Category: Journals - Page 84 - International Solidarity Movement

Amer’s story: They killed me three times

22 January 2009

Ramatan TV, nine floors up and open 24 hours, was the last bastion of internet during the strikes. We knew the place because we got asked in for interviews, and then called a few press conferences there, for example announcing that internationals would be riding with ambulances. We began to hang around in the corners at other times, hoping no-one would mind us hitching a ride on the wifi.

Instead of complaining about random internationals cluttering up the place, Ramatan journalists wholeheartedly adopted us, brought us tea, gave us blankets if we needed to stay the night. Now most nights at about 9pm, you’ll find some of us there being fed a small feast in the kitchen.

I forgot that I didn’t like journalists much, because these guys are firstly Palestinian, and their reporting is compassionate. Now journalists are flooding in through Rafah (though I do like some of them) I was reminded. Two days ago a recently arrived Channel 4 guy came into Yousef’s office on a deadline, wanting to know how many children died in the UNSRA schools. Youself said “Two children at one school. Forty five people at another…”

“But how many of them were children?” he insisted.
“Forty five people altogether,” Yousef said, thinking he’d misunderstood.
“No,” Mr Channel 4 said irritatedly, “I want to say the number of children.”
“Oh £*$&%*&@$ @*%@&*£.” I said, and stomped off, remembering my former journalist feelings.

Yousef Al Helou has the end office in Ramatan. His TV speaks English sometimes, and he’s always willing to pool information and help us figure out what is going on. Today he took me and E to Zaytoun to hear the story of his cousin’s family. When we arrived, I realised we were only two houses from the first house we’d evacuated people from on the Red Cross evacuation I went on. I would have walked past Amer and Shireen Al Helou’s house that day. But by then it was empty and broken, because the day Amer told us about was January 4th.

Sleeping under stairs

Amer is 29. 14 people from his family were in the house that night, and they were all trying to sleep under their stairs as some sort of shelter. Even though the stairs were partly open to the back yard, the F16 attacks on the house made downstairs seem the safest place. The house now has holes from shell blasts and thousands of pock-marks from the three inch nails that the shells were filled with.

“We hadn’t known how bad it would get,” said Amer. “Or we would have left our house and gone somewhere else. But we thought our area was a quiet area. And then that night we thought they would go past us at the front. But they came from the back.” Amer didn’t know it yet, but his brother Mohammed had already been killed elsewhere that day, struck by drone rockets.

army shooting in house just before 6am Jan 4

The Israeli soldiers came to their house at about 5.30am, after the house had been shelled for 15 hours, and immediately opened fire on the family, killing Amer’s father with three shots. Then they told the family to leave. Amer had called an ambulance (which had to turn back after being shot at) and was refusing to leave his father’s body but the soldiers said they would shoot him if he stayed, so they fled 300 yards up the dirt track behind their house, at which point they were shot at again by another group of soldiers. This time Amer’s brother Abdullah was shot, Amer and Shireen’s 6 year old daughter Saja was shot in the arm, and their 1 year old daughter Farah was shot in the stomach. They spent the next 14 hours sheltering behind a small hill of dirt, while the wounded bled, and were not allowed to access help though the soldiers were aware of the injuries. Having no other way to comfort her small daughter, whose intestines were falling out, Shireen breastfed Farah as the little girl slowly bled to death.

After 14 hours, at about 8 in the evening, the soldiers sent dogs to chase them out of their shelter and dropped phosphorous bombs near them, but due to the wounded family members and having bare feet in an area of broken glass and rubble, escape was difficult. The army took the three wounded and put them behind the tanks, and captured Amer, but the rest of the family managed to get away and call the Red Crescent. The ambulance that eventually reached the injured people 7 hours later (driven by my medic friend S) took an hour to find them, and by this time Farah was dead. (When I heard Amer’s story I realised S had already told me about collecting “a small shaheed” from this area.)

Amer was held for 5 days in army custody (the first 3 without access to food, water, or a bathroom), beaten and tortured, and questioned about resistance activity which he knew nothing about. When he was finally released on the border, the army sent two known collaborators to escort him, so it would look to the resistance fighters like he himself was a collaborator. But the fighters knew who he was and that he was not a collaborator. He tells us:

“I had my four children young, and they gave me the most happiness in my life. I took such good care of them. I didn’t let them just play on the street, we had a big living room in our house with toys for them, we would invite all the neighbours’ children to come play there with ours, so that we could be sure they were all safe. I always drove them to and from school, I didn’t even let them walk. Whenever I was depressed, I would gather all my kids, pile them in the car, take them somewhere nice like the park or the beach, and then to see them happy and having fun would make me happy again.

Now my remaining children will not go to sleep without their shoes on, because they think we will have to run for our lives again.

We love life as the Israelis do. Are they the only people allowed life? They killed me three times that day, first when they killed my brother, then when they killed my father, then when they killed my daughter. We looked for my father’s body later; they had buried him under rubble, eventually we found his foot sticking out. Sometimes now I think we have to leave Gaza, to join my brother in South Africa. Sometimes I think, no – Gaza is worth fighting for, this is our home.”

Amongst their crumpled belongings, next to the spot Amer’s father died, the family gives us tea. Shireen solicitously dusts the sand off my back. We ask them how it is they have not gone crazy from the pain of these events. “It’s not us, it’s God who gives us peace and strength. Without this I would be dead too. What happened to my family was like a horror film.” says Amer. He shows us photos of Farah (whose name means “joy”) and Saja on his phone. “I don’t think I can have any more children. I am too broken inside.”

Abdullah

The family is not living in the house right now, they are split between different homes, and Abdullah is in hospital in Egypt. Amer is wearing Abdullah’s jacket, complete with bullet holes. “It is hard to be here again in this house after what happened. But your presence has lifted my spirits.” he tells us.

Back at Ramatan, I hear one of the journalists talking. “I couldn’t protect my children – this is my responsibility, and I couldn’t.” He says. “My daughter asked, what is it like to die? I told her, it’s just like closing your eyes.”

Reem’s Story

Sharon Lock | Tales to Tell

Today I met with my friend Reem. She is 21 and works with Mercycorps, and we met when she came to interview me after I arrived on the initial FreeGaza trip. She was so bright and sparkly then, and I know that is still in her somewhere, but right now she is very fragile. She didn’t realise I was back in the country until last Wednesday, when her family was one of the many fleeing attack to Al Quds hospital, and we collided amidst the chaos. Today she told me about what happened to them.

Tuesday night, we had stayed with my uncle elsewhere, because the attacks were so bad. But Wednesday we went home, because it was home. Also we heard that the bombs Israel was using (phosphorous bombs) set things on fire, and we thought if we were in our home we could put out small fires before they burnt everything. We just didn’t realise how bad it was going to get.

Wednesday night was terrifying. The bombing, the shelling – my mother was shaking and reading prayers. We realised how dangerous it was there on the 5th floor, but we were too scared to go downstairs because there were windows all the way and we were afraid the Israeli soldiers or the planes would see us and shoot. My uncle lives on the ground floor, he has two daughters of 6 and 1 1/2, my grandmother lives with him also. He called us and said, come downstairs, but we said we just can’t. Next thing we knew, he’d come upstairs to get us. He actually went all the way up to the 7th floor by accident, and had to come back down to us to bang on our door. So we took blankets and went downstairs with him. We kept thinking – at 4am it will stop. Maybe at 6am it will stop. Because usually the army withdrew by then. We didn’t realise they were just continuing to move towards us this time.

Some hours later, my aunt looked out the window and saw a tank; it was pointing directly at our windows. That’s it, in a moment the shells will hit us directly, we’re dead, we thought. But something happened and it turned away from us. I called Mercycorps and asked them to call the Red Cross and ask for help. But we realised we had to escape immediately, to try to get to the hospital because maybe it was safe. We couldn’t go back to the 5th floor for our day clothes or our passports or IDs. My brother was so worried because if the soldiers got him with no ID, they would shoot him. But everyone in our building said, we have to go NOW. But some of them knew the snipers had just shot a man and his daughter (Haneen Al Batran and her father).

We went outside, we had small children with us – some of the little ones could barely walk but they had to if there wasn’t anyone to carry them. Then I saw you, and the other Red Crescent people coming; my brother was helping my grandmother but she can’t walk, she fell, and he stopped with her though he was sure he would be shot. Then you went to help them, so me and the rest of the family went on into the hospital. But inside, we waited for 10 mins and my uncle and my brother and my grandmother didn’t arrive, and we were sure they were dead. We checked the basement but we didn’t know it had two sides. I started to cry. Mum was shouting at everyone – did you see them, did you see them?

Then I saw my brother and I shouted “where the hell have you been!”

After some hours they said everyone would evacuate from the hospital and go to the UNWRA school, but we had to walk and Israel only gave permission for two ambulances to go with the hundreds of people. It’s a long way and my grandmother can’t walk. I didn’t know what we could do, if she had to stay we wouldn’t leave her. But then we got a wheelchair for her so we could push her. I was carrying someone else’s child because her parents had their other children, she was afraid not to be with them so she cried all the way; she could see how scared we all were. I realised how empty this area of the city was, everything was burning, it was a city of ghosts. I believed they would drop a bomb on us as we walked. But we arrived to the school.

From the UNWRA school, we went to very distant relatives – my uncle’s wife’s relatives. We had nowhere else to go; we stayed three days. We wanted to go home, but we expected after people had left, the army would shell the whole of Tela Howa. After the army withdrew, my father and brother went to check our home and bring our passports and ID. After the ceasefire we went home. But we can still hear shelling from the sea. We think it’s not really a truce, it’s more just a break.

I lost my friend from the WhyNot project – Christine Al Tork. She was really dear to me, she was one of the sweetest girls, kind of smooth and soft. Her parents only had her and her brother, so they took such care of her, and gave her so many opportunities, she took lots of classes and things…she was literally scared to death. She got asthma and then a heart attack, from fear. It was Friday, the day she died. I began to think it would happen to me too, because I was scared to death too. I was so affected by that, my family tried to be very close to me to help me. I looked on Facebook, her friends made an online group for her, and the photos of her after she died affected me so much; one of her father kissing her goodbye for the last time. I couldn’t believe she would never be back.

Then I heard my friend from college, Bissam – her name means spring – was dead. This shock was even worse. I was as pale as Christine after she died. I couldn’t eat or talk. My uncle wanted to wake me out of my shock. He shouted at me – it’s not the time for this – any of us might die at any moment, but we have to try to survive – show some care for yourself, for your family, wake up! I realised I had to find some strength, so I started to eat.

Some of my relatives live in Tuam. Their building was destroyed; six families lived there. My friend’s home was destroyed by shells. Some other relatives had their home burnt, so did another friend. Then yesterday I went to Mercycorps, and I found out my friend Jihan, who worked at Sharek, is dead. I was listening to everyone’s stories and I wanted to escape from reality but it was chasing me. During the attacks, I was calling all my friends every night to say goodbye, I was saying to all of them, please forgive me for any bad things I did. And they would say, Reem, please shut up!

My friends always used to say I was like a character out of a fairy tale, like Snow White or someone, not really living in the real world. After these days, I guess I am in the real world. I can’t watch the news, because the news was us, my life, my friends. All me and family are thinking about now is leaving Gaza.

Those minutes or hours – I literally couldn’t tell you which – when I went out into the street with the amazing Red Crescent medics to meet all the families like Reem’s, who were fleeing for their lives, were a strangely calm time. One of the guys paired up with me, and would quietly say my name and “come” to direct me where we needed to go, firstly with hands in the air but soon holding children and blankets and old people. I saw men crying, children wanting to run from sheer terror and their parents gripping them tight, women clutching babies buried in blankets. We carried several people on stretchers, stopping to bandage the sniper wound of one man on the way.

Towards the end my Red Crescent comrade B realised that we didn’t have his best friend A. He wasn’t answering his phone, and that his building was closest to where the tanks were. He asked me to come and get him (I have this trick of untying my long hair to be clearly visible as a woman, in case it discourages shooting, though in the circumstances I wasn’t convinced it would help) and after an eerie walk through emptiness, we found ourselves within a hundred yards of the tanks. From the next building we called across and discovered several families remained in it but wanted to leave. First they couldn’t find A, but then they did – and I swear he’d slept through the whole thing, with a tank nearly under his window and deafening shelling going on. And we all got back safe.

In these last days, whenever Red Crescent folks from other places turned up on ambulance runs, the greetings were much closer to reunions. Big hugs and 5 or 6 smacking kisses on each cheek. The subtext: “you’re still alive. It’s a miracle, you’re still alive.” E heard today of a third friend who is dead. She has had a hard time. I have lost no-one personal to me.

I have three hangovers that I’m aware of from these days. One, I hate to sleep alone at my flat; the two nights I did during the attacks, it felt too far from the hospital where my work and my friends were and I was worried I would be cut off from them. It still somehow feels like being in the wrong place. Two, I feel happiest when my 3 best Red Crescent friends are all present and within my sight. Three, in the dark when I see bags of rubbish on the street I think they are bodies. This is because I found, when we went to pick up bodies lying in the dark, that they looked more like crumpled bags of rubbish than the people they had been.

The strength of Gaza people astounds me. Everyone was out today fixing things. Re-laying water pipes, clearing rubble. Putting aside the thoughts of the children who are dead, to smile for the children who are still alive. How is it done? Where do they find the courage? And what will be their reward for getting up and going on, one more time?

I forgot to tell you that today again I woke to the sound of shelling from Israeli ships in the Gaza sea.

Jabalia children on wagonload of destroyed trees — Jabalia children on a wagonload of destroyed trees

First views of Attattra, northwestern Gaza

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

On January 18, the first day that Israel stopped most of the bombing all over Gaza (navy shelling continues to this moment), after

No choice but to leave with all belongings

learning that my friend’s father was alive in eastern Jabaliya, I went on to Attatra, the northwest region, which had been cut off since Israeli troops invaded. As expected, the destruction was great, the death toll high and still unknown. People streamed in both directions: going to see how their homes had fared or leaving from the wreckage and bringing as many surviving possessions as possible.

“This is our main road,” Yusef said dryly, gesturing at the undulating pavement and sand that served the towns in this region. “There should be houses here. Now there is nothing,” he added, seemingly more to himself than to me.

I’d noticed the road right off: torn through the centre, ripped up by a bulldozer’s claw or a tank’s tools, a theme that re-surfaced on various main streets. There were the horse or donkey carts, piled as high as possible with mattresses, blankets, clothing, and furniture, trying to maneuver on these newly-rutted, overcrowded streets, or around earth plowed into peaks.

I’d met my friend Yusef at the main crossroad. He’d come from Gaza city much earlier, to confirm that his own house was devastated: “There is nothing left. They gutted it. I took two pairs of pants, that’s all,” he said. “I was expecting it. There’s no house the Israeli soldiers didn’t enter, damage or destroy. We couldn’t get here to see it until today,” he had told me, Israeli troops’ fire and shelling preventing all from entering, wounded from leaving, ambulances from arriving. This point must be mentioned again and again.

We came to Anis, another Ramattan media employee, standing in front of his destroyed home. “It was hit in the first days of the land invasion,” he said. “F-16. We had evacuated, thank God. When the shelling started, I was crying. I just wanted to get my kids out of here,” he confessed. “Anyway, thank God none were killed. My mother, father, and children, we’re all okay,” he said.

“But nothing is left,” he added. “Walla ishi,”–nothing at all.

I looked down the road and

Jan 18: At the Samouni house

Sharon Lock | ISM Volunteer

The planes are still buzzing overhead, but there have been no explosions near me today. However this supposed ceasefire from Israeli’s side since 2am does not seem to have extended to Beit Hanoun, where there was shelling this morning and F16s were attacking.

You can see 4 video clips I took during the attacks on the Al Quds hospital and local people, including my medic mates rescuing Jasmeen after she’d seen her sister and dad shot.

This morning the Al Quds Red Crescent headed out to Zaytoun, to the area we had a few approved evacuations and far more refused ones. Local people had begun excavating the rubble of the Sammouni house. You remember we heard some of their story before. I helped correct the English of some of the testimonies from the survivors that the Red Crescent was collecting. One of the more vivid images was one of the trapped and injured children describing the only food being tomatoes covered in the blood of his family, and having to sleep on their corpses amidst the rubble for 3 days. My nurse friend R at the hospital said treating one of the children that they got out to Al Quds was the first time she couldn’t help but cry. He was begging her for food and water which she had to deny him until his injuries were assessed.

Anyway, today we arrived in the devastated Zaytoun area, where medics, friends and family began to remove the bodies of the Samounis from a hole in the roof of their flattened home. During the hour we were there, they brought up a body every ten minutes, 7 total, and I believe locals brought up at least two more after the Red Cross told us to take those we had to Al Shifa and withdraw, as a further army incursion threatened. A relative was clutching a list of 25 names of the dead.

Meanwhile, THANK YOU Brighton and friends for the direct action on EDO weapons manufacturers – see a series of short clips on Youtube and Wikio.

ITT/EDO MBM arms factory in Moulescombe, Brighton which supplies Israel has been wrecked by activists campaigning against war. Swords into waste skips at least. Prior to entering the factory, the activists made a video (attached) in which they explained their reasons for the action. One commented: “Israel are committing a gross crime now in Gaza. Israel have killed hundreds of children…

Waiting

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

Today was the first day that medics and journalists were able to reach areas occupied by the invading Israeli troops. Palestinians by this

point, by weeks ago, were desperate for any semblance of a normal life, though normality here is far from normality anywhere else. They were desperate to return to their homes, survey the damage and if possible repair it, find displaced family members, or their corpses, as well as neighbours, friends.

Not everyone returned home to stay; many could be seen returning to where their homes were, or had stood, to retrieve anything worthwhile. Donkey carts and taxis were piled with blankets, clothes, cooking pots, cupboards, pieces of furniture, people…

I went straight to Ezbat Abed Rabbo, the area east of Jabaliya which had been cut off since day 1 of the ground invasion, over 2 weeks ago. The Red Crescent had been receiving calls to evacuate the injured and dead since day 1, and were prevented, at gunpoint, by gunfire, from reaching those needing evacuation. We heard the cries of those who managed to escape, their stories of being locked in homes at gunpoint, losing family members to point-blank assassinations or house-bombings.

And although the area was crammed with troubled, panicked, residents, many of them injured, without water, without food, with homes occupied by Israeli soldiers, I worried particularly about one man: the father of my friends.

We had no idea if he was alive, though we knew he’d stayed in the area. My panic was great, daily, I felt like I had said goodbye to a grandfather.

I bee-lined for his house, though had a hard time doing it since the streets and the land were turned upside-down, torn apart, filled with carcasses of houses and animals.

He was there, miraculously, noble in his traditional gown, long beard, hat. But he looked shattered.

“He cried for us,” his son told me. “He didn’t know if we were alive or dead.” So the confusion and desperation was both ways. Utterly cut off from one another, we were but mirror examples of families and loved ones all over the Gaza Strip. And we were luckier, because we are all alive. Except his wife, my friend’s mother, who was killed on the very first day of attacks. But now everything is relative and we cling desperately to the positive, for its all there is to cling to.

I have so much to tell, so many photos that don’t do justice to the suffering, heart-break, trauma, psychological damage, and despondency of people here. So many smells ingrained in my memory, that when sniffed will bring images of dead children, burned houses, chemical fires.

Slamming doors will forever remind of the missiles slamming the earth, the life below.

And just visiting the few areas I saw today, so many people, so desperate to tell their stories, tell of their anguish. For some the anguish is immense: pulverized homes, killed family members, corpses unretrieved, sanctimony and all that is sacred defiled. For others, the suffering is in the tragedy of shattered dreams, of every personal item destroyed or lost. It all matters, and they were all desperate to tell me. And I to listen. But quickly their words became a blur, a swirl of agony. My basic Arabic began to fail me as I wrote their ailments, their losses.

I will go back, to take careful inventory of the destruction, physical and emotional. Many of those who returned to where their homes were have to return to overcrowded schools with memories of slaughters even within school premises.

While the bombs may have stopped, for now, the terror remains. F-16s still flew low, terrifyingly low, today, so loud, so unpredictable. No one here has any reason to believe any words Israeli leaders proclaim. Only reason to believe in the worst. But out of necessity, we must hope for the best.