Olfat al-Kurd is a 45-year-old a mother of four, a resident of a-Shuja’iya neighborhood in Gaza City, and a field researcher for B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Al-Kurd provided the following testimony to Field Researcher Manal al-Ja’bari on October 12, and updated on Oct. 15. Below hers is the testimony of Muhammad Sabah, a 42-year-old field researcher for the organization and a resident of a-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City. Gaza, population 2 million, is a 140 square mile enclave–exactly the geographic size of Bunnell. Both testimonies appear here as originally published at B’Tselem.
I live with my husband, Muhammad Khalil (47), and our four children, Haya (19), Yasser (18), Zeinah (16) and Yusef (14), in the a-Shuja’iya neighborhood in Gaza City.
On Saturday, 7 October 2023, I prayed the morning prayer around 6:30 A.M. and then woke the children to get ready for school. I started my exercises, which I do every morning, and then I heard a loud explosion. We’re used to hearing explosions here, so I didn’t pay too much attention to it, but then there were more explosions and they got louder and louder. It was getting very scary. I looked through the window and saw that all the neighbors, women, children and elderly people, had come out of their homes. Everyone was running along the road in a panic, white as a sheet with fear. I saw men running with small children in their arms, and mothers crying and looking for their children. It was a terrifying sight.
Then my husband came running into the room and asked us to get ready to leave quickly. We didn’t know what was going on and only understood there was a war. My sons and daughters grabbed their bags. They were shaking with fear and ran out to the street without any of us knowing what was happening.
We got into a taxi that took us to my sister Ghadah’s house, which is close to the Gaza seaport. Everyone was fleeing west of Gaza City. I saw thousands of frightened women, children and men running along the street like it was Judgment Day. I stopped the taxi to buy bread and water, but the stores were being swarmed so I couldn’t get any.
We kept driving until we got to my sister’s house. She also didn’t really understand what was going on. We started checking the news sites on our phones, and then we found out what happened in the Israeli settlements around Gaza. I was shocked to my core, and at the same time, I realized the Israeli response would be very harsh. I talked to the children and explained to them that very difficult things were going to happen. I asked them to stay inside and not hang around outside or scatter. The kids were so scared they couldn’t eat, and only drank some water. I tried to cheer them up a bit, but they were very pale and scared and kept running to the bathroom out of fear.
Later that day, my husband went to the market and bought some groceries to stock up for the war. We heard fighter planes bombing different parts of Gaza. The children became withdrawn. Whenever there were explosions nearby, they covered their ears with their hands.
I stayed on the phone with my father and siblings all day. They live in the northern Gaza Strip and also deserted their homes. My brothers’ wives went to their families’ homes in Jabalya Refugee Camp, and my father and brothers went to my sister’s house.
Yesterday, 10 October 2023, around 12:30 P.M., we had to evacuate   my sister’s house. We moved to my brother-in-law’s, east of Gaza City. There were a lot of people in the house and it was very crowded. There wasn’t enough food and water, and the power was out.
My husband and I decided to go to a-Shifaa Hospital and wait there because it’s considered a safe place, but when we got there, the situation was horrific. There were thousands of families there, women, children and elderly people. We heard shouting and crying and bombing. Ambulances were constantly bringing in dead and injured people. We saw people who lost limbs, children wandering around crying and looking for their mothers, and people who were hungry and sick.
We looked for a free spot to hole up in, and I finally found a narrow area at the end of a passageway in the hospital, near a toilet, and the whole family sat down there. I kept trying to lift the children’s spirits and joke around with them, but I couldn’t. They were shaking with fear the whole time. Every now and then, my husband went and got us a little something to eat, like snacks or tinned food. The fighter planes kept circling above us and dropping bombs. At the hospital, there were hundreds of pale and scared children who were crying all the time, and women in mourning who were screaming and wailing. Some had lost their children, others their husbands. Some lost their entire family.
The internet was down, which only made it worse. We were very worried about relatives and didn’t know what was happening to them. We were cut off from the world and had no idea what was happening outside. Every time injured and dead people were brought to the hospital, we were very afraid we’d recognize friends or relatives among them.
Yesterday, around 10:00 P.M., a relative called and told me the Israeli army had bombed my aunt Fatimah’s house and that members of our family, including children, were killed there. I still haven’t been able to find out exactly who was killed. That’s been our situation since Saturday. We still hear bombings and rockets and see injured and dead people all the time. The smell of blood is everywhere.
On 15 October 2023, Olfat added:Â
My family and I stayed at a-Shifaa Hospital for three days. That whole time, we couldn’t sleep at all, and just saw terrifying sights of wounded people covered in blood, and dead people, and heard mothers screaming and ambulance sirens that didn’t stop for a second. Hundreds of people, women, children and elderly people were sleeping on the hospital’s premises, including in the stairwell. Hundreds of young men slept in the outdoor areas, on the ground, with nothing to cover them. Some people slept sitting up because there was no place to lie down. There was not enough water or food. There were hundreds of frightened children who cried and screamed all the time. My children were pale with fear and suffering from lack of sleep. They lost their appetite and barely ate a few bites. I felt like I was falling apart, and I kept it together just for them.
On Thursday, 12 October 2023, the Israeli forces issued an order to evacuate a-Shifaa Hospital. Everyone started running away quickly in a panic, fearing the hospital would be bombed. Children were screaming in fear, and elderly people who had trouble moving cried.
Luckily, a friend of the family picked me and my family up, and we crowded in the car with his six family members. We drove away, leaving behind hundreds of people, including dead and injured people. On the way, we saw shocking scenes. Thousands of people who had been displaced from their homes, women, children, old people, young people. The houses, towers, buildings and schools were reduced to rubble. The smell of death and blood was everywhere. It was hard to advance because the roads were destroyed. The children and I recited Quran verses and felt that we were going to be bombed at any moment, that these were our final moments.
It took us about half an hour to get to the center of the Strip, but it felt like forever. We went to the home of the sister of our friend with whom we escaped, in Deir al-Balah. Other people were already staying there, and with us, the number came up to 20 people. We had no water or power. Luckily, they got water that day. My children had quick showers after a few days without being able to bathe. We washed the clothes by hand, baked pita bread on firewood we’d brought, and conserved as much water as possible, because we knew it would get cut off. We filled up as many dishes and bottles as we could with water, and the bathtub too.
We used a neighbor’s solar device to charge our phones and get in touch with relatives who’d also left their homes and whose whereabouts we didn’t know. Reception was terrible, but I was able to make sure that my father and siblings were still alive. Thousands of refugees from Gaza arrived in the area. I saw thousands sleeping in the streets and under trees. Only a few hundred were lucky and found shelter in institutions, universities, schools and UNRWA offices, but they didn’t have water, food or power either. Food and water in the area started to run out.
My kids were on the brink of a breakdown, especially Haya (19), who lost her appetite, became withdrawn and lost weight. I kept trying to coax her to eat, and it occasionally helped, but then she couldn’t eat again. We’re all just praying to go back to our homes and waiting to hear if there’s a solution on the horizon. We’re living a nightmare, anxious for family members and friends we haven’t heard from, without power and with very little food and water.
I’ve already lost more than 16 relatives in this war – uncles and cousins.  I’m in shock and can’t even cry. I feel emotionally disconnected. I try to put on a brave front for the family, but it’s very difficult. We have no idea how this will end and what will happen to us. These could be our final days.
Muhammad Sabah’s Testimony
On Saturday, 7 October 2023, I was sleeping over with my wife and children at my parents’ house in Rafah when I was woken by bombings. At first, I thought I hadn’t heard correctly, but I quickly found out there were Israeli airstrikes after militants had entered Israeli cities. We grabbed the kids and drove to our apartment in the neighborhood of a-Rimal in Gaza City. It was a quiet, safe neighborhood.
My wife and I packed a bag with our documents and with clothes for us, our three daughters and our son. I bought some groceries and sat down to follow the news. The next day, the airstrikes started and we were very worried. We were afraid our area would be bombed any second. Every time we heard a bombing, we were terrified. The bombings didn’t stop and the situation was difficult. We were very tense and so were the children. We were all anxious.
Day turned into night – but we slept very little. Every time we put our heads down, we were immediately woken up by the sounds of planes and bombings. Every time, we got up to make sure it wasn’t nearby, that our building hadn’t been hit and no one injured. We put some mattresses in the middle of the living room, far away from the windows, because we were afraid we would be hit by shrapnel.
Meanwhile, we started getting partial information about the horrifying things the militants had done in Israel, the harm to women and children.
On the third day, the Israeli military warned us that they were going to bomb Falastin Tower, which is a 14-story building with apartments, offices and medical clinics 100 meters away from our building. We all left the apartment and stood in the stairwell with the neighbors. They bombed the tower and our apartment was damaged. Our car was also damaged.
After the bombing we went back to the apartment, but kept on hearing airstrikes and spent the day in fear. When it was almost nighttime we were even more afraid. We felt vulnerable and very stressed. It was a long night, and we kept hearing bombings and reports about houses bombed and people killed inside their homes. Every time we heard about a family killed, it made our anxiety worse. I tried to calm my wife and children, who were very scared.
We stayed home until the military called the neighbors and ordered us all to leave. Everyone in the neighborhood was ordered to evacuate. We didn’t know what to do. We thought about it and discussed it between us, and in the end, we all decided together that we should leave. It was incredibly hard to leave our apartment, which we worked so hard to put together and invested our whole lives in. We were afraid we would never see it again. But we were even more afraid for our children’s lives and for our own.
Every family in the building went somewhere else. My family and I went to my brother Fathi’s house in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, about a kilometer from our house.
About 15 minutes after we left home, the military bombed our neighborhood. They flattened it completely. A-Rimal was considered the safest, most modern and most peaceful neighborhood in the center of Gaza. Muslims and Christians lived there together. There were luxurious apartments and villas. Everyone always ran to it during wars because it was considered the safest, and now they’ve bombed it to smithereens.
I went back to the neighborhood the next day to check on our house. It was hard to reach because of the wreckage. The roads were cut off and the entrance to the building was blocked by rubble. I went into the apartment and found a lot of damage. I stood there for a moment and mourned the home we had, but I couldn’t linger because I was afraid there would be another strike. I ran in to my neighbors, who were also there checking on their homes. They were all shocked and mourning their ruined apartments. We stood on the street, among the debris, and could smell the smoke from the bombs.
I went back to Fathi’s apartment. The situation remained dangerous, and we kept hearing planes and bombs. We were scared to death. Every time they dropped a bomb, we were sure it was our turn. We stayed like that for several days, with no power and very little water. It was dangerous to leave the house and the roads were destroyed.
On Thursday, 12 October 2023, at around 7:00 P.M., we heard people talking in the street down below. We went over to the window and saw elderly people, women and children carrying bags and belongings and fleeing the neighborhood. We asked them what happened and where they were going. They said they’d run away from another neighborhood and now there had been an announcement this neighborhood was going to be bombed. We took all our bags and headed outside. We stood in the doorway of the building. The women and children were shaking with fear. We didn’t know where to go and were afraid we would be bombed at any moment. It was dark, and we heard planes in the sky and bombings. We stood at the entrance to the building and didn’t know where to go. Every one of us had a different idea. We simply stood there, like that, for a few hours and didn’t know where to go or what to do. Then we went back inside and sat down on the stairs. We stayed there until morning and were sure it was our last night. It was a very rough night.
In the morning, we went back to Fathi’s apartment and stayed there until, on Saturday, 13 October 2023, the military announced that all residents of the northern Gaza Strip had to move to the Wadi Gaza area. We debated again. We didn’t know whether to leave or what to do. After several hours of deliberation, we took our things and went back to my parents’ house in Rafah. My brother Fathi and his family went to his wife’s family’s house in Khan Yunis.
We drove along Salah a-Din Street, which is the main road where travel is permitted. It was a difficult journey because part of the way was blocked by debris and there was a lot of movement on the road – people driving in all kinds of vehicles, cars, trucks, and a lot of people on foot. It was very hard to see. Seeing all those people fleeing south, terrified, on Israel’s orders was a tough sight.
I tried to film it but couldn’t really.
When we got to my parents’ house, my sisters were there with their husbands and kids. The power was out, and there’s no water or wifi. Things are very bad.
Deirdre says
This whole situation breaks my heart. The people in Gaza have suffered so much, with no end in sight. I’m shocked that they are not allowed to leave their country as refugees.
Just as not every German was a Nazi (obviously) not every Muslim is a terrorist – even in this area, although that seems to be the viewpoint of many.
Innocent people shouldn’t suffer from the actions of extremists. At least half the people that live there are children, and they should be allowed to leave the area as refugees and receive humanitarian aid.
Having said that, Israel didn’t deserve the horrific actions of one relatively small subgroup, and I’m so sorry for their suffering too.
The people that live in Gaza have lived in despair for so long it’s no surprise that extremists/terrorists would rise to power. I hope the world can see the situation for what it is – imprisoning those people there is outrageous.
Cares about children says
The median age of people in Gaza is 18 years old. And it is for a sad reason. The life expectancy of a Gazan adult is relatively short.
The bombings are horrific, no matter who is launching them. But now Gaza has been reduced to rubble after it rebuilt from the equally horrific bombings of 2014 by Israel. Even the Israeli army bombed the Rafa gate when Gazan’s and foreign nationals were urged to run in that direction by Israel.
People in Gaza are being displaced multiple times, not just in this conflict. Many families have been moved multiple times beginning as long as 75 years ago, still being deprived of their ancestral homes.
Food and water are not weapons of war. Israel’s blockade while bombing is not just deadly to all civilians but also is deeply traumatizing to children. The loss of family, the robbing of dignity, the impacts to education, and the blockade’s impoverishment of the people will breed hatred and revenge in many youth. Israel cannot kill every Hamas militant or political leader. More will be born to take their place because of the overwhelming sense of grievance with no hope for the future.
But on the Hamas side, there is no justification for its barbarism. Its actions have put ordinary Gazans in harm’s way.
The world’s leadership should work to end this constant cycle of war and death and the permanent scarring of two peoples who have much to give the world.
TREEMAN says
The World’s Leadership??? Wake Up, we are in a “Cold War” against Communist China, Russia, Iran, North Korea!! The Chinese Communist Party has ‘INVADED’ America’s Colleges and Universities Campuses! Communist China is very pleased that America is focused on TWO Wars (Ukraine and Israel) while it continues it’s plans to INVADE Taiwan! Think about America’s National Security and the Super Mirco-chips(produced in Taiwan) that are the engine of America’s Economy! Germany, Poland, and France MUST give MORE aid to Ukraine. Israel will WIN it’s War without America’s Aid (of course we continue to replace the weapons Israel has used)! The BEST Support for Israel is to enforce the Trump Sanctions Against Iran!! America must STOP it’s APPEASEMENT Foreign Policy-NOW!!!
Ray W. says
As so many other FlaglerLive commenters engage in fantasy thinking writing their posts, I will add my own.
Assume that the overpopulated Gaza Strip will be significantly leveled by Israeli bombings and follow-up street fighting. Assume that the anticipated incursion of IDF troops will lead to the discovery of the exact locations of the vast underground networks of storage and transportation tunnels, through use of underground imaging tools, which will lead to the dynamiting of large sections of Gaza to collapse the tunnel networks. Assume that the explosive destruction of the tunnel networks will damage the foundations of just about all of the structures within a certain radius, thereby making the structures uninhabitable or unserviceable even if they remain standing.
Does it then follow that utility networks, such as water, sewage, electricity, internet, etc., will be significantly if not completely destroyed? That hospitals, schools and other buildings necessary to community life will have been damaged or made useless? That roads will be blocked or made barely passable? That distribution of food and basic necessities of life will have been made at the very least onerous?
What then? Does the IDF simply withdraw from the entire Strip, declare that they won a pyrrhic victory, rebuild the wall surrounding it, and then wait for international aid to provide the resources to rebuild the Bunnell-sized region stuffed with whomever remains of its current two million people? Does disease break out and spread rapidly throughout the crowed inhabitants, many now living in tents? Does the coming winter add to the misery?
Many in our own midst will declare that the Palestinians made their beds, now let them lie in them, secure in the arrogance that their beliefs convey to all who read them, forgetting that no one deserve fates such as this. Others will blame the imagined failures of the current U.S. administration. Still others will blame the imagined failures of all former U.S. administrations, all the way back to Truman, or even to Churchill in 1920. Many will blame Israel’s long-standing occupation policies. Many will offer one or more of a wide variety of one-size-fits-all explanations, but few will offer viable solutions. Yes, ASF will accuse anyone who disagrees with her interpretation of the current state of affairs in Palestine of anti-Zionist or antisemitic tendencies; it is in her nature to do so. ASF should have realized long ago that the commenters who disagree with her are doing nothing more than disagreeing with her. Being opposed to ASF’s hate-driven comments does not mean anything more than that.
Here’s my impossible and fantastic solution. Simply decide to abandon the entire Gaza Strip and, when emptied of all of its citizenry, bulldoze it all. After all, Gaza was sparsely settled before the fledgling state of Israel routed the Arab armies that had attacked it and swept almost all of the long-established Palestinian population out of what had been declared Israeli territory in the act of establishing an independent state; the dispossessed fled into Gaza, having nowhere else to go. Many ritually pass from generation to generation the keys to their ancient homes, symbolic of a despairing hope that they will be able to return one day and occupy their former homes as their ancestors had for centuries.
Before emptying Gaza of its people, remove the estimated 500,000 Israelis from the illegal (by international law) settlements in the West Bank and allow Gazans to move into the settlement homes or into the many Palestinian communities scattered throughout the West Bank. Hamas fighters might try to hide among the innocent in the exodus, but the IDF can control the pace of the moves and would certainly search those at the exits from Gaza. Yes, this would violate international law, but this is a fantasy posting, nothing more, akin to fantasy comments posted by those who claim Democrats are communists, Democrats are waging war on the energy industry, Democrats have destroyed America, and on and on.
Hamas would have to leave behind their communications infrastructure, weaponry, ammunition, rockets and all of the accumulated materiel that enables them today to wield nearly complete power in Gaza. Hamas would have to start all over with a citizenry that might not welcome any resumption of their rule.
Israel would pay a heavy political price for such an unpalatable, if not outrageous, decision.
Would this type of good faith gesture enable discussions among more moderate elements of Israeli and Palestinian societies? Would it permit the resumption of talks of a step-by-step and tenuous and fledgling actual two-state solution?
My fantastic scenario does not involve blaming anyone for thousands of years of excesses, murder, and deprivations of all kinds. Everyone gives something, more than any are currently willing to give. As all mediators are taught before becoming certified in the field, if both parties leave any mediation session unhappy, it was a successful mediation. This idea of winning at all costs, regardless of the misery and deaths associated with winning at all costs, needs to stop. Yes, all of Palestine was promised to the Chosen. But I have never read any interpretation or heard anyone say with authority that God ordered the Jews to not share their land with anyone outside of the faith. Promises do not have to be conjoined at the hip with violence, hatred and exclusion.
R.S. says
I like your fantasy; it would be so just to follow through. If only Israel had approached the negotiations for the two-state solution with sincerity and honesty, this might all not have happened. But Israel is also engaging Palestinians in conflicts in the West Bank. Three villages in the West Bank, the very area that was destined to become a Palestinian state, according to The Times of Israel, have been cleared by settler violence. Wadi al-Siq, a Bedouin village, has been “cleared” three days ago. Gaza is on everyone’s mind, but settler violence continues in the West Bank. I’d also like to add that, in my most humble opinion, the supreme ruler of the universe has surely more important things on his/her/its mind than being a real-estate broker for an obscure planet in the mily way galaxy, no?
Ray W. says
I spent about a week thinking about your reply. Thank you for your comment. I have read a number of articles about the West Bank since the invasion of Israel. I cannot disagree with your characterization of new acts of settler violence and upheaval in the West Bank, which for whatever form of religious extremism the settlers carry in their souls, they just can’t help but pour gasoline on the fire; it is a compulsion with them. Action without reason.
I keep coming back to the undisputed fact that within minutes of Israel declaring its independence, five Arab nations declared war on Israel, not to mention the poorly organized Palestinian militia. Israel’s fledgling military and its well-established militia (Irgun) eventually repelled the Arab armies and expelled Palestinians from numerous villages in a rout the Palestinians now call the Nakba, or catastrophe. In all its irony, the initial declaration of Israeli nationhood had Palestinians controlling a far larger share of Palestine that what they agreed to in the armistice of 1949. I cannot help but think that if Arabs had simply accepted the State of Israel in 1948, none of this would be happening today.
I looked up census figures in Palestine at or near 1948 and found a government census dating from 1945. It included percentages of various indigenous groups in a number of regions. For example, Jerusalem was 2% Jewish. Gaza? 4%. Haifa was 35% Jewish. Tiberias stood at 38%. Jaffa 39%. Nazareth was 28% Jewish. Between 1922 and 1945, the Jewish population in the British Mandate of Palestine grew from 83,792 to 553,600. The Arabs openly threatened to drive all half-million Jews into the sea.
While you might be accurate in arguing that Israel has not approached the two-state proposal in “honesty and sincerity”, it has to be accepted as fact that Palestinians have approached the proposals with a level of venom and disgust. This is perhaps the major reason why I characterized my “solution” as a fantasy.
Like Beirut prior to its Civil War, today’s Palestine could be a paradise, but for religious extremism on both sides. It is no accident that I repeatedly fall back on Ryszard Kapuscinski’s description that religious extremism is one of three plagues that afflict the modern world’s politics, alongside nationalism and racism. The wealth and wisdom that could be shared among 10 million people or more if only they could coexist peacefully is incalculable. People harvest olives from groves dating from before Christ, yet the resulting oil has been used for two millennia to burn everything down instead of building everything up.
I will finish with a story that haunts me. I have commented about it a number of times. A Muslim father and husband survived a village slaughter near Sarajevo during the lengthy and widespread war that plagued the region after the disintegration of Yugoslavia. He had watched his family die at the hands of a squad led by a neighbor in his village. The Muslim man had worked alongside the squad leader in a factory. Their children had played together. They had eaten meals in each other’s homes. They had attended festivals together. Then came the madness and murder. Centuries of living together can come undone in a single day. Madness knows no limits. All I see thus far is madness in the Middle East. It was madness to invade Israel and decapitate soldiers and children. It was madness to take hostages. It was madness to set fire to home to drive out inhabitants. It was madness to rape at will. It will be madness to fight door to door in Gaza among 2 million civilians. Explanations, justifications, excuses, etc., will be thrown around like so much candy corn, but everyone will know it is all madness.
Sherry says
Thank you Ray W for your well reasoned analysis of what seems to be inevitable.
As noted on another article on this subject, my extended family. . . who actually have lived for well over 20 years in Israel with their young children. . . saw this coming when Netanyahu regained office. They predicted years ago that his long game was to “annex” (what a word!) the valuable seaside lands of Gaza for Israel. Generally, the “behind the scenes” attitude there is that Palestinian human lives are not as valuable as Israeli ones.
As far as my extended family knows, there is no concept to create a safe place for innocent Palestinians to take refuge/live peacefully.
It is extremely painfully ironic that the same people who were so dreadfully persecuted and murdered are now showing such little constraint in doing that same thing to others.
Is it possible that somehow the Israeli human sub-consciousness feels that this time is different? Do any of the Israelis feel that their ancestors were murdered for being “superior”. . . while the innocent Palestinians are not being protected/reasonably considered because they are considered “inferior”?
Ray W. says
Perhaps the emotionally most difficult book to read, in my experience, is The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto, 1941-1944. With a population of nearly 150,000 Jews in 1941, the ghetto was largely empty by 1944. The inhabitants kept copies of a secretly published newsletter and buried them before the ghetto emptied. Long after the war, a survivor returned to the site and dug up the copies. Originally published in Polish, it was translated and published in English in 1987.
Some commenters on FlaglerLive think they know what “despair” means (“the complete loss or absence of hope”). They have no idea. To them, a 2020 election loss is despair, worthy of sharing thoughts and hopes of soon beheading their political opponents. In reality, despair is little Jewish children living in a ghetto under SS control digging up potato peelings from six months earlier in hopes of finding sustenance. Despair is young women walking onto a metal walkover exit from the ghetto in full daylight knowing that doing so brings an immediate fusillade of German bullets. Jubilation means the arrival of a celebrated musician from Prague. Jubilation means the arrival of three train cars filled with potatoes. Jubilation means finding barrels of mineral oil in a warehouse, so that machinery can be lubricated; perhaps the Germans will let them live a little longer if they can just prove to be more useful in repairing more Wehrmacht boots with properly working machinery. All of these instances are just scraps to a despondent populace. Once a month, the newsletter published the accumulated numbers of arrivals, births, departures, deaths, life or death events of all kinds for that month. Each month, the total population lessens, and everyone knows that leaving for a work camp is slow suicide, yet people willingly leave the ghetto simply in the hope that they will be fed before they die.
In Ryszard Kapuscinski’s Imperium, he writes of his childhood experiences after the Germans swept through his village in eastern Poland. He tells of hearing a rumor that cans of candy will soon be sold. He joins a long line of children who heard the same story. They stand through the night in the freezing cold, only to find that the shopkeeper is selling the empty cans that contain the scent of the desired candy.
If one cannot fully comprehend despair; if one consistently misinterprets what it means, if one persists in lessening what it actually means, one cannot understand the Middle East. Jews and Arabs alike exist in various states of despair and jubilation. Dread lives on every street corner, inside every bus, amongst every gathering at any outdoor cafe that might attract the venomous who silently stalk amongst us all. Jubilation to the despairing of the world is the fleeting emergence of hope, that truth, beauty and justice just might be one and the same, just might be achievable, if only for the moment necessary for the memory of it.
Normally, I write of the circular reasoning that slowly infects every prosecutor’s office; it goes as follows: Good guys don’t make mistakes. Prosecutors are the good guys. I am a prosecutor. Therefore, I do not make mistakes.
But I argue here that this type of circular reasoning can infect every aspect of society. It can infect politics. It can infect law enforcement agencies. It can infect religious communities. It can infect ethnic communities. And on and on. Once anyone relies on this form of circular reasoning to conclude that he or she is one of the mistake-free good guys, almost anything can be done to the bad guys, without fear of recrimination.
CELIA PUGLIESE says
I just have no words to this modern carnage of innocent civilians in both sides in this time an age added to the Ukranian holocaust as well. What is wrong with some humans that become so poisoned with hate? We are suppose to be intelligent survivalist humans and not wild animals, that with planned cruelty we outdo.
ASF says
For the sake of journalistic balance, I request that FlaglerLive seek out an honest account of the horrors being experienced by an Israeli survivor on October 7th–as well as as some heart-rending accounts of the traumas and hardships being endured by all the Israeli citizens who are being forced to respond to the 24/7 wails of rocket warning systems being set off by an endless barrage of missiles being deliberately aimed at Israel by those poor “Never-done-nuttin-to-nobody” Palestinians.
Since the Israelis are also being targeted by Iranian Proxy army troops on all sides of them, I think that Israel’s situation deserves a little sympathy and concern as well. They are truly fighting for their continued existence.
If that suggestion offends some people who demand that Jews display an overt willingness to die in order to prove their worthiness to live (said approval always subject to change, of course), I think that that says more about the prejudices of those obsessive critics of Israel’s every defensive move than it does about those supposedly “Snidely Whiplash” Israelis/”Zionists.”
R.S. says
I am very pleased that Flaglerlive provides some balance to all other corporate media that manage to weave Israeli suffering into any report about the conflict. While both militaries engaged in war crimes, the only difference to my mind is that one is armed to the teeth with all kinds of military hardware and the other is on an extremely low budget. In cruelty, they’re even.
FlaglerLive says
As R.S. notes, our media landscape is not lacking in copious and these days significantly one-sided reporting from and about Israel and Israelis. It is gravely lacking in reporting from and about Palestine and Palestinians. More of one at the expense of the other would amplify a level of irresponsibility in the American press we don’t need to amplify here.
hippy says
I read this twice and still must have missed any condemnation for Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, parking rocket launchers, next to schools, hospitals, residential areas….. Not all Palestinians are terrorists, but Palestinians, and other Muslims are going to have to stand up against those who use them and their children as fodder for their radical and terroristic beliefs. Hamas and it’s supporters knew exactly what was going to happen when the slaughtered Israelis. Nothing is going to change until that happens.
Michael Cocchiola says
I cannot imagine the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians. I can only urge America to lead international efforts to bring the fighting to a halt and help people to rebuild their lives.