They are the ones who bear absolutely no responsibility for all the
violence, yet they are the ones left with some of the worst physical
and psychological scars -- scars they'll carry for life.
In seven days, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the forty fourth president of the United States. The UK Telegraph reports today that people have been willing to pay $2000 for one of the 240,000 tickets, most of them standing, to the inauguration. The streets of Washington DC are flush with cash, the Kuwaiti Ambassador's wife, Reema Al-Sabah, is throwing one of the flashiest parties in the Diplomatic Circle, every hotel room is booked, every couch taken, every ball-gown picked.
I want to write about the suffering of my people and my family in these days of siege against the people of Gaza. 888 people have been killed and more than 3700 injured. The Red Cross has accused the Israeli military of repeatedly refusing to allow ambulances to go to Zeitoun area, so those who are injured become those who die; a premeditated and purposeful violation of human rights.
NEARLY SEVENTY YEARS ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous
crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand
days, a gang of extremists called "the Red Army" held the millions of
the town's inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German
Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no
alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total
blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.
The incursion into Gaza is not about
destroying Hamas. It is not about stopping rocket fire into Israel. It
is not about achieving peace. The Israeli decision to rain death and
destruction on Gaza, to use the lethal weapons of the modern
battlefield on a largely defenseless civilian population, is the final
phase of the decades-long campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.
The assault on Gaza is about creating squalid, lawless and impoverished
ghettos where life for Palestinians will be barely sustainable.
ARISH, Egypt - As I write, we can hear the dull thud of explosions in
the distance. Israeli airstrikes continue to blast targets in southern
Gaza. Merciless bombing of the small Gaza Strip continues into a third
week. I heard some people here in Egypt wonder if the Israeli Air Force
must be running out of places and people to target. But perhaps the
surveillance drones we heard and saw flying over the Rafah border
crossing today hunted down more spots on which bombers could fix their
cross-hairs. Perhaps they spotted underground tunnels.
Judith Weisman, 78, is a Toronto psychotherapist. She
grew up in "a very Zionist family" in Baltimore but "began to change
when Israel supported the Vietnam War."
She and her husband came to Canada in 1969. She worked at the Jewish Family and Children's Services.
Israel's
1982 invasion of Lebanon estranged her from the Jewish state. "It took
me a while to grasp what was being done to the Palestinians." She was
critical of Israel through the two intifadas and the 2006 invasion of
Lebanon.
After weeks of neglecting the issue, the U.S. House finally addressed the crisis in Gaza.
