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How could we so apathetically acquiesce with this horrendous cycle of
violence? Is there nothing we can do?
======================================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/international/middleeast/21MIDE.html
Children Fill Ledger of Death, No Matter How, or How Many
May 21, 2004
By JAMES BENNET
RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip, May 20 - Set in fields of
white, pink and red carnations, the giant cooler here,
which usually holds vegetables or flowers for sale to an
Israeli company, has been turned over to the dead.
It was to this cooler that, inevitably, the Palestinian
doctor came Wednesday morning, when, just as inevitably,
the latest Israeli Army raid touched off a parallel
struggle to define reality. Were there, in fact, children
among the dead, as the Palestinians claimed? How many? Did
they die from Israeli sniper fire or from militants'
explosives?
The doctor, Ahmed Abu Nikera, had had enough of these
questions. In the dank, shadowy room, he yanked and pulled
to open the bloodstained white cloth wrapping one of the
bodies as tightly as a mummy.
"This is a child," he said, after he revealed the pale gray
face of Ibrahim al Qun, 14. "This is the exit wound." He
pointed at the ragged, softball-sized black hole where the
boy's left eye had been. A sniper's bullet entered at the
back of the boy's head, he said.
Still, in the icy book of accounts that one carries to
follow this conflict day after day, something else also had
to be noted: During the fighting Tuesday night, Dr. Ali
Moussa of Al Najar hospital had said there were seven
people under the age of 18 among the dead; a list of names
and ages compiled by Palestinian hospital officials
Wednesday morning showed four people under 18.
Along with the chaos of gunshots, tank shells, planted
bombs and armored bulldozers that accompanies life here,
there is a dense fog of war. There is also a war of fog, of
often fuzzily presented but always sharply conflicting
versions of reality.
Like so many characteristics of this conflict, the tension
over competing truths is shared across the desert, in Iraq.
There, American soldiers and insurgents are not only
fighting very different kinds of battles, but also
describing very different ones. In the end, it seems that
the contest of descriptions matters more, at least to the
leaders and to the analysts who guide them.
Whether the casualties on any given day are on one side or
the other or both, there is also, in a dark space
somewhere, a reality. There is a dead child; there is an
exit wound.
How many dead children is too many is a question often
asked by Palestinians and Israelis, but it shows no hint of
being resolved.
A couple of hours after the visit to the cooler, life here
took another cruel and bewildering twist. On Wednesday
afternoon, an Israeli helicopter gunship and a tank opened
fire as demonstrators approached a neighborhood on Rafah's
outskirts that the Israelis seized Tuesday.
Men with agony in their faces ran carrying little boys who
bled from many shrapnel wounds. It was bedlam, panic, a
vertiginous glimpse of hell.
There were dead and there were wounded, covering the beds
and even the floors of Al Najar hospital. Television
reports were of more than 20 killed. But one had to ask,
hovering ghoulishly with pen in hand and account book at
the ready: Where were the bodies?
Palestinian health officials said at least 10 were killed.
But Dr. Moussa acknowledged Wednesday night that he could
not "guarantee" that number. He said that some families had
taken their dead for burial before the bodies reached the
hospital.
Muslims bury their dead as swiftly as possible. The bodies
of 14 Palestinians were in the flower cooler only because
their families were trapped under Israeli curfew and unable
to bury them.
Dr. Moussa's uncertainty contrasted with Israelis'
precision in gathering their own dead. A few days ago,
Israeli soldiers on their knees formed a line in the sand
not far from here, to sift for tiny fragments of comrades
killed when militants blew up an armored vehicle.
Israeli officials did not publicly contest the sum of
Palestinian dead on Wednesday. They generated a different
kind of fog.
In a statement by the army, and in disciplined remarks by
many officials, the Israeli government expressed sorrow for
any deaths of civilians. It called the incident very grave.
It said that the incident might have been caused by tank
fire. It also suggested that the cause might have been
explosives planted by militants. The helicopter and tank
fire was legitimate, the government said, because there
were gunmen in the crowd of protesters.
Many witnesses said there were no gunmen. The matter is
under investigation, the army said.
Some things here are what they seem, and some are not.
Israeli soldiers have camouflaged themselves in Palestinian
vehicles. Militants have hidden smuggling tunnels in the
basements of houses. Each side plays on what it considers
the other's habit of deception to cast doubt on claims
about the killing.
On Tuesday night, Palestinian officials reported that
Israeli snipers had killed two other children while they
were taking in laundry on the family's roof. They were Asma
al-Moghair, 16, and her brother, Ahmad, 13.
But an Israeli officer leading the operation, whom the army
would identify only as Colonel Erez, said an initial army
investigation of the deaths was inconclusive. He noted that
Palestinians had planted many bombs in hopes of killing
soldiers.
"We don't rule out the possibility that these youngsters
were killed by the bombs," he said. "I can say
unequivocally that no one in our unit put this boy and girl
in his cross hairs with the aim of killing them."
Colonel Erez said that Israel had asked that the bodies be
turned over for the investigation.
Asma's body was in the morgue of Al Najar hospital, which,
with a capacity of only six corpses, had quickly filled.
Dr. Nikara untied a cord binding the cloth around the
child's neck, then pulled back Asma's hair to reveal a hole
the size of a half dollar over her left ear - an exit
wound. She had no sign of shrapnel wounds.
"This is what the Israelis call an accident," the doctor
said.
Ahmad lay in the flower cooler. He had a similar hole in
his head, above his right ear, and he did not have shrapnel
wounds.
Last week, two Israeli soldiers were shot dead as they
guarded the search for body parts of five other Israeli
troops killed when Palestinian militants destroyed their
armored vehicle.
Many of these differing accounts will never be balanced.
Each side prefers its version of the facts. The violence
continues, and the accounting can seem beside the point.
As the tumult quieted in Al Najar hospital after the
wounded were rushed in Wednesday, an exhausted doctor
dropped into a chair, his blue tie loose around his neck.
"It doesn't make any difference," he said of the
casualties. "Life equals death, for all of us."
He asked that his name not be published; he was worried
that Israel might deny him a permit to travel out of Gaza.
In the hallways outside, workers with buckets of water were
washing the blood off the crushed-gravel tiles.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/international/middleeast/21MIDE.html?ex=1086175949&ei=1&en=a8ddca69ad72e64d
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