Torn between both sides

[Violet_Crumble]

There's nothing like the falling of the missiles in Nazareth - and before that in Majdal Krum, Tarshiha, Hurfeish, Haifa and Acre - in order to illustrate the fact that Israeli Arabs are an inseparable part of the State of Israel. Whatever is good for Israel is good for them, and whatever is bad for Israel is bad for them. The death of two boys, brothers Mahmoud and Rabia Taluzi, by a Katyusha puts Nazareth in the same position as Haifa and Nahariya. The same pain, the same price, the same missiles - from the same place and same source.

But Nazareth differs from the other northern cities in several important ways, and the absence of bomb shelters is just one of them. Another important aspect is that Nazareth is also an inseparable part of the Lebanese victims of Israeli bombings.

Thousands of Palestinians live in Sidon, Tyre and other Lebanese cities - refugees who were forced to leave their homes and homeland in 1948, and tens of thousands more of their descendants. The Ein Hilweh refugee camp, for example, is home to hundreds of families descended from those who were uprooted from the large village of Saffuriya, now called Tzippori. They are members of the same family that lost the two children in Nazareth.

The Lebanese relatives cannot call their relatives in Nazareth to see how they are doing. The Lebanese administration, since the time of the Syrian custodianship, prevents them from contacting Israel. And the family in Israel cannot ask about their relatives in Lebanon, because the Israeli bombings have destroyed Lebanon's telephone network.

There's no end to the stories of suffering that we are hearing from there. We hear them and are torn, on both sides, because we are both here and there. Some are from here and some are from there.

The Katyusha hits us exactly as it hits all northern residents; it does not distinguish between Jew and Arab, nor between Arab Nazareth and Jewish Nazareth Illit. It is like the smart bombs of the Israel Defense Forces, which are also blind and do not distinguish between Hezbollah and the refugees of Saffuriya. These bombings have sent the refugees into yet another refugee situation, the third or fourth in recent years. We are absorbing blows both from Israel, when our relatives there are bombed, and like all Israelis, when our relatives bomb us from there.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/741136.html

[Warpy]

1. I'm filled with digust for both "sides."

The only ones worth sympathy are the people who are stuck between them, helpless as death rains down from the sky.

There are no heroes in this war. There are only victims.