On the other side of the firing line
Bookworm on Mar 11 2008 at 11:36 am | Filed under: Israel, Palestinians
Spiegel, a German magazine that is not known for its friendliness to either America or Israel, has a quite amazing story today about a Gazan woman, pregnant with twins, who was allowed to enter Israel for treatment of her complications. While there, she was exposed to the same Israelis who are so demonized on her side of the border, and she got to experience personally one of the random rocket attacks. The story is a breath of fresh air in that it accurately describes the escalation of Gazan warfare against Israel despite the withdrawal, Israeli humanitarianism, the way in which Gazan fanatics terrorize their own civilian population, and the culture shock a woman experiences when removed from the cesspool that is Gaza (a Gaza, I need to remind you, that is kept cesspooly and insulated by Western funds):
In the past, Shafii [the pregnant woman] saw the Israelis exclusively as perpetrators, but in Ashkelon she is encountering, for the first time, victims of the acts of terror committed by her own people. One of them is nine-year-old Yossi, who is sitting in a wheelchair. A steel frame holds his left shoulder together. It was fractured by shrapnel from a rocket that landed in the city of Sderot. “The people in Sderot are suffering just as we are in Gaza,” she says.
There was a sharp increase in the Palestinian rocket attacks after Israel cleared the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip in September 2005. The Israeli military counted 2,305 hits last year, and there have already been 1,146 in the first two months of this year. Until now, almost all of the missiles have been Qassam rockets, which are made in the Gaza Strip and have a range of about 12 kilometers (seven miles).
But the breaching of the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Egypt by Hamas in January made it possible to bring in Russian and Iranian rockets with longer ranges. This means that cities considered safe in the past are now threatened. One of them is Ashkelon. On the second day after the birth of Bayan and Faisal, a Soviet-made “Grad” rocket landed on the hospital grounds. “I heard it hit, 200 meters away from me,” says Shafii. The neonatal unit was moved to a bunker the next day. “The groups that are firing the rockets are not fighting a just war,” says the Palestinian mother, adding that they are not abiding by what the Prophet Muhammad said: that wars may only be waged between soldiers, but not against civilians.
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Ashraf Shafii describes how young, masked men repeatedly set up their rocket launchers under the cover of houses in Beit Lahia. “They shoot at Israeli civilians, which is completely unacceptable,” says Shafii. “And they put us Palestinian civilians in grave danger, because the Israelis shoot back.”
Why doesn’t he object? “They are armed,” says Shafii, “and they shoot at anyone who gets in their way.”
The father is holding the first photos of his newborn twins in his hands. He is worried about the rockets being fired at Ashkelon. He says that he would never have believed it possible that he could be indebted to the Israelis for anything. “What a confusing situation,” he says.
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5 Responses to “On the other side of the firing line”
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The Palestinian Problem is also occuring in the black and hispanic populations of America. And pretty much for the same reasons. The psychological state of a minority that produces either exemplary superiority complexes or extreme inferiority complexes. Sometimes both at once.
If somebody doesn’t solve these problems, bad things will happen, I assure you. Nations will fall and billions will be stuck in the Dark Age that is Africa and North Korea.
Because Israel refuses to engage in any contact with the authorities in Hamas-controlled Gaza, patients turn to private brokers who submit their entry applications to the Palestinian Authority of moderate President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. But it can be a lengthy process.
If you want the loyalty of the Palestinians, the Jews better create departments linking Israel directly to the Palesitnians that need their services. We all know the middle man takes a cut of everything, and don’t serve either side.
Every Empire eventually figured out that the Emperor had to have the support of the people directly and NOT through the power hungry aristocrats. Unfortunately, those lessons were lost when Europe jacked up imperialism and colonialism by their half-hearted failures. Rome and Greece did great things just so Europe could frack up the entire image of empire. Great.
Why doesn’t he object? “They are armed,” says Shafii, “and they shoot at anyone who gets in their way.”
Ironic that in the end, what matters is not religious or political beliefs, but who can use the tool of violence better. For sheep, life is never a battleground. It is just a state to be in until dead.
There are those that believe in Peace through Superior Firepower and then there are those that believe in Peace Through Letting People Die. I suppose the peace of the grave is the easier of the two to acquire.
Excuse me? What’s confusing, here, sir?
As a thought experiment, Mr. Shafi….what would happen to a Jewish woman and her twins, were they to be transported somehow to Gaza, today?
So, here we have Gazans hiding in civilian neighborhoods, shooting off rockets into civilian neighborhoods occupied by Jews, and bringing down the defensive fire of the IDF onto the houses and the children of their innocent co-religionists, who allow access only under threat of murder.
Over there, we have the Jews, who take in a pregnant Gazan mother to save the lives of her two children, who protect her from the indiscriminate rocket fire of her co-religionists on the other side of the border, who finish taking care of the problems and then send her safely home, whose Army takes every precaution to save civilian lives as they attempt to defend their country and their people, and who daily provide the energy supplies and other services needed for Muslim, murdering Gaza to keep going.
And you, Mr. Shafii, are somehow CONFUSED? No, you’re not….you’re dishonest.
I think he’s not confused about the facts, Earl. I think he’s desperately confused to have to face the fact that his religious/political system, which has been pushed in his face as the ultimate, best, most humane system to which to submit, is completely false. He’s suffering an existential crisis. I wish more would.
Excuse me? What’s confusing, here, sir?
What’s confusing is that people realize that they live in more than just a limited world, a world beyond their parochial doorsteps and even beyond the limits of their imagination.
When people understand that in war, their side is not particularly always 100% right, it increases their sense of perception about human nature. That increase of perception, for sheep, would be stunning and confusing. Those that seek to criticism their own side but believe the other side is perfectly ideal or ideally perfect, do the opposite of expanding their horizons and thus are no better than the fanatic that believes his own cause to always be Righteous.
I guess my point was that if the man were being honest, he’d be saying “I was lied to….”, rather than “It’s just so confusing…..”
I suppose that this is expecting ‘WAY too big a jump in such a short time….but when the evidence slaps you in the face THAT hard, and THAT intensely, it seems to me that you’d make the journey a little faster.
In fact, given the reality of Gaza, and he cannot possibly be ignorant of THAT,…….. ….I’d expect him to be asking for asylum in Israel.
I’ve never been terribly patient with people who seem unable to see what is so abundantly clear, I’m afraid.