Gaza is drowning in a river of blood

News reports pile into my email account, with the most long-winded and intelligent email reports being sent by Jewish Peace News. They sent two reports this morning – and as they said “both sickening, but important, reading to get a true sense of what is really happening on the ground.”

This diary is a brief summary of those reports and a couple of others. It was also posted on Daily Kos.

Gaza is sinking in a river of blood is the title of one report.

It is written by Mohammed Fares al Majdalawi on January 11, 2009. He and his family are in Gaza, and he claims that the International Red Cross has stated that the IDF will not allow them to get to the victims of the violent attack on Gaza. And so those victims die when they might have lived. And most of those victims are civilians, with over a quarter of them children.

Here is a bit of his report:

There is no safe place we can go. We cannot communicate with our relatives and friends -- networks are down as missiles rain on our homes, mosques and even hospitals.

Our life is centered around the burials of those who have died, our martyrs. At night our camp, Jabaliya refugee camp, is a ghost town, with no sounds other than those of Israeli military aircraft.

There is horror every minute and it is clear especially in the lives of children. For example, there were five sisters in one family killed in their home by the Israeli occupation forces. But there are 800,000 other children in Gaza, all afraid, all waiting for someone or something to help them. They are caught in a prison that is becoming a concentration camp. Every day we sleep and open our eyes to the Israeli crimes of killing children and women and destroying civilians' homes. My words are unable to convey my feelings about this life in Gaza.

He goes on to request that the peace movement demand the end to the siege and the killings and the demolition of homes. He thinks this should be done by rallies and sit-ins. He says: “We wouldn't have to stand it any longer if the world stood with us.”

I have written LTEs, postcards to elected officials (with photos), and called Israeli Embassies, put LET GAZA LIVE on my car, and attended a rally over 100 miles from my home. I will be doing even more peaceful protests of every kind I can think of.

Mr. al Majdalawi wants to invite everyone to Gaza to see for themselves what is happening. He says that, in spite of everything, they will not kill the will of the people for equality and justice. An update posted on the article says that all the homes in Mr. al Majdalawi’s neighborhood have been destroyed, and the family is staying at the UN run school nearby. His brother is missing and they do not know if he is dead or alive. This writer volunteers with the Middle East Children’s Alliance, which sends medical aid to Gaza.

You can donate at this link.

The second report that Jewish Voices for Peace sent me was by Ewa Jasiewicz, also writing from Gaza. His article is called “All signs point to systematic targeting of civilians.” He is working (or volunteering, I am not sure) as an ambulance driver in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza. He talks about his efforts to find and rescue casualties, and about efforts to wash up, do laundry, buy bread, and get some sleep. All of these acts, in the situation there in Gaza, are potential suicide acts, but he does manage to hang out the laundry on his roof while listening to the Israeli drones.

Then he describes going on an ambulance run:

Out of the city, we're met by a crowd running towards us with a blanket hump on the back of a donkey cart. Jumping out I see bloodied legs and arms sticking it out of it, "Shuhada!" -- martyrs! -- yells the crowd running along with it, while others gesture wildly to go on, go on ahead. Jumping back in we get to the house where it all happened. A woman in her 50s, in black, has her arms around a large, lifeless woman. Pools of blood surround them. They're cramped into a corner, the woman crying and clinging to her. We need to peel her away and lift the woman, cold, lifeless and shoeless, onto a stretcher. This is Randa Abed Rabu, 38. Her relative or friend comes in too, unable to stand, unable to speak or move; we drag her on and she has to slump on the ambulance floor. Next we bring in Ahmad Mohammad Nuffar Salem, 21, with 16 shrapnel injuries, tearing at his own clothes in pain, they needed to be cut off.

Six members of the Abed Rabu family were killed in the strike on their house. It happened at 11:40am. Ahmad, 21, explains, "We were all eating together, and then we were struck." The consensus amongst paramedics was that it was a tank shell, although the family thought it was a shell from an Israeli navel vessel.

Muhammad Abed Rabu, 50, explains to me, that in the night his other family homes were struck three times by F-16 fighter jets. "Thirty of us spent the whole of last night hiding under ground, in the basement. Our whole street was full of fire. They [the Israelis] spent one and a half hours attacking us. They destroyed three of our family's homes. All the martyrs today, they were underground with us last night."

He goes on to report on the effects of the missiles, bombs, shrapnel, white phosphorous and nerve gas being used on the people of Gaza. He says an average of twenty people a day are being killed in Jabaliya refugee camp.

Here is the report of a serious injury done to a women about to give birth:

Wafa al-Masri, 40 years old, and nine months pregnant was walking to Kamal Odwan Hospital to give birth. With her was her sister, 26-year-old Raghada Masri. They were passing through the Diwar Mabub crossroads in the Beit Lahiya Project area. It was 4:30pm. Witnesses said they were hit directly by a missile from a surveillance drone. Daniel, a half-Ukrainian paramedic here described the scene. "Her legs were shredded, there was just meat, and she had a serious chest injury, hypoxemia." Wafa was transferred to al-Shifa Hospital for a double leg amputation, from the upper thigh area down. Paramedics were apprehensive about her or her unborn child making it.

She did give birth to a healthy baby boy.

During the cease-fire, paramedics went out to collect bodies and injured. However, they found no one in certain areas. Here’s that report:

I asked the paramedics what happened when they went to collect bodies and the injured from the areas where street fighting is taking place, places like Tel al-Zaater, Salah al-din Street, Atahtura, Azbet Abu Rabu -- closed to everyone and anyone but the Israeli occupation forces. During 1-4pm there is supposed to be a ceasefire and coordination between paramedics and the Israeli army, through the Red Cross. Of the three paramedics I asked, all of their replies were the same. "We saw none." "It was like a ghost town." Despite finding bodies over the past week, including one baby which had been half eaten by dogs -- photos, film and witnesses at Kamal Odwan confirm it -- and bodies which had been run over by tanks, when they went yesterday, they found nobody, and came back to base empty-handed.

They speculate that the Israelis forces took the bodies away and buried them. If this is true, they will be found one day. This writer claims that the total numbers of the dead will not be known for some time, since many are still buried in the rubble. He reports that ambulances are losing the ability to go and pick up the injured since they are running out of fuel.

And there have been reports of starving children found in the rubble of Israeli bombing besides their dead mothers.

And here is a report from a women living in North Carolina. She was returning from a rally in DC on Sunday.

On the way, I receive the dreaded 9pm call from my father. My heart skipped a beat- late night calls always bear bad news. "More bombings, I can't sleep. Israeli navy gunships are bombarding Gaza city's Tel il Hawa neighborhood- you know where Amo Musab lives-where he built his new house" he says, referring to his cousin. "The suburb is in flames. Residents are calling out to the Red Cross but they can't reach them; and they say they are bombing with firebombs or something, there is a thick black smoke descending on them, choking people" continuing calmly.

…..I talk to my father until the bombing subsides-until anther hour. Sometimes we don't say anything at all. We simply hold the phones to our respective ears and talk in silence, as though it were an unfamiliar technology. As though I can shield him from the hell being unleashed around him for those few minutes. However absurd it sounds, we feel safe somehow; re-assured that if something happens, it will happen while we stand together.

I would like to invite everyone to stand together to end the violence in Gaza. Information about rallies and vigils will be posted on End the Occupation website. There are more ideas on Jewish Voices for Peace website. I would like to invite everyone to write letters to the editors about your feelings about the war on Gaza. Donations to help people in Gaza can be made at this link.

You can watch reports on al Jazeera English on your computer if you have a high speed connection. Go to LiveStation and download the program, then pick al Jazeera English. I have been watching them for a week now, and while it is difficult to watch, they are very informative.

And, lastly, I would like to quote Rabbi Rosen of Evanston, Illinois:

“What Israel has been doing to the people of Gaza is an outrage. It has brought neither safety nor security to the people of Israel and it has wrought nothing but misery and tragedy upon the people of Gaza.”

Photo: A Palestinian woman reacts after an Israeli air strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip January 12, 2009. (Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)