Day 18 of Israeli war on Gaza: surreality

 

January 13, 2009

It’s the start of day 18 and we’re all trying to go on with life, to resume some semblance of normality.

Looking up to the drones, the F-16s, the Apaches is normal.Discussing where the latest explosions were –as if no lives were being taken!—is normal.And even discussing those killed is routine: where was it? How many dead? Any injuries?

We joke about going out on the street too late –about being zapped—and the New Year’s Eve text message [Sending a festive sarook to a friend for New Year’s] has extended to daily jokes about calling rockets to visit.

It is sordid humour, sordid talk, sordid calm, a sordid side-stepping of a sordid reality.

Crashes and the ominous hum of drones and thud of an Apache bring reality back to me: there are machines flying above whose mission is to kill –and kill entire families, apartment residents, passersby, Palestinians… That reality is very hard to understand –to really understand.To see a photo of a baby, dead, burned, run over by a tank… A photo of a child, shot point-blank in the heart…

Somehow the fact that an elderly woman was punched in the face was more alarming to me than her two gunshot wounds.