Responding to “rocket fire” originating in Gaza, the Israeli army has shelled and bombed it for the past 14 months. Since June, it has killed over 300. On Wednesday, the town of Beit Hanoun was the site of a very illustrative chapter in the offensive.
Armed Palestinians — BBC says 15; The New York Times says 60 — hid from the Israelis in the Um al-Nasir mosque. The two armed groups exchanged fire, and eventually an Israeli bulldozer tore down one wall of the mosque. During the standoff, Hamas radio broadcasted the location of the mosque and asked local women to stand outside it. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Haniyeh called them “human shields.”
Hundreds of women responded. They brought female attire, entered the mosque and dressed the men, while others gathered outside. Though unarmed men are visible between them, Israel claims that eight “gunmen” were in the crowd, and it shot at the women. According to the women, all the men escaped uninjured, but Israeli spokesperson Avital Leibovich says, “Unfortunately, because the militants shot at our forces, sometimes we had to respond.” Video (grainy on YouTube, see for yourself) does not indicate that anyone in the crowd of women had guns. In addition, clearer video and eyewitness reports indicate that no one in the crowd of women was armed.
Middle-aged women Ibtisam Masoud and Rawda Khelah were shot and killed by Israelis outside the mosque. We could argue whether they were technically civilians or combatants. What’s absolutely clear, instead, is the sentiment behind one of the middle-aged survivor’s words. “We risked our lives to free our sons,” Um Mohammed told Agence France-Presse.
Survivior Nahed Abou Harbiya told the BBC Arabic Service, “All the women headed to the mosque to get the Palestinian resistance men ... But the Israeli occupation forces were firing heavily at us with their machine guns and also threw stun grenades at us … We entered the mosque and indeed we got all the resistance men out and put female attire on them so that the Israeli occupation forces wouldn’t arrest them,” she said.
Speaking with their bodies, hundreds of women in Gaza stood between “Palestinian resistance men” and the Israeli army. These women stared at flash grenades and into gun barrels, knowing full well that the chance of death was great. Their reasons for doing so are clear in their descriptions: they call those in the mosque “resistance men” and “our sons,” instead of the New York Times’ “gunmen” and “militants.” Harbiya owns her actions and expresses her role in the escape, saying “indeed, we got all the resistance men out.” She, and the hundreds with her, was obviously in support of whoever was inside the mosque, so full of support that she risked her life to protect them and aid in their flight.
Describing the men not as terrorists, not as anti-Semites, and not as radicals, Um Mohammed calls the men Israel tried to kill “our sons.” Acting as mother to shield her children, she says, was the goal. We should be overwhelmed by the willingness of hundreds of women to “risk our lives to free our sons.”
Yet it is hardly difficult to understand why these middle-aged women would stand in front of tanks, bulldozers, grenades, sniper rifles and uzis. What kind of suffering could be so heinous and so horrific that these women would risk their lives to aid the “resistance men?”
Looking backward, we know Israel’s assault on Gaza began almost immediately after it abandoned the area last year. It fired shells into Gaza — tens of thousands of them. Cannonballs rained for months and months, with 2,000 in the first two weeks of April alone. Then on June 10, one of them landed at a beach in Gaza and killed all 7 members of Huda Ghalya’s family. Most of the world stared in horror at the image of her in tears, surrounded by the body parts of her family. Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz apologized for the “accident,” then retracted his apology and claimed the shell was not Israeli, though the Ghalya family’s injuries indicate it was. Israel’s shells are, in fact, far more dangerous than what Israel claims demands its invasion of Gaza: Hamas’ small, highly inaccurate quassam rockets fired from that region.
Then, there’s also a good chance one of the women outside the mosque had a miscarriage. Since withdrawal, Israel has routinely flown its American-made and financed fighter jets over Gaza at supersonic speed, shattering windows, triggering spontaneous abortions, frightening children and attacking the psychology of a million people. Last year, the head of the U.N. Development Programme in Gaza, Khaled Abdul Shafi, “urg[ed Israel] to stop ... the sonic booming and the air raids immediately, because we simply think that this is a violation of basic human rights, especially rights of children to live in peace and to be educated in peace.”
Appealing to the Israeli High Court in November, 2005, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, citing international law, argued that “the booms are collective punishment against the civilian population and thus illegal.” The Court has yet to rule, though another petition was submitted in July when the current siege began and Israel bombed power plants and tore up crop fields and roads as part of what P.M. Olmert claimed was “necessary” to find captured soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Though Shalit’s father urged Olmert to accept Hamas’ terms for a prisoner exchange (the release of its women and children from Israeli prisons), Olmert refused, and his country’s assault on Gaza has radicalized women like Um Mohammed, who now describes the armed men inside the mosque as her sons.
What’s happening to Gazans shocks the conscience, and explains why hundreds of women would risk their lives to shield 15 men resisting it. The women at the Um al-Nasir mosque expressed collective ownership of the Hamas “resistance men” and their struggle, risking their lives to prevent Israel from capturing them. In Gaza, it’s obvious how Israel creates enemies, some willing to die to oppose it.
Jeff Purcell is a graduate student in Africana Studies. He can be reached at jlp56@cornell.edu [1]. Brutal Honesty appears Mondays.
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[1] mailto:jlp56@cornell.edu