The signature phrase of the 1960s cult classic The Prisoner [its star, Patrick McGoohan, died yesterday in Los Angeles]- "I am not a number. I am a free man!"- could have its corollary in Gaza [as well as in Afghanistan and Iraq] with the people declaring:
"We are not non-entities. We are a free people!"
The situation is very hard today. I heard something from a friend that simply gives me no peace – about two families who are fighting over the identity of someone who is lying in the hospital. Since it is impossible to identify the wounded person because his face is very badly hurt, one family claims that he is their nephew and the other family says that he is their cousin. They are fighting about it because they realize that if this is not their relative, that means that their relative is dead.Unfuckingbelievable!
I can see all of Beit Lahiya from the roof and it’s all going up in flames. There is a very big cloud over the entire northern area. Gaza is packed like a can of sardines, everything is small and crowded. People don’t understand this.
You could die anywhere in Gaza today – at home, in the street. Every place in Gaza is under attack. There is no safe place. This is what Hamas is telling people: why should you die at home? Come out and fight and at least you’ll die while defending Gaza and your home. Who can say no to such a thing?
There is no bread. I called all the bakeries in Gaza and I didn’t find even one where I could buy pitas for my children. In the end I stood in line for half an hour and got cookies. Even that was being rationed – only 1 kilo and no more. I can’t even get pitas for my children.
I’m telling you – I’m willing to come and help in Israel, in Sderot. What they are going through hurts us too but give us a chance. Just give us a chance. Don’t use our children in order to change the political reality. Do you understand that I – someone who has a respectable job and livelihood – burnt my hands while trying to heat water for my children on an open fire! My hands got burnt! Gaza is one big graveyard.
I know something of the loss felt by my Israeli friend Yitzhak, whose son Arik was captured and murdered by Hamas in 1994, and by my Palestinian friend Bassam whose daughter Abir was shot and killed by Israeli solders as she walked home from school in her West Bank village in 2007.
I cannot, though, know the loss felt by Anwar Khalil Ba'lousha, whose five daughters, asleep in their beds, were killed in Gaza by Israeli bombing on Dec. 28. I haven't the courage to imagine his pain.
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The U.S. must make clear that we will not support either side when it uses violence beyond its borders. We must demand that humanitarian aid as well as press and U.N. observers be permitted to enter Gaza without delay -- and that hostilities cease so that lifesaving commodities can be distributed.
Much more importantly, it is a message to the UN to pull out. Bear in mind that UN staff have already had to suspend operations because of the risk posed by the IDF. Other aid agencies such as the Red Cross have also had to suspend crucial activities after attacks by the IDF. Eventually, the UN might well be forced to withdraw its staff entirely if it can't guarantee their safety. At that point, the UN and its few millions and scant food and supplies, will no longer be available to the civilian population. This terrorised and starving population will soon be almost completely alone.
In Gaza, children,
you learn that the sky kills
and that houses hurt.
You learn that your blanket is smoke
and breakfast is dirt.
You learn that cars do somersaults
clothes turn red,
friends become statues,
bakers don’t sell bread.
You learn that the night is a gun,
that toys burn
breath can stop,
it could be your turn.
You learn:
if they send you fire
they couldn’t guess:
not just the soldier dies -
it’s you and the rest.
Nowhere to run,
nowhere to go,
nowhere to hide
in the home you know.
You learn
that death isn’t life,
that air isn’t bread,
the land is for all.
You have the right to be
Not Dead.
You have the right to be
Not Dead.
You have the right to be
Not Dead.
The legend, lest it be a true story, tells of how the late mathematician, Professor Haim Hanani, asked his students at the Technion to draw up a plan for constructing a pipe to transport blood from Haifa to Eilat. The obedient students did as they were told. Using logarithmic rulers, they sketched the design for a sophisticated pipeline. They meticulously planned its route, taking into account the landscape's topography, the possibility of corrosion, the pipe's diameter and the flow calibration. When they presented their final product, the professor rendered his judgment: You failed. None of you asked why we need such a pipe, whose blood will fill it, and why it is flowing in the first place.The above linked quote is from an opinion piece - not in the New York Times, not from National Public Radio (I would venture to say you'd not read it in any of the major media in America or Britain) - but written by Gideon Levy in Haaretz, an Israeli newpaper.
Regardless of whether this story is legend or true, Israel is now failing its own blood pipeline test. As Israel has been preoccupied with Gaza throughout the entire week, nobody has asked whose blood is being spilled and why. Everything is permitted, legitimate and just. The moral voice of restraint, if it ever existed, has been left behind. Even if Israel wiped Gaza off the face of the earth, killing tens of thousands in the process, as a Chechnyan laborer working in Sderot proposed to me, one can assume that there would be no protest.
They liquidated Nizar Ghayan? Nobody counts the 20 women and children who lost their lives in the same attack. There was a massacre of dozens of officers during their graduation ceremony from the police academy? Acceptable. Five little sisters? Allowed. Palestinians are dying in hospitals that lack medical equipment? Peanuts. Whatever happened to the not-so-good old days of Salah Shahadeh? When we liquidated him in July 2002, we also killed 15 women and children. At least back then, moral qualms were raised for a moment.
Here lie their bodies, row upon row, some of them tiny. Our hearts have turned hard and our eyes have become dull. All of Israel has worn military fatigues, uniforms that are opaque and stained with blood and which enable us to carry out any crime. Even our leading intellectuals fail to speak out on what havoc we have wreaked. Amos Oz urges: "Cease-fire now." David Grossman writes: "Hold your fire. Stop." Meir Shalev wants "a punitive operation." And not one word about our moral image, which has been horribly distorted.
The suffering in the south renders everything kosher, as if the horrible suffering in Gaza pales in comparison. Everyone is hungry for revenge, and that hunger is excused by the need for "deterrence," after it was already proved that the killing and the destruction in Lebanon did not achieve it....
It is doubtful whether Hamas will be cut down to size as a result of this wretched war. Yet, the face of the state has been cut down to size, as have civilian elites who are apathetic and scared. The "peace camp," if it ever existed, has been cut down to size. Attorney General Menachem Mazuz authorized the Ghayan killing, regardless of the cost. Haim Oron, the leader of the "new left-wing movement," supported the launch of this foolish war.
Nobody is coming to the rescue - of Gaza or even of the remnants of humanity and Israeli democracy. The statesmen, the jurists, the poets, the authors, academe, and the news media - pitch black over the abyss. When the time comes for reckoning, we will need to remember the damage this war did to Israel: The blood pipeline it laid has been completed.
