He has a name and a face. What he does not have anymore is a
family.
On August 24, last summer, around 4 o’clock in the
afternoon, Issam Abu Mustafa was inside preparing a meal which he thought would be a
treat for his family. Then, BOOM! An Israeli bomb killed his wife and four of
his children.
Issam’s wife, 6 year-old Osama, 8
year-old Mohammed, 12 year-old Raghad and 14 year-old Tasneen all died on the
spot. Thaer had his right leg amputated above the knee and he was sent to Germany where
doctors are still treating him for severe burns that cover most of his body.[1]
If it made the news at all, it was presented as a
statistic. Issam’s family was only five
of the 2,200 Palestinians, including 547 children killed by Israel , 68 percent of whom were 12
years old or younger. Ten year-old Thaer, the sole survivor from the back yard
massacre, is only one of the estimated 1,000 children in Gaza who sustained life time
disabilities.
We know very little about Mr. Issam Abu Mustafa. But what we
do know is significant. If he is old enough, he is one of the 750,000
Palestinians driven out of their homes in 1948 by force or fear. If he
is a little younger, and if he escaped the Nakba, he probably fled to Gaza as a refugee from
the six day war of 1967. Regardless, he is now living behind guarded fences as
a criminal. He has never committed a crime, nor has he ever been accused of
one. He is a victim of Israeli imperialism.
To the U.S. ,
he is invisible. To Israel ,
he is simply a nuisance.
For certain, he and his family lived through Operation Cast Lead which was started
by Israel on the night that
all America
was watching the election returns between Barack Obama and John McCain.
According to Noam Chomsky:
On November 4, while the media were
focused on the US
presidential election, Israeli troops entered Gaza and killed half a dozen Hamas militants.
That elicited a Hamas missile response and an exchange of fire. (All the deaths
were Palestinian.) In late December,
Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire. Israel rejected the offer,
preferring to launch Operation Cast Lead.[2]
A few Israelis in Tel Aviv demonstrated against the
slaughter of the people of Gaza .
They were attacked by hooligans as the police stood by and did nothing. Others took
lawn chairs and sat on a hill top overlooking Gaza to cheer every explosion.[3] And they would have much to cheer. Israeli
air corps flew nearly 3,000 sorties over Gaza
and dropped 1,000 tons of explosives
killing as many as 300 people in the first four minutes.[4]
In the course of Cast Lead, Israel
damaged or destroyed “everything in its way,” including 280 schools and
kindergartens, 1,500 factories and workshops, electrical, water and sewage
installations, 190 greenhouses, 80 percent of agricultural crops, and nearly
one-fifth of cultivated land. Whole neighborhoods were laid waste, fully
600,000 tons of rubble were left behind… 29 ambulances, almost half of Gaza ’s 122 health
facilities (including 15 hospitals) and 45 mosque.[5]
Issam and his children would have also lived through Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012. Israel called it defense. The facts say otherwise. From January until November of that year, one
Israeli had been killed. During that same time, seventy-eight Palestinians had
been killed in attacks on Gaza .[6]
At least, we can know this. Issam, in his whole lifetime, never
lived a day with hope and security. In
spite of the agreement Israel
had made to lift the siege, the blockade brought Issam’s world to near collapse.
Food, medicine, fuel, parts for water and sanitation systems, paper and even such
things as children’s toys and shoes were denied entry. The fact is, Israel
Then came Operation
Protective Edge, in the summer of 2014.
By massacre’s end, Israel
had killed 2,200 Palestinians, of whom 70-75 percent were civilians. Among the
dead were 500 Palestinian children. In addition, 11,000 Palestinians suffered
injuries (including 3,300 children, of whom 1,000 will be permanently
disabled): 11,000 homes, 360 factories, 160 mosque, 100 schools, and 10
hospitals were either destroyed or severely damaged; 100,000 Palestinians were
left homeless. Israel
suffered 66 combatants and five civilian casualties including one Israeli
child. In addition, 120 Israelis suffered injuries, one person seriously
wounded.[8]
“Yeah, yeah” a friend said to me. I know the story. We’ve
heard it before.”
I understand his feelings. Statistics and numbers can get
boring. But, it is not boring to
Isaam. Those statistics include his wife
and children. They were real people who
wanted to live as much as any child would want to live and enjoy life. Issam would overthrow his oppression if he could,
but he has no power or army. As far as Israel is
concerned, he is just a statistic. That’s all.
And, how does Israel justify itself to the
world? Gideon Levy, writing for one of Israel ’s
leading newspapers, Haartz, calls it
“Hasbara,” a fancy word for propaganda:
Propaganda shall cover everything.
We’ll say terrorism, we’ll shout anti-Semitism, we’ll scream delegitimation,
we’ll cite Holocaust; we’ll say Jewish state, gay-friendly, drip irrigation,
cherry tomatoes, aid to Nepal, Nobel Prizes for Jews, look what’s happening in
Syria, the only democracy, the greatest army. We’ll say the Palestinians are
making unilateral moves, we’ll propose negotiations on the “settlement bloc
borders,” we’ll demand recognition of a Jewish state and we’ll complain that
“there’s no one to talk to.”[9]
And that’s the way it will continue to be. Issam will be
little more than a statistic as long as the only nation on the globe strong
enough to do something about it is “on the take.”
Thomas Are
June 15, 2015
[1] Patrick
Strickland, Gaza Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2015.
[2] Noam
Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, On Palestine, (Haymaker Books, 2015) p.185
[3] Noam
Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, On Palestine
[4] Norman
Finkelstein, Method and Madness, (Or Books, New York , 2014) p.3, 15.
[5]
Finkelstein, p. 75.
[6] Noam
Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, On Palestine
[7] Noam
Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, On Palestine, (Haymaker Books, 2015) p.190.
[8] Norman
Finkelstein, Method and Madness, (Or Books, New York , 2014) p.156.
By the way: Under
international law, those resisting occupation are not debarred from using force
to defend themselves. The issue is, does Israel have the right to use force
to maintain its illegal occupation. As
long as Gaza is
shut up like an outdoor prison, soldiers, either within the land or deployed to
surround its borders, maintain an occupation.
[9]
Originally published at www.haartz.com. January 4, 2015