Hello all,

note: I believe I will be on the morning show on KPFK on Wednesday morning sometime between 7:00 and 9:00 am 90.7 FM in case anyone's interested. Again, for an archive of these reports check out www.straybulletins.com/garrick.

Another very bad night. I have a lot to talk about from the last few days and nights but I'm going to first concentrate on last night in the hopes of conveying what was truly an experience unlike any other I've ever had and try to convey to you the horror of daily life here as well as one particularly bad incident. As you have hopefully already heard, Israeli F-16's bombed Gaza City last night destroying 5 homes. It was an assassination against the leader of the military wing of Hamas. At this hour at least 11 are confirmed dead, 8 of them children. Al-Jazeera has been reporting that more than 100 are wounded and many of those are in critical condition. There may be bodies that have not been discoverd yet. This only a few hours after Hamas declared it would stop suicide bombing attacks in within green-line Israel to attempt to let the peace process work. If I haven't driven home the point enough this should make it clear Israel has absolutely no interest in peace. But about last night...

Yesterday 5 of us from ISM arrived in Rafah at the southernmost end of the Gaza Strip. This is my third visit to this hardhit city. Two of us from ISM as well as two journalists, one from the US and the other Dutch ended up staying with a family near Salahadeen gate. This is an area in the Yibna refugee camp hear in Rafah along the Egyptian border and an area that sees intense attack from the Israeli military every night. Some members of ISM had stayed with this family a few days ago so we knew it would be a long night but I don't think anything could have really prepared me for just how long it would be.

I want to give names to the people in this story because they all have names but I'm going to use fake names so as not to have any possibility of my words being used to target anyone. The father of the family is Mohammed. Mohammed has 8 children and his wife to think of. His home was severely damaged almost one year ago by Israeli tanks and bulldozers. They can no longer stay in their own home so they have moved down the street a few meters further away from the Egyptian border to a neighbors home. Just a few quotes from Mohammed, (I'm amazed at the sense of community under such horrific circumstances):

"I am original here, my family has lived in the Gaza Strip for hundreds of years."

"Simply I want my house, I want to continue my life as I am."

I take care of my neighbors children. They take care of mine. there is no question. Where else can I find that?"

"When I left my house I hoped to return in 1 or 2 or 3 hours. I think now I will never return. Why not?"

I really got the sense from him that he loved the people who lived around him, his friends and neighbors. He loved the shared memories of the community and had no desire to leave those people or those memories which is why even under the horrible conditions even if he could he probably would not leave.

Mohammed used to work as a construction worker inside Israel untill the beginning of this Intifada. Now with the closure he has no source of income.

Mohammed stays up every night now until at least 4:30 or 5:00 am. He sits outside with some other men from the community keeping track of where the tanks are, what's happening, if he and his older boys need to run, if the whole family needs to move, etc. At best he gets 2-3 hours of sleep per night. This has been going on for more than a year. And he loves to talk about his life and the situation that they live in and so I learned a lot last night.

Something like a timeline of last night:

11:30 pm We go outside. The shooting usually starts around midnight or 12:30. Almost immediately tonight we hear a series of gunshots from a tank. Mohammed tells us that there is already a tank at the end of the street. I can see the flashes of tracer bullets shooting by at the end of the street.

12:00 tanks begin to move. We hear them roll behind us around the building we are sitting in front of. More shooting but still only sporadic rifle and machine gun fire at this point.

At this time Mohammed shows me some of the damage in his neighborhood. He points out where homes had been demolished, where a medical clinic once stood and he shows me many streams of bullet holes from machine guns. He points out how many of them stitch through houses in places where people could not even possibly stand much less attack a tank from. "Why?" he asks. "Why do they shoot at these houses at places where no one could possibly fire back?" "Why do they shoot here? There is nothing military here, only regular people." I have no answers for him. Though it seems clear to me that the answer is that the Israelis don't view them as regular people they view them as dogs or vermin or all the other racist terms so common once amongst the Nazis referring to Jews that now are so common in Israeli culture.

12:50 tanks shoot down the street we are on. We all have to stand against the wall so as not to draw gunfire.

1:00 the news starts to spread of the assassination of a Hamas leader in Gaza City. It happened around 12:30 or 12:45. We go inside and turn on Al-Jazeera (the CNN of the Middle East, Mohammed translates for us) (We got the following information in bits and pieces over the course of the night but I'm including it all here for sake of ease) At least 11 killed, 8 children dead, about 100 injured from an F-16 attack. 5 homes were destroyed. The assassination was targeting Salah Shihadah, leader of the military wing of Hamas. He, his wife, his three children, 5 other children and one other man are known dead. We watch as people from the area pull bodies and pieces of bodies from the rubble. Others are being rushed to ambulences bleeding heavily. Children are screaming everywhere. Children's faces and bodies sliced open by shrapnel. One child bleeding from his head sitting drooling, unable to control his body. Have you seen these images in the US or has once again the voluntary censorship of the US media won out? That was the face of state terror last night. That is what the world should see, but I know that it won't. All this comes after Hamas has announced only a few hours before that it will stop suicide bombings to allow the peace process a chance to move forward, they were apparently veryclose to signing a deal. This morning we learned that the attack was ordered by Sharon and the minister of defense. The rest of the Israeli cabinet did not even know. The message is clear to Palestinian organizations. Talk about peace and we will hit you harder. We will kill not only you but anyone around you, including children. Israel has no problem with sacraficing children to continue its one sided war against an already oppressed and occupied people. There is some indication of disgust even from within the rest of the Israeli cabinet. We heard the response was that if these people within the government criticize civilian deaths in this action they can never again criticize civilian deaths in suicide bombing attacks. I heard this second-hand but if true, what a disgusting and sick argument. Not to mention the fact that it shows that these people don';t care about anyone, Israeli or Palestinian. I just heard that Sharon declared the action a great success but expressed regret about civilian deaths, how nice of him. The death toll is now 15. The assassination weighs heavily on us the rest of the night.

1:15 We come back outside. We sit in a different place, nearer to the home, with more shelter from another house and a partially demolished wall. We continue, drinking tea and coffee, smoking cigarettes and talking. Gunfire and shelling continue around us. Occaisonally a bullet passes directly over us.

(From hear on out the times become very approximate.)

2:30 The shooting becomes extremely heavy. There is sustained machine gun fire down our street. Shelling, the snap of bullets striking homes. Across from us a man has come out of his house because they are shooting into it. Mohammed yells at him not to cross the street. He lays on the ground beside his house casually smoking a cigarrette. Suddenly two flares go up illuminating the area. The man jokes that he was wondering where the tanks were, now they've lit up the area and he cansee them. People are on their rooves and on balconies. There is an amazing communication network that quickly relays where the tanks are so that people can make decisions about what they need to do. I am struck by the overwhelmingly sobering situation. People, just trying to survive. People who have lived under these conditions on and off for 55 years. Regular people just trying to get by with a first world army unleashing its full might against them.

3:00 The shooting and shelling become extremely bad, even worse than before. Mohammed thinks that there are some Palestinian fighters throwing a few bombs at the tanks. We here maybe three or four of these bombs all night. The Israeli fire lasts hours. He thinks the reason is because of the assassination. Who could blame them. What would I do if children in my community were blown to pieces over and over again. What would I do if a peace announcement is responded to with assassination. What would I do ifmy home was shot at every night? What would you do? Regardless, the fighters if they are indeed attacking, can do nothing against the tanks. As the shooting gets worse Mohammed has us all go inside the house. The sound of tanks moving is huge. They are rolling all around the area. He makes the decision to take his two oldest sons, Achmed and Jihad, probably about 19 and 16 and leave. They climb over a back wall and are gone. If the Israelis come into the house they will go after the men and older boys. This iswhy he stays awake, so he can wake them and get them to safety. He says we can go with them. We feel we'd rather stay with the mother and small children as we will be safer as internationals even if the soldiers do come into the house. Moving in the shadows we will only be targets. Two of the children, 3 year old Ibrahim and 5 or 6 year old Hiba have woken up. Ibrahim sits with his mother. He has a nervous condition. One night his whole body tensed up and he had tobe massaged by doctors to get him to relax again. He had knots in his groin from the tension. We try to comfort them. Ibrahim falls asleep on his mothers lap but his breathing is so loud and troubled, it is so hard to listen to. Hiba seems somewhat cheerful suddenly the loudest explosion of the night goes off somewhere nearby. Her face contorts in fear and tears begin to pour from her eyes. The dutch journalist drops his camera and grabs her cradling her in his arms, trying to comfort a child too young to know why she is hated. We hear Apache helicopters overhead for the first time this night. There fire is added to the noise. After a few minutes Hiba pulls away and throws herself down on a mat in the room she was sleeping in. She tosses and turns for a few minutes with her face in a pillow. I ask her mother if I can go in with her. I pull the blanket up around Hiba and stroke her forehead, trying in my lame way to provide some comfort in a world that no 5 year old should ever have to deal with. Stroking a childs forehead as machine guns, grenades, shells, and rockets are all going off around us trying to make some sense of this world. Eventually her breathing becomes regular, she sleeps and I rejoin the others in the courtyard of the house. The sounds of hell continue around us. Eventually Ibrahim and his mother also return to the room to sleep. We continue to hear his labored breathing.

4:15 Mohammed and Jihad return. Gunfire continues but it has subsided to some degree. Mohammed is worried because has lost track of Achmed in the confusion. He tries not to show it and says it has happened before but obviously he is a father and can't hide the concern for his oldest son.

5:00 the gunfire slowly subsides. We turn on Al-Jazeera for one final update and then get what little sleep we can.

7:30 Tamara wakes me up with a call from Jenin. Things are not good there either. People slowly wake up. Achmed has returned and the whole family is safe. Children in the neighborhood are up and playing outside. The day has started people go on with their lives and getting done what they need to do before the next night of hell. The family cooks us an amazing breakfast as is always the case in Palestine. The fact that three out of four of the foreigners come from the same country that the plane and missle used in the killing of 8 children in Gaza City, the bullets and ammo and other weapons used here did does not bother them. The fact that the blood stains our hands as well in the form of the tax dollars we pay to a government that doesn't care about Palestinians or their rights does not cross their minds. We are their guests and they will take care of us even though they have no money.

I write all this not to tell you of my experiences on one particular night but rather to illustrate what people have gone through every night for two years. As they say, "This is our life" They refer to the gunfire as "music". They continue to survive in spite of everything. This people that I find myself living amongst is so amazing. So resilient, so strong and so wonderful. They do not deserve to be on the receiving end of Israeli fascism. Last night was just one night. Lets work to make sure that these nights do not continue. Do what you can, resist in the US and other countries. Call your elected officials tell them to stop supporting fascism, shut down Israeli consulates and embassies and the government offices that support Israel, boycott Israeli goods, fight against the military industrial complex, come here and see for yourselves. Shut it down! This cannot go on.

There may or may not be a part 2 today. I have more to report than just last night but am also very tired. We shall see. Hope all is well where you are.

Love and Rage from Occupied Palestine,

Garrick

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Garrick Ruiz grok@riseup.net mobile phone (in Palestine): 067 371 507 (from the US) : 011 972 67 371 507 arhive of updates at www. straybulletins.com/Garrick

!!!!Palestina Libre!!!!