Lesley Whiting ~ Gaza Eyewitness: Crimes Against Humanity

“There is more. I haven’t yet mentioned the settler roads, and settler attacks, the checkpoint abuses, the apartheid (land grab) wall,  children forced to jump across rooftops to get to school, the psychological scarring of children and youth and so much more.” L Whiting

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Palestinian woman in Gaza strip. A Palestinian woman sees her destroyed house in Beit Hanoun town, in the northern Gaza Strip.Reuters/Suhaib Salem

While Gaza is in the spotlight, there is public outrage and people are moved to take action. It is important to remember that while the atrocities committed in the open air concentration camp called Gaza have called attention to the brutal, genocidal war being waged against the Palestinians, it is highly visible tip of the iceberg. To be effective, we have to wage a relentless war of exposure, whether or not the media choose to keep it in the headlines. The problem is not only the recurring blood ritual of the war on Gaza. It started with the Nakba, when the Palestininan were driven from their ancestral homes and villages or slaughtered. It is the brutal Occupation of stolen land, the inhuman blockade of Gaza,  it is the relentless collective punishment of Palestinian civilians, of students, doctors, businessmen, journalists and all the ordinary people like you and me, a state without an army.  It is about the continuous, fully documented, flagrant violations of countless International Laws including the Geneva conventions by the Rothchild chronically mind- infested “State” of Israel.

We are all Palestinian indeed. And Palestine is the stage upon which the great human drama is being played out.

From 2001, during the second Intifada, to 2004 I made a series of fact-finding trips to the West Bank, and joined the International Solidarity Movement in actions against the occupation. I would like to share with you some impressions.  .

But where should I begin? Perhaps near Nablus, where I began my journey, at the Azzan (funeral) of a father of five. We ascended the narrow stairway lined with silent mourners, there to pay respects. A top the staircase was his wife, ashen white, in her ninth month of pregnancy, her young children bewildered, tearful and clutching at her skirts. Her husband, an ordinary auto-parts dealer, had come home with birthday cake and gifts for one of his sons. During the celebration, a friend had called to say that the Israeli tank stationed in their road had withdrawn from the street. He went onto the balcony with his wife to look…… and was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper. His wife still had the shrapnel embedded in her wrist and belly – they would not operate due to her late stage of pregnancy. We payed our respects and left…… as she silently stared into a future without her beloved husband and family breadwinner, with 5 children and an aging mother to care for and another baby on the way, the baby who her husband would never see. Later that evening the wife would hear the report…..a “Palestinian gunman” was killed on a rooftop outside Nablus.

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Or shall I tell about the Salfit police station, reduced to rubble, with part of a missile still embedded in the roof, with the words clearly visible “Made in the USA”? (I have the photo).

Or  the home of the young man, recently married, now in a wheelchair. His crime?  He had responded to the warning shout of a neighbour, the dreaded word: “Geish!!” (soldiers!), and run to pick up small child playing in the orchard to carry him to safety. As he ran, he was shot, the bullet lodged in the spine, causing him to be paralysed from the waist down. I will not forget the look in the eyes of his young wife, who opened a door briefly to greet us with a shy smile from the shadows, but behind the smile was the unspoken despair and the shattered hopes and dreams of a newly married couple for their future and the children they would probably never have. I asked the young man about his profession.” I was a sports instructor” he said. I wished I hadn’t asked.

Ramallah, under curfew. We attempted to take food to 9 Palestinian journalists stranded in an apartment building. The IDF rule, during 24 hour curfew is “shoot on sight and shoot to kill” Curfew was lifted once a week for a few hours to allow people to buy food. It always ended with live gunfire as “warning” shots.

As we ascended the blown out rubble strewn building, glass shattered, we were met with a wide trail of dried blood, as if something had been dragged out of a room and into the elevator (now jammed shut). We entered the room. The entire floor was smeared with congealed blood. Around the walls, at 5 distinct spots, each  at the height of about 1 metre, were massive splatterings of blood.  In some cases the blood had fine-sprayed all the way up to the ceiling.  This was not a shoot out. It was the scene of a summary execution, 5 men had been tied up, made to sit or kneel on the floor and shot in the head at point blank range.

One of the reporters in the building (who discovered the bodies) confirmed that all five were members of the Palestinian police force, four of them aged between 50 and 65, the fifth was in his thirties. All had been shot in the head.  (This reporter, during my stay, was arrested and “disappeared”).

Nablus again, accompanying doctors on their way to the hospital in an ambulance (as the presence of a foreigner in the ambulance sometimes prevents the Israelis from firing at it). At a checkpoint, all the doctors are forced out of the ambulance, made to stand with their hands on the side of the ambulance at gunpoint while the ambulance is “checked for terrorists”. I was asked by the medical staff to stay in the front seat and not get out. However, after a long delay my rage got the better of me and I got out and walked towards the soldier guarding the doctors to question what they were doing. He pointed his rifle at my head and shouted in broken English, ” Don’t move or I shoot!”. I replied that if he shot me he would be in big trouble. From the corner of my eye I noticed a movement of the barrel of a gun hidden in a pile of sandbags train its sights itself on the doctors. I recalled their words and thought that they would be the ones shot, not me, and got back into the ambulance.

Ramallah, the ambulance which delivers food and essential medicine to people under curfew, the pleading eyes of a young father cradling his infant in his arms asking for infant formula. We only have milk powder. No, he says, my baby is too young, he is very sick, we need infant formula. We do not have any. There is a shortage. Tears and despair well up in his eyes…… at that moment there is the sound of a tank approaching  and people instantaneously scatter. The man with his baby vanishes into the clouds of dust…..

Ramallah, under total 24 hour curfew.  Only the ambulances move, I am stationed with an ambulance distributing emergency medicines. We find a middle aged woman in the midday heat struggling along with a seven year old boy in her arms. The ambulance stops. The driver yells at her. They will be shot. The boy has a raging fever and looks semi conscious. She pleads with us to take her son  to the hospital. We cannot. The food/medicine ambulances are not permitted (by Israel) pick up people. The area around the hospital is surrounded by military. We can only take her back home and call another ambulance (for sick and wounded) to collect her from home. We cannot leave her on the street. When we take her home we discover she has walked over three kilometers in scorching sun to get her sick child to hospital. Her husband is at home, he is a journalist, he was shot in the shoulder and leg, his camera smashed and is unable to walk or carry anything. On the way back we pass another young man standing, pale, confused he is also bleeding from the arm. We cannot pick him up. If found we will be accused of aiding terrorists and will endanger our ability to continue to deliver emergency medicines. We leave him there in the street and call another ambulance. We hope it will arrive before he is shot again for breaking the curfew.

Qalqiya, when the women knew we were in town they organized a meeting of the mothers of the fallen children and husbands. They begged us only for their voices to be heard. They say the world doesn’t know what is happening. They are right.  Around 40 or 50 women are present. One by one different mothers speak, mothers who have lost children, husbands, brothers. They speak quietly, each respectful of the others pain and loss. A young woman sits with us to translate in a low voice. Sometimes her voice falters and breaks. She is unable to complete her sentence. Their stories make your blood run cold, throw you into a world of torment, grief,  cruelty, despair, bewilderment and injustice in which the mind goes numb, stumbles into overload and no longer knows how to compute. I have the tapes. I guard them with my life until they can be used at a trial for crimes against humanity, crimes of the occupiers against a mostly civilian and unarmed people whose land has been stolen.

There is more. I haven’t yet mentioned the settler roads, and settler attacks, the checkpoint abuses, the apartheid (land grab) wall,  children forced to jump across rooftops to get to school, the psychological scarring of children and youth and so much more. I will write more.  I tell you only of a few fragments that the space of an article allows, a few small experiences of a foreigner in a very few short weeks.

But it is all with me, and I guard it all carefully. I am entrusted with the voices of the voiceless. I will not let them down. The criminally insane psychopaths must be brought to justice.

SF Source ZenGardner  August 20 2014

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