Gaza's children struggle with memories of war

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"Fourteen-year-old Ghasan Matar won't talk about the explosion that cost him his legs and killed his brother. In fact, six months after the end of the Israeli war on Gaza, he still barely talks at all.

He spends most of his time staring at the walls and a huge poster depicting his older brother against a bloody background of war featuring a Kalashnikov assault rifle and dead Israeli soldiers.

He says he never thinks about the day when the house was hit during heavy shelling of Gaza City's Zeitun neighbourhood. He insists he has no nightmares. "I'm doing fine," he says, and then clams up.

"He's very traumatised. He doesn't speak, tries to act like nothing happened," says social worker Nisrin Ramadan during a visit to the boy's crumbling brick home.

"There are many cases like this of deep shock and loss of hope," says Ramadan, who works with the Society for the Physically Handicapped.

More than 300 children were among the 1,400 Palestinians killed and many more were wounded during the 22-day Israeli offensive that ended on January 18, according to Palestinian figures.

And experts say a vast majority of the children who make up more than half of Gaza's 1.5 million population, will bear the psychological scars for years to come."

more

[Scurrilous]

1. In pictures: Gaza six months on

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8154275.stm

[GoesTo11]

2. That's why most governments don't try to start wars like Hamas did

War sucks. Losing sucks even worse. Hamas figured they would gain stature by firing missiles at Israel until Israel attacked them. It worked! And Gazans love Hamas for this great victory they achieved.

[ConsAreLiars]

3. "Gaza truce broken as Israeli raid kills six Hamas gunmen"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians

I know facts don't matter to some here, and if you had any respect for facts you would have not made that comment. The rockets before those 6 murders were few in number, harmless, and fired by anti-Hamas factions.

It is just speculation, but easy to imagine that those in the Israeli government broke the ceasefire in order to either enhance the "I'm a war president" creds of incumbent candidates in the upcoming elections or the IDF acted independently in order to further the strategic objective of increasing the impoverishment and degradation of Palestinian life and culture.

[shira]

5. if facts matter to you, then start reading here b/c you're badly misinformed

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x250119#250340

And the rockets are harmless? Tell that to the victims and their families, okay? During the London blitz over 60 years ago, German bombs were harmless too - if you didn't mind living underground in the tube.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

6. You do know that's nonsense, don't you?

The blitz proper ran from September 1940 to May 1941, and killed 43,000 civilians. After that the Nazis stopped concentrating on Britain, managing to kill a mere 8000 civilians until the developement of the V1 and V2, which killed another 9000 near the end of the war.

By contrast,http://www.theisraelproject.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=hsJPK0PIJpH&b=883997&ct=3887857 lists the total death toll due to rockets and mortar fire since 2001 as 23, with no deaths at all in the past year (I believe suicide bombings have killed rather more, if you want to widen the discussion, taking the death toll into the low hundreds, but that was not what you were talking about above).

I wouldn't call anything that has killed 23 people harmless. But nor would I mention in in the same sentence as either the blitz, or the killing of many hundreds of innocent Palestinian civilians by Israel in the same time period.

[shira]

10. not comparing the scale - only the 'harmless' aspect of the rockets when a population is forced to

take cover - as well as the fear and paralyzation involved that makes living life normally impossible.

[LeftishBrit]

7. Awful as it is, it's not on the scale of the Blitz

If we are looking for a British analogy, I would be much more inclined to use the activities of Irish terrorist factions during the Troubles. Between 1969 and 2004 (very few deaths occurred after 1997), 1855 civilians were killed, as were 1123 members of security forces. Most of the killings occurred in Northern Ireland itself, but 125 people were killed in England (and a similar number in the Republic of Ireland).

Both the attacks on Israeli civilians now, and on British civilians during the Troubles, are serious - but they're not on the *same* level as the carnage in all-out war such as the casualties of the Blitz.

[ConsAreLiars]

9. What irrelevant nonsense!

The violation of the ceasefire by Israel was continuous, since they never implemented their side of the agreement regarding lifting the siege and ending the policy of collective punishment which was intensified when Hamas became dominant in Gaza. The rockets fired from Gaza during the truce were in fact harmless in effect if not intent or potential, and were not fired by Hamas. Your comparison to the London Blitz is simply absurd.

The 6 murders by the IDF occurred a month and a half before that statement, after a long attempt by Hamas to get Israel to commit to some agreement to extend the agreement and actually honor it. It was a statement of fact, that since Israel had not honored the truce and refused to agree to extend or honor it in the future, that they were also no longer bound by it.

[Taitertots]

4. Spends his time staring at the huge poster of his brother with an AK and dead Israelis

I'm sure the IDF bombing that house had nothing to do with the families activities.

His brother's huge poster with an AK and dead Israelis.
"Outside her house, a poster depicts her cousin Talat Basal. Her family says he was a "martyr," a member the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza."



Sounds to me like they should be mad at their Hamas family for causing a war they couldn't win to advance a cause they couldn't win.

[LeftishBrit]

8. Horrible

Fuck the leadership. On both sides.