Union of Health Work Committees
Palestine
Today, a US non-governmental organization (Agency for Relief and Development in Conflict Regions) wrote to me, that I should stop sending them my messages. They said that "for those of us who have worked in a number of extremely violent and poor conflict situations, your writings seem excessive."
I have no idea where these people live. May be in Tel Aviv or even in Jerusalem where they can drink a glass of beer or a cup of coffee in a street cafe, on a beautiful, autumn evening, and talk about their experience in the "extremely violent and poor conflict regions." I would like to invite them for the same cup of coffee and a cooler glass of beer, only few kilometers away from their peaceful surroundings. I would like to invite them to Beit Sahour or Beit Jala. Or even to Gaza. They can come to Beit Sahour and stay in one of the houses at the front line. They can try to sleep during the shelling. They can try to calm the children down while they are screaming. They can try to console the families for their losses. They can try to help us attend the wounded. And they can try to stand by us when we declare someone dead. How much violence do these people need? How much violence do they need to stand up to the name of the organization they are working for?
Last night the combat helicopters and the Israeli tanks shelled Beit Sahour for several hours. No one was killed. "Only" homes were destroyed. No one was wounded. The Israelis use the argument "someone shot at the Israeli camp to the east of Beit Sahour." But today?
Usually the shelling starts in the evening hours. During the day, the families who left their bombed homes weeks ago come to see the damage that the previous night's bombing inflicted upon them. Today, a sunny, warm, autumn morning, two Palestinian officers also came to see the damage. Two rockets were fired from a combat helicopter, hit the car of the officers, and killed one of them immediately. Another officer was seriously wounded. In addition, two women from the neighborhood who were by chance near the car, were killed -- a 52-year-old woman and her niece, both relatives of a colleague of mine at the clinic in Beit Sahour. They were not fighting. They were not shooting. They were not demonstrating. They were not shouting. In fact, they were crying, after having visited the destroyed home. Any one of us could have been there.
It took me only five minutes to write this letter and I will continue encouraging everyone to write and talk and scream till the "gentle men" from the US NGO who were "working in extremely violent and poor conflict regions," and others like them, start to listen.