Leaving Gaza

If I were to pinch the ears of the Israeli leaders and drag them to the hospitals in Gaza, would they feel sorry for what they have done to the Palestinians? If they were to see the bloodied and broken children, if they were to look at the burnt and blackened women, if they were to cast their eyes on the limbless and lifeless men, would they feel a twinge of guilt?

If I were to haul them kicking and screaming through the streets of Gaza and ask them to stare at the ruined city, would they apologize to the people of this land? If they were to gaze at the Parliament building, if they were to watch the husk of what was once the beautiful courthouse, if they were to observe the scorched remains of the Red Cross building, would they promise to never again do what they did over the past month?

I leave for Egypt in a few hours and a small part of me wishes I'd never come to Gaza. The pain, suffering and tragedy that abounds in this beautiful place is almost too heartbreaking to see up close. Gaza is not a ghetto or a slum city, and Palestine is not a third-world backwater. It's a beautiful place. The air is pure and clean, the land green and fertile. The strawberries are the sweetest I've ever eaten and the fresh fish caught from the waters of the Mediterranean are tender and succulent.

The Arabs here aren't extremists or terrorists. In truth, they are a friendly, open, generous, honest and welcoming people who always have a ready smile, a ready greeting and an endearing sense of curiousity. Their fight is one against oppression, and yet it seems that the issue has divided the world into countries that are with them or against them.

All they want is the right to live in freedom and dignity, the basic things for which most independent countries in the past fought long and hard to gain. Is that too much to ask for?

This is not a fight between Muslim and Jews or Arabs and Israelis. It's against oppressors and the oppressed. It's happened many times in the past- the Malaysian freedom fighters who battled the Japanese, the American patriots who fought the British, Scottish hero William Wallace who drove the English out of his homeland. The list is endless and these people are revered as heroes in their homeland.

It's the same with the Hamas fighters here. They may have been painted as terrorists and suicide bombers in the international media, but back in their homeland, they are considered heroes, patriots and martyrs. Women cry for them, men speak of their pride of them and boys aspire to become them. The problem is that the guerilla tactics they use in their fight has brought the might of the wrathful Israeli army down on the whole nation. While people here are unapologetic and even proud of the price they have to pay, it is still a tragic waste of civilian lives.

What disturbs and saddens me the most is that the Jewish race itself has been the victim of great oppression in the past, most recently when millions were killed in Hitler's Holocaust. After all that has happened to them, I can't stomach the fact that their leaders are doing the same thing the Nazis did.

I can't imagine that their people are supporting the war the same way the German nation supported the Nazis (An opinion poll showed the war had a 91 per cent approval rating among Israelis). I've heard stories of mass murders, of how children have been lined up and executed, of how entire families have been annihilated by the Israeli forces. It begs the question of whether Israel has become the monster it once reviled.