on self defense and dead children.

today, israel bombed a UN school which was housing IDPs (internally displaced people) from gaza. israel has been dropping leaflets telling palestinians to leave their homes and seek shelter in schools and hospitals..."safe" places. the school was clearly marked as a UN building. it was filled with non-militants. it was filled with children. i opened the news this morning and my stomach churned at the image that faced me...the still frame of a video showing a young man carrying a little boy (half conscious? dead? i don't know...i haven't had the nerve yet to watch the video. i haven't had a stomach of "cast iron lead" yet to watch a boy dying. again.) i can't...not today.

again, israel bombed palestinian refugees. my mind raced back to qana I in lebanon in '96, when israel dropped a bomb on 100+ lebanese taking refuge in a UN camp in qana in southern lebanon. i don't understand...a phrase i find myself repeating over and over in my mind and my writing...i just can't understand. i distinctly remember walking to school that morning and trying to process what kind of army murders 100 people. how you can drop a bomb knowing there are living, breathing people underneath you. i wonder if killing is easier from far away...the distance of dropping a bomb rather than seeing the person whose life you're about to take face to face. they don't have to see the dead babies. they don't have to clean up the blood and try to identify remains. the memorial of the first qana massacre is horrific. there were parts of dead babies everywhere as most of the people taking refuge there were women and children. and then again, in 2006, israel delivered us qana II when it bombed and killed some 60 lebanese civilians again taking refuge there.

israel gives us sequels and trilogies to our tragedies.

so now qana was qana is gaza. in its war on lebanon in 2006, israel again dropped leaflets and sent text messages to lebanese (yes, somehow they have the technology to text you warnings) urging them--so humanitarily, the media showed us-- to leave southern lebanon, flee for their safety so they would not be "accidentally" killed in the war. and so, lebanese heeded the benevolent warnings of their attackers and piled into vans and cars drove north towards beirut, towards safety, as they were instructed. and then, in some perversely twisted game of dodgebomb, israel dropped vans and cars full of fleeing lebanese.

but in gaza, there is nowhere to flee to. israel closed the borders long ago. those who have left their homes have taken refuge in schools...which are now not safe either. hamas rockets hit a kindergarten recently in israel, but thankfully no children were there. israeli schools near gaza's borders have been evacuated since the incursions began. israeli children have somewhere to flee to. palestinian children flee to schools and are killed.

israel killed 40+ people today bombing the UN school. justified as "self defense". against whom are they defending themselves? the eight year old boy bleeding to death in the still frame i still cannot bear to watch? DO NOT TELL ME this was self defense. it is spiteful, purposeful targeting of palestinian life. israel bombed a school. they killed children. is it defending itself against educated palestinian children? crush palestinian infrastructure-- hospitals and schools-- and keep the population physically weak and uneducated. easier to keep divided and conquered. are they afraid that indeed, the pen is mightier than the sword? and that a palestinian population armed with pens might be able to defeat their western supplied army of proverbial swords? is this what israel defends itself against in its incursions in gaza? armies of educated palestinian children who might, despite all odds against them, grow up into educated palestinian adults? palestinian unity, palestinian education, palestinian strength, palestinian children...who are the future? yes. because breaking a society from every angle possible ensures it remains weak and divided.

so many times i have heard the plea for a movement of non-violence to be carried out by the palestinians. so many ask, "but why don't we see a palestinian gandhi? or martin luther king?" there are non-violent palestinian movements, but they are not as sexy as the image of violent, threatening, muslim/nationalist movements, and are thus overlooked by the media. in the city of ni'lin in the west bank, palestinians stage peaceful protests weekly against the encroaching apartheid wall, only to be met with rubber bullets, live bullets, and tear gas. but that doesn't make it into the news that much either. israel also has a habit of regularly jailing/detaining palestinian leaders, making organizing all the more difficult. but to those curious of why we don't see a strong non-violent palestinian movement, i throw the question back to them...why don't we see a strong non-violent jewish israeli movement? i am sure it exists, but not on a government level. the government still embraces the "might is right" mentality of destruction. the media does a huge disservice to people everywhere in ignoring those movements of meaningful coexistance and peace, polarizing people even further.

and now gaza is in darkness. they are recieving about 2hrs of electricity a day. for those unfamiliar with middle eastern weather, it is cold and rainy in gaza right now. people are sleeping with no heat, as they have been for the past 3 months. gaza is in darkness, starving, and bleeding, and israel maintains there is "no humanitarian crisis." and electricity is running out. i am glued to the computer all day reading news, having to tear myself away to take a deep breath, clear my head. but i am fearful that one day i will wake up and there will be simply no news because the electricity would have run out and no news can come out anymore. israel is barring western journalists from entering gaza, just as it did after the jenin massacre in the second intifada. as robert fisk notes, this practice has created a new sort of journalism-- most of the news coming out of gaza is being told by the victims themselves. for the first time, much of the news isn't sanitized by western journalists, rather it's being told directly by those whose lives are being destroyed. their voices are being heard, unfiltered.

but the electicity will run out. God only knows what horror will be unleashed if the world becomes truly blind to what is happening inside of gaza. if emails cannot be sent out. if phones cannot be recharged to assure friends, family, colleagues that yes, i am still alive. if gazans have no more lines to the outside world, and we have no more inside... i fear deeply israel is delivering sabra/shatila II. enough of the sequels and trilogies...