User blog:Toa Vorak/A Reminder to Everyone of the Carnage and Death that happened in Gaza

Imagine having a 4 year old girl, young, energetic, and beautiful, being torn away from you, not with her flesh, but without it. Shahd, a four-year-old Palestinian girl, was playing in the backyard of her home in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza when an Israeli tank fired a shell at her. Her uncle and aunt attempted to save their niece, who fell to the ground in her own pool of blood, but were stopped by Israeli bullets that kept them away. For five days Israeli bullets held back her family, leaving her exposed to animals. Her uncle said in tears, "The dogs did not leave one single part of the poor baby's body intact." Those five days, her brother, Matar, and her cousin, Mohamed, tried to reach her but every time they were repelled by bullets. "Seeing the body of the little angel torn to pieces by the assaulting dogs, the two made one final attempt, and it was their last." Omran Zayda, her neighbor, said that the Israelis knew what they were doing. "They chased her family and prevented them from reaching her body, knowing that the dogs would eat it," he said. "They are not just killing our children, they are intentionally doing so in the most inhuman ways." Many Palestinians say that Shahd was not the only girl this has happened to. Later when her family went to go bury their dead, the Israelis started firing at them and prevented them from doing so. Then, witnesses say, the Israelis released their dogs at the bodies, deserted by mourners who had run for shelter. Shahd's remaining living family is her uncle. Her parents killed hours before her, her brother killed trying to retrieve her, and her cousin who died doing the same. What more could the Israelis do?

By the twentieth day of the genocide, around 1,100 people had been killed and over 50% of the dead are children and women. That's over fifty deaths everyday! Also more than 5,000 people had been wounded! Israel has lost a total of thirteen men, 10 of them were soldiers in Gaza and three were civilians, throughout their offensive against Hamas. Israel has stated the reason they have started this war was to weaken Hamas which they have completed. Israel also is trying to protect its children and civilians from rocket fire. But only a hundred and twenty-three Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians since September 29, 2000 to July 17, 2008 compared to the 1,050 Palestinian children that have been killed during the same time frame. So it was clear even before this offensive that the Palestinians have lost more children than Israel. Not only that, but 8,341 Israelis have been injured compared to the 33,034 Palestinians that have been injured since September 29, 2000 till September 30, 2008. So Hamas is not as big of a threat to the civilians and children of Israel as Israel is to the civilians and children of Gaza.

"Israel has broken more united nations security council resolutions than all the other countries of the world put together," says George Galloway, a British Member of Parliament. Israel has been targeted by at least sixty-five UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by none from the years of 1955 to 1992. Israel has been demanded to make a ceasefire yet they delayed. Also protests all over the world with tens of thousands of people have also been demanding a ceasefire many days before the ceasefire had actually occurred. There was a protest in Brussels that drew 30,000 people, 2,000 in the Pakistani port city of Karachi; as many as 100,000 people in Spain, 2,500 in Beirut, at least 1,000 in Copley Square, hundreds of thousands in Europe, and more all for the cause of helping the people of Gaza. Israel's offensive in Gaza has forced at least 90,000 Gazans to abandon their homes. But those who had been caught in the crossfire between Hamas and Israel had no were to run, there was no safe sanctuary. "They knew this operation was coming, they knew what the geography and demographics of Gaza are like, and apparently they didn't plan for the humanitarian needs," said Fred Abrahams. The U.N. had opened 36 temporary shelters housing more than 28,000 people, but two of those had come under fire. How? These shelters have the U.N. flag on them and are marked on the Israeli charts yet two were bombed? "Normally people can at least dream of going somewhere safe," Colville said. "Gazans can't."

Injustice has been committed over the past years. By March 31, 2007, there were 10,756 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel while only one Israeli was being held captive by the Palestinians. Israel also used white phosphorous. It burns off human flesh and burns hotter and more fiercely when you try to put it out with water. Use of white phosphorus on civilians as an antipersonnel weapon constitutes a war crime. They are using white phosphorous to target Hamas fighters but its range is so vast that it hurts and kills hundreds with them. Also Israel, over the past days, had been using Gaza as a "lab". Doctors in Gaza had been reporting strange wounds on the bodies of innocent people. These wounds are often invisible to the X-rays and the burns are so intense that many cases have required amputation. The legs of the injured were "sliced from their bodies as if a saw was used to cut through the bone." But there is no evidence that ordinary metal got even near the wounds. Further investigations helped the doctors realize what Israel was using. They were using dense inert metal explosives, in other words DIME. DIME is a carbon-encased missile that shatters on impact into minuscule splinters, at the same time setting off an explosive that shoots blades of heavy metal powder. The powder turns to dust on impact and burns and destroys everything in a four meter range. The Gazan environment could have been extensively damaged if the Israelis continued to use this new weapon with impunity.

America has not been helping at all. During 2007, the U.S. gave more than $6.8 million per day to Israel and $0.3 million per day to the Palestinians. Why does Israel need this money? 0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and 18,147 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967 to 2006. Palestine needs the money, they need medical help, they need to rebuild homes and towns, and they need protection. America has no right to give Israel $84,854,827,200 since 1949. Israel by October 2007 had 223 Jewish-only settlements and 'outposts' built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians have none. Israel's territory was by January 1949 enlarged by about 5,000 km², compared to what was granted by UN in 1947. Our country should start supporting the civilians of Gaza. We can't be silent nor silenced. We should at least help them with what we have, better yet with our words. We must be representatives of peace against violence, of voice against the mute, of justice against the unjust, and representatives of knowledge against the ignorant. Israel and Hamas have lately made a ceasefire and they expect us to forget about all the people they have killed? "The total repair bill would be at least $1.9 billion," said the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. They have destroyed 5,000 homes, 16 government buildings, and 20 mosques and have damaged 20,000 houses. They have killed 292 people from Hamas and other military groups and have killed at least 1,300 people with more than 5,450 injured. "We want a solution that would guarantee Israeli tanks do not return to kill us," said Yehya Aziz, a 22-year-old Gazan.

This is just food for thought, written by a friend of mine who, like me, thinks we should remember all of this. Yes an ideal time to post this probably would have been like last week. But I didn't recieve the text then....