THE QUALITY OF MERCY IS BROUGHT LOW
else lasker-schüler A SINGLE MAN A single man can be a whole nation Yet he becomes an earth With its own heaven when He nurtures the old and noble qualities: God-- Lets God spring up in him-- God does not want to be watered in blood. He who kills his own neighbor Kills the God-seedling in his heart. We cannot sleep at night. We are afraid For those we long for.
translation by Eavan Boland
For generations, children who have come of age in Gaza have been held as captives in a five by twenty-five mile concentration camp. When the first of them arrived in Gaza, they had survived the execution of their fathers, the burning of their villages. Their suffering and continuous horror inside Gaza since 1947-48 is a cruel and traumatic history. During those early years, the burning and stripping away of the Palestinian legacy was an overwhelming blow to their dignity and way of life,—what the Arabic word, Nakba describes as disaster, the catastrophe,—that caused whole families to flee their homes and their country, and caused others to be shut in and oppressed.
And those confined to Gaza still find themselves caught between the sea on one side, and those endless barricades strung with barbed wire on the other. For in a savage fashion it leaves a scar when people’s possessions, their way of life, their family continuity, their land is taken. Farmers are forced to stand by as olive trees, which were handed from one generation to the next, are destroyed. When Israel’s military chief calls the Palestinians “human animals”,—it certainly is the wholesale slaughter he has organized that proves his sincerity. He means all of them. Ignoring the ruthless bigotry of Israel’s Likud coalition, and its massacre in Gaza, would be to invite more death and risk spreading the violence and destruction in unpredictable ways.
A ceasefire would be a meaningful first step back from madness. What an act of mercy it would be, if the thousands of Palestinians that have disappeared into indefinite detention could be exchanged for the hundreds of hostages held by Hamas.
Yes, there are Palestinians who have piled up in Israeli jails who’ve never had their day in court, or even had a charge filed against them. It’s been part of Israel’s psychological war, to punish people and routinely torture them in order to spread the pain to their extended families. An exchange of hostages would do a lot to relieve pent up anger and pressure.
Gaza’s people have gotten the worst of the illegal Israeli occupation. The amount of food they are allowed to have is barely sufficient to their needs. And now, under an onslaught of bombs falling on the heads of civilians, an indiscriminate slaughter is happening. Food and water is running out, and a catastrophe that shocks the world is taking place.
In the past there was a consensus of world opinion that an apartheid state in South Africa was odious and unjust. Now that Israel has made the transition to apartheid and segregated everything, and continues to occupy Palestinian land illegally, it has made it hard for the occupied people to make ends meet or have access to clean water. And so it’s no surprise that Israel’s standing in this world has collapsed.
War correspondent Eva K. Bartlett: excerpt from “Israel is Genociding Gaza”
As of November 10, Israel has murdered over 11, 000 Palestinians in Gaza, and injured over 27,000, after over 35 days of relentless Israeli airstrikes on a literally imprisoned population who cannot flee by air, land or water. Keep in mind doctors are reporting they are treating severe burns and skin melting injuries that they have not seen before, making it difficult to deal with.
Still thousands more are likely dead under the rubble.
Of those killed, roughly 4,500 are children, on average Israel is killing one child every 10 minutes. According to Save The Children, October 29, more children have been killed by Israeli bombings of Gaza in three weeks than, “the number killed in armed conflict globally – across more than 20 countries – over the course of a whole year, for the last three years.”
This is a staggering statement which—if the endless images of lifeless Palestinian children being pulled out of rubble or wrapped in white shrouds doesn’t already shock you—should shock the general public.
Due to the over sixteen year long Israeli siege on Gaza, there has consistently been a dearth of the most basic necessities of life, and in particular essential medicines. When I drafted this article, that dearth was so severe that even anaesthesia is lacking, meaning children and adults alike who are fortunate enough to get medical care now at all are often being operated on without anaesthesia.
Now, the scant numbers of hospitals that were still somewhat functioning have shut down or are being bombarded.
Clare Daly is a member of the European Parliament. She grew up in Ireland and has, since 2019, represented the Dublin constituency, where she often challenges the abuses of power, especially in the area of foreign policy. This video clip is found on Eva K. Bartlett’s IN GAZA-and beyond.
The atrocity which is presented to the world in gruesome detail, day after day, is the blood of thousands of Palestinian women and children buried under the rubble of multi-storied apartment buildings, leveled by the Israeli bombs that turn city blocks into a wasteland. This war against hospitals is a darker reign of terror that seeks the deaths of patients, doctors, and nurses. Where does this inhumanity end?
Journalist Chris Hedges: excerpt from “The Horror, The Horror”
[ Hedges is with his colleagues in Doha, Qatar. They are watching a live feed from distant Gaza City, in the studio of the Arabic service of Al Jazeera, where they monitor the scene of war surrounding Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital. ]
…It is night. Israeli tanks fire directly towards the hospital compound. Long horizontal red flashes. A deliberate attack on a hospital. A deliberate war crime. A deliberate massacre of the most helpless civilians, including the very sick and infants.
Then the feed goes dead.
We sit in front of the monitors. We are silent. We know what this means. No power. No water. No internet. No medical supplies. Every infant in an incubator will die. Every dialysis patient will die. Everyone in the intensive care unit will die. Everyone who needs oxygen will die. Everyone who needs emergency surgery will die. And what will happen to the 50,000 people who, driven from their homes by the relentless bombing, have taken refuge on the hospital grounds? We know the answer to that as well. Many of them, too, will die.
Three other hospitals in northern Gaza and Gaza City are encircled by Israeli forces and tanks, in what a doctor told Al Jazeera was a “day of war against hospitals.” The Indonesian Hospital has reportedly also lost power. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that 20 of 36 hospitals in Gaza no longer function.
This history will not be obscured by disingenuous rhetoric, because we are witnesses to a crime.
One is reminded of Iraq when George W. Bush started the Siege of Fallujah.
Archive Tholos of Athena: excerpt from Bush Rips the Fabric of Reality
When Seymour Hersh first began speaking about the abuses of Abu Ghraib, before the story broke in the mainstream press, it had become known to him that members of Congress had seen the pictures that were later released. They had also been advised of even more terrible things, of children being tortured, in the presence of their mothers, to gain confessions…
[After the city fell] the BBC reported that of 300,000 people who once lived in Fallujah, only eight-and-half thousand had returned to the ruined city. In the words of an eye-witness, Ali Fadhil, an Iraqi doctor, it is a "city of ghosts". He described it as such a place, where packs of wild dogs gorged themselves on corpses.
Aside from the dead fighters, others the Americans killed are seen in photos from Fallujah: people who had been too impoverished to make a getaway. These pictures show elderly and middle aged people shot to death in their beds, and boys who lay face up in the street, still clutching the white pieces of cloth with which they tried to surrender. It is estimated that a little over a thousand insurgents were killed; and to accomplish this, the Geneva Conventions were violated, and a cruel, collective punishment was inflicted. The city was destroyed. Hundreds of thousands were made homeless. Doctors and patients were deliberately killed. And the frantic, who tried to swim the Euphrates, sank in a hail of bullets. The walls of Fallujah toppled; the sewer mains were broken ; the fire and stench spread over the town.
Because Netanyahu’s genocidal work is so shocking, even the mainstream media has found it hard to ignore. CNN carried the video story of an old man who was ordered to come out of his house with his son. The young man was willing to go out but his father was more reluctant. They emerged cautiously and were carrying white flags; but it wasn’t long before the son was shot in the head. It was a mortal wound and the father was crying. The man’s grief was heartbreaking. How many more deaths before this outrage is stopped?