History is inexplicable. It has a way of seizing the chosen few to
deliver a commanding message that transcends the tapered, often rote,
confines of time, place and journey.
Like the mystery of magic, defining moments seem to find powerful
launch through the flash of a sudden second and echo through the voice
of those destined to become iconic well beyond the rhyme of powerful
lyric alone.
To them, theirs is a journey of the ages. For those fortunate enough
to witness such passage it is a transcendent reminder that greatness is
measured not through acquired wealth or power but by the prompt of the
principle, courage and sacrifice of the few.
Who can forget Faris Odeh, 15 years old when he stared down a tank
with little more than a stone in his hand, murdered by Israel in Gaza?
Or 23 year old Rachel Corrie, on that mist covered morning, armed with a
bullhorn as she faced off against a bulldozer to save a home, murdered
by Israel in Gaza.
And now legend has taken 29 year old Ibrahim Abu Thuraya from us.
Disabled but not disarmed, he had the boldness to stand his ground
clutching his weapon, the flag he loved… murdered by Israel in Gaza.
What is there about a tiny enclave known as Gaza that so offends, so
alarms, so intimidates Israel? It would be far too easy to say nothing
and simply reduce it to Tel Aviv’s voracious chase of its off-shore gas
reserves or its potential as a Mediterranean tourist coastline …once
cleansed of its native population and the destruction which bears the
marked Star of David.
No. Gaza terrorizes Israel not by force of arms but through the
endless resound of its resilience and the muscle of its inspiration.
To millions of Palestinians under siege in Palestine, or those
forcibly exiled by a Diaspora now 70 years of age, and to its chorus of
supporters worldwide, Gaza stands as a shining beacon of resistance and
hope. Yet, to romanticize Gaza is to lend excuse to Israel and no such
apologia will be offered here.
50 miles from the destruction that is Gaza sits Tel Aviv… as so much a marker of grotesque Israeli indifference.
Indeed, not a day passes without a new tease from the “
third hottest city” in the world and “
party capitol of the middle east”
whether it’s the pristine Mediterranean seashore, cosmopolitan
restaurants, coffeehouses, and galleries or hip after hour dance and bar
scene of the “City that Never Sleeps.”
Ranked as the 25th most important financial center in the world, Tel Aviv has the
third-largest economy
of any city in the Middle East and draws well over a million
international visitors annually to its numerous upscale hotels. Home to
Israel’s only stock exchange, it has some 70 skyscrapers as tall as an
American football field and includes one with 80 floors topped by a
spire 150 feet in height.
Described as a “miniature Los Angeles,” Tel Aviv has been called one
of the 10 most technologically influential cities in the world. Serving
as home to numerous venture-capital firms and scientific
research
institutes, it has hundreds of startup companies, textile plants and
food manufacturers.
Israel’s second largest municipality, Tel Aviv never wants for
“culture” and entertainment. Its population of almost half a million,
with an unemployment rate of approximately 4% and income 20% above the
national average, can choose from eighteen of Israel’s 35 major centers
for the performing arts. The
Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center is home of the
Israeli Opera and the
Cameri Theatre. The
Heichal HaTarbut is Tel Aviv’s largest theatre and home to the
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
But an hour’s drive, yet worlds away, sits Gaza; home to two million Palestinians.
Once known, in polite social circles, as the earth’s largest open air
prison, it long ago moved on from jail to Israeli administered death
camp. Whether by embargo or bombs, it is simply impossible to watch the
life and death of the coastal enclave without seeing Israel’s criminal
plan unfold.
With the first blush of sunrise, the streets of Gaza City fill
rapidly with those who’ve survived its ritual night of darkness
illuminated solely by bursts of another Israeli bombing run. For them,
with each passing hour, the taste of daylight portends a constant race
against what little time remains to shop at empty markets, rush for
medicines long gone, or dangerously dated, search for missing bottled
water, or attend to the needs of family too paralyzed or ill to join the
chase.
While Tel Aviv remains a constant tease of new ventures, glorious
dining and enrapt theater going, Gaza lives a repetition of bare
survival… at least for the lucky.
For others, it’s an endless wail of mourn as infants are laid to rest
with lungs once barely filled with the breath of life. Alongside them
sleep the young who, traumatized by the unbearable pain of living,
tragically surrendered to the calm of willing death. Next to them lie
the “elderly” who grew old and ill far too soon while their generation
is coming of age and power everywhere else.
By now, it seems some have grown inured, indeed, comfortable with the
visible suffer that is uniquely Gaza. Unlike an explosive genocide that
unfolds overnight, impossible for many to ignore, Gaza has long
simmered out of sight…out of mind.
Entering its second decade of complete isolation and embargo, Gaza
periodically, inevitably, explodes from mindless rage in which Israel
seeks to “mow the lawn” for little more than the embattled enclave’s
determined resilience.
In late 2008 through early 2009, Israel unleashed an all out military
attack on the defenseless population of Gaza. When the toxic white
phosphorous cleared, some 1,417, mostly civilians, lay dead along with
13 Israeli soldiers… 4 from friendly fire.
In 2014, Israel undertook a 50 day all-out assault on Gaza as it once
again targeted the entire enclave with massive disproportionate force.
Although some debate continues over the exact results, according to most estimates
up to 2,310
were killed of whom 1,492 were civilians, including 551 children and
299 women. Another 10,895 were wounded including 3,374 children of whom
1,000 were left permanently disabled.
Among the infrastructure leveled were 220 factories, dairy farms with livestock and the orange groves of Beit Hanoun.
138 schools and 26 health
facilities were damaged and thousands of homes totally destroyed or
severely damaged. The lone power station in Gaza and its transmission
lines was targeted and severely damaged. Sewage pumps and a major
sewage pipe serving 500,000 inhabitants were destroyed. 10 out of 26
hospitals were damaged or destroyed along with several TV stations.
203 mosques were damaged, with 73 destroyed … along with two of Gaza’s three Christian churches.
Israel lost 66 soldiers and 5 civilians, including one child. 469 Israeli soldiers and 261 civilians were injured.
Four years later, conditions have only worsened in Gaza. Where once
the UN announced it would be uninhabitable by 2020, for all intents and
purposes, that day has come and gone. Yet the determination of its
people continues on.
Gaza Today
Today, years of Israeli attacks and siege, have left Gaza reeling
from an absence of a basic infrastructure capable of meeting even the
minimal needs of its two million people.
Whether its electricity, clean water, healthcare, or sewage treatment and waste management, Gaza is undergoing a very public
humanitarian crisis now entering its second decade.
In Gaza, abject poverty is rampant. At
41.1 percent, the unemployment rate is the highest in the world. Its youth unemployment is
64 percent.
Currently there are 50,000 young women and men with university and
graduate degrees unable to find work in their chosen fields… or any
other. That figure grows each year by some 17,000 to 18,000. While once
the industrial and production sectors offered more than 120,000 job
opportunities per year, now less than 7,000 such positions become
available.
Although thousands of homes damaged or destroyed during Israel’s
attack in 2014 are still in need of repair, the construction sector is
practically idle and essentially out of business. It used to contribute
to about 22 percent of local production and offered some 70,000 job
opportunities.
Sixty per cent of Gaza lives under the poverty line. Over a fifth of
it lives in “deep poverty.”
According to the U.N. Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), “
over 80 percent of the people in Gaza depend on humanitarian assistance.”
Another report by UNOCHA
found that over 80 percent of its displaced families have borrowed
money to get by in the past year, over 85 percent purchased most of
their food on credit, and over 40 percent have decreased their
consumption of food.
According to UNICEF
a third of Gaza’s children suffer from chronic malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies that can stunt development and affect overall health.
In other, less visible, ways, the residual impact of years of Israeli
attacks and a decade long siege have produced a palpable and
deleterious psychological impact on the people in Gaza.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack OCHA estimated that at least
373,000 children required psychosocial support. Today the UNRWA
Community Mental Health Programme has found that Gazans are experiencing
increasingly higher levels of stress
and distress. The World Health Organization (WHO) has found Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder to be widespread with studies indicating that
upwards of 54% of Gaza’s children, teens and adults either symptomatic, or suffering from its full-on effects.
According to WHO between 10 and 20 percent of the population suffer
from severe mental illness. Because of isolation, community pressure or
lack of treatment opportunities the figure is likely much higher. Once
unheard of, suicide has now becoming a familiar occurrence in Gaza
clearly suggesting that the
coping skills of Palestinians are being exhausted.
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor reported at least 95 people
tried to commit suicide in the Gaza Strip in the first quarter of 2016, a
nearly 40 percent increase from previous years.
Life in Darkness
For nearly a decade,
Tel Aviv has held a yearly blackout in support of
Earth Hour.
Meanwhile, millions of nearby Palestinians struggle to eke out a life
of bare existence with twenty-one hours of darkness each and every day.
Indeed, while Tel Aviv has converted an idle power station named “Gan
HaHashmal” (Electricity Park) into a public park, recently OCHA
published
new data
that shows electricity for Gaza has dropped to a total of just three
hours daily and at times that vary from day to day. Lacking any advance
notice as to when the electricity will go on, or off, the most
rudimentary of life’s work is left largely to little more than blind
wish leaving familial, educational, employment and health tasks either
undone or incomplete.
According to the
WHO,
power cuts and fuel shortages have created constant crises for Gaza’s
14 public hospitals; threatening the closure of essential health
services leaving thousands of people without access to life-saving
medical care.
In
Shifa hospital, tiny premature babies, some with multiple infections or congenital diseases, lie crammed in incubators
fighting for life
as lights sputter. With electricity virtually cut off, their life
support is entirely powered by a generator with unpredictable current.
At any given time, power loss threatens the lives of hundreds of the
new-born and adults in neonatal and intensive care units and some 658
patients requiring bi-weekly haemodialysis, including 23 children.
Refrigeration systems for blood and vaccine storage are also at risk.
With adversity often the mother of invention, many in Gaza have
struggled to keep pace with the needs of energy through use of poorly
vented generator systems and candle light when available.
According to Al Mezan,
29 people including 24 children have died since 2010 from fire or
suffocation incidents related to attempts to overcome power outage. In
one such tragedy, three
siblings were killed after their home caught
fire from the candles being used during the power outage.
Water Crises in Gaza
While Tel Aviv holds a
yearly contest with
an award of free parking to the family that has consumed the least
amount of water, in Gaza it would be a competition without a challenge.
As a result of repeated attacks that have targeted Gaza’s water
infrastructure… and a 10 year embargo on materials necessary for its
repair, a crises in the making has now reached one of epic proportions
unmatched anywhere else in the world.
For two million people, it is estimated that 3% of the water of Gaza
remains fit for human consumption. In particular, it poses grave risks
to its children.
As a result of untreated sewage dumped into the Mediterranean Sea,
agricultural chemicals and unfiltered seawater, the rest of Gaza’s water
is dangerous; 68% of it biologically contaminated during storage or
transportation to Gaza’s households. Indeed, recent studies have shown
Gaza’s water contains a large concentration of chloride… as well,
nitrate rates two to eight times higher than the WHO recommends.
Recently the UN warned its underground water aquifer, upon which the
territory is almost entirely dependent, will soon be completely
contaminated; stripping Gaza of access to all its water.
With the shortage of clean water comes the well based fear of a
deadly cholera epidemic… particularly in a community with an unusually
young population. This is all the more likely where signs of acute
malnutrition and severe wasting are an increasing phenomenon among the
young children in Gaza.
Healthcare Dying
Cancer rates are exploding in Gaza. A decade of Israeli wars has
poisoned its soil and water, leaving depleted uranium in their wake.
Daily spray of insecticides used by Israel to clear border areas, have
exacerbated what is becoming a deadly environmental disaster to a
community long under siege through every means possible.
According to the head of oncology at Shifa Hospital, today Gaza produces
90 cases of cancer per 100,000
people compared with 65 in 2010. These statistics are particularly
ominous given the unusually young population of Gaza with 60% of its
residents under 25. Due to a lack of early diagnosis and treatment
options in Gaza, women with breast cancer are
dying at rates two to three times those receiving first world care.
On top of its energy crises,
Gaza suffers from a chronic shortage of hospital beds, medical equipment and specialist physicians.
Treatment for an estimated 6,000 cerebral palsy patients is
particularly problematic with many families unable to cover the cost of
its specialized care. Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesman for Gaza’s Health
Ministry notes:
The poor financial conditions of families (means they)
cannot take responsibility for their children who suffer from cerebral
palsy or provide them with medical care such as physiotherapy, speech
therapy, occupational therapy.
According to the World Bank,
56 % of all Palestinians have no access
to “reasonable and customary” healthcare. For those few, in Gaza, with
the financial ability to obtain necessary health care, a
lack of embargoed “sensitive” medications has
created a “very very dangerous” situation with dozens of drugs
unavailable… including antibiotic skin ointment and medicines to treat
infants born with hypoglycemia and to counteract venomous snake bites.
The UN reports that
34% of essential life preserving drugs at the Central Drug Store in Gaza are completely out of stock.
According to
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel
(PHRI), the public health system is not able to provide specialized
treatments for complex medical problems in a variety of fields including
neonatal care, cardiology, orthopedics and oncology. Moreover, nearly
50 percent of
Gaza’s medical equipment is outdated
and the average wait for spare parts is approximately six months. With
few functioning mammography machines and the unavailability of radiation
treatment, lumpectomies and plastic surgery, women with breast cancer
routinely receive mastectomies as the only option.
The energy crisis has shed light on the huge rise in babies born with
congenital, and other, disabilities who are waiting to leave Gaza for
specialist treatment in Israel or elsewhere. For many, the wait for the
much sought after exit permit can prove too long to survive.
Recently, three seriously ill babies
died after permits to grant the
children treatment in Israel were
denied by the Palestinian Authority. Earlier this year, a
5 year old girl with cerebral palsy died while
waiting permission from Israel to leave for external treatment. Not
long thereafter, another 5 year old boy and 22 year old man died waiting
permission to obtain treatment outside of Gaza.
Ka’enat Mustafa Ja’arour, 42, died of uterine cancer while awaiting a
response to her permit request for treatment at a hospital in
Jerusalem. In May, 52-year-old Talat Mahmoud Sulaiman al-Shawi, a
resident of Rafah, died after being denied entry to Israel to treat a
kidney tumor. In August, Fatin Nader Ahmed, 26, died in hospital, while
awaiting a travel permit for treatment for her brain cancer.
So far this year, 20 patients have died after their exit permits were
either denied or not granted in time. Physicians report that another 10
who, in July, died of cancer but
could have been saved if they had been transferred elsewhere for treatment.
A short distance from Gaza, Israeli patients receive the benefit of
complex medical treatment from some of the finest and most specialized
hospital and emergency care centers in the world.
The Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center has been selected as one of the
world’s top 10 medical destinations specializes in adult and pediatric
neurosurgery, orthopedic and surgical oncology, kidney-pancreas
transplants, liver transplants, micro neurosurgery and trauma.
The Assuta Hospital, in Tel Aviv, is part of Israel’s largest private
medical service and offers surgeries and diagnostic procedures in all
fields of medicine; including cardiology, oncology, gynecology and
urology.
The Wolfson Medical Center, on the southern border of Tel Aviv,
addresses a wide range of health conditions from malaria to diabetes and
heart conditions and specialty care in ENT, orthopedics, infectious
diseases, pediatrics, OB/GYN, family medicine and psychiatry.
Meanwhile, back in Gaza, Yara Bakheet, age 4, and Aya Abu Mutalq, age
5, are laid to rest… denied access to basic medical treatment that
would have saved their lives but for Israel’s delay in granting an exit
visa for treatment.
Gaza Lives
In the light of this nightmare, some wonder what can drive hundreds,
at times, thousands of young women and men to the edge of steel
barricades and barbed wire that make their home a prison built of walls
but not of silence. Yet they struggle on as they toss stones at
soldiers hundreds of yards away and ignite fires that pose no threat but
speak loudly of freedom.
Ultimately, it’s the indefatigable spirit of these 140 square miles
of self-determination that threatens the myth, indeed, puts the lie to
the grand sale of an all powerful and democratic Israel.
What little mark Israel has built and, ultimately, will leave behind
in the assembled home it seized has been erected not by the call of
principled purpose but the drive to become but another mini-empire in a
region long known for despots that have placed economic and political
profit before people.
At day’s end, it’s a legacy that knows no home, or welcome, but that of brute force.
For empires large and small, real or sham, history is but a
predictable march of gaudy pretense.
Gilded shacks built of shallow
stilts and tattered shrines, theirs is homage to little more than empty
tease. It’s who and what they are… it’s what they do… at least until
they crash. And sooner or later they all crash.
Be assured, Israel will not be the exception.
Yes, empires come and go like so much a cheap, but deadly, chase for a
call in eternity that welcomes no such guest. For the learned, it’s a
lesson of history acquired not by 140 characters but by keen informed
observation. For far too many, empty sound bites have, today, become a
defining vision without a view.
Yet, there are crossroads in history where an image, a single glance,
depicts more powerfully than the finest of poetic verse, a statement of
principle, determination and sacrifice which inspires the winds of time
for evermore.
Somewhere, right now Faris Odeh, Rachel Corrie and Ibrahim Abu
Thuraya smile down upon us as history’s hope and eternity’s message.
Avi
Yemini is the co-founder of IDF Training in Caulfield. Photo:
www.facebook.com/AviYeminiOfficial/ 
Manny
Waks is suing his brother for defamation. Photo: Penny Stephens