There is a bouquet
of plastic purple flowers in the center of a cheap wooden table.
It’s easier to stare at it than into the faces of either
of the men speaking. The air is suffocatingly hot -- no breeze
passes through the half-open window. I’m thirsty but won’t
drink the orange soda our host passes around in paper cups.
We
want to see Israel’s blood.
Fayiz
and Muhammad Shehadeh trade turns almost shouting their anger
at the lawyer and human rights activists who’ve come to
ask for sworn affidavits. Their brother, Salah Shehadeh, one of
the leaders of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassem brigades, the military
wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), was the target
of the July 22nd bombing in which fourteen others died, nine of
them children, when a two thousand pound bomb obliterated the
two-story apartment building in a crowded residential area in
Gaza City just before midnight.
I’ve
come to hear what these two brothers have to say, though among
ourselves—workers for the Mezan Center for Human Rights—we
know that their testimony is the least important, despite the
high profile of their now-dead brother. A war crimes trial must
center on the innocent who died or whose lives were destroyed
in order to be successful, not on the venomous hatred of a man
and his supporters who knowingly sent boys to blow themselves
up in places also populated with innocent civilians.
Muhammad
continues his speech.
We won’t
have anything to do with your affidavits. We won’t sign
anything. We don’t want a trial. We know about European
justice. Look at Belgium. Will Sharon be tried for his war crimes?
Will the victims of Sabra and Shatila ever rest in peace? Will
the survivors ever see justice done in their names? What about
Israel’s war against our people every day? Who cares about
the United Nations? Count how many resolutions have passed against
Israel’s criminal behavior. What have they accomplished?
Who cares? The United States? The US, with its massive arms sales
to Israel every year? The European Union that sits there and does
nothing no matter how many pleas for intervention on behalf of
our people it receives? Do you think your stupid, bureaucratic
papers will make one bit of difference to the people suffering
under Israel’s domination? Do you think they will stop being
hungry? Do you think it will give them jobs? Do you think their
humiliation will end? Do you think Israel will stop killing them
whenever it wants? You can take your papers and your British Colonialist
lawyer and get out of here. We know what Israel understands. Israel
understands blood and power. Nothing else.
The
tirade ends and more cold drinks are offered.
No real offense to you guys for trying, you see.
But we want to make our position clear.
It’s
clear. I hear it today as clearly as I heard it then. The words
are still ringing in my ears and I want to protest, but I have
no grounds. They are the angriest, truest words I have heard this
summer. When I walked amid the rubble of the blasted building
and young boys followed me shaking a basket full of missile remains
and saying, “Made in America” I remember feeling only
shame. Is it any surprise that so many people have lost all confidence
in the international democratic legal institutions set up presumably
on their behalf? Where is justice each day when the sadists of
the occupation are stripping another man of his clothes in front
of his son? When they are daily detaining hundreds sitting in
sweltering taxis at the Deir al-Balah checkpoint –people
trying to get to work or to school, or just trying to return home?
When their tanks are rolling up the streets of Rafah or Beit Lahia
firing at anything that moves terrifying children, many of whom
are malnourished and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder?
When their loudspeakers are arrogantly broadcasting yet another
24-hour curfew? “Mamnua Tajawwal; Mamnua Tajawwal”
(It’s forbidden to go out).
Should
we be proud to know that the F16s and Apache and Blackhawk helicopters
that fly overhead in Gaza every day terrorizing a population of
a million and a half prisoners are made in the United States?
Is it gratifying that the state-of-the-art US military technology
for which American taxpayers fork over billions every year are
used to murder, wound, subjugate, humiliate, ruin, and dispossess
people all over the world?
Leaving
the home of the Shehadeh brothers, we are assaulted by the hot,
desert wind again. The sand and dust clings to our faces mingling
with our sweat. There is little to talk about. I know that the
families who lost children, mothers, fathers, cousins, on that
terrible night in July will never see justice –anymore than
will the families who lose their sons, fathers, mothers, and daughters
at the hands of the Occupation Forces every day in the Gaza Strip.
Worse, I know that nobody cares.
Just
days later more tanks roll into the city to destroy metal workshops,
or “bomb factories” as the Israeli forces call them.
This happens twice while I’m living in Gaza City this summer.
Never mind that people’s livelihoods have been ruined; that
more unemployed will line up for international food aid. These
places contained the materials used for making bombs, so they
must be destroyed. No one questions this logic. –Like banning
lead pencils going into Iraq. Who knows to what sinister use a
pencil might be put??
I have
little doubt that some of the materials in those metal workshops
did indeed end up in the hands of homemade explosives experts.
Does this justify destroying a man’s entire business? How
long do we accept that a regional military superpower has the
right to smash the lives of the people whose land it occupies
each day, but that these people have no right to self-defense?
I ponder this for a while and find myself thinking I’d rather
not see both peoples armed. I’d rather see them both disarmed.
But imagine the outrage, the indignation, the self-righteous ire
of those whose military toy boxes come under threat. Imagine the
look on the faces of the beneficiaries of our huge murder corporations
when foreign tanks roll into Fort Worth, Texas or Mesa, Arizona
or Hartford, Ct. to demolish the mega-metal workshops called Lockheed
Martin or Boeing or United Technologies.
Sorry,
you can’t have any more Blackhawk helicopters, no more F16
fighter jets or AGM air-to-ground missiles. No more Hellfire anti-tank
missiles or Apache Longbow helicopters. Goodbye to the F100-PW-229
aircraft engines, adios low altitude navigation targeting infrared
night systems. Tanks, don’t forget to stop in Lexington,
Mass to put an end to Raytheon’s AN-TPQ-37 Firefinder counterbattery
radar systems and their Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles.
Move on to Fairfax, Virginia to halt the production of ExxonMobil’s
JP-8 aviation jet fuel. Move south to Orlando, Florida to wipe
out PGSUS LLC’s Standoff Attack Missiles, and then backtrack
to Oshkosh, Wisconsin where the Oshkosh Truck Corporation is producing
and selling Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks. The list
goes on and on. The profits and the price tags for these items
more jaw dropping than the items themselves.
The news
bulletin might give us pause if worded correctly. “Metal
workshops throughout the United States fired on and bulldozed
this afternoon after it was determined that they contained the
materials used to produce Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
I
think the rest of the world might sleep more peacefully that night.
*
Ms. Jennifer Loewenstein is a regular contributor to the March
Media Resources. Her writings have received wide recognition in
some of the leading media outlets worldwide.
