Not Anonymous

First of all, thanks to everyone on my f-list who is raising awareness about the Gaza War, there are various voices and the more people talk and write about it (no matter their opinion) this is a good thing.

Second of all, I'm seeing my LJ being plugged all over my f-list. Which is flattering in a purely egotistical way, I'm glad you all find me so informative.

I've been told that I should write outside this little milieu, but I don't really know where or how to go about looking for a place.
So if any of you reading this have a suggestion, I'm all ears and eyes.

My writing is fairly stream of conciousness like, so I hope you will forgive me the jumps between "hard facts" and "feelings".

Since the IDF's ground incursion into Gaza, 34 soldiers have been wounded, three seriously and one soldier has been killed.

Rockets keep falling in the South of Israel, since the beginning of "Cast Lead", rockets have been flying more and more and hitting farther and farther.
Israelis are hiding in shelters, children are being treated for anxiety and all schools in a radius of 40 km from Gaza are closed, including Ben-Gurion University - my darling, my girl, my [Southern!Girl] studies at BGU and lives in range of the rockets falling.
So far so good.

Over on the Other Side, casualties rise on the Gaza offensive. Since the ground incursion into Gaza 90 people (both civilians and militants, approx. 26 children - that is Palestinians under the age of 16 - have been killed).
So far over 500 have been killed and there almost 2500 wounded.
There are no more hospital beds.
The term "living conditions" with regards to Gaza is such a laughable term I only want to cry.
Israel said they're sending 80 trucks filled with Humanitarian aid and last week (maybe still) Israel was evacuating some wounded Palestinians to Israeli hospitals.
At first I couldn't understand what these gestures were supposed to mean? Did we[Israel] really expect the Palestinians to drop onto their knees with thanks that we're throwing them a scraps while demolishing their entire infrastructure.

It was pointed out to me that these may have been done so that Israel can claim that there is no Humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

"Hello Desk"
"We meet again Head"

I can only cry and shout and weep and scream.

( Cut for length, but more things to do with Cast Lead, Israel and Palestine )
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Things are tense.

[Southern!Girl] came up from Beer Sheba for the night and ended up crying in my arms as we snuggled.
She said (I paraphrase) that there people suffering more than her in this situation.
She's right of course, but she's the one crying in my arms.

Add to that, I feel as though my family has gone 'round the bend.
Living with my parents give me ample opportunity to discuss the war with them and how one sided the media is (towards the Palestinians, of course).

My mother said she doesn't agree with me on the suffering of the Palestinians as compares to the suffering of the Israelis. I had an argument on the phone with my older Jerusalem-residing sister who ended up saying (again, paraphrasing) that she agrees with everything I'm saying, but bottom line, the lives of the people of Sderot and the other towns and villages surrounding Gaza are of more value than the lives of Palestinians in Gaza.

And again there was the dropping of Hamas' immoral tactics: human shields and using the civilian populations and housing for their weapons and their headquarters. That all they want is the destruction of Israel and that they get money from Iran and only use it to fight and not create infrastructure for... well, anything.

Thing is... when you're talking specifically about Hamas these are facts. Question is how you're going to put them in context.
Context being... the Occupation.
There is no separating that from the situation.
The whole "we left Gaza and they let everything go to waste", is just so moronic I can't even articulate it properly.
Being of South African heritage, maybe I should begin using the term Bantustan.

One sentence I can't get out of my head and really can't believe I've been hearing, not from anyone specific, but in general:
"We [Israel] haven't hurt too many innocent people".
What does that even mean?
That collateral damage is swept under the bloody rug?

Israel is so ethical, the defence ministry calls houses that are about to be bombed and tell them to evacuate a head of time:

We just received a phone call on our land line. It was the Israeli Defence Ministry, and they said that any house that has guns or weapons will be targeted next, without warning and without any announcement. Just to let you know, we don't have any weapons in our house. If we die please defend my family.
[...]
For the last year and a half the Israeli government has intensified the economic blockade of Gaza by closing all the border crossings that allow aid and essential supplies to reach Palestinians in Gaza. This forced Palestinians to dig tunnels to Egypt to survive. Israel continued to threaten a military operation in the Gaza Strip, until the madness of war became inevitable for both sides. And since it began, hundreds of Gazans have been killed.

I don't know how other people around the globe think. Did you think to be honest with yourself once to understand the truth? A handmade Palestinian rocket jeopardizes Israeli security, but Israel's deadly F-16s, rockets, missiles, and tanks don't jeopardize Palestinian security?

Emphasis mine. Quoted from Electronic Intifada.

Hamas was elected democratically, by the people of Gaza. They then went on to kill all Fatah activists and their families in the strip.
This is despicable, bad and terrible and certainly shows Hamas to be "bad guys".
In my home's political discourse they've been compared to Robert Mugabe of Zimbambwe as to how Evil they are and how cheap they view life to be.

But see, I don't care how Hamas view human life, because this kind of discourse just dehumanizes them more and more, and it's not as though Israel has that much better an opinion on Human Life, which is categorized very nicely into religious and ethnic criterion.

The traumatised children of Sderot are also human shields, but that's dehumanizing them isn't it.

I've been accused of hating Israel. Why do I not remember the history of my people's persecution, how can I prefer the Palestinians over my own Israeli brethren?

I don't hate Israel, that would mean hating the people that make the country, I think the way the power is structured prevents the people to actually be a part of the governing body and thus have very little influence in any sphere of influence.
I remember my people's history very well, I'm very much living in the paranoid fantasy that my own Jew-Ways will get me killed.
I've been to Warsaw (and imagined the Uprising) and to Auschwitz (and breathed in the Ashes). That isn't our entire history, reducing it to that, defining our Jewish-Israeli identity in that way diminishes our own subjectivity and the using of that history to oppress and dehumanize an Other People is the ugliest kind of narrative exploitation.

Thus endeth the spiel.

Free Palestine, Gaza, Rafah, Beit Hanoun, Ramallah and the rest of us. Bring hope to Sderot, Beer Sheba, Ashkelon, Ashdod and the rest of all of us.
Peace with our enemies.

Rockets reach Beer Sheba, cause damage.

Beer Sheba, largest Southern City.
Large Arab population.
University town.

Current residence of my girlfriend [Southern!Girl].

Bloody fucking brilliant.

I hate, hate, hate, bloody well fucking hate this!

She's okay and apparently the rockets landed quite away from her. But other people are hurt and in shock in the neighbourhood that they hit.

Oh god, why the hell did we have to do things this way?

Let's get a few things straight shall we.

Arrogance?
Israel, check.
Hamas, check.

Disregarding civilians life?
Hamas, check.
Israel, check.

Using said civilian life in order to push forward an aggressive militant agenda?
Israel, check.
Hamas, check.

Hawkish propaganda?
Hamas, check.
Israel, check.

I could go on, but really to what end?
The really big, huge, flippin' enormous difference between Hamas and Israel?
Israel has way, waaaaay bigger guns and are using them with impunity and immunity.
Hamas is calling for suicide bombing because those are the weapons they have.

I think Hamas are arrogant, fanatical abusers.
Then again, I think much the same about the Israeli government.

Thing is, you can twist this around all you want, and try to create a symmetrical situation. It's not.
There is, however, a deeper more ethical issue.
Israel controls all the borders (bar the one with Egypt, which *thmbs up* to you Egypt, glad to see you making a stand), seas and air of Gaza. Israel controls everything that goes in and out of Gaza... as terrible as it is, Gaza depends on Israel and Israel softly began killing the Gazans during the seige which began because the government didn't approve of Hamas being elected by the silly deluded Palestinians who simply do not understand anything other than force and violence of course.
Never mind that Hamas was Israel's equivalent to the PLO after the first Intifada and that everything is jump biting Israel back in the ass.

*sigh*
I hope this doesn't last long, for everyone's sake.
I don't know how much anyone can take of this shit.

Have I mentioned how much I hate this (un)Holy Land?