With Neighbors Like These

(Rafah Refugee Camp, Gaza, 2 May 2002) -- "They raise their children to hate." That's what we're told about the Palestinians. Watch the TV news. Listen to the radio. Pick up the dramatic US news magazines. Ask the intellectuals and the political pundits. Palestinian mothers willingly sacrifice their own children to the cause. In school, the teachers reinforce the hatred the children learn at home. How can there be peace in Israel/Palestine if they hate the Jews, the Israelis, and the Zionists so much? How can the lily-white live with such neighbors?

Iyad is four years old. His father doesn't allow him to play outside. In the streets of Rafah there is too much danger he'll be shot by Israeli soldiers -- like six-year-old Samiah Najih Hussan who dared walk home from school along the border road with her schoolmates. A bullet lodged in her brain and she died shortly thereafter. That was April 6th, 2002. Do you know how many children have died in similar circumstances since then? No. You don't. Because the news doesn't report it, just like it didn't report the death of 11-month-old Huda who died in her bedroom in the middle of the night on May 1st, 2002 when a tank shell blew apart the concrete walls of her home. By the time I got there the next day, all that was left of her was a ring of blood on the floor.

Ramzi laughs cynically after mimicking the poisonous claims of the western media.

--We raise our children to hate, don't you know?

He says this sarcastically, but gloom soon overtakes him.

--What am I suppose to say when Iyad asks me why he can't play outside? What am I supposed to tell him when he asks me why there are people shooting guns at us? Why tanks roll into our neighborhoods and fire at anything moving? Why airplanes and tanks destroy our city buildings and his friends‚ houses? What am I supposed to tell him when he wakes up at night because the war is just outside our door? How can I explain to my son why I am home from work for the fifth day in a row? Sixteen hours at the checkpoint on Saturday, 12 on Sunday, 13 on Monday, 10 on Tuesday, and then the rumors that it would soon open just stopped circulating. Don't make me laugh by asking me why. There is no why. There is only that I am not earning money to feed and clothe my family. I sit in my room and watch TV. I am restless and bored and humiliated. My sister is 7 months pregnant and she can't return to her husband in the Nuseirat refugee camp 20 minutes north of here. That's the price she's paying for daring to visit my wife and me. She was so sick in the taxicab at the checkpoint and I couldn't do anything to help her. We came back here after 8pm and she went to sleep on the floor.