Growing pains

[Violet_Crumble]

HARRIET SHERWOOD
December 22, 2009

GHIADA abu Elaish's fingers twist in her lap and her eyes cloud over as she recalls the day an Israeli shell killed four of her cousins and left her in a coma for 22 days. She has had almost 12 months to reflect on the tragedy, a time in which hatred and anger might have consumed the 13-year-old. Remarkably, though, not only has she survived shocking injuries and a dozen operations, with many more to come, but she has retained both her sweet nature and faith in a bright future.

Which makes it all the harder for her to return each day after school to the scene of the horror — her family home.

It was Friday, January 16, and Ghiada was studying for exams. Her father, a pharmacist, woke from a nap, demanding tea and shouting at the younger children to be quiet. "Suddenly I could hear my cousin downstairs, screaming 'Dead! Dead!'." A shell had hit the building — a block of five apartments, housing the extended Abu Elaish family — smashing windows and causing extensive damage to the flat below.

In the ensuing panic, Ghiada defied her father and followed him downstairs. "One room was completely black. I saw Aya , she was on the ground with wood on top of her. There was a big hole in the wall."

Ghiada tried pulling Aya out from under the furniture. A second shell struck. "There was a big light for a second," she says. "I saw some windows smash and I heard screaming all around. A piece of shrapnel hit me. I started to scream for help and then fell down unconscious."

Ghiada's father, Atta Mohammed abu Elaish, rushed into the room. "I saw bodies without heads and legs. I saw my daughter. I saw her mother screaming." He ran outside to call an ambulance. "The Israelis stopped the ambulances 250 metres from the house. Some boys from the street came to start ferrying the bodies and the injured out of the building."

The attack was one of the assaults during the 23 days of war in Gaza — Israel's Operation Cast Lead — that began on December 27 last year. But it was also one of the most notorious because Ghiada's uncle — Aya's father — was a doctor who worked in Israeli hospitals and was well known to Israeli viewers for advocating peace and reconciliation. All through the conflict, Dr Izzeldin abu Elaish (pictured below) gave regular eyewitness accounts by phone in fluent Hebrew to Israeli television. Within minutes of the attack on his own family, he was back on the phone to a journalist in a Tel Aviv studio, weeping and begging for help as Israeli viewers listened: "My daughters have been killed."

Bissan, 20, Miar, 15, and Aya, 14, were dead, along with another cousin, 17-year-old Nour. Ghiada was in a critical condition; another of the doctor's daughters was also wounded.

<snip>


Yet it is striking how many Palestinians cling to a belief in a better future. For all her traumas, Ghiada hasn't given up. She attends a thrice-weekly English lesson after school to improve her chances of fulfilling her dream to be an airline pilot.

The teacher hands Ghiada a question to answer to the class in English: If you were a colour, what colour would you choose? The girl doesn't hesitate. "Red," she tells the class. The teacher asks the students what the colour red means to them. Blood, suggests one; danger, says another, both witnesses to last year's carnage. Ghiada considers for a moment, then replies: "It makes me happy. It's the colour of love."

http://www.theage.com.au/world/growing-pains-20091221-la5d.html

[Violet_Crumble]

1. Giving this one a bit of a kick as everyone should read it n/t

[Ken Burch]

2. Indeed. Here's another kick

The crazies should be along presently.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Very sad, Here's all best wishes to Ghiada, Hanan and all the other children

And I agree with Ging's and Zeyada's points about the reasons why the blockade is counterproductive.


"Education is probably the most effective tool through which you will counter extremism, by developing a positive and well-educated mindset. And yet we are being prevented by the policy from educating these children."...



Hasan Zeyada agrees. "They see their fathers as weak, powerless. They see parents can't give them feelings of security, can't protect them. So they look towards other figures. That might be God as an absolute power — so children might go towards religion, become more fanatic. Some identify with fighters from Hamas and other groups..."