Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: In Gaza, Israeli brutality on display daily...

L'autore della testimonianza parla dell'altra faccia (the dark side) di
israele. Qualcuno mi saprebbe spiegare quale e' the bright side? Non riesco
ad immaginarla... Forse ho davvero pregiudizi circa israele. Ma se anche li
avessi, come si fa a non averli? Dopo che si assiste a questo continuo
stillicidio dei palestinesi inermi effettuato non da gruppi terroristici ma
da un governo, con un esercito regolare e' difficile giustificarne le azioni
e quindi riuscire a vedere anche i suoi lati positivi.
By Rana El-Khatib
The Arizona Republic
25 January 2004
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/viewpoints/articles/0125El-
Khatib0125.html#
"Israel good!" were the last words my husband and I heard as we left
the final checkpoint within Erez, the border crossing maintained by
Israel to control all entries and exits to and from Gaza.
I turned back to get a closer look at the soldier. I saw a petite,
attractive blond, her face almost smiling. Her arms rested
comfortably on a large-against-her-frame M-16. Her words echoed
chillingly in my head - not because I did not want to believe her,
but because I had just seen the other side of Israel: the
"not-so-good" Israel.
We traveled to Gaza to return 6-year-old twin sisters, Asma and
Hiba, to their refugee camp existence. The girls had spent the last
five months in our Phoenix home recovering from major surgery. They
had grown very fond of their doctors and the dozens of families they
met here.
They also grew accustomed to the creature comforts of American life.
Here, they had a soft bed. They could sleep the night through
without the earsplitting sounds of artillery all around them. They
had a television. They showered every day and enjoyed a tub filled
with warm suds. They did not have to fear a helicopter. They had
electricity all the time. They could be children.
In Gaza, they sleep on mats on the floor. They shower only when they
have water. A helicopter sends them into a panic. Their father is
not always able to travel to his nursing job. Electricity cuts off
regularly. A soldier represents terror and hate. They are denied a
childhood as we know it.
Our four disturbing days and three sleepless nights in Gaza were
filled with the images and sounds of a society in turmoil. Atrophy
infested every aspect of life, and a real sense of isolation hung in
the air.
During the daylight, in the company of friends, we tried to overlook
the dilapidated conditions. During the nights, it was a different
story. Trying to sleep amid the raucous sounds of state-of-the-art
Israeli weapons against the pathetic pap, pap, pap of Palestinian
Kalashnikov guns was difficult.
At times, only a few rounds could be heard echoing above the city.
At other times, my husband and I cringed helplessly at the thought
of who was at the receiving end of the hail of bullets. When the
shooting began, it silenced the cacophony of roosters crowing out of
sync and the sporadic, spine-chilling shrill of hawks that pierced
the dark.
And at least once each night, there remained one sound that jolted
me back to consciousness - the vociferous brays of one anguished
donkey. Every species seemed troubled.
Our ninth-floor room in our empty hotel offered a panoramic view of
two very disparate worlds. Immediately below us, we could see the
decrepit Palestinian world. In the distance, a settlement that might
as well be labeled "Jews Only" nestled up neatly against the
seashore, enclosed behind lush greenery and protected by armed
soldiers in watchtowers.
When I asked if I could take photos, I was told simply, "The
Israelis will see you and you could get shot." The bullet hole in
our hotel window and rear wall facing it reinforced the wisdom of
their recommendation.
Bullets also occasionally rain down from dreaded Israeli observation
towers. These blots on the landscape protrude menacingly over the
densely populated towns. And when the volleys of bullets hail down,
for whatever given reason, they often kill or injure innocent people
going about their daily lives, such as the life of 9-year old Hani.
We saw his lifeless and bloodied body at a hospital morgue. He had
been shot in the head by one such bullet while playing soccer.
Israeli soldiers interfere with the most basic of freedoms, like the
choice to leave one's home. When Palestinians are not jailed in
their homes under curfew, their freedom is restricted by notorious
checkpoints that can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 15 hours to
cross.
At these checkpoints, soldiers peer out through small, darkened,
rectangular windows from inside unsightly steel structures that
overlook pothole-filled roads. Decisions as to who goes in and out
of particular areas are often arbitrary and baseless.
Merkava tanks also dominate the society. Concealed inside 3-inch
walls of steel, Israeli soldiers barrel forebodingly down small,
densely populated streets. The tanks deliberately damage streets,
churning the asphalt into crater-filled, sewage-seeping obstacle
courses for emaciated donkeys and the relatively few cars to
maneuver precariously around.
Soldiers will sometimes park the steel behemoths in one spot,
shifting their cannons from side to side, provoking the young and
the fearless to throw rocks at them. Consequently, the soldiers open
fire into the crowds, leaving both destruction and death in their
wake.
F-16 fighter planes serve as yet another notch in the belt of
Israeli domination, reinforcing their total control over the
Palestinians they rule. They streak sinisterly across the Gazan sky
- day and night. Heaps of mangled concrete buildings lay in their
wake.
The most spine-chilling face of Israel's occupation comes in the
form of Apache helicopters. The mere sight of one causes pandemonium
in the streets. People scramble to take cover. No one feels safe.
Apache missions almost always set out to murder individuals who are
unilaterally declared to be "threats to Israel's security."
In the process of executing people without any due process, innocent
bystanders are killed as well. They were either unfortunate enough
to be in the area when the assault took place, or were administering
aid to the victims of the initial onslaught. These innocent human
beings get tacked onto the mounting "collateral damage" pile.
Among Israel's most provocative actions is its ongoing expansion and
development of new government-subsidized Jews-only housing for
illegal settlers to live on stolen Palestinian land. These settlers
drive on Jews-only roads that lead into lavish Jews-only colonies
with manicured lawns and swimming pools. Palestinians, less than one
mile away, do not even have enough clean water to drink.
Perhaps the most egregious act of Israel's occupation that we saw
firsthand is its home demolitions and collective punishment
policies. Thousands of homes and apartment buildings have been
demolished. Entire families are forced into tents set up by the
United Nations, making refugees of refugees for a second, third and
even fourth time. It is estimated that some 40,000 Palestinians in
Gaza and the West Bank have been left homeless since September 2000.
We returned precious Asma and Hiba to a giant prison cell. Their
crime is that they refuse to disappear silently into someone else's
version of history and fact. Palestine may have been erased off the
world's maps, but Palestinians have not. Asma and Hiba have not. At
least not yet.
Weiss, an American Israeli, is a registered patent lawyer and
co-author of I Am My Brother's Keeper: American Volunteers in
Isreal's War for Independence
El-Khatib is a Palestinian-American poet and activist living in
Phoenix. She is the author of BRANDED, The Poetry of a So-Called
"Terrorist," a collection of poems available from online booksellers
beginning in March 2004.

Forse ho davvero pregiudizi circa israele.
Infatti sei un antisemita ben conosciuto :)
-Stefano

Un'altra testimonianza:
By Gideon Levy
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/388524.html
After one of their sons was killed on the roof and a nephew shot to
death in a funeral procession, their eldest son blew himself up with
an explosives belt. A week in the life of the Al-Masri family.
Abir al-Masri was sitting on a window sill in her house in the center
of Nablus and watching her son Amjad, 15, who was on the roof of the
adjacent house chatting with his brother and some friends. Suddenly
she saw him falling onto his side. A fatal bullet hit him before her
horrified eyes.
The next day, death struck again. Abir's nephew Mohammed, 18, was shot
during Amjad's funeral procession. A week later, there was another
tragedy: Iyad, her eldest son, 17, blew himself up in front of
soldiers. Thus Abir al-Masri, 34, lost two sons and a nephew within a
week.
The mother of the boys maintains a frozen expression. She doesn't cry,
doesn't raise her voice. Well-groomed in black clothes, with a gray
head scarf, she doesn't move a muscle in her face as she tells about
the killing of one of her sons and the explosion of the other. She had
four sons; now only two sons and a daughter remain. Their home is in
an apartment house in the center of Nablus, behind the cauliflower
stalls, a typical middle class apartment on the second floor, with
velvet sofas, rugs, and porcelain figures in a glass case.
Amjad was a student in the 10th grade in the Amr bin al-Aas school in
the city. On the day of his death, January 3, he woke up early to
prepare for his civics test. On that day the IDF (Israel Defense
Forces) was in the old city of Nablus, but here, in the city center,
it seemed to be quiet.
Amjad left at 8 A.M. A short distance from the school, he noticed the
soldiers, turned around and went home. Impatient, he tried once more
after a short time; but again returned home. The IDF was in the area;
there was no exam. He climbed to the roof of the neighboring house, a
stone apartment building like his own, to see whether the soldiers had
left.
A small Palestinian flag now waves on the roof of the neighboring
house, where Amjad was waiting to go to school. Two palm saplings are
planted in his backyard, a small monument to the fallen boy.
Abir says she saw the children talking on the roof just before Amjad
was killed. The IDF spokesman has a different version: "Amjad was
killed as he was throwing rocks from the roof of the building on an
IDF force, during the course of a disturbance in which he was
involved. The force was engaged in operational activity, because of
warnings of the intention of terrorist organizations to send five
suicide bombers to carry out attacks in the heart of Israel. In the
operation, four suicide bombers were caught, as well as dozens of
wanted men. During the course of this activity there were many
attempts to harm the IDF forces by throwing Molotov cocktails,
throwing down cinder blocks from the roofs of buildings, and even
shooting and throwing bombs."
Abir just managed to shout "What happened to you?" and her son managed
to answer: "Nothing" before he fell. She didn't see any rocks or any
bottles. A neighbor called an ambulance, the mother rushed to her son
as he lay on the roof, unconscious. She didn't see blood. Iyad rode
with them in the ambulance. Next to the City Hall building, the
ambulance was delayed by the soldiers, and after a while it arrived at
the hospital. Amjad was buried the same day.
Abir didn't go to her son's funeral. But Fatma al-Masri, her
sister-in-law, did. Fatma says that Amjad wanted to be a pharmacist;
long ago he began to spend hours in her pharmacy, helping run the
business. Amjad's father enters the room and wraps himself in silence.
An accountant, he has been unemployed for a year and a half.
During the funeral procession, says Fatma, there were suddenly shots
in the direction of the stretcher on which the dead youth was being
carried. She says this was the first time in the history of the city
that there were shots at a funeral procession. One of the pallbearers
was Mohammed al-Masri, Amjad's 18-year-old cousin. Fatma, who was
Mohammed's aunt too, says that one of the bullets just missed Iyad's
head and hit his cousin, Mohammed. He fell, and died.
The IDF spokesman: "A violent disturbance took place during Amjad's
funeral too, during which Molotov cocktails and stones were thrown at
IDF soldiers. Mohammed, Amjad's cousin, took part in the riots, threw
Molotov cocktails at the soldiers and endangered them. The force fired
in his direction and in that of another terrorist, who was armed with
a pistol."
Mohammed was buried next to Amjad the day after his cousin's funeral.
Iyad, who was on the roof with his brother Amjad, rode with him in the
ambulance, and was almost killed at his funeral, seemed to go back to
his usual routine. His mother says she didn't notice any special signs
of distress, nor did she hear any talk of revenge from him.
Nevertheless, there was something worth mentioning in his behavior,
she finally admits. At the end of the four days of mourning for the
death of his brother, he asked her not to rush to end the mourning. In
the coming days he hardly left the house, stayed shut up in his room.
He also began to smoke, something he hadn't done before. His aunt,
Fatma, told him that his duty now was to take care of his mother.
On Sunday, January 11, exactly a week after the funeral, Iyad left the
house. He told his parents he was going to work; he worked
occasionally in construction. Abir didn't hear from him again.
In the afternoon, the Hezbollah television station, Al Manar,
broadcast news about a young man who had blown himself up in front of
soldiers in an open field, at the exit from the village of Jinsafot.
In the family home, they hadn't turned on the TV yet, because of the
mourning for Amjad, and that's why they didn't hear the news. They
found out only in the evening.
Where was he heading? What was he planning? Why did he blow himself up
in the open field? Did he get lost on the way to the Qalandiyah
checkpoint, which is far from there, get scared when he saw the
soldiers at the Jinsafot checkpoint and therefore blow himself up far
from them, as residents of the village reported? The IDF spokesman:
"Iyad al-Masri, Amjad's brother, blew himself up near the village of
Jinsafot, near [the Jewish settlement] Kedumim. He was on his way to
carry out a suicide attack in the center of the country."
The family received no information about what happened. The next day,
Haaretz published a report to the effect that the father of the
family, Bilal, had expressed anger at Islamic Jihad for recruiting his
son. "We are a patriotic family that has sacrificed its part in the
intifada, but the group that recruited Iyad sent him without thinking
about the fact that they sacrificed him for no reason," the father was
quoted as saying. The announcement by the family, who according to the
report asked the Palestinian Authority to investigate the
circumstances of Iyad's recruitment, also said that "the family
condemns the exploitation of the young man's emotional state in the
wake of the killing of his brother in cold blood. The youth was sent
on an operation with no goal, with the result a forgone conclusion. He
was sent with an explosives belt, without his dispatchers taking an
interest in his chances of success, although they were familiar with
the army's security measures."
Bilal shifts uneasily when confronted with the quotations. "They
twisted my words," he says hesitantly. He only turned to the PA with a
request that they ask Islamic Jihad for information about what
happened to Iyad. Then he decided to express his opinion: "Sending my
son was a big mistake. We want to live, and anyone with a conscience
will fight the occupation in his own way."
What if Iyad had asked you?
"There's no father in the world who would agree."
Are you angry at the Jihad?
"We are believers. It's something that happened and that's that. The
conditions and the timing were not justified."
What do you think happened to Iyad?
"If he thought of going to those organizations, it was only in order
to avenge the deaths of his brother and his cousin, and of his friend
Raad Khaled, who was also killed."
Bilal would at least like to have his son's body. The IDF isn't
returning it. The IDF spokesman: "All the bodies of Palestinian
terrorists are returned to the families for burial. In those cases
where a decision is made not to return the body of a terrorist to his
family, it is done for reasons of security and after taking into
account all the circumstances relating to the matter."
Iyad didn't leave explanations. No letter and no video cassette.
Surprisingly, neither the Islamic Jihad nor any other group issued
victory posters to commemorate him.
The younger son, 11-year-old Islam, looks puzzled, as though he
doesn't understand what the fuss is all about. Their little sister,
Alaa, saw Amjad killed on the roof.
"Our 1- and 2-year-old children know that there is death and killing
and shooting. Every one of us expects to fall at any moment," says
Fatma. "Have mercy on our children. Just as you love your children, we
love our children."
"Put pressure on your sons to stop the killing," says Abir to Israeli
mothers. "Mothers allow their children to kill, and then come with
complaints about suicide attacks. As long as their sons continue to
kill our children, they shouldn't expect an end to the killing on our
part."