Our Collective Guilt: The Hideous Cruelty Of Not Calling For An Immediate Cease-Fire in Gaza

I’m mindful of young Afghans who repeatedly told us, over the past decade, that "blood doesn’t wash away blood."

Cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink

“Who will benefit if the slaughter, instead, continues? Certainly, the weapon manufacturers’ profits will soar, assured of a sustained intensification of violence across the region and perhaps across the world.”

By Kathy Kelly
The Progressive (11/8/23)

Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli aerial assault and massacre of Gazans that began on December 27, 2008, lasted for twenty-two days. The Israeli military deployed its navy, air force, and army against the people living in Gaza, using U.S.-supplied weapons and killing 1,387 Palestinians, of whom 320 were children.

I remember a doctor at the Al Shifa hospital, after a ceasefire was declared, shaking with anger and remorse as he told me that, for twenty-two days, the world watched while the incalculable affliction of Gaza went on and on. Most of his patients, he said, were women, children, and grandparents.

Carrying our press passes from Counterpunch, I walked with Audrey Stewart, a human rights worker, into Gaza at the Rafah border crossing, which at the time was the only Gazan border crossing not controlled by Israel. We were sandwiched between correspondents working for The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. A human rights activist in Cairo had arranged for Audrey and me to stay with a family in the residential area the crossing opened into. Overnight, bombs exploded like clockwork, once every eleven minutes, from 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. and then again from 3:00 a.m, to 6:00 a.m. Yusuf, a bright child and the family’s oldest, explained to us the difference between explosions caused when an Apache helicopter fired a Hellfire missile and the sounds of 500-pound bombs dropped by F-16 fighter jets. Yusuf was seven years old.

This month, Mohammad was killed. On October 12, while he was sleeping, his building was attacked by an Israeli warplane. The building collapsed, crushing him. I don’t know if his own children were with him, but countless others took hours or days to die in the rubble.

When the ceasefire was declared, Yusuf’s mother sank into a chair and murmured, “Can you imagine? This is the first time I breathe in all these twenty-two days. I was so frightened for my children.” Yusuf wasted no time organizing neighborhood children who soon were dragging a large tarp through alleys and along roadways, collecting twigs and branches they could bring to their families for fuel.

Meanwhile, Mohammad, Yusuf’s younger brother, playfully imitated an airplane flying in circles, after which he would dive into his father’s lap as we all shared breakfast, seated in a circle.

Four years later, following another Israeli aerial attack against Gaza, I had a chance to visit the same family again in Rafah. Yusuf and Mohammed were proud of how their father had organized relief work to help children traumatized by the bombings and siege. Gaza’s access to food, fuel, basic medicines, and even clean water for washing or drinking would continue to constrict under Israeli pressure over those years in which the brothers would eventually become husbands and fathers themselves, still assisting the family efforts to share resources and care for increasingly desperate neighbors. …

https://progressive.org/latest/calling-pause-israels-assault-gaza-isnt-enough-kelly-231108/