The Unprotected: A Gaza Family Destroyed by Israeli Bombs

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-story-of-a-gaza-family-destroyed-by-israeli-bombs-a-986728.html



For an entire week, eight people -- women, children and an elderly man -- were trapped in their house in Gaza. They couldn't leave and nobody could help. An hour before the cease-fire, the family was wiped out by Israeli bombs.

The Unprotected: A Gaza Family Destroyed by Israeli Bombs
By Julia Amalia Heyer and Juliane von Mittelstaedt
August 21, 2014 – 10:02 AM



Zaki Wahdan is looking for a head. Or a body. The remains of eight people that have to be here. The two small brothers, the grandparents, the mother, the two sisters and the little niece. So far he has found only 13 legs, with small and large feet. But how can he identify them with these feet, blackened as they are with dirt and blood?

He is standing on the rubble of his parents' house and walks around the perimeter of what was once the living room. They have to be here beneath him, underneath shredded mattresses, clothing, a child's bicycle and tons of concrete. They are so close, yet Zaki can't get to them. Had he not been detained by the Israeli military, he too would have ended up in this concrete tomb.

Zaki and his older brothers come to this mountain of concrete and rubble every day. According to Islamic tradition, the bodies must be buried as quickly as possible. But now they've been here almost two weeks; the site smells of death and there are flies buzzing around. Zaki walks across the rubble and doesn't know what to do. With a broad, good-natured face, he seems like an overgrown child. At 19, he is now the youngest son once again. But what does it mean to be a son when you no longer have any parents or grandparents?

Zaki pulls on iron bars and shakes chunks of concrete. Should he dig with his hands? A hopeless prospect. They really need a backhoe, but they are all being used elsewhere. Entire blocks have disappeared in Beit Hanoun, in the far northeastern corner of the Gaza Strip. Everything was leveled where the Wahdan family lived. The extended family owned 14 buildings, with 200 people living in them four weeks ago. Now there is nothing left but a single pile of rubble. Behind it is wasteland and the border with Israel is only a kilometer away. Beit Hanoun juts into Israel like a finger, and the Al-Burrah neighborhood, where the Wahdan family lived, is the fingertip.

[newfie11]

1. Mans inhumanity is Appalling!

[4now]

2. End Israeli apartheid

“Apartheid” isn’t just a term of insult; it’s a word with a very specific legal meaning, as defined by the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1973 and ratified by most United Nations member states (Israel and the United States are exceptions, to their shame).

According to Article II of that convention, the term applies to acts “committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.” Denying those others the right to life and liberty, subjecting them to arbitrary arrest, expropriating their property, depriving them of the right to leave and return to their country or the right to freedom of movement and of residence, creating separate reserves and ghettos for the members of different racial groups, preventing mixed marriages — these are all examples of the crime of apartheid specifically mentioned in the convention.

from
http://www.bdsmovement.net/