The story of the little boy Faisal is a representative of the children of Gaza. Many of them have been killed in the Israeli war on Gaza, tallied at 13,000 so far although experts say the number is much higher.
Around 17,000 have lost one or two parents and are now orphans in need of help. Like the rest of the population – dubbed 1.9 million out of 2.2 million – these children are now displaced and live in UNRWA-run schools and/or in tents around the Gaza Strip.
They now represent the voices of Gaza, part of a deluge of people who are waiting for the Israeli war machine to stop after the huge carnage it caused to their lives. The number of people killed after six months of relentless Israeli bombing stands at 31,000 while those injured and maimed is around over 74,000 and rising with the prospect for a ceasefire continuing to be as dim as ever.
Today, in Gaza there is death, bombing, destruction and starvation but there is also of faint hope for a different tomorrow.
A stark view from a toddler
In this short videoclip little Faisal talks candidly about what happened to him, how he was shot, the killing of his parents and who will look after him now.
How are you, Faisal?
Al Hamdulilah (Thanks be to God).
Were you injured, from whom?
From the Jews (Israeli soldiers).
What do you say about them?
That they are not nice because they are firing us.
What happened to you, do you know?
I was shot in the stomach and my mom and dad were martyred.
Are you alone now?
No, I am with my brother and uncle.
After 46 days under the rubble
The second videoclip is about the heartache of death, Palestinians are enduring on a daily basis. They are being bombed mostly from the air by alien soldiers for they know not why. These are ordinary civilians, they are not armed, living their daily lives as best they know how.
They are not members of the resistance. They are women, children, men and old people. Some are doctors, teachers, journalists, shop owners, workers and nurses. They have all been subject to death and murder.
The video scene is of a body in a black plastic bag on a cart driven by a horse waiting to move. The narrator asks the man about the black bag on the cart. “This was my wife,” replies the man.
“Where did you recover her from,” came the next question.
“We recovered her from under the debris after 46 days,” the man replies in bewilderment. “We’ve just brought her body up from under the rubble.”
“May Allah have mercy on her,” the narrator matters.
“Our home of three stories was bombed on 26 January, it was a Friday, she was performing the morning prayers just before dawn when the building was bombed…” the man said, feeling he needed to say such factual information.
“And its only today you were able to recover her body?”
“Yes, only today we got the body, Al Hamdulilah for that.
“We couldn’t do that before, it was difficult getting the body out, but finally we managed to do so with the help of God, there is still two bodies of children under the rubble…” he said matter-of-factly.
There are thousands who continue to be buried under the debris, rubble and wreckage. With the constant Israeli bombardment of homes, buildings and blocks of flats, there are no equipment to get people out.
People try with their hands and simple tools but thousands of bodies remain in the ground. If they are not killed immediately, they die waiting for people to get them out.
Not the time for books!
Bissan Odeh, the famous blogger from Gaza is happy she got her hands on books for the first time in months. Remember, Gaza has been torn apart by the Israeli war machine and there were no books, that’s why her latest find is a goldmine.
“I am so happy that finally after 157 days of genocide, of leaving my home, of leaving my library, I found some books, here, sold on the street,” she tells the camera with great delight.
“These books came from a library that was bombed in Khan Younis and people are now selling them,” she said as she firmly gripped two books as if somebody was about to grab them from her hand.
“I got Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery and the other one was a book that was printed in 1964. I took this last book not because of the title but because of the print and when it was printed.
I am really, really happy that I finally can read something. I used to read a book a week at least, now I can get back to reading at last.
I left a huge library back in my home in the north of the Gaza Strip and I am going to read these and tell you about them later,” she said while thumbing through the two books avidly.
She got many reactions on this last blog post. One said “…the book she’s holding is written by a Canadian and that our government is helping terrorize her and her friends, family, loved ones.”
Dr Asmar is a journalist based in Amman specializing on Middle East Affairs
