I saw Ross Kemp's Middle East documentary on BBC Knowledge yesterday. He took a trip across the Israeli border into Gaza and explored what life was like in this half of Palestine under Hamas rule. There was the usual scenes of destruction, buildings half-destroyed, rubble everywhere. People went about their lives around the concrete mess, their cars whizzing about like organised flies on a horizontal, pock-marked asphalt plane.
Mr Kemp went around talking to business owners and locals about the last major Israeli offensive, Operation Cast Lead, that was meant to take out terrorist infrastructure but left most of the city in ruins instead. Homes, schools and government buildings were destroyed. The people, upset, got on with their lives, most quietly waiting for something good to come their way.
Mr Kemp noticed the kids on the streets. They didn't play with toys like balls and dolls but with guns and rifles. Almost all the shots edited and put in as final cuts showed Palestinian kids in this manner. It was alarming, enough for the BBC presenter to get an opinion from kids seeking psychiatric treatments in a local hospital. This was the bit that got to me. All the children, effectively under 12 years of age, hated Israel. They had witnessed their parents and siblings get hurt by or be killed by "enemy" soldiers or in Israeli attacks. A girl talked about seeing half her mother's head blown off. Another boy said that his life was shit and it was better to be a martyr and be with God in heaven. The boys around him agreed with his views. Later, Mr Kemp got access to a terrorist camp and was unwittingly part of a video recording session where a would be suicide bomber was making his last declaration of faith and resolve, to be broadcast after his personal attack on the enemy. The stunning revelation was that he was a 24 year old university graduate with a law degree, a thinker and idealist, driven to this fatal extreme.
That's the routine state of affairs there. Kids who have seen death and have the ambition to die. Grown men who die to make a stand. It's so depressing to hear from kids that their lives have no value in living form. They think they're better off hurting other people as they kill themselves as suicide bombers. There is no value to being alive in Palestine. As Mr Kemp alluded 'if all you've known is hostility, then that's all you'll be, hostile."
It must be truly awful to live like that. It lends another perspective to our daily gripes, into the 'yeah, that's not so important any more' bucket. No parent watching would be able to keep a dry eye I think. To know of sweet kids with warped ideas of how life is, how it could never be better than rubble, bombings, few male role models, weeping widows, a constantly reiterated hate for an enemy they cannot see, one that comes in the night and blows things to bits. It's real bad.
What's worse is that almost no one can change the situation. Not without Israel's permission. Not even the UN it seems.
Another day on paradise yeah.
No comments:
Post a Comment