Life For Gazans Under Israel Bombs by Dr Marwan Asmar

“This is Bissan from Gaza, its day 90 of this escalation.” This is how Bissan starts here videoclip. She talks directly to the viewer and listener about this “genocide” and ethnic cleansing by the Israeli army in Gaza and the “killing”, “destruction” and “displacement of civilians” in the Strip. She talks about the Israeli bombing of central Gaza including the Almaghzi, Nuseirat, Al Breiji camps and Dier Al Balah.

The video gives Bissan the voice in English to talk about the mayhem caused by the soldiers and tanks and how they moved into this central region seeking to make their way between these camps and neighborhoods protected by their military might and armor, inflicting death and destruction on the local population.

Bissan, also name of a Palestinian town taken by the Israelis after 1948, provides a graphic picture of destruction of buildings including the Red Cresent Society and makes the point 70 percent of those killed are women and children killed by Israeli snipers in the head and the back.

Next is the issue of cemeteries. Little has been written about them in the news but for the Israeli army has been busy bulldozing them. Why is this happening nobody knows except for pure spite and hatred.

The Gaza Government media office states the Israeli army currently fighting in the Al Tuffah neighborhood, east of Gaza City, desecrated 1,100 graves in the neigbouhood’s cemetery after they bulldozed it, exhumed the bodies of the dead and trampled on them. The media office maintains the army stole about 150 bodies of recently buried martyrs after exhuming them and transporting them to an unknown location.

Gazans fear the Israelis are stealing organs of martyrs which is a crime repeated more than once, with the most recent incident involving the delivery of 80 bodies stolen from the other Gaza governorates and sending them back to Rafah to be buried.

It has all been about death in this war on Gaza but why deliberately target an old woman? Obviously, the Israeli army is not pulling out from north Gaza as they claim. Here, an Israeli sniper shoots a woman down. Somehow, local boys are seen pulling her to safety while bleeding.

The destruction continues through missiles and bombs. Its devastating, communities ruined, neighborhoods destroyed with debris and wreckage but there is resilience among people who say they will build on the debris and wreckage of their homes. There is a sense of challenge to the Israelis. Gazans will not be beaten.

Whole cities, town, camps, squares of houses have been razed to the ground with massive bombs. The Gaza Media Office says 65,000 bombs were dropped on Gaza; this is equivalent to three or four times the size of the Hiroshima atom bomb.

And then there is the fascist Israeli view from Israeli analyst Eliyahu Yossian who says “the woman is an enemy, the baby is an enemy…and the pregnant woman is an enemy.” But who is listening to such talk. In a state of defiance

50,000 pregnant women in Gaza are in the pipeline to deliver.

In Gaza there is always a sense of hope and a spirit and determination. The people are tough, it must be in their genes to stand up to the Israeli occupiers, invaders and usurpers.

Amidst the carnage, there is also marriage and whoever better to do it than the following couple at a full ceremony. You could almost hear them say “so what, life goes on even if there is genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

But this cruel war has been the bloodiest for Gaza journalists with around 106 killed whilst covering the devastating onslaught. It’s a killing spree for Israeli warplanes and tanks. In World War II between 1939 and 1946 67 journalists were killed and in the 1955-75 Vietnam war 63 journalists were killed. Gaza beats them by miles. However, local journalist Noor Harazeen couldn’t take it in the end and broke down because she is human.

Marwan Asmar, who has a Phd from the UK’s Leeds University, has long worked in journalism in Jordan and the Gulf countries.