2023-11-18 09:51:57
Dear President,
When is the death of a Palestinian child unacceptable to you anymore? Or let me put the question another way: When are you going to give a Palestinian life the same sanctity as an Israeli one?
Israel bombarded the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza yesterday. Part of the camp was completely destroyed and regarding 100 people were killed or wounded. My dear friend poet Mosab Abu Toha and his wife and children recently moved to Jabalia. Because Israel was warned to leave their home in Beit Lahia, north of the camp. Beit Lahia will be shelled. That was the warning. And it happened, and Mosab’s house was completely destroyed. After two days of anxious anxiety, I received a voice message from him. ‘The bombing at Jabalia camp was seventy meters away from where we were standing,’ he said. ‘An entire neighborhood was wiped out.’
What I remember most regarding my visits to Jabaliya are the children: everywhere they were laughing, playing and being happy. I also loved the bustling bustling markets that I always visited with my female friends.
Jabaliya is a very familiar place to me even though I haven’t been there in years. It is the largest of the eight refugee camps in Gaza. Twenty-six schools, two health centers and a public library are part of it. Over one hundred and sixteen thousand men, women and children live there in an area of 1.4 square kilometers. Do you have any idea what it means to cram over a hundred thousand people into half a square mile? However, despite the extreme population density, the camp is a very vibrant community. What I remember most regarding my visits to Jabaliya are the children: everywhere they were laughing, playing and being happy. I also loved the bustling bustling markets that I always visited with my female friends.
I need to tell you one more thing. As the daughter of Holocaust survivors and as a Jew, every house I visited in the camp welcomed me with joy. The truth is that they embraced me. I still have a picture that the twelve-year-old son of a friend of mine, who wanted to go to art school in America, drew for me.
I don’t know if my dear friends and their families are among those killed or mortally wounded by Israel. But I am sure that this is not the first atrocity committed once morest them, and it will not be the last if you and others who have the power to stop it continue to justify the atrocity. Now you are asking for a ‘humanitarian pause’, I don’t understand what that is. What is meant by a pause in the midst of this terrible carnage? Does that mean feeding people and letting them survive to be killed the next day? How is that humane? How is it soluble?
How much more evidence do you need to call the killing of over eight thousand people (as of this writing), the complete destruction of generations of families, the leveling of Gaza’s entire infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and homes, not self-defense, but a war crime? Of course, Israel has killed many more civilians in Gaza than Hamas fighters.
Not self-defense, but the desire to drive Palestinians from their homes and annex their lands in Gaza and the West Bank. Of course you totally know that. But how do you exonerate it?
Please answer this: How does an occupier have the right to self-defense once morest a people he has oppressed, dispossessed, impoverished, and is now on the brink of extreme starvation? Not self-defense, but the desire to drive Palestinians from their homes and annex their lands in Gaza and the West Bank. Of course you totally know that. But how do you exonerate it?
It would not be sanctified if Israel and the U.S. abandoned every shred of morality and mercy in its attempt to avenge Hamas’s brutal murder of fourteen hundred innocent Israelis, abandoning the very notion of a common humanity with the defenseless and insecure Palestinians. Is this how Israel is going to ensure the safety of its people? Is this how you intend to do it?
Mosab told me regarding an Israeli airstrike on the Jabaliya refugee camp at the beginning of this terrible war, when people were out shopping. He said dozens of people were killed. He later sent me a photo showing the remnants of the attack — avocados strewn next to motionless bodies. ‘Can you see those avocados?’ He asked me. I can do it. Can you do it, President Biden?
Source: London Review of Books
Translation: Aftab Illat
Sarah Roy is an American political economist and Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Roy’s research and more than 100 publications focus on Gaza’s economy and most recently on Hamas. She is also the author of the 2007 book, “Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.”
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#avocados #Open #Letter #President #Biden
