Autumn has arrived in Maine, reminding us that the winter rains will begin in Gaza in just two months. Gaza is bone dry from April to November and then subject to massive rainfall all winter, with heavy flooding. During our first winter in Israel, with me working in Gaza, 1991-92, we had a rolling thunder storm that lasted three solid days. I learned the meaning of “storm of Biblical proportions.”
Gaza flood control infrastructure that was built by international donors over the years, including some from my time as the USAID representative there, has been repeatedly destroyed, sometimes rebuilt, and then destroyed again, just like the sewer systems, so it all mixes together in a toxic brew, this time including the dangerous chemicals from tens of thousands of tons of exploded ordnance.
Gaza now has a year’s worth of the untreated fecal matter from 2.3 million people who will soon be awash in it. Even if the war were to stop tomorrow, which it isn’t going to do, life under tarps this winter for 2.3 million people there is going to be cold, fetid and deadly.
YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS
We have not been able to reach Abu Saif and Saja, in Nuseirat, which has been under aerial and artillery bombardment, but Hamad, in Cairo, reports that he was able to speak with them and that they are so far unharmed.
From Hamad September 5 (minor edits for clarity)
“Regarding the last amount we spent about 1000 shekels (about 3.6 to the dollar) we bought a tent for a family in central Gaza Zawaida and 400 hundred shekels we sent to Jamal's son as a bank transfer, the rest of the amount we couldn't withdraw it in central Gaza due to very high commission 19%.
“So I will send the rest of the amount to northern Gaza my friends will withdraw it and distribute it by tomorrow.”
FROM HAITHAM:
By coincidence, Haitham’s note from September 5, shows that, like us, he has been thinking about the meaning of dystopias and societal collapse.
“We are all tired. Everyone suffers from insomnia, staying up late, terror, malnutrition, disgust, and lack of hygiene products. We have started searching for water without asking if it is fresh or fit for drinking. We have forgotten about cold water. We wish to see electricity. We wish that our children would go to schools and universities. We have no school, no university, no hospital, no house, no factory, no market, no street, no electricity pole, and no furniture left if the house remains standing. There are no morals, no conscience, and no Islamic qualities left in the street. Everyone is a liar, a charlatan, an exploiter, and a thief. We have become devoid of respect and love, and most people have become sadists at a time when everyone needs compassion, kindness, and participation. Enough means enough.”
From Haitham September 6
Below, Haitham’s accounting and a note of thanks. Please remember that each listed recipient is supporting numerous family members, sometimes a couple of dozen, or more.
Norman, this is how the latest $3000 was spent...
14/8/2024
3000*3.64=10.920 NIS
Motaz 2500 NIS
Nedal 700 NIS
Eprahim speta 500 NIS
Eyad elsefi 300 NIS
Elkodary family 500 NIS
Samy hasaballh 500 NIS
Abo azab family 300*15=4500 NIS
Drinking water 1000 liter 130*2=260 NIS
Skin medications 300 NIS
Mattresses 7*90=630 NIS
Pillows 7*30=210 NIS
And his note of thanks:
We are always very grateful to you and your sponsors for thinking and helping us from overseas to survive this massacre
And appreciate that you are trying to do good for people you don't know. People that doesn't collected together religion, nationality, or color or language. Only humanity.
May God accept and blesses Al of you 🙏🏼 🙏🏼 🙏🏼 amen
Also from Haitham: The video below is of Saudi Prince Turk Al Faisel speaking VERY clearly of the war. Well worth viewing.
American woman Aysenur Eygi killed in West Bank as IDF opens fire - The Washington Post
The Israelis can find and target an individual in the middle of a city, even a foreign city, deep in a tunnel, amid thousands of civilians; can facially recognize any of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and others after years of sophisticated monitoring; but they never seem to be able to identify the Israelis who kill journalists, peace workers or 13-year-old girls on pink roller skates, even those with perfect shots to the head.
Blinken, though, is “intensely focused.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/06/west-bank-american-idf-aysenur-eygi/
Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 61 as UN pursues vaccinations | Reuters
This is the “pause” in fighting to allow a polio inoculation effort.
THIS PIECE IS AN ACCURATE DEPICTION OF THE DESTRUCTION FROM AN IDF RAID
including what happens after those American-made IDF armored D-9 Caterpillar bulldozers (from the previous post) rip up the pavement.
WashPost: Israeli forces end 10-day raid in Jenin, leaving destruction
Israel’s army was reported to be withdrawing from the West Bank city of Jenin on Friday, leaving behind a trail of destroyed homes.
https://wapo.st/3XuW91Y
A which brings us to…
THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY
If, as the saying goes, doing the same thing time and again and expecting different results…
As noted in the article linked below, Israel has been “mowing the lawn,” that is, killing off each new group of Palestinian militants and political leaders, for seventy-six years — amazingly, pushing on toward a full century. That’s an amazing amount of time to pursue a strategy that has failed to bring peace.
The continuation of that strategy begs the question of what — if not peace — is Israel’s ultimate aim.
It’s fair to suggest that, in what is clearly the longest of long games, a patient, biblical-duration, multi-generational quest, the aim is to rid Palestine of Palestinians by making life intolerable — land seizures, settlements, roadblocks, administrative detention, military law, blockades, caloric management — exactly as Israeli ministers Bezelal Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir and even Yoav Gallant and their followers repeatedly and very publicly declare, and exactly as Netanyahu’s policies demonstrate.
Smotrich did, after all, publicly declare a few weeks ago that Israel had a moral right to starve Palestinians to death, but that the international community would oppose it. Hence the necessity of a longer game.
If we realistically assess — or even just ponder as one possibility among several — that expulsion is Israel’s ultimate aim, what does that say about (the insanity of) 76 years of supposed United States policy to foster a peace, and about 31 years of U.S. post-Oslo policy for a two-state solution?
That’s 14 separate U.S. administrations — Truman to Biden. And a U.S. policy that’s as dead as Yitzhak Rabin.
In this 76 years, about 100 former colonies in Africa, the Middle East, south and southeast Asia, Oceania, the Caribbean and elsewhere have moved to independence. Eastern European nations and former Soviet Republics came out from behind the Iron Curtain.
The U.S. foreign policy establishment, of which I was once a minor cog, is supposed to be looking for reality, sifting out the chaff, assessing risk and opportunity, to the net benefit of the United States.
Are we so poor at assessment? Or are we content for domestic political reasons to pursue the same failed strategies — the same vacuous “obstacles to peace”vocabulary — year after year, decade after decade, with the same failures? To treat death and destruction of the politically powerless as just a cost of doing business?
Lots of wars and killing in the world. But here, we pay for it all.
Gallant: IDF 'mowing the lawn' in West Bank, but will need to 'pull out the roots' | The Times of Israel
THE HEADLINES ALONE TELL THE TALE IN BOTH GAZA AND THE WEST BANK
Israeli Raids Become a Near-Daily Reality for Many Palestinians in the West Bank - The New York Times
Note the parts about destruction of roads, water and sewer lines and other infrastructure.
NYT: Middle East Crisis: Airstrikes Resume in Central Gaza as Polio Campaign Enters New Phase
AND, LASTLY, AN INDICTMENT FROM SOMEONE WHO, IN A PREVIOUS LIFE, ALWAYS DID HIS PART FOR THE OCCUPATION
Thanks to Salah Sakka for pointing out this piece by David Horowitz, founding editor of The Times of Israel and formerly shameless executive editor of the Occupation-supporting The Jerusalem Post.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/under-netanyahu-israel-is-in-existential-danger/
And more, at Haaretz.com
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