gaza: live blogging from hell

White phosphorous being dropped over Jabaliya, Gaza Strip.

A few days ago I stumbled onto a cluster of blogs written by English-speaking activists currently working in Gaza, mostly with the International Solidarity Movement. Of these, Eva Bartlett's In Gaza and tales to tell (the author is identified only as Sharon, from Sheffield in the UK) are the most frequently updated and filled with a truly amazing wealth of photos, video and stories that the world--Americans most of all--desperately need to see. I am so thankful to these activists, not just for their presence in Palestine, but for their commitment to documenting the atrocities going on there and showing them to the world.

I advise you to go read these blogs yourself, as I don't have the words to summarize the horrors contained therein. You'll hear tales of ambulance drivers being shot at while trying to retrieve dead bodies or evacuate the wounded. You'll see pictures of the tell-tale spidery white clouds of white phosphorous being fired, as it was in Lebanon in 2006. White phosphorous is a chemical weapon that will burn your skin down to the bone on contact. There are clear and well-documented reports of it being fired over Gaza City and the Jabaliya refugee camp, which has a population density seven times that of New York City--over 100,000 people in just 1.4 square kilometers. Of course, Israel claims they're only firing white phosphorous for illumination and to use as a smokescreen--not directly at people, which is illegal. But what do you really think is going to happen when you fire chemical weapons over a city seven times more crowded than New York?

One of the multiple reasons I haven't been writing much on this blog lately is that it's seemed pretty trivial to write about anything other than Gaza, and it's very hard for me to write about Gaza without feeling an intense rush of helpless, desperate rage and sadness.

Perhaps it's that the injustice that seems so clear and profound to me is poorly understood or not even seen by many Americans (through no fault of their own, thanks to our complicit media). Perhaps it's just very difficult not to feel powerless in the face of such overwhelming violence, and such intense commitment on the part of the US government, Republicans and Democrats alike, to continue funding and supporting that violence.

Of course, not helping matters is the relentless doublespeak in the US media, which repeatedly insists on comparing the sides as if they were, at best, equal, and equally at fault for the violence, when that's so clearly not true. Case in point: 24 hours into the ground offensive, one (ONE!!!) Israeli soldier had been killed. At this point the Palestinian death toll was well over 500.

Much has been made of the town of Sderot, which is two miles from the Gaza border and regularly sustains rocket attacks from Hamas. Barack Obama even visited there in July. Over 2,000 rockets have been launched at Sderot in the past four years. And how many people have they killed? Eight!

Now, before I'm accused of sounding callous, I'm sure it's no fun at all to be a resident of Sderot. No coincidence it's mostly populated with Israel's underclass--working-class North African immigrants, too poor to afford real estate outside the measly two-mile range of Palestinian rockets. Yes, I bet living under the constant threat of death from a hostile force at your border sucks a lot. Just ask a Palestinian.

Did you ever have a nasty older brother/sister/cousin who played this game when you were little? The little bugger starts poking you, hitting you, making faces, and finally annoys you to the point where you up and give them a good smack, or shove, or whatever. Then of course the kid screams, "Moooooom! She hit me!"

Israel is a bit like that. It has one of the most advanced military machines in the world, second probably only to the US. They have tanks, Apache helicopters, advanced artillery, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, and armored bulldozers for knocking down houses. They strangle the Occupied Territories constantly with blockades, checkpoints, a huge concrete wall, bypass roads that cut the land apart and that only Israelis can drive on, home demolitions, raids, airstrikes and "targeted killings." Hamas has rockets so ineffectual they have to fire 250 of them to kill one person--after which Israel will retaliate, kill a hundred Palestinians, and say they're defending themselves. Of course, it's tragic when anyone dies; it's a war and there's pain and suffering on both sides. Of course! But there are no cemeteries in Israel where children are being buried on top of their grandparents because there's no more room for new graves.

I spend several hours reading the news from Palestine last night, and I think I OD'd a bit. I woke up today in a very strange headspace. The author of tales to tell wrote this in one of her posts, about going on ambulance runs with the Red Cross behind or near Israeli army lines:

What I feel in walking this road with these good people is calm, and focused, and glad to be here. As my friends know to their sorrow, what I don’t cope with is supermarkets and four-by-fours and plastic. Even more, I don’t cope with the dissonance of trying to live in a Western society that pretends this reality, the reality of this road I am walking at this moment, does not exist. In the UK, in front of me is McDonalds, in my head are the tanks. It almost sends me crazy sometimes.

Although I haven't been to Palestine, I can identify with this sentiment. Today was my first day back to school, and it was very weird to be sitting outside on campus, eating a bagel and watching undergrads bike past in their tank tops and short shorts, people laughing and chatting on their cell phones in the beautiful California sunshine, while my head was filled with white phosphorous trails, the grinding of tank treads, the crack and clunk of rifle shots against an ambulance door, trying to imagine what that much blood smells like.

Curse my overactive imagination.