Shell Shocked

On the Ground Under Israels Gaza Assault

Mohammed Omer

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781608465132
• eBook ISBN:
  9781608465149
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Operation Protective Edge, launched in early July 2014, was the third major Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in six years. It was also the most deadly. By the conclusion of hostilities some seven weeks later, 2,200 of Gaza's population had been killed, and more than 10,000 injured.

In these pages, journalist Mohammed Omer, a resident of Gaza who lived through the terror of those days with his wife and then three-month-old son, provides a first-hand account of life on-the-ground during Israel's assault. The images he records in this extraordinary chronicle are a literary equivalent of Goya's "Disasters of War": children's corpses stuffed into vegetable refrigerators, pointlessly because the electricity is off; a family rushing out of their home after a phone call from the Israeli military informs them that the building will be obliterated by an F-16 missile in three minutes; donkeys machine-gunned by Israeli soldiers under instructions to shoot anything that moves; graveyards targeted with shells so that mourners can no longer tell where their relatives are buried; fishing boats ablaze in the harbor.

Throughout this carnage, Omer maintains the cool detachment of the professional journalist, determined to create a precise record of what is occurring in front of him. But between his lines the outrage boils, and we are left to wonder how a society such as Israel, widely-praised in the West as democratic and civilized, can visit such monstrosities on a trapped and helpless population.

Palestinians find shelter at Gaza hospital

With emergency shelters overcrowded, displaced Palestinian families have sought refuge at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital

GAZA CITY—Thin bedsheets provide little comfort to Naima Abu Asar and her three teenage daughters, living in a makeshift tent in the yard of one of Gaza’s busiest hospitals.

The family now calls the Shifa Hospital compound home; they lie on the hard ground outside as hospital and ambulance staff rush between patients, and family members frantically check if their loved ones are alive. “The schools [shelters] are bursting with families sheltering [there] already. The only option, for our safety, is here at the hospital,” Naima told Al Jazeera.

“Life here is already harsh, but [Israel tries] to crush us more [and more] every day,” she said, adding that the family’s tent—made from hospital bedsheets and pieces of plastic—doesn’t protect them from the scorching summer heat, or the cold at night.

Naima and her three daughters are living within the walled compound of Shifa Hospital with dozens of other families, totalling a few hundred people. They are in the same clothes they were wearing when they escaped the bombings near their home in Shejaiya, a neighborhood in eastern Gaza City that suffered extensive Israeli shelling in July.

“I couldn’t retrieve anything from the house. It’s all ruined,” said 15-year-old Yasmine. “We just managed to escape the artillery shelling, but it killed several of our neighbors. We are lucky to have gotten away with the clothes on our backs.”

“We couldn’t find anywhere safer or less overcrowded,” Naima added, while an elderly man in the makeshift tent next door chimed in, saying that Israel has bombed Gaza hospitals, too.

Unlike Palestinians sheltering at United Nations or government-run facilities, the Abu Asar family and others now living at Shifa Hospital get little support, relying solely on passersby who sometimes share food and other supplies with them.

The UN estimates that about 365,000 Palestinians are living in UN and government emergency shelters or with host families across the Gaza Strip, as at least 16,800 homes have been destroyed or severely damaged since the Israeli offensive began on July 8.

At least 1,980 Palestinians have been killed, and nearly 10,200 others injured, in Israel’s operation, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Sixty-four Israeli soldiers have been killed, along with two Israeli civilians and a Thai worker.

Kefah al-Harazeen, 25, is also from Shejaiya. “Even [during the] ceasefire, as now, I know my home is partially demolished, with much of the stone structure turned to dust and sand which could crash down on our heads,” said al-Harazeen.

Sitting at her feet, her two young children have head lice and skin rashes; it’s been nearly one month since the family has been able to shower, al-Harazeen said. She now uses a small pot, filled with water from the hospital’s maternity ward, to wash her children.

“I never had to live in the dirt like this before the bombing. Now, viruses are spreading among our children while we all shelter at the hospital and still try to stay clean,” al-Harazeen said. “We couldn’t get into the UN schools and now we feel excluded from any aid, food or water,” she added.

Chris Gunness, spokesperson for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees, said the group does not turn anyone in Gaza away.

“It is UNRWA’s policy to turn no one away, whether refugee or non-refugee, while there is an emergency in Gaza such as we are now seeing. We assist people on the basis of need,” Gunness told Al Jazeera.

Eighty-seven UNRWA schools are currently being used as emergency shelters in Gaza. “The number of displaced fluctuates as families discover that their homes are uninhabitable or lack even the basic amounts of water, electricity and food available in emergency shelters,” the group stated. “Others are returning because they wish to secure their places in shelters should hostilities resume or because of general insecurity.”

Gunness explained that UNRWA is currently trying to prepare its facilities for the upcoming school year, which means clearing out the schools that are currently being used as shelters. “To that end, we are trying to consolidate and regroup, moving people into a fewer number of shelters,” he said.

Amal Alaraer, 46, lives at Shifa Hospital with nine family members, including her husband and son, who both sustained injuries when Israeli troops fired on a local market in Shejaiya, killing at least 17 people and injuring 200 others.

“We sit on pieces of old cardboard medication boxes from Shifa Hospital,” said Alaraer, as she prepared her children for another night of trying to sleep through loud ambulance sirens. Alaraer told Al Jazeera that her family tried moving to five separate schools being used as shelters, but upon seeing the conditions—overcrowded and lacking basic resources—she decided to go to the hospital instead.

“We gave up and came here to Shifa, where my family was also sheltering,” she said. “Children shiver from the cold night air. It hurts me as a mother that I can’t make them warm enough.”

Despite a five-day cease-fire, which took effect on August 13, holding in Gaza, Alaraer said she is too scared to return home. “We want a long-term truce,” she said, “not just these short-pause cease-fires, and then running from Israeli tank shells and missiles again.”

Horror, then degradation, confront Gaza residents

Imam survives bombardment only to be stripped naked in front of family, humiliated and used as human shield

KHUZA’A, SOUTHERN GAZA STRIP—Khalil al-Najjar sat in his brother’s home with his mother, siblings, in-laws and children—15 family members in all. They were under constant Israeli-artillery fire all night, not knowing what would happen with each passing second, bombs raining around them.

“A tank shell hit, and there was heavy black smoke in the building, so we ran under the staircase to hide and rest for a few minutes,” Najjar said.

As the bombing continued, automatic gunfire was heard outside. “We shouted out that we were civilians. But more bullets were fired after we declared ourselves as civilians,” said Najjar, who, at 55 years old, is a well-known and highly respected imam in his community.

A few minutes later, a military dog rushed into the home, terrifying the children. The imam shouted out in Hebrew to the soldiers behind a wall riddled with bullet-holes: “We are civilians. We have children and babies with no medicine or milk.”

The soldiers shouted back, in Hebrew, ordering him and the family to “get out, one by one.”

Outside, the soldiers ordered everyone to get down on the ground—women and children on one side, men on the other—as more neighborhood women were brought to the street corner.

“In front of all these women, I was forced to undress until I was naked, at gunpoint,” recalls the imam while walking through the destruction in his neighborhood.

“Making a well-respected man stand, completely naked, in front of everyone was the most humiliating thing of my life,” he added as tears began to well up in his normally proud, dark eyes.

The situation would have been embarrassing for any man, but for a deeply religious and conservative Muslim who is seen as a pillar of the community, the act was particularly shameful.

Adding to the humiliation, Najjar said that he and the other men were ordered to stand naked with their arms held up until they hurt. When he could take no more, Najjar told one soldier in Hebrew, “My arms hurt,” at which point he was ordered to sit. “This was the only time they listened to me. They brought a chair for me to sit on,” he added.

The imam and his family had already been denied sleep by the pandemonium of Israel’s attacks, but that fateful morning was the fiercest attack they saw. Najjar now calls it “the Black Tuesday of July 22”

While still naked, he was told to “take the women and children somewhere else.” The only option he could think of was his brother’s home, two streets away, which he hoped would be safer.

“The bombs and bulldozers left massive holes in the streets, so I carried my elderly mother on my shoulders to my brother’s home,” he said.

But when the family arrived there, they found that the house was filled with Israeli soldiers lying on their backs, some asleep on mattresses and beds belonging to the family.

“These soldiers were angry that someone had allowed us to come,” Najjar said, as if there was a lack of communication and coordination between the different Israeli units in Khuza’a.

The men were then rounded up while the Israelis decided who would be arrested and who they would let go.

Najjar, however, was singled out and marched to the Khuza’a Mosque, which had been badly damaged and defaced by Israeli soldiers. It’s here that he was interrogated by the Israeli officer in charge of the men inside his brother’s home and repeatedly asked about particular individuals from the Abu Rida family, a very large extended family that is well known in Gaza.

“Yes, I know him from the mosque where Abu Rida says Friday prayers,” the imam said.

Still held at gunpoint, he was then questioned further about “where the rockets come from.” The imam replied that the “only rockets I know of are the Israeli missiles from the F-16s and drones” But this did not save him.

The officer soon became angry with Najjar, demanding to know about the “tunnels” that Israel had used as a pretext for expanding its military campaign in Gaza.

Najjar stayed firm. “You are Israeli intelligence with all your technology, drones, F-16s, and you don’t know where the tunnels are,” he said. “Do you think those building tunnels are going to come and tell me where they are?”

This continued for a while, but eventually one of Najjar’s brothers was brought to the mosque. He caught a soldier looking at some graffiti on the wall citing Islamic Jihad’s term for Operation Protective Edge, “al-Bunian al-Marsoos”—a Quranic term that means “hard-packed structure”—and asked the soldier if it needed erasing. But the soldier dismissed Najjar’s brother, simply stating that he would “deal with that.” Soon after, a bulldozer came to demolish the whole mosque wall that had the graffiti on it.

In retrospect, the bulldozers should have acted as a warning sign that Najjar’s troubles were far from over.

The imam was soon ordered to dress and was ushered outside at gunpoint along with his brother. Najjar was then told to walk ahead of the soldiers down the center of the street, while calling to all young residents to come outside and surrender.

The Israeli troops seem to have selected a well-respected resident, the imam, knowing that the local residents would trust his words and be more confident about their safety, although they also harbored deadlier intentions if this plan failed.

The imam’s brother heard the officer tell his soldiers behind them in Hebrew that “if people didn’t come out, my brother and I were to be shot.”

The soldiers behind them had warned: “You are being observed. Our guns are pointed at your heads, so watch out. If you move from the center of the street, you will be shot.”

While walking ahead of the soldiers, people saw the imam. Another brother shouted from a window: “Brother Khalil, brother Khalil.” The imam told his brother and everyone around him to come outside and they would be safe.

The young people came out, seeing the imam, but not the troops, who stayed out of sight until the majority of the residents walked outside. It’s only then that the soldiers appeared and shouted at them to put their arms above their heads.

Some of the people, however, stayed inside. One soldier told the imam that “there are over 1,000 people still in their homes.” The Israelis then marched him back to the mosque, where an officer raised his gun and ordered Najjar to start the electricity generator to the mosque and use the loudspeaker to call all young people out of their homes, insisting that they would be safe.

“I was having problems giving the call to prayer anyway from exhaustion and fasting. My voice was dry, but the soldier put his gun to my head and ordered me to tell everyone to come out,” he said.

When the imam finished his message, he was led outside the mosque and saw more people arriving, trusting his words that they would be safe.

The soldier then ordered him, “Take your mother and go. If I hear any of these women speak, I’ll bomb your home immediately.”

All the young men who surrendered were arrested, leaving just the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Legal page
• Table of contents
• Introduction
• When my son screams
• Israel strikes Gaza apartment blocks
• Gaza: no place to bury the dead
• Palestinians find shelter at Gaza hospital
• Horror, then degradation, confront Gaza residents
• Back cover