The Palestinian people refuse to accept oppression and are enduring severe hardships. Young militants continue to fight, driven by diminishing hope for a better future.
By Amira Hass – 5 minutes read time..
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It’s rare to hear by phone from two people in Gaza whose relative was killed in battle. He was a soldier in the Hamas army.
A: “We haven’t talked for a long time.” (I say this apologetically. There are so many people I want to know about, to find out whether they are “well,” that I don’t manage to talk to all of them every day. Moreover, contact with many of them has been lost over the last two weeks.)
Friend: “That’s right. How are you? (That’s a question I always respond to haltingly. It’s hard when I am safe in a well-lit, warm house, with the friend sitting in a tent, half-destroyed house or apartment with 18 relatives.)
Friend: “I’m in Cairo. I managed to get out two weeks ago,
with my family. Just a few days before Rafah was invaded.” (I suddenly
remember his sense of humor. Once, in 1994 or 1995, his neighbor and I
collected testimonies about Gaza’s economic situation. We met him and
others on the beach. “What are you doing?” we asked. “Waiting to turn
40,” he answered. Permits to work in Israel were then given only to men
40 or older.)
A: “That’s good to hear. Tell me about yourself. What’s your situation?” (It’s hard for me to directly ask, ‘How are you?’ so I look for words that are less committal or ones that are not anchored in customary phrasing.” Friend: “My sister was killed two days ago.”
A: “Oh, where?” (In such hellish conversations, people say they receive such news with dull emotions. But videos from Gaza, which most Israelis are unwilling to watch, show the opposite. The grief and longing with which fathers hold the bodies of their children, the cries to the heavens after they manage to extricate the body of a daughter from the ruins, the shocked, tear-streaked face of a bereaved mother, the pain with which a friend writes about losing a brother a week earlier.)
Friend: “In the Jabalya refugee camp, in an airstrike or shelling. She was outdoors. The next day, her son was killed. The day after that, her second son was killed as well.”
A: “Both sons? Were they inside the house? Or are they part of the resistance?”
Friend: “In the resistance.”
A: “Were they hit by a missile or in battle, in an exchange of fire?”
Friend: “I think they died in battle.”
A: “That’s something different. That was their choice. To fight.”
Friend: “That’s true.”
It’s rare to hear by phone from people inside the Gaza Strip after a relative of theirs is killed in battle, meaning that he was fighting for Hamas. The speed at which the friend in Cairo knew that his sister’s sons were killed indicates that many families know relatively quickly about armed sons who are killed, alongside other families who live with uncertainty for a long time, not knowing if their sons are alive or not. And if he was killed, whether he was buried, or whether his corpse is rotting somewhere. Perhaps people are hesitant to share such reports on the phone, from inside Gaza, for fear that eavesdroppers from Israeli army intelligence and the Shin Bet will mark the speaker as a supposedly legitimate target for a missile or drone or arrest and abuse.
In Israel, the press reports on “terrorists” who were killed. But this is not the correct definition for those who are fighting within their territory, in Gaza, against an occupying army and the soldiers of a foreign army. “Terrorist” is a generic, condescending term, deliberately devoid of any historical, social and political context, and it fogs our ability to understand and analyze the situation. Another detail in the failed, arrogant conceptions that led to October 7. For an armed militant whose victims are the elderly, women, children and babies – the definition “murderer” is suitable. One who stands opposite soldiers of a powerful army equipped with powerful technology – is a fighter.
Seven and a half months after October 7, it appears that Hamas still has a large reservoir of young armed men ready and willing to fight, and who have been trained to make things difficult for the invading Israeli army. Another fact that the captains of war did not anticipate when they embarked on the campaign for total victory. It’s very easy to say that these young militants have been brainwashed, that they hate Jews, that they want to see Israel eliminated. But it’s harder and more accurate to say that they have courage, and that they are ready to die, because the reasons to live – and not just to merely survive – have steadily diminished in Gaza, which Israel cut off from the rest of the world long before the war.
Does the wholesale killing of their families – in Israeli bombings that, with the approval of IDF legal advisers, kill 20 or 30 people including women, children and elderly to kill one “legitimate” target – deter other young people? How many of them are motivated by it to join the Hamas army? The failure of the total victory doctrine does not derive from Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal motivations to endlessly continue this cruel war. It comes from most Israelis’ refusal to grasp that the oppressed Palestinian people is no longer willing or able to go along with its oppression. And that includes many opponents of the war and of Hamas.
Comments
15 responses to “What Do You Call People Who Fight on Their Own Land Against Foreign Soldiers?”
Palestinians are heroic and courageous. The damn Israelis have shameful character, and I would not be at all sorrowful if Iran nuked Israel. There is no justice in this world, so that will not happen. Jehovah is an evil entity, and a nation based on religion is inevitably going to be oppressive, that is the nature of religion. The big and little satans are known as the Christian and Jewish nations. I am no fan of shariah law. May I suggest that you worship no God, man, or woman for true freedom and righteousness for righteousness’ sake. Being good because of commandments backed with bribe of heaven and threat of hell is not indicative of a good person, but is the definition of a sociopath on a leash. Ignore me if you can, but you know I have just spoken truth. God is the problem, not the solution.
https://truthforce.work
Dude! Palestinians are Muslims and Christians. Very few Atheists. The Forces Of Evil always hijack what ever ideal or ideology that can get them in the door, and that goes for peace loving, Golden Rule Believing Atheists. Like vampires, you have to invite psychopathic hypocrite bullshitters past your ideological threshold. Once in, if you let them, they move to influence impressionable youth in order to achieve political dominance. And unlike true idealists, they always believe that murder is an acceptable tactic of politics, and warfare. The all’s fair in love and war syndrome.
They play both the long game and the short game. You know how it goes Michael. Listen. I would invite you to imagine your mortal existence before conception and after death. One thing is not only plausible but logically certain.
If you are right and I am wrong, there is nothing before or after. So this “leash” that keeps my human tendency towards “psychopathic” behavior in check is pure fantasy. However, if I am right and you are wrong… well… there is heaven. There is Hell. And before… there is The Creator. And after… There Is The Judge. And I welcome the leash that tethers my soul to the source THE MORAL COMPAS.
Michael, I’m a soul man. But if I were not sensitive enough in my soul to Feel my spirit’s immortal nature, as a person from a family of gamblers, I’d hedge my bets despite my doubts. Better to be safe and immortally sorry, Mike, my man. Dig it.
“Michael, I’m a soul man. But if I were not sensitive enough in my soul to Feel my spirit’s immortal nature, as a person from a family of gamblers, I’d hedge my bets despite my doubts. Better to be safe and immortally sorry, Mike, my man. Dig it.”
To my atheistic mind, you don’t sound like a sincere believer, but rather like a person whose very shaky belief is just another form of CYA—COVER YOUR ASS! You sound like a guy with very serious doubts (which is fine and healthy as well) who is trying to convince himself that he is a true believer because he’s afraid of getting in Dutch with the big guy (GOD) and being sentenced to eternal damnation! In other words, it sounds to me like you are hedging your bets in a big way in order to cover your ass and avoid eternal hellfire, which, unfortunately for you, you seem to feel is a distinct possibility—you have my sympathies!
You are completely ignoring the reality that Amira Hass centered her piece on. All the religious stuff aside, Zionism since day ONE (I mark that day with Herzl’s first Zionist congress in 1897) has had a policy of ‘transferring’ Palestinians out of the land, which at the time of that congress were over 95% of the population. You want to get moral with all the talk of heaven and hell. But this is about THIS world, and the world since 1897 in Palestine in which Zionism, the British, and the Americans (with lots of help from most of the rest of the EU countries) have deliberately refused to allow Palestinians to grow their system of political representation and economic development. And this in an age ever since the League of Nations after the First World War identified in Article 22 of its charter the right to self-determination.
Palestinians believe and depend on the final justice of God and that’s what makes them strong. They don’t believe in ICC or the ICJ or the UN. These organisations did nothing for them for the last seven decades.
The above article goes nowhere.
Amira Hass writes with sympathy for Israel
Palestinians waiting to turn 40 so they can work for the Israelis. (Really.)
A: That’s good to hear. (Really.)
Then this
A: “Were they hit by a missile or in battle, in an exchange of fire?”
Friend: “I think they died in battle.”
A: “That’s something different. That was their choice. To fight.”
Friend: “That’s true.”
The Palestinians are fighting for their country, their lives.
Not a mention of Israel the invader.
The Israelis or whoever they were before being Israelis were proselytised into the Judaic religion.
They should never have gone to the Middle East
Read Shlomo Sand and Ilan Pappe.
Is information Clearing House on the Israeli side?
You’ve misinterpreted what Amira Hass has been saying for a long time.
I wanted to donate US$50.00 which is A$81.00 and I donate through PayPal only but the money was going to Internet Archive and I am not at all sure that it would be sent to ICH so I haven’t proceeded with the donation.
LinorOz
Hi Linesenor,
Thank you for trying to support our community here at ICH. i have corrected the error and provided the corrected link. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/support.htm
I apologizes for the confusion.
Peace and Joy
Tom
Palestine’s Jewish Problem is not a religious matter. These aliens decided to kill Palestinians and steal Palestine. Maybe “israel” has a right to exist, but not in Palestine. Nobody has to kill or die, just get out.
Partisans are usually labeled as terrorists till they have won over their tyrants.
Palestinians have already won as their tyrants have already been exposed and have lost all their credibility and cover.
Here my latest one updated
https://mywisdom.substack.com/p/the-turning-of-the-tide-in-favor
Thx for sharing and hugs to your friends too.
Hamas must be too humane for not using the hostages as human shields. Israelis say Hamas use their families as human shields. Do the Israelis expect the people to believe this excuse for genocide?
“Perhaps people are hesitant to share such reports on the phone, from inside Gaza, for fear that eavesdroppers from Israeli army intelligence and the Shin Bet will mark the speaker as a supposedly legitimate target for a missile or drone or arrest and abuse.”
That applies to all the reports in the west. People are afraid of losing their jobs. Israelis live in a bubble. Wise men and historians like Illan Pappe leave the bubble. Illan Pappe left Israel to search for the truth.
And here one more
https://mywisdom.substack.com/p/the-genocide-convention-vs-the-plague
When US invaded Iraq the Iraqis who fired back were called insurgents. Staggering.
And the Palestinians who fire back, unwanted.