December
28, 2023
No
matter the challenges of speaking up in the United States, censorship is deadly
for Palestinians.
Every
Muslim American knows that speaking up for justice in Palestine means you are
punished twice: You face Islamophobia as a Muslim and are defamed as
antisemitic for criticizing Israel’s violations of Palestinians’ human rights.
The
ample evidence of this backlash against Muslim American legislators such as
Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar is instructive. Each time they seek to humanize
Palestinians, the attacks on their character are based on an Islamophobic trope
that falsely presumes Muslims are taught to hate Jews. This racist stereotype
is squarely debunked in a recent groundbreaking report Presumptively
Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestinian-Israel Discourse by the
Center for Security, Race, and Rights. This report gives Muslim Americans and
the broader global human rights movement a well-researched frame for exposing
bad faith attempts to silence Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims from engaging in
human rights advocacy.
In
the past months. Americans have witnessed how structural and institutional
Islamophobic backlash causes people to lose jobs, Palestinian Americans to be
shot and stabbed, and protesters to be jailed simply for expressing the view
that Palestinians deserve human rights. And when Americans courageously
participate in protests calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, New York City Mayor
Eric Adams shamefully describes his constituents as extremists. Universities
such as Columbia and Rutgers have suppressed student’s speech on Palestine by
suspending Students for Justice in Palestine.
I
have personally experienced the false antisemitic presumption in my career as a
human rights lawyer and professor, even though I have devoted my entire
professional career to protecting the rights of all vulnerable members of our
global society, including efforts to combat real antisemitism. In 2014, after
attending a rally in support of Palestinian human rights in Times Square, while
waiting for my husband and children to return from the restroom, I was
aggressively arrested by a police officer. Recall in 2014, Gaza was bombarded
for 50 days with Palestinian children being the most impacted. At the time, I
was preparing for a temporary leave from my appointed position as a top lawyer
to the New York City Public Advocate to conduct human rights related research
in Bangladesh after the tragic death of over 1,100 garment workers.
When
I sought out public support for my arrest, one progressive New York elected
official wrote: “I saw it on Twitter, and wanted to express sympathy, but the
complexity of the overlapping issues of Palestine and policing are more
complicated than I could figure out how to address in 140 characters.” The
elected official was willing to speak on the policing aspect of my unlawful
arrest, but not on Palestine because speaking on Palestine would have
consequences for their electability.
I
filed a lawsuit challenging the arrest, not hiding the fact I was present at
Times Square supporting Palestine, and that I viewed the arrest as
Islamophobic. When the media contacted my city employer, they said I did not
work there. The message was clear. So, I returned to New York after my human
rights research fellowship with no job, even though I had been appointed as
“top counsel” to the city. With elite law firms proudly rescinding offers to
law students who support international law and the Palestinians, I fear their
fate—and understand this form of repression is all too common. I know from my
volunteer work providing legal advice and support to those who lost their
livelihoods due to Palestine speech that educators, healthcare workers, and
people from all professions have experienced harassment, discrimination, and
job loss simply for expressing support for Palestine.
Four
years after that baseless arrest, I joined the faculty at CUNY School of Law.
My participation in collective efforts to lift up Palestinian human rights
makes me a McCarthyistic target of right-wing Zionist groups who collapse the
distinction between holding anti-Zionist principles and harboring anti-Jewish
bigotry. Each time I sign a petition on Palestinian rights, I receive emails
baselessly labeling me an “antisemite.”
Months
before Israel’s current siege on Gaza, right-wing organizations and media
outlets called for funding to be cut for CUNY because our Muslim graduation
student speaker, elected by her peers, spoke on police brutality and Israel’s
human rights violations. Her comments were consistent with United Nations
reports finding that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is
unlawful under international law. Every major human rights organization has
long issued similar statements of fact.
Presumptively
Antisemitic highlights how students experience a hostile academic environment
that impedes their ability to learn and closes all opportunities for greater
understanding among students. We are observing this Islamophobic backlash right
now as CUNY students of all faiths and ethnicities organize around Palestinian
human rights—but none are more targeted and slandered than Palestinian, Arab,
and Muslim students. As Presumptively Antisemitic aptly states, “Islamophobia
is weaponized to deny Palestinians recognition of their civil, human, and
national rights while upholding the consistent partiality of U.S. policy in
favor of Israel.”
The
steep penalty for speaking up for Palestinian rights is often higher when you
are Muslim. Presumptively Antisemitic describes this reality as a “racialized
double standard.” When Muslim Americans exercise their constitutionally
protected “free speech” rights to criticize the U.S. government’s persistent
failure to hold Israel accountable for its systemic violations of Palestinians’
human rights, they are often “treated as security and cultural threats
deserving of social stigma at best or criminalization at worst.”
Recently
I saw a meme pop up on one of my social media feeds that read: “Don’t Stop
Talking About Palestine.” It was a much-needed reminder that censorship is
deadly for Palestinians. At present count, the death toll exceeds 20,000, with
no end in sight. No matter the challenges we may individually face, even myself
as a South Asian-origin Muslim in a professional position, they pale in
comparison to Israel’s unrelenting bombardment and starvation of Palestinians.
Israel guns for war with Lebanon and Iran
December
28, 2023
Another
210 Palestinians were killed and 360 injured by Israeli forces in Gaza in the
24 hours to Thursday 3pm, according to the Gazan health ministry. More than
21,300 people have now been reported killed in the assault, and over 55,600
injured, with roughly 7,000 more missing, likely buried under rubble.
The
United Nations reports that 85 percent of the population of the enclave has
been displaced, and 40 percent face famine. UN shelters are at over four times
capacity.
While
the genocide in Gaza continues, Israel and its allies are looking to expand the
scope of the war. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared earlier this week, “We
are in a multi-front war. We are being attacked from seven fronts—Gaza,
Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], Iraq, Yemen and Iran.”
He
added Thursday, “This is the end of the era of limited conflicts,” continuing,
“We operated for years under the assumption that limited conflicts could be
managed, but that is a phenomenon that is disappearing. Today, there is a
noticeable phenomenon of the convergence of the arenas.”
When
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes comments along the lines of Monday’s,
“We are not stopping. The war will continue until the end, until we finish it,
no less,” it is the wider Middle East more than the already ruined Gaza Strip
he is referring to.
The
West Bank is one focal point of an already expanded conflict, with Israel
tightening its military dictatorship over the occupied Palestinian territories.
On Wednesday night, Israel carried out its most intense raids of the war to
date in the region, sending large numbers of troops and vehicles into ten
cities, killing at least one person and injuring 15 others, while at least two
dozen were detained, and seizing $2.5 million from money exchanges.
Over
500 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) or settlers since October 7, and over 4,700 arrested—among them
journalists and politicians.
Middle
East Journalist Mouin Rabbani told Al Jazeera, “They are out to deliberately
provoke the Palestinians to seek to create as much conflict as possible,”
adding that this was part of a plan “to permanently consolidate” Israeli
control of the West Bank.
The
UN released a 22-page flash report Thursday on “The human rights situation in
the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem” up to November 20.
The
paper lists: “Increase in the use of unnecessary or disproportionate force by
Israeli security forces (ISF), resulting in unlawful killings”; “Mass arbitrary
arrests, detentions and reported torture and other ill-treatment by ISF,
raising concerns of collective punishment”; “Exponential increased in attacks
by armed settlers leading to displacement of Palestinian herding communities”;
and “Ongoing discriminatory movement restrictions affecting daily life and
choking the local economy.”
A
line from the summary reads, “Palestinians live in constant terror of the
discriminatory use of State force and settler violence against them and, while
the situation is already dire, all indications are that it may further
deteriorate”.
Conforming
the threat of a wider war, to the north a full-scale conflict with Hezbollah in
Lebanon is on a hair trigger. Israel’s forces are in a “state of very high
readiness” and escalating strikes on Lebanon’s southern territory, in a trade
of fire with Hezbollah forces.
More
than 150 people have been killed on the Lebanese side of the border since
October 7, including over a dozen civilians, three of them journalists. Three
more, one a Hezbollah member, were killed Tuesday by an Israeli airstrike on
Bint Jbeil. Nine soldiers and four civilians have been killed in Israel by
return fire.
Al
Jazeera journalist Ali Hashem, reporting from Bint Jbeil, explained, “Israeli
warplanes are currently targeting towns that are even very far from the border.
The fact is that this area is now becoming a complete warzone, it’s becoming
very dangerous, very risky, to go around, with the fact that you’re always
anticipating an Israeli drone.”
Israeli
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen used a visit to the Lebanese border to threaten
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who Cohen said “must understand that
he’s next. If he doesn’t want to be next in line he should immediately
implement the U.N. Security Council’s resolution (1701) and keep Hezbollah away
from the north of Litani.
“We
will work to exhaust the political option, and if it does not work, all options
are on the table in order to ensure the security of the State of Israel”.
Netanyahu’s
spokesperson Eylon Levy added the same day, “We are now at a fork in the road.
Either Hezbollah backs off from the Israeli border, in line with U.N.
Resolution 1701, or we will push it away ourselves.”
War
cabinet triumvirate member Benny Gantz was most explicit, saying Wednesday,
“The situation in the northern border necessitates change. The time for a
diplomatic solution is running out. If the world and the government of Lebanon
don’t act to stop the fire toward northern communities and to push Hezbollah
away from the border, the IDF will do that.”
The
ultimate target is Iran, in service to the broader imperialist war aims of
Israel’s US patron. Referring to the seven theatres in which the IDF is waging
its war, Gallant declared, “Iran is the driving force in the convergence of the
arenas. It transfers resources, ideology, knowledge and training to its
proxies.”
Israel
drastically escalated this confrontation on Monday by assassinating Iran’s
Brigadier-General Seyed Razi Mousavi, a senior commander of the country’s
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in Syria. Omar Rahman, fellow at the Middle
East Council of Global Affairs, told Voice of America, “Israel’s decision to
assassinate a high-ranking member of the Iranian military in Damascus is a huge
provocation.
“Iran
has stayed out of direct involvement so far, but if its commanders are being
targeted, it will have trouble continuing along a path of restraint.”
Senior
Iranian officials, including President Ebrahim Raisi, have pledged to
retaliate. It is only one week until the fourth anniversary of America’s
assassination of General Qassem Suleimani, considered second only to Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, which Iran has repeatedly threatened to avenge.
Any
retaliation would serve as a pretext for Israel, whose government is seeking a
war it otherwise could not seriously contemplate because it has been assured in
advance of US support.
Washington
has deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups to the Eastern Mediterranean,
adding to the thousands of soldiers it already has stationed across the Middle
East. Since October 7, US forces have carried out multiple strikes in Syria and
Iraq against Iran-aligned militias, most recently Kataib Hezbollah, following a
drone attack on America’s Erbil Air Base. US Central Command commented that the
strike “destroyed the targeted facilities and likely killed a number of Kataib
Hezbollah militants”.
The
government in Baghdad condemned the “hostile act” and violation of its
sovereignty.
US
and allied forces are also heavily engaged in the Red Sea, where Iran-aligned
Houthi rebels have launched attacks on shipping in retaliation for the genocide
in Gaza. Washington is attempting to form a coalition navy to police the waters
and considering strikes on Houthi bases in Yemen, with Iran placed squarely in
the crosshairs.
“We
know that Iran was deeply involved in planning the operations against
commercial vessels in the Red Sea,” US National Security Council spokeswoman
Adrienne Watson said last Friday.
Israel-Hamas war live: Children among the dead as Israeli strike
hits Rafah
December
28, 2023
·
An Israeli strike hit a residential building in Rafah near Al
Jazeera’s reporting team. They report seeing many casualties streaming into the
nearby Kuwaiti Hospital.
·
Fifty Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza’s
Beit Lahiya, Khan Younis and al-Maghazi areas on Thursday, the Gaza Health
Ministry said
·
The Palestinian Red Crescent says at least 10 people have been
killed and 12 injured in an attack near al-Amal Hospital in the southern city
of Khan Younis.
·
The World Health Organization says tens of thousands of
Palestinians are fleeing central Gaza and Khan Younis, attempting to escape
Israeli attacks.
·
In Gaza, at least 21,320 people have been killed and 55,603
injured in Israeli attacks since October 7. The death toll from Hamas’s attack
on Israel stands at 1,139.
A
day in the life of a mother and child in Gaza
December 27,
2023
Despite the
constant Israeli bombing, shelling, terror in the air from close by and far
afield, somehow being a creature of habit, I wake up at the call to prayer,
every early morning. And after prostrating myself in the direction of Mecca, in
the direction of my faith in the almighty, the following immediate question on
the top of my mind, every Fajr prayer time is: how and from where will I, a
young Palestinian woman, a young Palestinian mother, secure essential food and
precious water for myself and for my six-year-old daughter today. That is, if
we make it alive to sunset and beyond, with the grace of the almighty, to whom
I’m so deeply faithful and an observant Muslim.
Then it’s a mad
rush to fill our gallon-sized plastic jerry cans with water. My family’s
allocated portion has been a few gallons of filthy, dirty water for the coming
day. We are six adults, in addition to the young ones, the children, huddled
together in this one small, dilapidated apartment. This is our current place of
refuge from all the surrounding death, destruction, and unimaginable, simply
unspeakable human suffering. We use this precious allocated water for a quick
sponge bath and some essential laundry, which feels like some great extravagant
luxury. It is a seemingly extravagant affair, which costs me a daily
back-breaking climb from the ground floor, all the way to the fifth floor of
the building, with no electricity and no functioning elevator. Dragging all
this heavy but precious water like some beast of burden and constantly keeping
an ever-vigilant watch on my child grasping, clasping onto some part of my
cloth, tagging along. This constant nagging fear that there could very possibly
and very likely be a missile strike from the air, and it would be all over in
no time. Not just for me but for all from the ground up to the fifth floor.
A normal visit
to the toilet has to be planned, pre-planned, and precisely thought out so that
one does not spend more water – it’s a constant balance between normal human
urge, maintaining one’s sanity, and losing it all in a jiffy (water, life, and
loved ones).
The six adults
in this two-room apartment take turns to go to the bath, to take sponge baths
of sorts, take care of their respective children, maintain some human dignity,
and some minimum hygiene. There is this undeclared competition for the bath
water. There is competition for whatever bread comes our way, a very
distasteful competition, a very inhumane way of life – that so many adults have
to eye, prey upon each other’s meager slices of bread and lentils, if they are
even available that day. The price of wheat flour is sky-high if at all
available, you can’t afford wheat flour in Gaza today if you are a typical
average, ordinary Jack or Jill. Flour to make bread, to feed your hungry
stomach, is not for you.
Just yesterday,
my child was so hungry, so starving, and I was not able to get anything from
any of the relief workers, who turn up in this area less and less often. And
ashamedly, I did ask her to rush to the neighboring apartment on the same floor
and ask for some bread. The six-year-old, on her mother’s nudging, did walk up
to the neighbors but came back as swiftly. Came back crying and said, “Mummy,
the neighbors have strictly forbade me from showing up at their door, asking
for something as precious as bread to eat.”
It seems all the
more likely, almost assured, that we will not make it alive from here, given
the barrage of weapons and bombings directed at us from every imaginable
direction. In case we don’t, I hope when we are physically gone, someone out
there will appreciate and comprehend the hell my child and I went through in
our last days, just hoping for some pieces of fresh bread, some hot soup, some
delicious fruit, and yearning the most for some clean water to drink and clean
ourselves, wash ourselves – our so basic and so earthly human desires.
And what kept me
going till the very last are three things: my faith in Allah, my love for my
young daughter, and the Palestinian blood in my veins.
Total War: Israeli Gov’t has Killed 4,037 students and 209
Teachers in Gaza, Demolished 92 Schools and Universities
December
28, 2023
The
Gaza Ministry of Education, which is staffed by professionals rather than party
cadres, said on Wednesday that “According to the Ministry of Education, between
7 October and 26 December, more than 4,037 students and 209 educational staff
were killed, and more than 7,259 students and 619 teachers were injured in
Gaza.” So reports the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Let
me just repeat this incredible statistic. Israel has murdered over 4,000
students. Moreover, we haven’t heard a peep about this from any university
administration in the United States — offices that routinely denounce attacks
on higher education elsewhere in the world. People who are up in arms about
banning books in schools don’t seem to care about this big pile of dead
students, including K-12 and undergraduates.
If
you think the below apocalyptic landscape from northern Gaza results from
targeted strikes against Hamas militants, then there is something wrong with
your reasoning abilities.
It
is this random leveling of every building in sight that produced the over 4,000
student deaths.
Saudi
Arabia’s Asharq News further reports that the indiscriminate campaign of aerial
bombardment has destroyed 342 schools, educational institutes, and
universities. This according to Hazem al-Shemlawi the Public Relations Director
for the Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education.
Some
425 college and university students have been killed by the bombs, along with
19 university staffers.
I
repeat: The Israelis have rubbed out 425 undergraduates.
One
of the university professors killed, in what some have alleged to have been a
deliberately targeted strike by the Israeli military, was Refaat al-Areer a
Shakespeare and John Donne specialist at the Islamic University of Gaza (since
destroyed).
He
refused to leave northern Gaza, saying that the most dangerous thing in his
house was a pen. He seems to have known that the Israelis would try to kill him
for being outspoken. The strike that murdered him also killed his brother, his
sister, and her four children. His last poem became famous.
About
19 institutions of higher education in Gaza served 88,000 students and employed
5200 staffers before October 7, since which time they have all been closed and
several have been demolished.
Israel’s
total war against the people of Gaza clearly aims to deprive them of their
culture. Studies of victims of past wars have shown that such interruptions in
education have a life-long negative impact on employability and standard of
living. Students living through bombardment and displacement also suffer from
mood disorders later in life at a higher rate.
In
addition, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) ran 183 schools, which served
278,000 students. Because UNRWA is perpetually underfunded, most of its schools
have had to run two shifts. UNRWA was established to serve the millions of
Palestinian refugees descended from the Palestinians ethnically cleansed by the
Israelis in 1948 and those displaced in 1967. Some 70% of Gaza’s residents are
descended from such refugees who were forced out of their homes or off their
farms in southern Israel by Zionist blackshirts.
The
UNRWA schools are also closed, and many are being used as shelters for the 1.9
million people Israeli bombing has displaced from their homes. Some UNRWA
schools, as in Beit Hanoun, have been blown up by Israeli forces on the
ridiculous charge that they were Hamas outposts. Aljazeera reported earlier
this month, “UN schools and buildings continue to be targeted by Israel, while
also being used as shelters for thousands of displaced Palestinians.”
Asharq
reports that the Gaza government has categorized 1,745 Israeli bombings as
“massacres.” The Israeli air force has damaged or destroyed 126 government
buildings. It has completely destroyed 92 schools and universities. It has
inflicted significant damage on 285 schools.
19
institutions belonging to the Ministry of Higher Education have been closed by
the Israeli bombing, depriving 88,000 students of their education for three
months in a row.
Shemlawi
says that the buildings of the al-Azhar University branch in south Gaza have
been largely destroyed by Israeli shelling.
This
footage from TikTok shows the bombing of
al-Azhar University in Gaza in November.
This footage
says it shows the state this month of al-Azhar University in Gaza:
“Destruction
of Al-Azhar University in Gaza”
Al-Azhar
University in Gaza was established in 1991 by the Palestine Liberation
Organization, the secular rival of Hamas. It is not related to the al-Azhar in
Cairo. It has 14,391 students and 387 faculty members, though some of these are
now dead and none of them have any buildings in which to learn or teach. It had
been ranked around 171 out of 200 among Arab regional universities, and it is
amazing that it wasn’t at the bottom given that it functioned in an occupied
territory under economic siege since 2007.
This
was AUG’s medical school. All Gone.
The Cost of Bearing Witness
December
28, 2023
There
are scores of Palestinian writers and photographers, many of whom have been
killed, who are determined to make us see the horror of this genocide. They
will vanquish the lies of the killers.
Writing
and photographing in wartime are acts of resistance, acts of faith. They affirm
the belief that one day — a day the writers, journalists and photographers may
never see — the words and images will evoke empathy, understanding, outrage and
provide wisdom.
They
chronicle not only the facts, although facts are important, but the texture,
sacredness and grief of lives and communities lost. They tell the world what
war is like, how those caught in its maw of death endure, how there are those
who sacrifice for others and those who do not, what fear and hunger are like,
what death is like.
They
transmit the cries of children, the wails of grief of the mothers, the daily
struggle in the face of savage industrial violence, the triumph of their
humanity through filth, sickness, humiliation and fear. This is why writers,
photographers and journalists are targeted by aggressors in war — including the
Israelis — for obliteration.
They
stand as witnesses to evil, an evil the aggressors want buried and forgotten.
They expose the lies. They condemn, even from the grave, their killers. Israel
has killed at least 13 Palestinian poets and writers along with at least 67
journalists and media workers in Gaza, and three in Lebanon since Oct. 7.
I
experienced futility and outrage when I covered war. I wondered if I had done
enough, or if it was even worth the risk. But you go on because to do nothing
is to be complicit. You report because you care. You will make it hard for the
killers to deny their crimes.
This
brings me to the Palestinian novelist and playwright Atef Abu Saif. He and his
15-year-old son Yasser, who live in the occupied West Bank, were visiting
family in Gaza — where he was born — when Israel began its scorched earth
campaign. Atef is no stranger to the violence of the Israeli occupiers. He was
2 months old during the 1973 war and writes “I’ve been living through wars ever
since. Just as life is a pause between two deaths, Palestine, as a place and as
an idea, is a timeout in the middle of many wars.”
During
Operation Cast Lead, the 2008/2009 Israel assault on Gaza, Atef sheltered in
the corridor of his Gaza family home for 22 nights with his wife, Hanna and two
children, while Israel bombed and shelled. His book The Drone Eats with Me:
Diaries from a City Under Fire, is an account of Operation Protective Edge, the
2014 Israeli assault on Gaza that killed 1,523 Palestinian civilians, including
519 children.
“Memories
of war can be strangely positive, because to have them at all means you must
have survived,” he notes sardonically.
Refaat
Alareer
He
again did what writers do, including the professor and poet Refaat Alareer, who
was killed, along with Refaat’s brother, sister and her four children, in an
airstrike on his sister’s apartment building in Gaza on Dec. 7. The
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that Alareer was deliberately
targeted, “surgically bombed out of the entire building.” His killing came
after weeks of “death threats that Refaat received online and by phone from
Israeli accounts.” He had moved to his sister’s because of the threats.
Refaat,
whose doctorate was on the metaphysical poet John Donne, wrote a poem in
November, called “If I Must Die,” which became his last will and testament. It
has been translated into numerous languages. A reading of the poem by the actor
Brian Cox has been viewed almost 30 million times.
If
I must die,
you
must live
to
tell my story
to
sell my things
to
buy a piece of cloth
and
some strings,
(make
it white with a long tail)
so
that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while
looking heaven in the eye
awaiting
his dad who left in a blaze—
and
bid no one farewell
not
even to his flesh
not
even to himself—
sees
the kite, my kite you made,
flying
up above
and
thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing
back love
If
I must die
let
it bring hope
let
it be a tale.
Atef,
once again finding himself living amid the explosions and carnage from Israeli
shells and bombs, doggedly publishes his observations and reflections. His
accounts are often difficult to transmit because of Israel’s blockage of
Internet and phone service. They have appeared in The Washington Post, The New
York Times, The Nation and Slate.
On
the first day of the Israeli bombardment, a friend, the young poet and musician
Omar Abu Shawish, is killed, apparently in an Israeli naval bombardment, though
later reports would say he was killed in an airstrike as he was walking to
work.
Atef
wonders about the Israeli soldiers watching him and his family with “their
infrared lenses and satellite photography.” Can “they count the loafs of bread
in my basket, or the number of falafel balls on my plate?” he wonders. He
watches the crowds of dazed and confused families, their homes in rubble,
carrying “mattresses, bags of clothes, food and drink.” He stands mutely before
“the supermarket, the bureau de change, the falafel shop, the fruit stalls, the
perfume parlor, the sweets shop, the toy shop — all burned.”
“Blood
was everywhere, along with bits of kids’ toys, cans from the supermarket,
smashed fruit, broken bicycles and shattered perfume bottles,” he writes. “The
place looked like a charcoal drawing of a town scorched by a dragon.”
“I went to the Press
House, where journalists were frantically downloading images and writing
reports for their agencies. I was sitting with Bilal, the Press House manager,
when an explosion shook the building. Windows shattered, and the ceiling
collapsed onto us in chunks. We ran toward the central hall. One of the
journalists was bleeding, having been hit by flying glass. After 20 minutes, we
ventured out to inspect the damage. I noticed that Ramadan decorations were
still hanging in the street.”
“The
city has become a wasteland of rubble and debris,” Atef, who has been the
Palestinian Authority’s minister of culture since 2019, writes in the early
days of the Israeli shelling of Gaza City.
“Beautiful buildings fall
like columns of smoke. I often think about the time I was shot as a kid, during
the first intifada, and how my mother told me I actually died for a few minutes
before being brought back to life. Maybe I can do the same this time, I think.”
He
leaves his teenage son with family members.
“The
Palestinian logic is that in wartime, we should all sleep in different places,
so that if part of the family is killed, another part lives,” he writes. “The
U.N. schools are getting more crowded with displaced families. The hope is that
the U.N. flag will save them, though in previous wars, that hasn’t been the
case.”
On
Tuesday Oct. 17 he writes:
“I see death approaching,
hear its steps growing louder. Just be done with it, I think. It’s the 11th day
of the conflict, but all the days have merged into one: the same bombardment,
the same fear, the same smell. On the news, I read the names of the dead on the
ticker at the bottom of the screen. I wait for my name to appear.
In the morning, my phone
rang. It was Rulla, a relative in the West Bank, telling me she had heard
there’d been an airstrike in Talat Howa, a neighborhood on the south side of
Gaza City where my cousin Hatem lives. Hatem is married to Huda, my wife’s only
sister. He lives in a four-story building that also houses his mother and
brothers and their families.
I called around, but no
one’s phone was working. I walked to al-Shifa Hospital to read the names: Lists
of the dead are pinned up daily outside a makeshift morgue. I could barely
approach the building: Thousands of Gazans had made the hospital their home;
its gardens, its hallways, every empty space or spare corner had a family in
it. I gave up and headed toward Hatem’s.
Thirty minutes later, I
was on his street. Rulla had been right. Huda and Hatem’s building had been hit
only an hour earlier. The bodies of their daughter and grandchild had already
been retrieved; the only known survivor was Wissam, one of their other daughters,
who had been taken to the ICU. Wissam had gone straight into surgery, where
both of her legs and her right hand had been amputated. Her graduation ceremony
from art college had taken place only the day before. She has to spend the rest
of her life without legs, with one hand. ‘What about the others?’ I asked
someone.
‘We can’t find them,’ came
the reply.
Amid the rubble, we
shouted: ‘Hello? Can anyone hear us?’ We called out the names of those still
missing, hoping some might still be alive. By the end of the day, we’d managed
to find five bodies, including that of a 3-month-old. We went to the cemetery to
bury them.
In the evening, I went to
see Wissam in the hospital; she was barely awake. After half an hour, she asked
me: ‘Khalo [Uncle], I’m dreaming, right?’
I said, ‘We are all in a
dream.’
‘My dream is terrifying!
Why?’
‘All our dreams are
terrifying.’
After 10 minutes of
silence, she said, ‘Don’t lie to me, Khalo. In my dream, I don’t have legs.
It’s true, isn’t it? I have no legs?’
‘But you said it’s a
dream.’
‘I don’t like this dream,
Khalo.’
I had to leave. For a long
10 minutes, I cried and cried. Overwhelmed by the horrors of the past few days,
I walked out of the hospital and found myself wandering the streets. I thought
idly, we could turn this city into a film set for war movies. Second World War
films and end-of-the-world movies. We could hire it out to the best Hollywood
directors.
Doomsday on demand. Who
could have the courage to tell Hanna, so far away in Ramallah, that her only
sister had been killed? That her family had been killed? I phoned my colleague
Manar and asked her to go to our house with a couple of friends and try to
delay the news from getting to her. ‘Lie to her,’ I told Manar. ‘Say the
building was attacked by F-16s but the neighbors think Huda and Hatem were out
at the time. Any lie that could help.’ ”
Leaflets
in Arabic dropped by Israeli helicopters float down from the sky. They announce
that anyone who remains north of the Wadi waterway will be considered a partner
to terrorism, “meaning,” Atef writes, “the Israelis can shoot on sight.” The
electricity is cut. Food, fuel and water begin to run out.
The
wounded are operated on without anesthesia. There are no painkillers or
sedatives. He visits his niece Wissam, racked with pain, in al-Shifa Hospital
who asks him for a lethal injection. She says Allah will forgive her.
“But
he will not forgive me, Wissam.”
“I
am going to ask him to, on your behalf,” she says.
After
airstrikes he joins the rescue teams “under the cricket-like hum of drones we
couldn’t see in the sky.” A line from T.S Eliot, “a heap of broken images,”
runs through his head. The injured and dead are “transported on three-wheeled
bicycles or dragged along in carts by animals.”
“We picked up pieces of
mutilated bodies and gathered them on a blanket; you find a leg here, a hand
there, while the rest looks like minced meat,” he writes. “In the past week,
many Gazans have started writing their names on their hands and legs, in pen or
permanent marker, so they can be identified when death comes.
This might seem macabre,
but it makes perfect sense: We want to be remembered; we want our stories to be
told; we seek dignity. At the very least, our names will be on our graves. The
smell of unretrieved bodies under the ruins of a house hit last week remains in
the air. The more time passes, the stronger the smell.”
The
scenes around him become surreal. On Nov. 19, day 44 of the assault, he writes:
“A man rides a horse
toward me with the body of a dead teenager slung over the saddle in front. It
seems it’s his son, perhaps. It looks like a scene from a historical movie,
only the horse is weak and barely able to move. He is back from no battle. He is
no knight. His eyes are full of tears as he holds the little riding crop in one
hand and the bridle in the other. I have an impulse to photograph him but then
feel suddenly sick at the idea. He salutes no one. He barely looks up. He is
too consumed with his own loss. Most people are using the camp’s old cemetery;
it’s the safest and although it is technically long-since full, they have
started digging shallower graves and burying the new dead on top of the
old—keeping families together, of course.”
On
Nov. 21 after constant tank-shelling, he decides to flee the Jabaliya
neighborhood in the north of Gaza for the south, with his son and mother-in-law
who is in a wheelchair. They must pass through Israeli checkpoints, where
soldiers randomly select men and boys from the line for detention.
“Scores
of bodies are strewn along both sides of the road,” he writes.
“Rotting, it seems, into
the ground. The smell is horrendous. A hand reaches out toward us from the
window of a burned-out car, as if asking for something, from me specifically. I
see what looks like two headless bodies in a car — limbs and precious body
parts just thrown away and left to fester.”
He
tells his son Yasser: “Don’t look. Just keep walking, son.”
In
early December his family home was destroyed in an airstrike.
“The house a writer grows
up in is a well from which to draw material. In each of my novels, whenever I
wanted to depict a typical house in the camp, I conjured ours. I’d move the
furniture around a bit, change the name of the alley, but who was I kidding? It
was always our house.”
“All the houses in Jabalya
are small. They’re built randomly, haphazardly, and they’re not made to last.
These houses replaced the tents that Palestinians like my grandmother Eisha
lived in after the displacements of 1948.
Those who built them
always thought they’d soon be returning to the beautiful, spacious homes they’d
left behind in the towns and villages of historic Palestine. That return never
happened, despite our many rituals of hope, like safeguarding the key to the
old family home. The future keeps betraying us, but the past is ours.”
“Though I’ve lived in many
cities around the world, and visited many more, that tiny ramshackle abode was
the only place I ever felt at home’” he goes on. “Friends and colleagues always
asked: Why don’t you live in Europe or America? You have the opportunity. My
students chimed in: Why did you return to Gaza?
My answer was always the
same: ‘Because in Gaza, in an alleyway in the Saftawi neighborhood of Jabalya,
there stands a little house that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.’
If on doomsday God were to ask me where I would like to be sent, I wouldn’t
hesitate in saying, ‘Home.’ Now there is no home.”
Atef is now trapped in
southern Gaza with his son. His niece was transferred to a hospital in Egypt.
Israel continues to pound Gaza with over 20,000 dead and 50,000 wounded. Atef
continues to write.
The story of Christmas is
the story of a poor woman, 9 months pregnant, and her husband forced to leave
their home in Nazareth in northern Galilee. The occupying Roman power has
demanded they register for the census 90 miles away in Bethlehem. When they arrive
there are no rooms. She gives birth in a stable.
King Herod — who learned
from the Magi of the birth of the messiah — orders his soldiers to hunt down
every child 2 years old and under in Bethlehem and the vicinity and murder
them. An angel warns Joseph in a dream to flee. The couple and infant escape under
the cover of darkness and make the 40-mile journey to Egypt.
I
was in a refugee camp in the early 1980s for Guatemalans who had fled the war
into Honduras. The peasant farmers and their families, living in filth and mud,
their villages and homes burned or abandoned, were decorating their tents with
strips of colored paper to celebrate the Massacre of the Innocents.
“Why
is this such an important day?” I asked.
“It
was on this day that Christ became a refugee,” a farmer answered.
The
Christmas story was not written for the oppressors. It was written for the
oppressed. We are called to protect the innocents. We are called to defy the
occupying power.
Atef,
Refaat and those like them, who speak to us at the risk of death, echo this
Biblical injunction. They speak so we will not be silent. They speak so we will
take these words and images and hold them up to the principalities of the world
— the media, politicians, diplomats, universities, the wealthy and privileged,
the weapons manufacturers, the Pentagon and the Israel lobby groups — who are
orchestrating the genocide in Gaza.
The
infant Christ is not lying today in straw, but a pile of broken concrete.
Evil
has not changed down the millennia. Neither has goodness.
Palestinian Christians in Gaza fear being ‘swept under the rubble or
into the desert’
December
28, 2023
Hundreds
of Gaza’s Christian families are either sheltering in a church or have fled
south, marking Christmas only as another day of Israel’s deadly assault.
This
holiday season, there was little reminding the Palestinian residents of
Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, that it was Christmas time. Indeed,
the city marked Dec. 25 not as Christmas, but as Day 80 of a vicious war that
has engulfed all of historical Palestine since October 7.
The
events that are typical of Bethlehem this time of year — the tree lighting
ceremony, the bustling market, Scouts parades, and other celebrations — had all
been canceled. Grief and fear predominated as two million Palestinians in the
Gaza Strip continued to endure Israel’s brutal military offensive and punishing
siege, which has left more than 20,000 Palestinians killed. The usual joy that
lights up the city was impossible to find, making it an unrecognizable
Christmas season.
The
decision to let the month pass without its typical festivities was proposed by
various churches and priests and approved by the Bethlehem municipality, which
oversees the annual celebrations. Souvenir shops and restaurants, usually
packed with tourists and visitors from all over Palestine, were largely empty.
The Church of the Nativity, the oldest Christian holy site in the world, would
normally be packed; these days, no one is standing in line to see the spot
where Jesus is said to have been born.
Traditionally,
outside the church, there would also be a towering Christmas tree. This year,
in its place, Bethlehem artists have erected a monumental display of the Flight
of Jesus and the Virgin Mary to Egypt. The story bears painful resonances with
the violence in Gaza, where 80 percent of the Strip’s residents have been
displaced, and even face the looming threat of total expulsion.
The
Lutheran Church, a 19th century building constructed by German pilgrims, has
placed the ongoing war on Gaza at center stage, literally: at the church’s
altar, there is a pile of bricks and stones resembling rubble, with a doll of
baby Jesus lying wrapped in a Palestinian flag.
The
pastor of the church, Mitri Raheb, told +972 that the display was the only way
to make Christmas feel relevant this year, hoping it would inspire thoughts and
prayers for those lying under the rubble in Gaza. “The elements of the
Christmas story resonate in our [Palestinian] story,” he said. “Christmas can
speak to us in a very profound way. It’s about God’s solidarity with us. We
hope that Jesus is looking upon [Gaza] and that He is with them.”
Reverend
Fadi Diab, of the Episcopal Church in Ramallah, warned that the current war
might mark a dark historical moment for Christians in the Middle East, and in
Palestine in particular, where Christian life has been especially precarious
under the weight of the occupation. In the early 20th century, he said, about
17 percent of Palestine’s population was Christian; today, that figure stands
at merely 1 to 2 percent, with most Palestinian Christians now living in the
diaspora.
Pastor
Raheb, who is also a theologian and founder and President of Dar Al-Kalima
College in Bethlehem, spoke of the gravity of this year’s loss. “One of the
many tragedies of the war is that it will bring an end to the existence of the
Palestinian Christians in Gaza. We can’t go on with our lives and pretend
nothing is happening here. We are not in a mood for celebration. While the
world looks at Bethlehem, we want them to see what’s happening there in Gaza.”
No
safety in churches
Reverend
Diab told +972 that Christians have lived in the Gaza region since around the
third century. Markers of its rich Christian history have continued to crop up
over the years: in September 2022, for example, an accidental historical
discovery gave the Strip’s few remaining Christian families a sense of pride —
a 1,500-year-old Byzantine floor mosaic attesting to the wealth of Christian
life in Gaza.
Over
the past 16 years, however — since Israel imposed its blockade on the Strip
following Hamas’ takeover — Gaza’s already small Palestinian Christian
population dropped by two thirds, from nearly 3,000 to just 1,000. The main
reasons for this emigration, according to many from the community itself, were
related to the Israeli occupation and blockade, not because of a sense of
religious persecution within Palestinian society.
Since
the outbreak of the current war, Christian life, like the rest of Palestinian
life in the Strip, has come under severe threat. Christian sites and places of
worship in Gaza have been repeatedly targeted by Israeli forces. Earlier this
month, two Palestinian Christian women, Nahida Khalil Anton and her daughter
Samar, were shot and killed by an Israeli sniper at the Holy Family Parish, the
only Catholic church in Gaza.
Both
the Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches have been targeted by Israeli
airstrikes more than once, according to the Patriarchate in Jerusalem. One such
strike occurred a day before the killings of the elderly mother and her
daughter, damaging the only generator and water tanks that belonged to the
Latin Church, according to witnesses.
The
vast majority of the area’s Christian community are now reportedly sheltering
in the Latin Church in Gaza City, in the north of the Strip, where Israeli
troops have been waging a ground offensive for weeks. Several hundred of them
were originally sheltering in the Greek Orthodox Church elsewhere in the city,
but an Israeli airstrike forced them to flee to the other house of worship.
Ramzi
Andrea, 458 is a Greek Orthodox Christian from Al-Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza
City, who was displaced with his entire family three times since the start of
the war. He is now among a handful of Palestinian Christians who have fled to
the southern city of Rafah, along with members of his family spanning three
generations. Some of the other Christians are dual nationals who were able to
leave through the Rafah Crossing with Egypt.
In
2006, Andrea, who had finished his first degree at Birzeit University in the
occupied West Bank, rerouted his original plan to finish his graduate studies
in Amman, Jordan, and instead returned to his beloved hometown of Gaza City.
Despite Israel launching its siege the following year, and the repeated wars
ever since, he chose to stay in the Strip, resisting the urge of many of his
peers to try to leave the tiny coastal enclave.
Soon
after the start of the current military offensive, the Israeli army ordered all
the residents of Andrea’s neighborhood in Gaza City to relocate down south.
Andrea initially refused and instead took shelter in the Greek Orthodox Church,
but after the compound was hit in late October, he had to relocate again with
his family and moved to the central city of Deir Al-Balah. “We had to evacuate
several times until we reached Rafah, the farthest point in the south,” Andrea
told +972.
‘We’ve
lost the joy. We have only prayer’
“For
80 days we have been seeing all sorts of struggle amid the continued targeting
of churches and places of worship, and the loss of contact with people
especially in the north,” Andrea continued. “We lost a lot of friends during
this journey, and we lost connection with our people in the church.
“All
this is unbearable when it comes without a political horizon,” he added. “We
are now among the hundreds of thousands of refugees who are now looking for
medicine and warmth.”
Andrea,
a banker, was forced to abandon the 50-year-old, family-run business in Gaza
City’s famous commercial center, Al-Rimal. Years ago, he had wanted to start a
venture to help emerging businesses in the besieged Strip to advertise their
products and their success stories. But soon after the battles between Israeli
forces and Palestinian armed groups intensified in Deir Al-Balah, he was forced
to evacuate again and move to Rafah with his family.
“Today
is like any other day to us, not Christmas Day,” he lamented. “We want to
mourn. We don’t want to celebrate — we don’t feel that we are able to. We have
lost the joy. We have only prayer.”
Communication
with the remaining families at the Latin Church in the north is very difficult,
he explained. “When we hear a ringtone, the whole family gathers just to hear a
hello from there. We are barely in touch,” he said with a sorrowful voice.
“The
general thought among all Palestinian Christians now is to immigrate, after
their homes and businesses were destroyed, and since there is no political
horizon signaling an end to this crisis,” he added, expressing his fear that
the total destruction of Gaza is “sweeping away everyone either under the
rubble or into the desert.”
“My
home, my neighborhood, my church, the roads leading to my house, even my gym,
have been razed to the ground, with the whole world watching. There’s nothing
left for the 2 million Gazans. I can’t imagine what would be the case for the
few remaining Christians,” he said.
Back
in Ramallah, Reverend Diab similarly worried that Christian life in Gaza could
be wiped out entirely. “Hitting churches, like hitting hospitals and schools,
sends a message to all Palestinians that no place is safe,” he said. “Without
the people, the churches will turn into museums.”
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