By Dr Marwan Asmar
In Gaza, the meaning of death and destruction has taken new levels because of the intense Israeli firepower. The killing of people has become a novelty for every one watching on their TV. There is a sense of accepted surrealism about death and corpses on roads with bits of flesh among wreckages and rubble.
In this war, the concept of humanity and sanity has been removed from the Israeli mentality as soldiers continue on a mass killing spree all over the Gaza Strip from north to the south of the enclave.
Take Beit Hanoon, a town in the north of the Gaza Strip. Videos show decomposed bodies lying in the streets for weeks or even 40 and 50 days according to experts.
Israeli military operations should have been completed before now, as soldiers entered the area long ago, in fact, a week or two after 7 October when Israelis decided to launch its war on Gaza. Yet fighting continues between the Israeli army and the Palestinian resistance with no end in sight. This a real and unexpected war at least from the Israeli side.
The decomposed bodies appear to be part of the skirmishes that have been going on for the last 80 day or so, yet they also show these to be of civilians and children with small shoes scattered, here and there, and know way indicate they are part of the fighting force.
The bones, and some on scraps of clothing are found in desolate areas that have long been vacated.
Elsewhere, also bodies continue to be strewn on roads. Take the area of Shiekh Radwan which is part of Gaza city. Here as well, decomposing bodies were shown in the different parts of the neighborhood as if it was a normal state of affairs.
Bodies covered and/or wrapped in body bags huddled together are found all over the Strip and not only in hospital courtyards but on side-streets and alleyways as if people usually live with death on a daily basis.
This is not to mention the stench of decaying bodies and the sickness likely to arise from that. But this Gaza. The Israelis want their full pound of flesh to use a Shakespearean term.
What has happened to society and people. The Israelis must want revenge so much they are willing to forego their humanity or what’s left of it. They are blinded by hate!
According to eyewitnesses the bodies here, were more fresh, meaning they hadn’t been killed long ago. They appear to have been shot by Israeli soldiers as their tanks pulled back from certain parts of the neighborhood. These people were likely to have been targeted whilst moving around the destroyed neighborhood.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will leave no stone unturned in Gaza, he certainly seems to know what he is talking about for the level of destruction is mind-boggling, and incredulous by international standards.
Israeli tanks demolished this area, turning it into wreckage and rubble where once plush buildings were turned into ghost buildings of craters and wrecked homes by one-ton American bombs that are generously splashed, speaking of eyesores of destruction, mutilation and human waste.
As the Israeli tanks repositioned themselves from the Al Amin and Abu Iskandar areas of Sheikh Radwan people rushed to collect the blanketed bodies onto trucks in a bid to bury them in a mass grave in one of the destroyed houses. For here, there is no cemeteries. How could there be amongst the destruction, with news elsewhere that Israelis soldiers have been destroying or turning graves of other cemeteries through ostentatious bulldozers.
As Al Jazeera camera showed the people had to move very carefully in collecting the dead because the tanks only moved within 100 meters or so above and were within firing distance and thus had no problem in continuing to fire on people.
This had long become death country. Israeli soldiers have no qualms about shooting mothers, fathers, children, grandads, and grannies on site as numerous eyewitness reports testify to the fact.
In another scene, mainly in the Yarmouk stadium, groups of Palestinians, including some women and children, were stripped and told to squat in the field while Israeli soldiers looked on in deadly dazes of macabre surrealism.
What happened to humanity, even for those people, don’t they have mothers, fathers or kids of their own. Israeli bombers, and no doubt soldiers on the ground have killed over 20,000 innocent civilians. Most of these are women and children.
The figures keep rising. Over 55,000 people are now injured in Gaza. Well, there would be with the Israeli war machine striking at houses. About 10,000 bodies are estimated to be lying underneath the rubble if not more, no one can get to them because you need machines for that, and in Israel-besieged Gaza, they simply don’t exist.
If they do, the problem then becomes how to get there for roads have been bombed and neighborhoods no longer exist, completely gone through Israeli military might and American supplies. Why have their political and military establishments have become so vicious?
Maybe this is the age of sidestepping all things that are decent; thinking outside the mundane box and going for the bloody kill, every hour of the day and night.
Israel with the help of the Americans have been bombing Gaza for 80 days and likely to revel in that for a good while longer, their taste for blood is obviously yet to be satisfied.
Dr Marwan Asmar is a journalist from Amman, Jordan
27 December 2023
Source: countercurrents.org