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Kindle Notes & Highlights
How many days will this one last? How will it compare to previous assaults?
Hearing a bomb in real life, for the first time in a couple of years, is like having a PTSD flashback. It jolts you to exactly where you were two years ago, five years ago, four decades ago, to the most recent, or very first time you heard one.
As children, having your name sung by the musaharati is a genuine thrill. Knowing they were finally going to be included this year was a source of real excitement for my boys, and on the first night of Ramadan, they barely slept in anticipation of it.
Adorable🥹
Every single human being in Gaza, whether walking on foot, riding a bicycle, steering a toktok, or driving a car, is a threat to Israel now. We’re all guilty until proven otherwise, and how are we ever going to do that, whether alive or not? Your innocence doesn’t matter—you have to abandon that. Survival is your only care.
Even in the Arab states, there’s been no demonstrations, only condemnation. Such words and protests don’t help much, but they do give you a sense that someone out there is thinking of you, that someone, though helpless, cares about the killing and believes you have a right to live in peace.
The mobile network is down. This is often the case during drone attacks. It interferes with their communications, so the Israelis simply disable them.
More people are killed by single strikes in groups; in fives, sevens, nines. Individuals aren’t the targets, but residences, family houses. They’re bombed until there’s nothing left.
It's never about kHAmas
Death is so close that it doesn’t see you anymore. It mistakes you for trees, and trees for you. You pray in thanks for this strange fog, this blindness.
One missile strikes Sheikh Radwan Cemetery. A reporter comments on the strange fate of the corpses interred there—many of whom were killed in previous bombings—finding themselves once more under attack.
Oh yeah lemme pull 'this is not the first time' card
Our fates are all in the hands of a drone operator in a military base somewhere just over the Israeli border. The operator looks at Gaza the way an unruly boy looks at the screen of a video game. He presses a button and might destroy an entire street. He might decide to terminate the life of someone walking along the pavement, or he might uproot a tree in an orchard that hasn’t yet borne fruit. The operator practices his aim at his own discretion, energized by the trust and power that has been put in his hands by his superiors.
The voice of a man from the Abu Namous family cries out; a reporter explains that the head he is carrying is that of his son, the brain is outside the head. . . .
Allah.. Ini juga terjadi di genosida yg sekarang kan 😭
Link youtube di catatan kaki gabisa dibuka 🥲
“Dad, is football not allowed in war?” Mostafa asks. Naeem replies, trying to make sense of it himself: “No, only playing football on the beach is forbidden. Isn’t that true, Dad?” I don’t know what’s true and what’s not anymore. I know that when your children talk about death, you have to change the subject quickly. Think of something totally different that will instantly distract them. But it doesn’t always work.
There are symbolic statues, like the phoenix in Palestine Square.
Baru tau kalo Phoenix itu simbol kota Gaza 😯
I mean, wow..? Muhammed El-Kurd nulis tentang ini btw. It make sense now🥲
the constant nervous glances upwards at the sky in fear of a premature end to the truce. . . . This is Gaza on a truce day.
Who will teach him that life cannot be built on the ruins of other lives?
Who will convince the international community that it has a responsibility to be objective when things like this happen? No one, I suspect. Gaza has no one to help it. The people have only hope and their own resilience to fall back on. If that fails us, the sea may as well rise up and flood the land.
Everything is turned into numbers. The stories are hidden, disguised, lost behind these numbers. Human beings, souls, bodies—all are converted into numbers.
Journalists like catastrophes. They like numbers, statistics, data. They like the sight of tears and emotions in front of the camera. Destruction is a rich meal for the camera.
Dan kami (yg peduli) cuma bisa melakukan hal kecil yg nyaris gak berdampak apa² 😔
The next morning, dirty, grey bones lay scattered about the broken gravestones. At the moment of impact, these old corpses must have flown upwards into the air.
Another little girl who survived, while her mother and brothers perished, was asked by a local TV presenter where her family was. “They’ve gone to be martyrs,” she replied. She thinks that being a martyr is somewhere you go for a while, like a holiday. She went on to explain that she’s waiting for them to come back from “martyrdom.”
Israel has been using local radio channels, hacking into the wavelength, to deliver its messages to Gazans. In the middle of listening to music at my friend Wafi’s house, we hear the broadcast cut short suddenly and the voice of an Israeli general, threatening the people of Rafah. Any person walking in the street, any person driving a car will be hit.
When the Israeli army occupied Gaza in 1967, her husband—my grandfather Ibrahim—wanted to leave Gaza and take refuge in Jordan. She refused. She told him that she was not going to “drink from the same glass twice.” She was not going to flee, or take refuge, anywhere again. She was staying in Palestine. Thanks to this strong woman, I was born in Palestine, not in a refugee camp outside it.
If i was not a Palestinian and I saw this happening, i would definitely wish to have been Palestinian — Ahmed (princekouta)
The images of the children in the hospital beds—blood everywhere, screams, tears, the violent measures doctors and nurses have to take to try to save them—are too much for other kids to see.
He is right, but being right isn’t enough. “Right” and “just” are words that don’t get the same respect in politics as they do in the dictionary.
Since the occupation began in 1967, ships from the outside world haven’t been allowed to drop anchor at Gaza.
Gaza’s fishermen face all kinds of challenges in the best of times. When they set out, they have warships, patrol boats, submarines, coastal gun turrets, and drones, all threatening to wipe them out.
The TV presenter is suddenly full of confidence, declaring that a new dawn was coming for Gaza: a time when the Strip would be free again with an airport and a seaport, with free movement through the Rafah crossing, freedom to travel and worship in Jerusalem, when construction material would be imported un-rationed, when all goods and all people would move freely.
Jadi bertanya-tanya, di 2014 ini siapa yg memimpin perundingan gencatan senjata? In 2023-2024 it mostly kemauan Hamas (end the occupation, free all 9k Palestinian hostages, liberation of Palestine dan al-quds sebagai ibu kota).
Siapa yg memimpin? Apa aja syaratnya sampe akhirnya gencatan senjata tercapai? Dan kenapa jurnalis ini seoptimis itu sampe nyebut bandara? 😭
I want to look into the face of little Jaffa and be able to promise her a future free of the fear of being killed. I want to see the boys playing in the street without danger. I want to return to the fine details of my everyday life: to go to the café with friends, to read a book quietly in silence, to sit up late watching a movie with Hanna, to wake up in the morning not thinking, “Who has survived the night?”
The war ended, officially, on 26 August, but for those who were left homeless or bereaved, or with their livelihoods destroyed, the war goes on. The only difference is the world isn’t watching anymore.
Don't look away. Kita bangun Palestine sama-sama when all of this shit ends:")
“Daddy, when will the next war be?” He is eleven years old and has witnessed three wars in his short life; already he’s planning for the fourth.
