Mariam Abu Daqqa is a press photographer in the Gaza Strip. She gives us below her daily morning view of the carcass-ridden Strip. She reflects the feelings of all Gazans when they get up in the morning under the Israeli war machine pounding above their heads:
“I want to talk to you about how the mornings start in Gaza, here its different than any mornings in the world,” she tells the camera.
Good mornings to martyrs
“It starts with saying goodbyes to martyrs, warplane strikes of houses on civilians, mornings start with being enveloped by the injured, sadness on the face of everyone, of hunger, exhaustion because of intermittent sleep by the whole of the people of the strip,” Abu Daqqa adds.
“From 7 October till now, it has been 90 days of anguish. Every day starts with strikes, martyrs, goodbyes, sadness, injuries and the fear that grips everyone,” counting one-by-one the misery Gaza has been reduced to.
“People have stopped saying good morning to each other, but say Al Hamdulilah (Thanks be to God) that I have survived, a prayer they have survived from a fierce night of military strikes on top of their heads and their homes.”
Ninety days of getting up each morning to the same sounds of thudding, tireless momentum that never stops, but keep pounding on and on and on.
“Gaza is not well, 90 days of people going to bed and waking up in fear, of people hoping that they will make it through the night, so they can get up in the morning and say Thank God I am still alive, but we are actually not alive because of the situation we are in and what surrounds us, the bombing, the destruction, the debris, the devastation on us.”
In Gaza, we live one day at a time and see what happens next. Living, minute-by—minute, hour-by-hour and if we are lucky, day-by-day,” the young journalist can be heard saying.
“Mornings in the world or other countries are about good mornings, mornings to work, mornings to coffee, it’s about mornings to go to work, mornings to see relatives and parents, the exchanges, odd comments here and there, strolls on the beach, a normal life for everyone but not in Gaza.
Life here is not normal at all.”
Genocide
The Israeli military machine has ruined Gaza, it has devastated the enclave from its north to the south, turning its rubble, wreckage and debris as if a meteorite hit it not once but a hundred time as 80,000 tons of explosives (but who is counting!) were dropped on its cities, towns, villages and refugee camps. This is glaring, apparent genocide on helpless people.
But people are not relenting. They say we will live and stay where we are even in our displaced status.
Already, over 21,000 people have been killed indiscriminately, around 7000 under the rubble of their once-existing homes while over 55,000 people have been injured.
Israel is truly a pariah state, it doesn’t care, but may in a way. It wants controlled massacres, deaths and destruction because it doesn’t want its allies to look too bad. That’s why it has sought to kill as many journalists as possible.
In its three months massacre of Gaza, Israel has killed 106 journalists, most of whom in the enclave because they don’t want the word to get out about their butchery in Gaza. But they are wrong. Everybody knows in the world of their heinous acts. And the finger is pointed at them.
Marwan Asmar, who has a Phd from the UK’s Leeds University, has long worked in journalism in Jordan and the Gulf countries.
