Crossed into Gaza/ Refugees Devastated

The US Gaza Delegation for Medical/Mental Health and Relief finally received approval to enter the Gaza Strip through the Rafah Crossing on Friday, March 6, 2009. We had camped at the border gate one night and were prepared to camp again. We received word late Friday afternoon that we would be allowed to enter Gaza, Palestine. With us was the Italian Delegation of mostly mental health professionals and a team of British orthopedic surgeons.

We have much to report, but I will start with this summary of our visit to a village that was devastated by the US funded Israeli massacre in Gaza.

On March 8, International Women's Day, the US Gaza Delegation for Medical and Mental Health visited the Al Shata' village in North Gaza City. The village was in a state of disaster. There were piles of rubble everywhere. Some homes were partially destroyed with makeshift plastic roofs and lean-tos to keep out the wind, sand and rain. One boy of about 15 years approached us with his father. He had two toes missing, a disfigured hand and wounded eye and other bruises. Gaza Delegation member Dr. Saeed Algheri examined him on the spot. Other delegates provided his father with the phone number of the Palestine office of the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund of Kent, Ohio.

Delegate and filmmaker Edward Salem had walked off into the rubble and I followed him over piles of broken concrete blocks, splintered beams and scattered housewares, fixtures and children's book bags and smashed toys. There were two men sitting by a small campfire next to their destroyed home. Edward was sipping a coffee that they had offered him from their meager supplies. The woman of the "house" began talking in Arabic to US/Gaza delegate Dr. Martha Nathan and me. Neither of us understood the words, but we certainly heard her anguish. Delegate Inaya Khalil came over and told us that the woman only wanted a tent so her family could have a safe place to sleep. She showed us the shelter they had built to keep their supplies. It was not adequate for sleeping because the logs they used were unstable and might not stand in a heavy wind. The rain came in at times and soaked the few belongings they had salvaged from their pre-massacre (yes, MASSACRE) lives. The woman showed us the embroidered crafts that her disabled daughter had made. Two robes and an embroidered cloth tray with a broken frame. I gratefully purchased this fine piece.

The worst was yet to be revealed to us. Over a few more piles of broken Palestinian lives and refugee camp homes we came upon a woman, about forty years old. She carried a young boy and invited us into her collapsed porch. She was speaking and digging with her hands in the dirt. I thought she was looking for something. I asked Inaya what she was looking for. "She's showing us her husband's blood," she told me. He had been gunned down with forty bullets by Israeli soldiers. The soldiers came in the night and shouted in Hebrew for the owner of the house to come outside. The eldest son, who now sat before us, had risen to answer the soldiers call. Mrs. Al Samouni, the wife of the dead man whose blood stained the earth, told us that Mr. Al Samouni gestured his son to sit back down and he went to the door, now riddled with bullet holes. He went out with his hands raised above his head. He was killed with merciless gunfire - along with 28 other members of the Al Samouni family killed by heavy artillery, except for one other who was killed by gunfire.

Mrs. Al Samouni begged the soldiers not to kill the children. "We are not Fatah! We are not Hamas!" With utter merciless brutality these gutless murderers shot the four-year old child inside the house. Today, and everyday, they live in the two-room house with these dark memories, with little to eat, and the stench of death all around. On our way out the son picked up a gun shell he found in the rubble; he handed it to me. We determined it was from an M-16, made in the USA.