In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing
the history of the holy … ascending to heaven
and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love
and peace are holy and are coming to town.
These are the opening lines from “In Jerusalem” by Mahmoud Darwish (translated by Fady Joudah).
Millenia have passed and Jerusalem remains the ancient holy city that represents paradise for the faithful — not of one but three major religions. At the crossroad of religious conflict, a few square kilometres enclose history within the cornerstones of the Wailing Wall, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The roads here crunch under the boots of soldiers of the Israeli Defence Forces even at times of peace. But the last fortnight was a show of crazed war-games, public lynchings and rockets criss-crossing the skies above.
In the comfort of our homes, our lives went on, the Middle-Eastern conflict a seemingly distant news piece in the papers. I turned on Netflix, as usual, one evening and up popped the first recommendation — “Born in Gaza”. I clicked “play” out of curiosity and thereafter remained glued to the screen, taking in the horrific stories that played out in the documentary.
The film follows the camera into Gaza at the end of the Israeli offensive in 2014, narrating the stories of ten children, each a witness to personal devastation. A brother blown to pieces, a morning on the beach ending in little boys dying, fathers killed while driving ambulances carrying patients, little girls lying bandaged in hospital beds, screaming at nightmares that haunt them weeks later. Their daily struggles include PTSD, poverty, hunger and fear. The overhead camera shots revealed kilometres of buildings razed to the ground where the Palestinians seemed to be still living.
‘The situation is really complicated. We have a war every two years’, stated 13 year old Mohamed. ‘I often think about our situation and I never see the end’.
A basic question arises — what is the pressing need to kill innocents? What is this achieving? Why does Israel use its sophisticated military machinery to kill civilians — mostly women and children? Inside territory that is already wretched — the Hamas controlling every piece of it remorselessly.
Children under the age of 15, who live in Gaza have lived their entire lives under Israeli blockade. We cannot begin to imagine the miserable lives these families live. Their movements restricted, warships on the waters and military drones in the skies. Within the borders of Gaza, the Hamas has had a stranglehold since 2007. Dissent is impossible. The children have grown up witnesses to hatred and violence, living with stifling moral codes and bizarre school curriculum.
After the last war in 2014, Hasan Zeyada, a psychologist with the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, told The Guardian, “We are talking about a traumatised generation. They will perceive the world as dangerous, and they will have a lot of frustration and anger. And a desire for revenge.”
Across the Mediterranean Sea from Israel, on the beaches of Spain, Italy and Greece, children grow up building sand castles. The ones Born in Gaza pick out body parts, after a football game on the beach gets interrupted by shelling. Growing up with resentment and hatred is the natural outcome.
The Palestinian death toll this time stood at 248, including 66 children, with more than 1,900 people wounded from Israeli air and artillery attacks. Rocket fire killed at least 12 people in Israel, including two children. I looked up a few names behind these numbers.
Ibrahim al-Talaa, 17, lives in the centre of the Gaza Strip. When the shelling began, he was among those who sent a final farewell to extended family members and friends through Facebook.
He is one the many youngsters that will never forgive or forget. “As a Palestinian in Gaza, I am deprived of my simple right to live in safety. I asked my friend to spread my message that I won’t forgive any human being and president in this world who supports the Israeli occupation, normalises with them, or even stays in silence.”
Reem Hani was 19 during the 2014 attack. Her neighbourhood had been razed by tanks then. This time, when the rockets landed she and her family of five siblings and parents fled in a car with a few belongings and their documents.
She said that she witnessed the same scene from six years earlier with hundreds of people running on the streets, all heading to the west of the Gaza Strip.
“My family and I survived in 2014, but we didn’t expect that we would survive this time because they launched more than 50 air attacks around us while we were in the car. I kept hugging my young brothers, shedding tears, and fearing I’d die before we arrived at our destination,” said Reem.
Nothing has changed in Gaza in the interim years though much has changed in the rest of the world. Global mortality rates have plummeted (excluding the pandemic), illiteracy numbers are down, Antarctica is losing gigatons of ice mass as climate change is on its course to destroy large parts of our environment, we get regular visual updates from Mars. But all of these have passed the children of Gaza by.
Palestinians world over mark May 15 each year as the Nakba — “catastrophe” — the ethnic cleansing and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948. This was followed by the Naksa in 1967 — “setback” when Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Documents suggest 430,000 Palestinians were displaced then, half of them becoming refugees a second time since 1948.
A few days back, I wrote about David, the king of the Israelites. The Valley of Elah where David slayed Goliath is not far from Gaza, only 26 kilometres from Jerusalem. That was a battle fought between armies. Today the descendants of David and Goliath have taken on the contraptions of war to fight innocence. And the rest of the world debates, pontificates, even adds to the arsenal of both sides.
One of Israel’s most famous poets, Yehuda Amichai wrote:
We forget where we came from. Our Jewish
names from the Exile give us away,
bring back the memory of flower and fruit, medieval cities,
metals, knights who turned to stone, roses,
spices whose scent drifted away, precious stones, lots of red,
handicrafts long gone from the world
(the hands are gone too).
Circumcision does it to us,
as in the Bible story of Shechem and the sons of Jacob,
so that we go on hurting all our lives.
-extract from “Jews in the Land of Israel”. (Translated by Chana Bloch).
Is there a point to the constant hurting? Israel is a beautiful country, prosperous, admired by the world for its dynamism and success in all areas that a civilization should excel at. They should leave the children alone.
