An innocuous phrase, meaning how welcome is the rain as it falls upon this earth beneath, full of goodness and sustenance, the nourishment of life. Not on Gaza.
Four days ago, when the people of Gaza heard the thunder in the heavens and looked towards the sky they saw surveillance drones, Apache helicopters and F-35 war planes bulging with state-of-the-art implements of war. Nothing and no-one was safe. There is no rain. There is only death and destruction, Mr Netanyahu promising more if the Gaza based resistance fighters do not submit. How can they submit, how can they not retaliate? Even when their only weapons are a barrage of rockets, primitive, ineffective and mostly glued together in the garden sheds and fields of Gaza.
Yes, the heavens have opened above Gaza and the harvest for Israel? Three days ago it was four Palestinian school children and their parents. I posted the pictures of the young, hopeful faces on this page. There were more already; fifteen including their parents and neighbours.
The next day the list of the dead had risen to thirty and before I had a chance to post it and show what these so-called enemies of Israel looked like, the tally has risen to thirty-four. I don’t believe that this will be enough for Mr Netanyahu or Mr Ben Gvir. They have promised total devastation and Mr Netanyahu certainly has the where-with-all to achieve it. He is also less popular than he used to be. But, there’s nothing like a good war to bring the people together under one banner.
Jafar M Ramini is a Palestinian writer and political analyst. He was born in Jenin in 1943 and was five years old when he and his family had to flee the terror of the Urgun and Stern gangs. Justice for the people of Palestine is a life-long commitment.
