HOSSAM MADHOUN’S MESSAGES ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCES DURING THE ISRAELI ATTACK ON GAZA IN 2014
29 July 2014
The work to organise our event is coming together. Caryl Churchill has sent us an original piece specially written for it. I haven’t had time to read it yet! This means that we now have pieces from Hassan Abdulrazzak, Caryl Churchill, Haifa Zangana! I saw Ahmed Masoud, the other writer we have asked to contribute, at Reem Kelani‘s concert at Rich Mix (which is where our event will be on Sunday 14th September) and he apologised for not getting something to us but he comes from Gaza and his family is there. No hurry, Ahmed.
I got these sms messages from Hossam last night:
Hi dear, I am very worried. This night is different. Heavy bombing in West Remal where I live. Same as the night of Shejaiya. We left our bedrooms and we lay down in the kitchen. Away from windows. I am panicked, Abir and Salma too. Moreover, we are in the dark here. In the dark that we see nothing and in the dark that we know nothing, where they bomb? Why they bomb? I want you to know that I have been honoured knowing you and co-operating with you. Love H, Gaza.
Then after I replied today via sms (‘Sending you and your loved ones love more powerful than bombs (I think!). Not sure of anything except that you are in my heart. Love, j’) this message came:
Thanks, dear. We passed that night safe. My family displaced at my home from the North also safe.Then suddenly we made contact on the telephone. He was at work at the Ma’an Development Centre. Hossam told me that yesterday the Centre director asked him to take care of some children from his family and neighbours that had come out of the Khozaa district. Israeli troops invaded the area and occupants were asked to leave their houses at gun-point. Hossam played with the group of children for an hour or so. One two and half year old boy told him that an Israeli soldier had pointed a gun at him and told him to raise his hands in the air. The boy told Hossam that he had to explain to the Israeli soldier: ‘I have nothing. I have nothing’.
Hossam told me that people were being herded, through random threats delivered by telephone and aerial leaflets, from outlying districts to the centre of Gaza. He asked me to post a piece of writing by a friend. You can read this below after this message from Hossam:
Do you know how it feels when someone puts a gun to your head and starts to squeeze the trigger?
No dear, you don’t know, only those who live the experience for real know what it means.
Can you imagine a whole nation is living this experience?
This is how we live for 24 days
But….
But….,,
But yesterday, it was different. Yesterday we could feel the bullet, we could touch, it, we heard it moving out, hot, sharp, ready to take souls.
Yesterday night the Israeli air force conducted 75 air strikes, firing 140 missiles, targeting different locations in Gaza Strip. Israeli forces fired approximately 879 tank shells and the navy fired approximately 430 shells toward Palestinian territory. During the attack, 44 houses were destroyed. 67 Palestinian fatalities and 294 injuries.
Add to it more that 2000 flash bombs causing the same sound as an explosive rocket, it was a terror night, no one slept, no one could sleep. They meant to terrorize us, to terrorize our children, they make it clear that no-one is safe, any one in Gaza is a target, they proved it, by bombing hospitals, schools, shelters, playgrounds, group of children playing in a playground in beach camp celebrating the feast (Eid).
What to say? Humanity has no space to think about Gaza?!
God is busy and has no time for Gaza!
Alright, we will try to manage.
Thanks, humans, you helped enough.
Our father in the sky !!!!!! Stay there.
Message from Jawad Harb. Hossam asked me to post it:
Does anyone hear us on this god-damned planet?
Yesterday, I made a tour of the shelters where displaced people fled to during the massacres.
Eight hours of speechlessness, I have decided to put in writing what those people have been through. Tens of stories, a huge amount of painful feelings: anguish, victimization, helplessness and anger.
People feel abandoned, left alone and deserted by everybody, people are unable to know who to blame, who to ask for help.
“I stopped complaining to anyone except to Allah, he created us and he would definitely stay with us to overcome this misery” said a man surrounded by his children.
“How long do we have to wait before my kids feel safe and in peace, how long do we have to cry and suffer? I am becoming more confident that being a martyr is more comfortable than what we have been suffering each and every moment of the day” said his wife, peeping over his shoulder.
These people, caught between danger at home and loss of identity in inappropriate shelters, chose to be in shelters.
“ I am here only to keep my kids alive” said a woman, as I was staring astonished and speechless, wandering all over. My god, it looks like a volcano of people rushing at you from every corner.
The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees defines a refugee as any person who:
‘owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.’
Ironically, this definition does not include displaced persons who have not crossed an international boundary nor does it include those who fled, internally to get out of the way of war or civil strife.
The situation of the displaced Palestinians in the UNRWA Schools are not even properly described and included in international law.
What is going on now, as I am writing this blog, is another massacre in different areas of the Gaza Strip. More people are trying to escape this horror leaving everything behind, even the most precious things they worked forever to save.
The whole world is in a deep coma, as if no children’s blood is being shed every moment. I am hearing the crying of children from here all over and around, and this is what kills me more than the horrible death itself.
Those children who were lucky to survive the holocaust, are suffering flashbacks, nightmares, emotional numbness, bed wetting , anxiety disorders , episodes of outbursts of crying and nervous breakdown.
Who cares? Who is thinking of those kids? I couldn’t hold back my tears watching them today with eyes full of deep pain and faces full of horror.
We know that the wounds from war are not confined to the battle field. Refugees from Shejaiya and Khozaa have evidently continued to experience trauma from house demolitions, bombardment, airstrikes and loss of loved ones.
Psychological distress from this experience is harmful to the displaced children who witnessed the brutality and blatant violations of their rights by the Occupation forces.
Now, where are we going to with all these crimes, how many more people do we have to lose, how many children does the occupation have to kill in order to bring the attention of the world?
What kind of world are we living in, watching the bloodshed and the screaming of children and no one cares?
Jawad Harb July 29 2014