Saturday, June 16, 2007

reality check

yesterday on Democracy Now! one of the folks on the show was a Palestinian woman named Laila El-Haddad. I'm posting this in order to urge you all to check out her blog "Raising Yousuf, Unplugged: Diary of a palestinian Mother."
"This blog is about the trials of raising our son between Gaza and the US, while working as a journalist, and everything that entails from potty training to border crossings. Together, we endure a lot, and the personal becomes political. This is our story.

her writings are a much needed glimpse of life under occupation...children, elders, families...just trying to live.

from the post "war games"...

"I was down in Rafah again this week. While inspecting the site of a future park project my friend Fida is working on (and which we are making a film about), we were disrupted every few minutes by the voracious sound of multiple F-16 fighter jets flying overhead in unision. Sometimes one or two; then four or five.

Children scurried about playing football with a deflated basketball on the sand lot.

"Do you think I will be assassinated one day?" one child asked another. He didn't say this jokingly.

I can't sleep. I get up maybe once every two hours. Go to the bathroom, walk around a little, and then doze off again. Only to be awakened by the drones, followed by the manic hovering of helicopter gunships.

This time they were directly over our apartment building. I would have been afraid, except this happened once before, maybe two years ago. Panicked and fearful at the time, I called my cousin, who re-assured me that when an Apache is directly overhead, it means its intended target is about 500 metres to one kilometre away. It is information I wish I did not know."

1 comment:

Jbeeky said...

I will check it out, Erin. Just that snippet is unbelievable.