Death In A Cemetery

[Violet_Crumble]

How many of us can imagine the night of horror that the Salah family endured? To lie on the floor of the living room for what seemed an eternity, embracing as one being, trembling with fear as the house was blasted with bullets and missiles; to watch the sniper's laser ray doing its dance of death across the apartment, searching out its victims; to see the missiles slamming into the walls of the house, missile after missile, as though an earthquake had struck; to get to their feet in the dark following the order to evacuate the building before it was demolished; to try to open the front door and discover that it had been twisted out of shape by the gunfire and couldn't be opened; to open a window and try to shout to the snipers, in the dark of the night, that the door was jammed; to see the father of the family collapse from a bullet fired into his neck by a sniper; to see the son collapse a few minutes later from a bullet in his cheek fired by a sniper; to watch, helpless, as your son lies on the floor, the life ebbing out of him, next to his dead father, and to cry for help, but to find that the soldiers will not allow anyone to enter; then to undergo an interrogation and humiliation; and to discover that the entire contents of the house had been destroyed.


That was the night of horror of the Salah family: the father, Prof. Khaled Salah, 51 at his death, founder of the Department of Electrical Engineering at An-Najah University in Nablus; his wife, Salam, and their three children, Diana, 23, Mohammed, 16, and Ali, 11, all of whom were at home that night. Fortunately for the firstborn, Amer, he was in Boston, where he is an engineering student. It was a night of horror on which the father, possessor of a Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, and a member of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Committee at An-Najah, was killed, along with his son, Mohammed, a boy who loved soccer and dreamed of becoming a pharmacist, who lay dying on the floor for lack of medical treatment, which the soldiers denied him.

Maybe you saw them. Two years ago, during the Mondial (the World Cup of soccer), Channel 2 News correspondent Itai Engel broadcast a report of his impressions from a house in Nablus where he had watched the game between Brazil and Turkey as a guest of the Salah family. Engel was flabbergasted this week when told what had happened to the family that hosted him. The boy too? The boy, too. He said he had been charmed by them, by the father and his son, both of them avid soccer fans. When asked about the possibility of a game between Israel and Palestine, Khaled consulted with Mohammed and then replied, "We're better, but it'll be best if you win, because we'll be in for it if we beat you." They talked about peace and about soccer.

Salam, the widow and bereaved mother, a survivor of that night, found it difficult this week to remember the television piece and her loved ones' remarks about peace. It's important for her that the Israelis know that Khaled was a man of peace. Between fits of crying, still in shock, it's important for her to tell the Israelis in detail what happened in the pre-dawn hours of July 6 in her home on Saka Street, in Nablus.

http://www.countercurrents.org/pa-levy260704.htm

[amber dog democrat]

1. It would be politially incorrect for me to express my opinions now.

I am so outraged at what Sharon started 3 years ago by sparking off this current uprising. And the tragic irony is how nearly the parties involved came to a peace agreement.

How is this helping ?