Dennis Fox’s Weblog

Three weeks ago I met Dana Shalash, an English student at Birzeit University In Ramallah who commented on this blog back in October. She showed me around campus, and we sat for a while in the cafeteria talking about her life as a student, about her small village nearby, about her plans for the future.

She’s now written on her own blog about Thursday’s Israeli raid on Al Manara Square in central Ramallah. A couple of excerpts, but the whole thing is worth reading.

I have just come back from Ramallah where together with my sister I was locked inside a building at Al Manara, Ramallah’s city center, for four hours. While we were shopping this afternoon, people started running, stores began closing up, and the Palestinian policemen fled from Al Manara. Everyone was pointing somewhere upwards and there were two Israeli helicopters flying in Ramallah’s skies. …

…I would never wish this to happen to anyone because it is much worse than death. I am still unable to put things together at the moment, but I am so glad that I got back home. The only irony is that once I got here, Al Jazeera was covering the Olmert-Mubarak press conference. While they were sucking up, we were under attack. They were discussing peace (I guess), and they made sure it is being perfectly applied this afternoon in Ramallah.

Perhaps it’s wrong to express special concern about people we know personally, but  I’m glad Dana wasn’t one of the four Palestinian civilians who Israeli soldiers killed that day.

Back in October, I also briefly met Sam Bahour in Ramallah, the Palestinian-American who’s been in the news in recent months because he’s fighting Israeli demands that Palestinians without residency permit leave the country no matter how modernized, urbanized, and professionalized they happen to be. Sam, too, has a personal story about Thursday’s Israeli raid, which began as he walked into Angelo’s Pizzeria with his family, including six-year old Nadine.

…My friends, I write this not to bore you with one family’s experience during 2 hours of occupation, but rather to scream to the world that we need your help!  4 Palestinian civilians were killed last night in this attack, 20 were injured, 5 of them seriously.  I have no statistics on the number of children, like Nadine, whose skin become thicker during this latest Israeli adventure.

Israel has lost her way and the US is Palestinian-blind.  Israel is creating yet another generation of Palestinians that are more numb to their military occupation than any other.  Likewise, it is creating a generation of Israeli occupiers that see my city as the wild, wild, west.  It is stripping children, Palestinian and Israeli, of their childhood.  It must stop and NOW.  We need your active support….

Most Israelis, I know, focus only on their government’s justifications, partly because that’s all they know. But every Israeli attack has consequences well beyond those its planners might intend. At some point it becomes irresponsible to ignore consequences completely by reiterating only one-sided justifications. That point came a long time ago.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 6th, 2007 at 11:13 pm and is filed under Israel/Palestine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.