A Palestinian’s Letter on the Gaza Crisis

I copied this mail from a Palestinian who reacted to a statement made by a friend of his who obviously represents how most ‘people in the west’ think about the crisis in Palestina. I also include the mail that invokes what would be a long debate among students or graduates from different countries and background. At the end of my Palestinian friend’s mail there is a list of links to a better coverage of the Gaza crisis that you should look up.

Thee- mail from a German:

Why doesn’t Hamas stop their attacks on Israel? Why haven’t they stopped for months when Israel generously practiced restraint and tolerated the exposure of its own people to constant attacks? The democratically elected Hamas government could have easily avoided the hardship on its own people.

The Palestinian’s e-mail:

“…when Israel generously practiced restraint and tolerated the exposure of its own people to constant attacks”.

I stand speechless when I read something like the statement above and I don’t blame Irene for typing it, because if I watch CNN only or read NYT and the likes only, and imagining myself as an outsider to the situation in Gaza, I think I might go ahead and write something like what Irene wrote.

However, as someone whose family is under fire in Gaza and can all die at any moment, I cannot help but to tell you this: please open your eyes, and stop posing as parrots repeating what you hear in the mainstream media, like CNN, FOX, NYT, Jerusalem Post, ..etc. There are hundreds and hundreds of blogs and news outlets that operate without an agenda, read them, get informed, don’t be a parrot and repeat statements like the one above.

I wish I had time to write a long article and show you how “generous” “Israel” is when it restrained itself and only killed 450 people, the vast majority of them don’t identify with Hamas or any other militant group, like the 120 children and women that got killed, and the doctors, EMS personnel, people praying in mosques (as I am writing this, 11 people just got killed while praying the 4th daily prayer in a mosque in my neighborhood, I am typing this and watching live pictures from the local hospital, only few hundred meters from my home in Gaza). Israel claims that they are attacking Hamas strongholds and buildings! The truth is they target every moving object in Gaza and label it as a Hamas stronghold. You all should ask yourself, is the ministry of Education a Hamas stronghold, is the Islamic University of Gaza (The premier higher education school in Gaza and among the best in the middle east) a Hamas building, is Gaza main hospital a Hamas stronghold, … the list goes on.

Yesterday, “Israel” killed a top Hamas political leader, they bombed his home with an F-16 warplane, he was killed that’s what CNN reported, but they filtered the rest of the story, that the house was full of children and women, 11 children and 4 women were killed in that building. CNN missed the part about the 11 children, the youngest is 1 year and the oldest is 14.

“Israel” is not only fighting Hamas, they are fighting every single one in Gaza, it’s a genocide, it’s the big shoah (holocaust) as a top “Israeli” cabinet member once called an even smaller scale operation on Gaza.

While I am typing this e-mail, “Israel” has started its ground operation, few tanks have crossed the border, and it seems that the 450 people killed are not enough to drive people to vote for Livni or Barak. The “Israeli” election is coming in few weeks, and the dead bodies of the Gazans are the best campaign tactics to win votes. This is the “Israeli” democracy.

An “Israeli” journalist couple of days ago wrote this in Haaretz, an “Israeli” newspaper:

“I will not conceal my enjoyment of the flames and smoke rising from Gaza that have poured from our television screens”.

Some blogs that cover the massacres in Gaza.

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com

http://sabbah.biz

http://gazatoday.blogspot.com/

http://umkahlil.blogspot.com/