By Julia Chaitin
I’ve lived my whole life in Gaza … and witnessed … [numerous] violations of human rights …. Operation Pillar of Cloud … was very close to my house…. The Israeli navy shelled from the sea, the F-16 warplanes, Apache helicopters and drones from the sky, and the tanks from the ground … our house shook like an earthquake, windows … shattered everywhere, not to mention our utter fear and horror…. Nowhere was safe in Gaza … On the way to the hospital … I witnessed blood in the street, people running everywhere, ambulances … total chaos… At the morgue I saw burned bodies and body parts of children, women and elderly… I will never get this scene out of my mind…. Thank God, no one from my family was injured, but my nephews and nieces are suffering from major trauma. During the assault they were screaming a lot and it was very difficult to calm them down… there is no military solution for this conflict … Israel has proved it can’t win, and Palestinians have proved we can’t lose; so where do we go from here? … Palestinians and Israelis must speak out for the madness to stop: the IDF attacks and the Palestinian missiles … all Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live in peace… We must … call upon our leaders … to stop playing with our lives!
–From a message written by Soul,[i] a Palestinian from Gaza, for an Israeli peace event held in December 2012 Continue reading
Mobilizing Ideas 