Shoah Watch: Black Saturday

Saturday, March 1st, 2008. Sixty two Palestinians are massacred in an insane Israeli slaughter committed against the besieged people of the Gaza Strip. From the early hours of the morning, the Israeli airforce conducted dozens upon dozens of airstrikes against civilian homes, police stations, civilians in the streets and a mosque.
The massacre was concentrated around Jabalya and the village of Izbet Abed Rabbo. TV footage clearly showed the Israeli army pounding civilian homes in and around the area. Children, women and the elderly were not spared. Ambulances were targeted by Israeli snipers and machine guns, as were journalists and the media.

Its past midnight here, but the attacks are ceaseless. I just want to talk about Saturday for now, so the killing going on now will be chronicled tomorrow as part of the Sunday chapter of this heinous crime.



Its just hard to put into words what happened in Gaza today. There can be no justification whatsoever. Israel promised a holocaust (excuse me, a mere disaster) and it didn’t waste time in delivering. I don’t understand how the lives of a certain group of people can mean so much less than another group because of race, or ethnicity, or religion. Sixty two Palestinians in 24 hours. Amongst them were children, including Samah and Sana, two teenage sisters murdered by an Israeli missile that was fired into their family home.

Also amongst the dead: a 45 year old man who was shot by an Israeli sniper as he stood on his doorstep, and his 19 year old son, who was killed by an Israeli rocket as he came to his father’s rescue. The Darduna family, which lost 3 of its young sons as they were playing soccer only yesterday, lost yet another member of the family when more Israeli missiles hit the family home.

What’s hardest to comprehend is the size of the slaughter. How can over 60 people be murdered is such a cold, murderous manner in one of the most high profile conflict regions on earth? Why have there not been any moves, from any official body, to denounce the massacre? The Palestinian people have been under illegal Israeli occupation and a brutal military rule for decades-so why is Israel’s butchering of Palestinians accepted as necessary self-defense, while Palestinian resistance to this brutality is denounced as abhorrent?

Why is it that in so many parts of the world, the death of one Israeli on Wednesday continues to receive equal or greater media coverage than the death of over 90 Palestinians since then? Is that really the equation, that 1 Israeli life is far more important than that of 90 Palestinians?

Talking to relatives in the Gaza, the situation is beyond terrifying. The airforce has begun attacking Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, as ground forces have moved several kilometers deep into the north of the Strip. Any moving car is liable to be hit with an airstrike without warning. A mosque in Rafah was bombed, killing three men, and two policemen walking home from duty were bombed in the street.


The medical services are warning of an imminent catastrophe. Gaza’s main hospital, Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, says that it cannot take in any more wounded. Mothers that have recently given birth have been sent home, as have dialysis patients, to make room for makeshift surgery rooms and intensive care units. The Strip is close to running out of anesthesia, making a disturbing situation even more gruesome as the majority of the wounded come in with missing limbs, severe burns and gaping wounds. The hospitals are close to running out of the diesel they need to power the emergency generators that are so necessary during these times of continuous power cuts, and with 50% of Gaza’s ambulance fleet parked due to a lack of fuel, there are official warnings that the fuel available to the other 50% will not last more than two days.

The two hospitals that are struggling the most are Al-Shifa in Gaza City and Kamal Udwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, the latter of which had 21 dead bodies brought in today alone. There is a shortage of sheets to cover and wrap the dead in, so hospital bed sheets, already scarce, are being used for the task. One Al-Shifa doctor has warned that if urgent medical supplies do not get through soon, the hospital will be unable to save many of the wounded, and that many of the over 200 wounded today will be buried in mass graves.

The extreme nature of the medical situation has many on the ground believing that the border with Egypt may well be breached again soon, if only to transfer the wounded to Egyptian hospitals.

With Israeli TV announcing yesterday that this is part of a four step plan designed by the Israeli government to overthrow Hamas in Gaza, it seems like what happened today is the beginning of an extremely bloody period in Gaza’s history.

As the governments of the world watch in silence, in apathy, or actively conspire against the people of Gaza, we all need to make every effort towards shedding light on the inhuman brutality of Israel’s merciless attacks on Gaza.
God be with them.