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Children of Gaza: Scarred, Trapped, Vengeful
Omsyatte adjusts her green school uniform and climbs gingerly on to a desk at the front of the classroom. The shy 12-year-old holds up a brightly coloured picture and begins to explain to her classmates what she has drawn. It is a scene played out in schools all over the world, but for one striking difference: Omsyatte's picture does not illustrate a recent family holiday, or jolly school outing, but the day an Israeli military offensive killed her nine-year-old brother and destroyed her home.
Omsyatte, whose home was destroyed by F16s during the 2008 military offensive. Warfare has dominated thee short lives of Gaza's children; particularly the horrors of the 2008 Israeli military offensive Operation Cast Lead, which killed 1,400 Palestinians, and destroyed one in eight homes. (Dispatches) "Here is where they shot my brother Ibrahim, God
bless his soul. And here is the F16 plane that threw rockets into the
house and trees, and here is the tank that started to shoot," she says,
to a round of applause from the other children. The exercise is designed
to help the pupils at the school come to terms with the warfare that
has dominated their short lives; particularly the horrors of the 2008
Israeli military offensive Operation Cast Lead, which killed 1,400
Palestinians, and destroyed one in eight homes.
Like hundreds of displaced Gazans, Omsyatte's family have spent more than a year living in a tent on a site near their home. Little rebuilding work has been done during this time - with supplies unable to pass into Gaza because of the ongoing blockade imposed by Israel in 2007 - and groups of children now pick their way through piles of rubble, kicking footballs around the bombsites which used to be local landmarks.
Homelessness is just one of the issues facing the 780,000 Gazan children in the aftermath of the conflict, problems that are explored in a revealing new documentary Dispatches: Children of Gaza, to be screened tomorrow at 8pm on Channel 4. Perhaps the most disturbing of these is the emotional scars borne by children who have survived the conflict; the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme reports that the majority of children show signs of anxiety, depression and behavioural problems.
Small boys build toy rockets out of drinks bottles, and talk about the fake guns they are going to buy with their pocket money. While boys the world over are preoccupied with fighting and weapons, this takes on a more sinister significance when the game isn't Cowboys vs Indians, but Jews vs Arabs, and the children's make-believe warfare is chillingly realistic.
These games may reflect the children's desire for revenge against their neighbours, of which many speak openly. "I think we are seeing a growing desire for violence, and it saddens me," said Jezza Neumann, the Bafta-winning director of the programme. "If they could get revenge legally, or saw someone saying sorry, then perhaps they could come to terms with it, but there has been no recourse. What you're seeing now may only be the tip of the iceberg."
Mahmoud, 12, describes the day Israeli soldiers knocked on the door and shot his father dead, lying down in the dirt where his father fell in a heartbreaking reconstruction, and describes the enormous changes it wrought upon him. "Before the war, I was thinking about education, but after I started thinking about becoming a fighter," he says, his thickly lashed brown eyes staring straight into the camera. "God willing, if I can kill one Israeli it will be better than nothing."
Desperate to avenge his father's death, Mahmoud is encouraged by his uncle Ahmed, a member of the terrorist group Islamic Jihad. Sitting Mahmoud down in front of a martyrdom film, Ahmed says, "Look how he doesn't feel a thing when he is detonated" as a suicide bomber dies. Just a few hundred yards from the family's home is a training camp for Gaza's fighters - both Hamas and Islamic Jihad - where young men carrying rocket launchers are clearly visible.
While Mahmoud is desperate for revenge, his mother weeps when she considers the possibility that he may become a martyr. "It is an honour to die in the name of Allah, but I don't want to lose my son," she said.
Some believe that with Israel's tight restrictions on movement blocking conventional career options for the 1.1 million people who live there, children may feel they have no choice but to join resistance movements. Last week Palestinians in the Gaza Strip lit 1,000 candles and held a peaceful protest to mark 1,000 days of the Israeli blockade. During this time, unemployment has risen to 45 per cent, with 76 per cent of households now living in poverty.
"The children are struggling with the idea of the future," Mr Neumann said. "Many graduates in Gaza are unemployed, and they can't see a way forward because they can't get out."
Families have been fractured by the conflict, with many parents racked by guilt because they couldn't protect their children from the violence, and now cannot provide for them in the aftermath. Sitting in the tent which is now their home, Omsyatte's father weeps as he talks of his regret over the death of his son Ibrahim.
"The Israelis killed my son while he was in my arms, and I could do nothing to protect him," he says, tears streaming down his face. "I couldn't even look at him when he was taking his last breaths of life, because the soldiers were right above my head. I was too much of a coward to even hug my son. I was afraid that they would kill me. These things torment me."
Dr Ahmed Abu Tawanheena, the director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, says this issue is also affecting children in Gaza. "They have lost their parents twice: first, during the conflict, when they saw their parents terrified and unable to protect them from the violence. Now, under the blockade, they see their parents are still unable to provide for their basic needs, such
as shelter or food," he said. "It's a crisis which is threatening families and communities across the Gaza Strip."
For some, this crisis has had a devastating impact on family relationships, with mental health professionals and NGOs linking a rise in domestic violence with these feelings of guilt and impotence. A study by the Palestinian Women's Information and Media Centre (PWIC) in March 2009 found that 77 per cent of women in the Gaza Strip are exposed to domestic violence, while a survey by the UN Development Fund for Women (Unifem) also indicated that violence against women increased during periods of heavy conflict.
Many children are suffering the physical effects of the conflict. One of these is Mahmoud's nine-year-old sister Amal. Trapped under the rubble of her home - which was destroyed by Israeli shells - for four days before she was rescued, Amal was left with shrapnel lodged in her brain. Plagued by headaches and nosebleeds, and unable to get the medical care she needs in Gaza, Amal is lucky enough to be granted papers which allow her to travel to nearby Tel Aviv to be examined by a specialist. However, her experiences have left her so scared of Israelis that she doesn't want to go.
Crouching over a colouring book, her curly brown hair held back with pretty hair bands, she explained: "I'm scared to go to Israel. From the Jews. I'm frightened they might kill me."
Many of the children in Gaza's Shefa hospital do not have the option of leaving the strip, and the prognosis for children in the oncology ward is bleak. Chemotherapy is not available in Gaza, and many of the children on the ward have not been granted the papers they need to seek the treatment readily available to Palestinians just across the Israeli and Egyptian borders. One of these children is 10-year-old Ribhye, crippled by advanced leukaemia and unable to leave Gaza. His distraught father, sitting in a hospital room devoid of the equipment and medicine his son so desperately needs, is devastated not to have been granted leave to take Ribhye out of Gaza. "How do I get out? This border is closed, that border is closed. What do I do?" he asked.
"The mortality rate for cancer in Gaza is much higher than elsewhere," said Steve Sosebee, president of the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund. "You have to get a permit if you want to cross into Gaza and most of them are not granted. A lot of kids are dying as a result of the decisions being made by the people in charge, whether Hamas, the Egyptian government, the Israeli government."
Even the parents who have papers allowing their children to leave don't fare much better. Eight-year-old leukaemia sufferer Wissam was granted permission to cross into Egypt for treatment, but has been waiting for weeks for the border crossing to be opened. After being told that he would finally be allowed through after sitting at the border for hours, the coach full of hospital patients was turned away, and had to make the long drive back to the Nasser hospital. Wissam's father desperately tried to find out from hospital officials why the coach was turned back. "Every day the child stays here is a danger to his life," he said, his words echoing the thoughts of so many Palestinian parents.
'Dispatches: Children of Gaza' airs tomorrow at 8pm on Channel 4 in Britain; childrenofgazafund.org/
- Posted in
31 Comments so far
Show AllAs sad and horrible it is to read this story of how Israel is forcing a generation of Gazan children to be born and raised in abject poverty and effectively in an open air prison and thus grow up hating the Israeli masters who are causing their misery (with US/Egypt's assistance), I'm sure apologists for the US/Israel ethnic cleansing policy will defend the action.
To preempt apologists' comments on CD of the US/Israel policy of ethnic cleansing Palestinians, I'll post the following so I don't need to respond to their comments.
Apologists' tactics in regards to the US/Israel policy of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians:
1 – Attack the messenger (CD poster or whoever criticizes the US/Israel's ethnic cleansing)
2 – If the critic is a Jew, call the Jew anti-semetic or a self-hating Jew
3 – Make it sound like Israel is the victim although Israel is the aggressor and occupier
4 – Point to other injustices in the world to deflect attention of Israel's illegal acts.
5 – State that Jews and Palestinians have a long history of conflict therefore the situation is unresolvable (ignoring Israel's illegal occupation) in order to maintain status quo and further Israel's expansion of illegal settlements
6 – Claim Israel has biblical rights to Palestinian land (thus God supports the ethnic cleansing)
7 – Claim the occupied territory was either no man's land or another countries land to justify Israel's illegal confiscation of the land and the people on it.
8 – Defend the occupation and ethnic cleansing without mentioning the illegal acts: land confiscation, house demolitions and evictions, burning and razing of Palestinian farmland, illegal land annexations, specific apartheid policies in the West Bank, shooting and arrests of non-violent demonstrators on occupied land, restriction of movement, land and sea blockade, restrictions of imports of medicine, food, school supplies and building materials, illegal shooting of Gazan farmers and fishermen...
9 – Make so illegitimate arguments or use inaccurate/misleading facts to justify Israel's illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing policy that it is impossible to respond to them all because every time you try, another illegitimate argument is made. (The Bush administration was a master of this in the buildup to the Iraq war. It seemed every week, another piece of unsupported evidence was made to support attacking Iraq. And every time you challenged one illegitimate argument, the arguer (usually a Fox News viewer) would abandon that argument and jump to the next illegitimate argument and this would continue to the point of exhaustion.)
10 – Switch between tactics 1-9 above in your non-stop argument whenever one of the tactics runs out of steam.
11 – In regards to blogging, create discussion fights and go off topic.
12 – In regards to blogging, apologist is either ignorant or feigns ignorance and attempts to attack the credibility of the comment by asking for a link to the source (effort to waste time of blogger when information is readily available on the internet and the apologist doesn't provide support for his own misinformation). If you don't respond, e.g., because you don't monitor the site all day, apologist discounts your argument, and if you respond, the apologist changes the subject, makes a new attack, or ignores the response.
Apologists use tools such as Megaphone Desktop (www.giyus.org) to alert themselves when articles about Israel's destructive policies appear on the internet so they can use tactics like the above to try and win public opinion.
Thanks ever so much for posting this. I hope each time there is an article about Gaza or the West Bank that you will repost it. Israel has recruited hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Zionists to reply to any information which tells the truth of the ethnic cleansing, which makes it into the news media, with deliberate propaganda and disinformation. We must call them out and not be distracted by their disinformation.
Anyone can feel free to just copy and paste it to Microsoft Word so they can post this. I don't always get to read CD everyday.
You forget the most common argument - blame the Palestinians themselves. "If the Arabs would just do what we tell them to do and simply go away, we wouldn't have to kill them, so it is their own fault that we have to kill them"
Why is this all happening? Because a group of European Zionists, with the help of Britain and then the U.S., decided to take over an inhabited land and set up a nation in which rights would be based on ethnicity and religion.
It is as if the Aryan Nations decided to move into Delaware (maybe some government somewhere could "give" Delaware to the Aryan Nations, first), with the idea of subsidizing more and more of their members to move there every year (call it Aryan aliyah) while simultaneously driving out the people who are already there, and establishing a "democratic" government under which the Aryans would be entitled to preferential treatment under the law.
Britain had no right to the Palestinian land in the Middle East that Lord Balfour "gave" to the Zionists. The U.S. was wrong to recognize, and support, the outlaw, terrorist state of Israel, especially since in our own Declaration of Independence we recognize that government is legitimate only when based on the consent of the governed:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
The Palestinians have never consented to the confiscation of their land and the subjugation of their people by the Zionists, and have every right to resist. And now we see the terrorized Palestinian children, trying to find some meaning in their devastated lives:
"Mahmoud, 12, describes the day Israeli soldiers knocked on the door and shot his father dead, lying down in the dirt where his father fell in a heartbreaking reconstruction, and describes the enormous changes it wrought upon him. "Before the war, I was thinking about education, but after I started thinking about becoming a fighter," he says, his thickly lashed brown eyes staring straight into the camera. "God willing, if I can kill one Israeli it will be better than nothing.""
The Israeli government is worried that the Boycott, Divest, Sanction Israel campaign, as well as the worldwide interest in arresting Israeli government and military figures for war crimes, is a move to "delegitimize" Israel. The timeworn tactic of crying "anti-Semitism" to prevent criticism of Israel is no longer effective, and as Israel's human rights abuses continue to horrify world opinion, the smokescreen thins, and Israel is seen for what it is: a vicious colonialist land grab that is NOT legitimate.
Many Israelis are proud to say they are "not religious." But maybe they should at least consider Hosea's prophesy: "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind..." (Hosea 8:1-7)
Good post
Les chiens aboient, mais la caravane passe.
The holocasut happened 70 years ago. Can we please move on? Have we learned nothing? Is it only Jews who deserve compassion?
Wasn't it Shylock who said,
"Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means,
warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer
as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?
Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his
sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge.
The villainy you teach me, I will execute,
and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."
(Act III, scene I)
Everyone needs to learn.
Question 1: Why do they hate us?
Question 2: What's it about Islam that turns people into "suicide bombers?
Answer to both questions: Read the above article.
The Israeli propaganda machine is the world's most sophisticated and influence in the corridors of the world's richest countries legion (and it is a sure sign of a regressive and aggressive small power that they seek out the protection of rich imperial countries as opposed to the solidarity of anti-colonial countries), but one cannot hide such cruelty forever. And while solidarity in the West has become very difficult to maintain because of the fear imposed by Zionist command of the media and levers of the state and academia (anti-semitism being a charge even more powerful than any other -ism), that fear cannot be matched by the sheer horrors being perpetrated against the Palestinians.
The rest of the political world are all-too-willing partners in this. There's a fortune to be made on instruments of death. Your "Zionists" wouldn't get away with their crap without massive international support, complicity, and silence.
We should all be ashamed.
Truer words were never spoken.
Just like the Zionists among us have infiltrated Congress and circulated lies about the death of Rachel Corrie, seven years ago this month, providing each and every congressman and woman with a false powerpoint presentation to try and discredit the story that Rachel (RIP) was intentionally crushed by a Caterpillar (http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/9) built-for-Israel, the story of Gaza including the heartbreaking accounts of systematic genocide, must be cicrulated in Washington and to each and every elected official.
I am disgusted that the Board of Education in Texas has made Golda Meir (the arrogant colonialist woman who rejected the existence of the Palestinian people on their own lands) a subject for mandatory study as part and parcel of the misguided creatonism teachings in schools.
There are so many people working independently to change the hegemony of the neocon/zionist agenda, yet there must be more consolidation of effort and cooperation of the various groups particularly in lobbying and educating congress and elected officials in all 50 states.
FOR THOSE WHO LIVE NOT TOO FAR FROM SACRAMENTO, CA:
Wednesday, Mar 17, 7pm, The Costs and Sorrows of War. Kathy Kelly reports on her 2009 visits to two war zones: Gaza during the Israeli Operation Cast Lead assault and Northwest Pakistan. 909 12th St, Sacramento. FMI: 916-448-7157; sacpeace@dcn.org.
I plan to be there.
"Children of Gaza airs tomorrow at 8pm on Channel 4 in Britain"
For the U.S. broadcast schedule please consult your local listings. Strange as it may seem, it's more likely to be aired in Israel than under U.S. media self-censorship.
The reason that presumed pro-Palestinian films and documentaries are not aired in the US is because whenever a media station decides to show somthing "controversial" the station faxes, phones, and emails are jammed with knee-jerk zionists who demand the show not airing, or in some cases, a "balancing" piece must be run at the same time.
This Pavlovian response is so effective, that there its practically impossible for any station manager or media mogul to survive without a public tarring and feathering by the sheer intensity of the protest. It is time to call out this sort of blackmail and economic terrorism that literally frightens even the averagely curious mediaman from delving into anything that might give a voice to the non-Israel perspective.
As a fresh example during the month that Rachel Corrie is honored at the 7th anniversary of her murder, have a look here: http://www.democracynow.org/2006/3/22/my_name_is_rachel_corrie_a
WHAT WE DESERVE -- HIGH WATERMARK IN LIFE
Visiting Professor
__”Many have wondered how the Israeli Jews... are able
to participate in the institutional cruelty and abuse that
their country inflicts on Palestinians... But it just may be...
a young person who suffers child abuse is himself likely
to inflict it on others”
ROOT CAUSE
There are only two types of people in the world, givers and takers. For those who grasp the reality that one day of life is more then they deserve, with a grateful heart they give all they can give, actually feel guilty if ever they miss an opportunity to give all they can give.
Whereas, those who feel they deserve more then life, they take all they can take in a madding quest to even the score, actually feel guilty if ever they miss an opportunity to take all they can take.
For what a man feels he deserves, this controls every aspect of his mind, character and personality. This is his highest priority in life, his high water mark to achieve.
They invented an evil god that told them theft and murder are OK as long as they are the ones doing it.
Surely a smoke screen by the rich to blind the public’s mind by burning their emotions.
For all have a freewill to do good or cause misery, and the fact that it is allowed to go on makes it clear that the devil in us has nothing to do with heaven above.
"those who feel they deserve more then life, they take all they can take in a madding quest to even the score, actually feel guilty if ever they miss an opportunity to take all they can take."
This is a very good description of entitlement.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Since the U.S. pisses away over $3 Billion dollars a year keeping a parasitic Israel afloat, the situation in Gaza reflects more adversely against the U.S. even than it does Israel.
If these children do not score well on standardized tests, I suppose Israel will have to close their schools and fire their teachers. Or would the parents be to blame? No more excuses.
Joe
Whats the point of your post?
Perhaps it came off as insensitive and for that I apologize. It was meant to parody the glib neocon policies of firing teachers, blaming parents and closing schools when the children are demoralized, instead of really considering what is happening to the children and fixing that appropriately.
No community here has the problems of Gaza, but many children here are traumatized by poverty, homelessness, untreated family illness, crime and other insecurities. In Gaza, like anywhere, when children are not doing well, the goal should be to heal them through peace, priorities and loving care. Their situation should not be an excuse to write them off in order to save money or to create profits through privatization of their basic needs.
The only real parallel is that children become collateral damage as adults press forward with selfish objectives like land grabs and privatizations.
Joe
As for the caravan it's all yours it's heading strait to the wall
The caravan ain't going anywhere it's like those wall we seem to build here & there they are symbols of silence & death & denial \
it's the M word MEMORY 60 YEARS AGO SOMEWHERE IN GERMANY today you have that luxury to be in that caravan make SURE TES YEUX SONT FERMES it's easier that way U can avoid the dogs.
So, the Holocaust continues with "Usrealis" as the perpertrators.
Aren't the Jews even yet?
Perhaps all governments are criminal bastards of the first order.
And that's the problem?
Throughout the ages, invaders have almost always mixed with the population of the land they settled, in the end. Mixed, absorbed, integrated.
This is the fear of the Zionist Khazars who have stolen most of Palestine from its original, Semite inhabitants.
There is only one wall which can really keep people apart, and that's the Wall of Hate.
Zionist leaders know this, and that's why they engage in killings and destruction: To seed hate.
The "Chosen Ones" are not afraid of extraordinary hate, but of ordinary love, of friendship, and of mixing.
"Zionist leaders know this, and that's why they engage in killings and destruction: To seed hate."
That's why all elites engage us all in wars and destruction: to keep us loyal to the bullies who lead us.
Becoming more of the true terrorist character is izrael's rulers, especially how easy it is to slaughter small defenseless children and unarmed people.
This so much more makes up for that holocaust the nazis unleashed but I s'pect izrael ain't finished yet, no, not by a long 'shot'.