No Bombs On Birthdays

written in the summer of 2014, but still relevant because war is still hell.

One of the worst  moments of the recent war for me, took place on my birthday.  An errant bomb struck what was identified as a  "disability center," with two people dead and four injured.  The disability center was next door to a mosque which concealed a Hamas weapons cache, which was the actual target. 

 

The date was July 12, 2014.  My birthday had fallen on a Saturday.  This was early in what proved to be a fifty day war.  I was still following this war carefully.  I vividly remember reading this news.  What was the "disability center?"

I remember thinking sharply, this is the inevitable price of aerial bombing in a dense neighborhood.  I had so wanted a different course of development, as did many many people.  I so wanted the disarming of Hamas to be a self-disarming, the result of a negotiated deal etc....   But that type of reasoning had become a fairy tale.

 

I have no empathy with Hamas weapons.  I do have empathy with mosques and disability centers, and with some people who might frequent such places.  I ran a search on "disability center" and Beit Lahiya, and found out nothing really about the disability center.  I did however read about Beit Lahiya  that one-third of the Hamas arsenal was manufactured in there.

 

The advocacy and use of violence by Hamas against Israeli civilians is demoralizing of every one's peaceful aspirations, and abridges Israel's choices.  Nevertheless, the IDF is accountable for its choices and its errors, this one very costly, in terms of two people dead, four people injured, and more than twenty disabled people displaced and homeless.   I will be interested to see its report when it is published, how they explain that incident and another one a week later, in which a bomb appeared to be chasing children on a beach. 

I never for a moment ever thought either of those incidents were deliberate, but rather  mishaps  inevitable from the choice made within the abridgement of choices, the choice to use a military mission, with aerial bombing, to setback Hamas.  The politics of Hamas, to me, deserve to be set back.  I wanted and still want to sock it to their politics.  I could not however bear the military operation against Hamas in Gaza, because of the casualties to civilians, and the displacement of civilians. 

After the incident on the beach, I thought, I can't take this, and I had to cut back on reading  the details of  dreadful news.  Nevertheless, I want to post a link from B'tselem, a civil rights organization in Israel, who took testimony on the telephone from  people on the ground in Gaza.  I want to post the testimony of a woman who lived at the "disability center," which she refers to as a hostel and residence for disabled people.    

 

http://www.btselem.org/testimonies/20140714_diabled_center_hamada