Indeed, Walid tells of how the stench of death haunted the air as he returned to what used to be his home town. Most of the residents had fled, but during the initial evacuation, he had already seen neighbors and friends, many carrying white flags, being shot at from behind by the advancing Israeli soldiers and artillery. Moreover, some of the old and infirm were unable to run and could not be evacuated in time. Nobody who remained in the village was left alive after the Israeli army’s four-day occupation. So when Walid and others returned, the unburied remains of many of their neighbors had already been baking in the summer heat for two weeks, in the streets and beneath the rubble. They lay where they fell.
One such case, which has shot to prominence as of late, is the death of 74-year-old Ghalya Abu Rida. The Israeli military released a photo of an IDF soldier giving Ghalya a drink of water. She was later found dead. Ahmed Qdeh, a journalist from Al-Aqsa TV and a local from Khuza‘a claimed to have witnessed this event. “During the aggression, an Israeli soldier approached the old woman and took a photo for another soldier while giving her water. They then executed her by shooting her in the head from a distance of one meter and let her bleed until she died,” said Qdeh.
An Israeli English language blog, Israelly Cool, dismissed the story as lies and “a Palestinian Blood Libel.” Walid Rouk, however, corroborates Qdeh’s account, saying that he visited the area around Ghalya Abu Rida’s home after returning to Khuza’a. He spoke to her neighbours and family about what happened; “I went to see her family at her old home and they showed me the medical report from Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. The report said she was shot from one meter away and the bullet was lodged inside of her head,” Rouk claimed.
This alleged summary execution is one of the many cases being looked at closely by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International as instances of possible war crimes committed by the Israeli army in Khuza‘a and elsewhere in Gaza during the Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. Both parties have been prevented from sending their international experts to Gaza to document the facts, but have been slowly gathering information through the limited operations they already have extant in Gaza.
Walid trembles when he speaks about what happened in Khuza‘a, condemning the lack of humanity of the world toward his people. “No media covered what happened, there was no camera from anywhere covering Khuza‘a. This is a war against humanity, not just Palestinian people,” he told the Palestine Monitor over the phone.
This is what led him and his friends to set up the Humans of Khuza‘a Facebook page, to record some of these stories and share them with the world. With the ongoing work being done to document potential war crimes in the area and the Palestinian Authorities recent moves to join the International Criminal Court, perhaps the horrors of Khuza‘a will be belatedly relayed to the world through these fora.
Palestine Monitor, 27 January 2015, http://bit.ly/1CsVmNK
A Call from Gaza: Make Israel Accountable for Its Crimes in Gaza—Intensify BDS!
Gaza Civil Society Organizations
From the ruins of our towns and cities in Gaza, we send our heartfelt appreciation to all those who stood with us and mobilized during the latest Israeli massacre. In the occupied West Bank, Israel has embarked on one of its largest illegal land grabs in decades by confiscating another 1000 acres of Palestinian land to expand its illegal colonies. Now, our battle to hold Israel accountable for its fresh war crimes and crimes against humanity has begun. The outcome of this battle to end Israeli impunity will determine whether Israel’s latest assault will be yet another stage in Israel’s “incremental genocide” of Palestinians or the turning point that will bring an end to Israel’s status as an entity above the law—the world’s dangerous pariah. The outcome of this battle depends on you.
Two months after its 2008–09 massacre in Gaza, Israel’s prize was an upgrade in trade relations with the European Union. By 2012, western powers in cooperation with the UN Secretary General had effectively prevented all investigation by the United Nations and the International Criminal Court (ICC) into the war crimes and crimes against humanity that Israel committed during the attack.
During the most recent massacre, on August 2, 2014, three days after the occupation forces bombed the designated UN humanitarian shelter in Jabaliya refugee camp, killing 20 civilians and wounding at least 150 people as they slept, the U.S. Congress approved $225 million in additional military aid to Israel. The following day, the occupation forces bombed another UN shelter in Rafah killing ten civilians and injuring dozens. Also during the massacre, Germany sold Israel an attack submarine with nuclear capability, and Britain refused to freeze its arms sales to Israel. These and other forms of criminal complicity from world governments and official bodies pave the way for Israel’s ongoing genocidal attacks. It is up to people of conscience and all those who seek peace with justice worldwide to make sure this complicity ends now.
We urge you to stand with the Palestinian people in its entirety and to demand that Israel be held accountable for the war crimes and crimes against humanity it has committed and continues to commit against the Palestinian people everywhere. We urge you to intensify boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns to further isolate Israel economically, militarily, academically and culturally.
Intensify BDS against Israel in all fields, including by taking the following actions:
Working to have arrest warrants issued against Israeli war criminals and for them to be tried before your courts.
Pressuring governments to impose a comprehensive military embargo on Israel.
Pressuring governments to suspend all free trade and bilateral agreements with Israel until it complies with international law.
Building effective direct action against Israel and Israeli companies, such as the inspiring Block the Boat actions that prevented Israeli ships from unloading in California and Seattle, and the occupations of Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems’ factories in the UK and Australia.
Working within trade unions to raise awareness about Israel’s regime of oppression and engaging in effective BDS measures such as stopping handling of Israeli goods, divesting trade union funds from Israel and complicit companies, and boycotting complicit Israel trade unions. The trade union movement has a proud history of successful campaigning against apartheid in South Africa, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions has joined Palestinian trade unions in calling for trade union action to end Israel’s impunity.
Holding to account those corporations and retailers that support and profit from Israel’s regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid, including by boycotting their products and taking creative and direct action. The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) has suggested a list of corporate criminals to target: http://www.bdsmovement.net/make-an-impact.
The majority of the world’s people are waking up to the reality of Israel’s rogue regime of oppression and racism. For the rest of what is supposed to be the International year of solidarity with the Palestinian people, demand an end to Israel’s criminal impunity. Stand with Gaza, and act for freedom, justice and peace in Palestine.
Issued by the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) and the following Gaza organizations/unions:
Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions
University Teachers’ Association in Palestine
Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations
Network (Umbrella for 133 orgs)
Medical Democratic Assembly
General Union of Palestine Workers
General Union for Health Services Workers
General Union for Public Services Workers
General Union for Petrochemical and Gas Workers
General Union for Agricultural Workers
Union of Women’s Work Committees
Pal-Cinema (Palestine Cinema Forum)
Herak Youth Movement
Union of Women’s Struggle Committees
Union of Synergies—
Women Unit
Union of Palestinian Women Committees
Women’s Studies Society
Working Woman’s Society
Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel
Gaza BDS Working Group
One Democratic State Group
BDS Movement, September 5, 2014, http://bit.ly/1rRtH6Y
One Thing They Can’t Bomb
Ned Rosch
The great Indian writer Arundhati Roy once said, “The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.”1
For a brief but remarkable nine days in November, 2014, I had the privilege of being part of a Washington State Physicians for Social Responsibility health delegation to Gaza. To be there so soon after last summer’s brutally devastating war on the people of Gaza was to catch a glimpse—through the stories we heard and the destruction we saw—of the grotesque horror of those 51 days. The destruction was everywhere, the grief universal, the trauma intense.
“Scared our turn might be next, my husband and I sat our 4 children, ages 9–15, down and we and our kids each talked about what we would do if a bomb hit and we were the only survivor of our family. I felt I needed to have that conversation because the possibility seemed so real and as a mother, I needed to know that our children had a plan.” Rawya, who translated for a training that I did with 15 school counselors, shared this with me over a cup of tea during a break. She, the counselors, the children they see, and according to the counselors, it’s safe to say, everyone is traumatized. When Israeli jets were heard overhead one evening while we were in Gaza City, the re-stimulated fear was palpable.
On the way into Gaza City, we saw haunting skeletons of homes, people living in bombed out buildings, and mosques, hospitals and factories reduced to rubble. Etched in my mind probably forever will be what we witnessed in heavily bombed neighborhoods of Beit Hanoun, Shuja‘iya and Khuza‘a. It’s hard to find words that adequately describe the utter devastation. People are living in makeshift structures of cardboard and blankets surrounded by rubble. Even though I’d seen these images online, somehow the impact of witnessing families squatting next to what was everything they had owned and what in a matter of seconds had been absolutely wiped out took my breath away, as did a busted up large slab of concrete with names spray painted on it of family members buried under the mounds of debris, a woman sitting on the rubble staring vacantly off in the distance, and a wedding party celebrating amidst ravaged buildings.
And yet, through all the trauma, there is resistance and resilience. An incredibly vivacious woman named Reem in a refugee camp told me she just can’t think any more about the future. “All I have,” she said, “is today and that’s OK as it’s filled with opportunities to help people.” Reem is opening centers in some of Gaza’s most destroyed areas, centers where children play, read, sing, learn French, plant seeds in paper cups—to maybe get a taste of what a “normal” childhood might be like. Very little is normal in Gaza as almost 8 years of siege and 3 wars in the past 6 years have devastated the economy, wrecked the environment, and ripped apart people’s hopes that things will someday get better, that there is a future.
People intuitively understand that literally over-the-top stress levels in Gaza are strangling them and their traumatized loved ones. An end to the Israeli siege, freedom and justice for Palestinians would go an incredibly long way towards alleviating the stress, but at least until then, people are hungry for ways to reduce continuous traumatic stress disorder. I was struck by the eagerness of so many people to learn about meditation, relaxation techniques, visualization and yoga to reduce stress. So, in close collaboration with the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (our delegation’s host agency) and the Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s Gaza Project, two organizations for which I have the deepest respect, I was privileged to facilitate a series of experiential stress reduction workshops.
Taking place in impoverished refugee camps, under-resourced schools, overwhelmed Red Crescent Society clinics, and inundated mental health centers, these workshops were unusually emotional and powerfully interactive. I was honored to lead workshops for wonderful and committed healthcare providers and other public servants who sensitively serve others while doing their best to somehow tend to their own profound loss and grief.
In the first workshop I did with an inspiring and hugely overworked group of school counselors, I suggested at one point that they visualize a beautiful place that they could share with their families and others they love. When I asked what that place looked and felt like, the most common response was that it was hard to push out of their heads the horrors of the summer to find a place of beauty. The second most common reply was that the place they envisioned was safe—extremely safe. From then on I always described the visualized place as not only beautiful but extremely safe and calm, qualities virtually impossible to come by in Gaza.
The yoga portion of my workshops typically included a divider down the middle of the room totally separating women from men as traditionally men should not watch women doing things like, well, yoga! I was generally at the head of the divider so that everyone could see me demonstrating how to do the poses. I kept my eyes focused on the men so even though the women could see me, I “couldn’t” see them. The following comments after the final relaxation pose of my first workshop in a ramshackle hotel overlooking the Mediterranean reflect the feedback I heard after every workshop:
“In the 2008–2009 war, I lost my son. A teacher from France taught me some yoga which helped me heal and which I did every day until this summer’s war when I just couldn’t do anything. This workshop and how it made me feel reminded me that I need to continue my healing.”
“Ever since this summer’s war, I’ve had a weight on my chest. I released a part of it today.”
In a growing body of research, yoga has demonstrated remarkable effectiveness in assisting people to reduce overwhelmingly high stress levels, especially those dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder. In the December 2014 edition of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, researchers under the leadership of Bessel van der Kolk, MD, published “Yoga as an Adjunctive Treatment for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” a study exploring the efficacy of yoga to decrease PTSD symptomatology.
The primary outcome measure was that yoga significantly reduced PTSD with effect sizes comparable to well-researched psychotherapeutic and psychopharmacologic approaches. The study went on to say that yoga may improve the functioning of traumatized individuals by helping them to tolerate physical and sensory experiences associated with fear and helplessness and to increase emotional awareness and affect tolerance.
While going through my 200-hour yoga teacher training program, I always dreamed of someday integrating my passion for yoga with my commitment to activism—especially the struggle for justice in Palestine. Little did I know at the time that utilizing yoga to explore stress reduction would swing open a door to Gaza and be my ticket to meaningfully connecting with its amazing people. All of us who practice yoga know that it can be exceptionally cathartic—its effects experienced not just in the physical realm, but in the emotional sphere as well. The combination of meditation, movement and relaxation in my Gaza workshops burst open emotional dams from which stunningly powerful stories poured forth—on occasion more than I could bear.
Virtually everyone had a story that broke my heart, and each drama revealed another layer of what it is like to live in Gaza, striving for some semblance of dignity in spite of a suffocating siege, tens of thousands of bombs, and a world that seems apathetic to holding Israel accountable.
Yasser, a gentle soul and the executive director of Gaza Community Mental Health Program, our host agency, lost 28 members of his extended family in this summer’s bombings. No one in Gaza was spared from knowing someone who was killed or injured in the brutal Israeli assault. Y
asser said his family speaks of 28 empty chairs!
Ramadan’s family, which lived in Shuja‘iya, is now ten people less. One of the deceased was a young girl who was rescued after somehow surviving for 10 days under a massive pile of concrete and rebar, only to die in the hospital two days later. Her name was Yasmin. “I can’t get Yasmin and the thought of what her last days were like out of my mind,” Ramadan shared, tears wetting his shirt.
“I’m 38 years old. I’m a doctor. I have nothing. Because the clinic has no money, I work as a volunteer. How can I get married and start a family without money?” Salim was sweet, thoughtful and depressed. Half the people in Gaza are unemployed, and many haven’t received salaries for six months, a year, or longer.
Everyone yearns for the borders to open so they might be able to work, travel, study abroad, or get medical care not available in Gaza due to the shortage of everything caused by the Israeli siege, but most assert they would return. “Just like a fish can’t survive out of water, we can’t live out of Gaza for too long. At some point, we need to return,” explained Walaa.
Imad, a nurse who works full time and hasn’t been paid for a year, invited us to meet his wife and eight children in their modest but comfortable apartment. According to Imad, this was the first time foreigners had ever been in his apartment. When asked how they survive with no income and so many mouths to feed, Imad explained that everyone in Gaza does what they can to help others out since really they’re all pretty much in the same boat. He then shrugged his shoulders and pensively posed the question we heard often, “What can we do?”
A couple of days after leaving Gaza, I bumped into Amani in the Old City of Jerusalem. It was great to see someone from Gaza as the intensity of my experiences there were searingly fresh and vibrant. In her mid-20s, Amani, for the first time in her life, was out of Gaza. It’s striking that Gazans are imprisoned in an area that is only 25 miles long and 5-8 miles wide (smaller than the Portland metro area!). I was happy to see her, but her happiness was that she was able to shop! Her shopping wasn’t just for souvenirs, as not much is getting into Gaza. The tunnels that had become the commercial highways through which practically everything—from cars to sheep to pasta—traveled, have been sealed.
Gaza Unsilenced Page 29