I spent most of Friday and Saturday nights at the emergency unit in Exeter hospital with my daughter; Ghaida aged 12. She had a severe stomach ache. The doctors tried all their best to comfort her, put an end to the pain while trying to discover what the problem was. Different people from different ages were there desperate to this novel help at the night of the weekend where most of the clinics are closed. At that minute my mind flash back to Gaza, to my community and my people who are living the horror of what the Israel’s deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai, called a new holocaust, Shoah.
The dozens of pictures I saw in the news for kids, infants, women, men, old people and families murdered and wounded within the past three days are passing before my eyes. Will it be a holocaust as Vilanai threatens? Does this military man really mean the word? He as all the Israelis supposed to be the last people on earth to say such horrible word being victims to that brutal tragedy.
But the death toll in the past two days alone reached a hundred; the vast majority of whom are civilians. The pictures of Mohammed Nasser Al burai aged 5 months, Abdallah Abed Rabbo 4, Jakleen Abu Shbak 12, Safa Abu Saif 12, Ghada Saleh 16, Attalah family consists of Suad, Abdelrahman, Ibrahim, and Khaled, aged 60, 65, 33 and 30 are keep flashing into my mind. What else can holocaust mean but killing and bombardment civilian population prisoners in their largest open air prison since almost 18 months? What does holocaust mean but denying people rights of movements, medical treatment and basic necessities such as food, water, electricity and fuel?
It is the longest time ever one might have when his own child is in severe pain or in danger. Ghaida was biting the ground from pain while waiting for a taxi. Yet we get her to the hospital at the end. However, today there are several people in Gaza who died in streets with no reach for an ambulance or a taxi because either it is too dangerous to reach their areas or because of the denial of getting to such area. There are people who also died in hospitals from lack of medications. Gaza is living the brutal blockade that paralyzed every angle of life including the health sector. There were no beds and no enough places to receive the wounded. People were treated on the ground. Hospitals stopped receiving pregnant women with delivery status or any other cases as there is no room for them there. There were no pain killers, no enough medications and no good equipments.
My relative, a doctor , told me that there is nothing in hospitals these days that could make it deal properly with the number and type of cases they receive and therefore he wonders why they still call them hospitals. His voice shakes when he told me about his feelings. He said wounded people and their families feel a little bit relieved when they reach a hospital. But for him it is the beginning of the pain, but physiological one this time. Will he be able to treat this wounded and put and end to his suffering or will it be his end. In every crisis, and these days there is crisis every day, while coming to hospital, the work that one day was his dream, he feels that some one strangles him. He puts a foot forward and ten backward.
His words reminded me of my feeling towards my daughter while she is in pain. It is one of the harshest feelings in life to see you own child suffers and cannot offer a help to stop the pain. And for a doctor I definitely imagine how such feelings could be when the problem is daily one, severe one and he stands before it powerless not because of lack in his capabilities but because of shortage of possibilities, a problem is an occupation made problem.
I saw these scenes in Shifa hospital during 2002 and 2003 when I was working with press as a translator in Gaza. I also felt the meaning of my relative words and his feelings while I was stepping among wounded people bodies lied on the ground. Doctors were trying to do their best in a very difficult times. I still rememebr with vivd clarity their words: "this is going to die, hopeless case, so leave it. Lets deal with this one to try to save his life if we can." At that moment, five years ago, I could not stand the words and I collapsed. I could not translate a word. The message was clear to me as well as those dying on the ground. If you are Palestinian then there is no dignity in life nor death. I was catching the hands of those in comma dying or those in last minutes and the blood is everywhere and crying. Searching for words that I couldn’t find. What shall I say in such circumstances? Is this the type of place, words, people you supposed to be or to hear or to see before passing away.
So what else can a word holocaust mean? For me this is the new form holocaust. The holocaust is the physical killing and the spiritual physiological killing of mothers, children, doctors, wounded people and whole population. Whether what so called the international community see what I see or agree to what I say is not an issue any more. If they stand for and understand the pain of one Israeli victim in Sderot, and so far there are very few victims, so why don’t they stand for the mass killing in Gaza. If the killing of one Israeli civilian mean and count for the Israelis and for the world then killing of hundreds would definitely count for us.
Like the vast majority of Palestinians, I won't wonder how the slaughter in Gaza is swallowed by the international community, particularly the Bush administration. In the eyes of the Palestinians and many others in the world including me, the killing in Gaza breaks every norm and law, and contravenes every human right we have ever known. If the Israeli government call it holocaust and world kept silent then from now on Palestinians should declare the death of the international community towards their cause.
The dozens of pictures I saw in the news for kids, infants, women, men, old people and families murdered and wounded within the past three days are passing before my eyes. Will it be a holocaust as Vilanai threatens? Does this military man really mean the word? He as all the Israelis supposed to be the last people on earth to say such horrible word being victims to that brutal tragedy.
But the death toll in the past two days alone reached a hundred; the vast majority of whom are civilians. The pictures of Mohammed Nasser Al burai aged 5 months, Abdallah Abed Rabbo 4, Jakleen Abu Shbak 12, Safa Abu Saif 12, Ghada Saleh 16, Attalah family consists of Suad, Abdelrahman, Ibrahim, and Khaled, aged 60, 65, 33 and 30 are keep flashing into my mind. What else can holocaust mean but killing and bombardment civilian population prisoners in their largest open air prison since almost 18 months? What does holocaust mean but denying people rights of movements, medical treatment and basic necessities such as food, water, electricity and fuel?
It is the longest time ever one might have when his own child is in severe pain or in danger. Ghaida was biting the ground from pain while waiting for a taxi. Yet we get her to the hospital at the end. However, today there are several people in Gaza who died in streets with no reach for an ambulance or a taxi because either it is too dangerous to reach their areas or because of the denial of getting to such area. There are people who also died in hospitals from lack of medications. Gaza is living the brutal blockade that paralyzed every angle of life including the health sector. There were no beds and no enough places to receive the wounded. People were treated on the ground. Hospitals stopped receiving pregnant women with delivery status or any other cases as there is no room for them there. There were no pain killers, no enough medications and no good equipments.
My relative, a doctor , told me that there is nothing in hospitals these days that could make it deal properly with the number and type of cases they receive and therefore he wonders why they still call them hospitals. His voice shakes when he told me about his feelings. He said wounded people and their families feel a little bit relieved when they reach a hospital. But for him it is the beginning of the pain, but physiological one this time. Will he be able to treat this wounded and put and end to his suffering or will it be his end. In every crisis, and these days there is crisis every day, while coming to hospital, the work that one day was his dream, he feels that some one strangles him. He puts a foot forward and ten backward.
His words reminded me of my feeling towards my daughter while she is in pain. It is one of the harshest feelings in life to see you own child suffers and cannot offer a help to stop the pain. And for a doctor I definitely imagine how such feelings could be when the problem is daily one, severe one and he stands before it powerless not because of lack in his capabilities but because of shortage of possibilities, a problem is an occupation made problem.
I saw these scenes in Shifa hospital during 2002 and 2003 when I was working with press as a translator in Gaza. I also felt the meaning of my relative words and his feelings while I was stepping among wounded people bodies lied on the ground. Doctors were trying to do their best in a very difficult times. I still rememebr with vivd clarity their words: "this is going to die, hopeless case, so leave it. Lets deal with this one to try to save his life if we can." At that moment, five years ago, I could not stand the words and I collapsed. I could not translate a word. The message was clear to me as well as those dying on the ground. If you are Palestinian then there is no dignity in life nor death. I was catching the hands of those in comma dying or those in last minutes and the blood is everywhere and crying. Searching for words that I couldn’t find. What shall I say in such circumstances? Is this the type of place, words, people you supposed to be or to hear or to see before passing away.
So what else can a word holocaust mean? For me this is the new form holocaust. The holocaust is the physical killing and the spiritual physiological killing of mothers, children, doctors, wounded people and whole population. Whether what so called the international community see what I see or agree to what I say is not an issue any more. If they stand for and understand the pain of one Israeli victim in Sderot, and so far there are very few victims, so why don’t they stand for the mass killing in Gaza. If the killing of one Israeli civilian mean and count for the Israelis and for the world then killing of hundreds would definitely count for us.
Like the vast majority of Palestinians, I won't wonder how the slaughter in Gaza is swallowed by the international community, particularly the Bush administration. In the eyes of the Palestinians and many others in the world including me, the killing in Gaza breaks every norm and law, and contravenes every human right we have ever known. If the Israeli government call it holocaust and world kept silent then from now on Palestinians should declare the death of the international community towards their cause.
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