Messages from the Inferno

JVL Introduction

In the past few days, the messages are sparse from Gaza. We learn that the internet is constantly going down, and that the people trying to fix it are targeted.

About two weeks ago, this one from Mohammed El Sharif, the former Director of the Gaza Child Mental Health Centre (now reduced to rubble), recently released from seven months of brutal imprisonment in Israel:

Gaza on the third day of forced silence, the contacts are cut off, and the bombing does not stop. People are fleeing into the unknown, and the pain is greater than words. No food, no medicine, no safety… Children, women and old people are sleeping on the floor and waiting ….

From my colleague Mohammad Maragha, from the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, this heart wrenching short message a few days ago from one of the music teachers in their Gazan team, who had until very recently still been gathering little groups of children and musicking with them in the rubble. No more.

We just want to die now, without this terrible hunger. 

And from Erella of the Villages Group, whose words have reappeared several times in this series as she documents the ongoing horrendous settler violence that she witnesses first hand again and again, this howl of anguish.

We are posting this rather late but it is still highly relevant.

 Felicity Laurence 

Khallet al-Dab’e, Iran and what lies in between

 To our friends all,

Have you added insult to injury? – literally “Would you murder and also take possession?” says the Prophet Elijah to King Ahab after he murdered Navot and inherited his vineyard, only because Navot would not give up the ground of his forefathers, where he was born and raised and tended and lived his life like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather for generations. This terrible tale is told in the Bible, the Jewish Book of Books.

It is told twice so as to be known and studied, once in Kings 1, Chapter 21, and once in Kings 2, Chapter 9.

In Hebrew this means that a double injustice has been perpetrated. Not only this, it is doubly so since the person inflicting the injustice enjoys its fruits while the victim is denied.

But the settlers, the Israeli army, police and other arms of Israeli occupation, all of them kosher Jews and some of them ultra-kosher, are mightily active in Khallet al-Dab’e. They annihilate, inherit and make sure the annihilation is well-committed and inherit again and make sure again and humiliate, discriminate, beat up, spit, steal and lie – murder and inherit in slow motion.

 The last time I wrote about an event in Khallet al-Dab’e was about two weeks ago. Since then, the above-mentioned happens every day. I no longer manage to formulate it in words. But Friday night, when the government of Israel and its emissaries continue to murder and inherit in the West Bank and in the ruined Gaza that is bleeding to death under incessant bombing and starvation – these bodies are hungry for more destruction and blood and open a ruthless front against Iran, and now suddenly I find my words again, out of the rage that threatens to destroy me.

 Our friends from all over the South Hebron Hills including Khallet al-Dab’e call us to inquire about our welfare. Friends from the world over call us to inquire about our welfare. And I reconnect to my powers. The powers of that ancient knowledge that freedom cannot be murdered, subjected to inheritance or stolen. The freedom to choose not to give in and not surrender my own freedom to choose my friends. How much power has ties of the soul that are created by the ability to see other people.

Light is longer now. In 5 days, the longest day with the most hours of light will be here. Nature and the world have existed since the beginning of time and enable us humans, too, to see the most important thing that exists. That which is in our own hands. This enables me to see inside myself in full light the ability to love, to heal, to live.

 Only not to let the dark powers steal this freedom.

 Erella, on behalf of the Villages Group