Scarred souls: Psychic scars of fear and rage in Gaza

For one brief, shining moment, something encouraging unfolded in the Gaza Strip: Palestinians protested against Hamas.

As I travelled in Israel and the West Bank — foreign journalists are generally not allowed in Gaza — the protests seemed to capture hope of change, a deadlock breaking, some way forward. But Hamas appears to have squelched the brave protests for now, in part through torture and murder.

Despite talk of ceasefire proposals, the two sides still seem impossibly far apart on any deal to end the war for good, so I fear we must brace for more killing. Israel on Wednesday announced an expansion of its military offensive in Gaza, including plans to seize “large areas.”

The people of Gaza are caught between the irreconcilable demands of two parties, Hamas and the Israeli government, that both show a brutal indifference toward Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages alike — in Israel’s case, with a weapons assist from the US.

Gaza today has the highest proportion of child amputees in the world, according to the United Nations, yet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke the initial ceasefire, defying public sentiment on the one issue that most Israelis and Palestinians seem to agree on: The war should end.

"The US doesn’t have influence over Hamas, but we provide the 2,000-pound bombs that Netanyahu employs to turn buildings and people into dust — and that gives us leverage to press for an end to this war. We’re not using it," former Prime Minister Ehud Barak told me.

So American bombs will create more WCNSFs. That’s a common abbreviation in Gaza hospitals for “wounded child, no surviving family.”

Dr Sam Attar, an American surgeon and professor at Northwestern University School of Medicine, has made five medical missions to Gaza since the war began. He told me about kids he treated: a teenager with burns over half his body who died because the blood bank had run out of blood; a 10-year-old girl buried in the rubble for 12 hours beside her dead parents; a 13-year-old boy with a charred face who kept asking for his dead parents and sisters.

“In every war, it’s these psychic scars of fear and rage that cost more lives and livelihoods for generations,” said Attar. “We can amputate arms and legs to save lives. How do you heal a scarred soul?”

For several weeks now, Israel has blockaded Gaza again, magnifying the suffering of civilians and, presumably, of hostages alike.

“All entry points into Gaza are closed for cargo since early March,” said Tom Fletcher, the United Nations humanitarian chief. “At the border, food is rotting, medicine expiring and vital medical equipment stuck.”

How does America respond to this needless suffering in Gaza, which UNICEF has described as “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child”? President Donald Trump shipped another 1,800 of the 2,000-pound bombs to Israel and suggested emptying Gaza of Palestinians in what would amount to ethnic cleansing.

Yet the war has achieved one thing: It has kept Netanyahu in office. Continued war works for him, even though 69% of Israelis say they want him to do a deal to bring back all the hostages and end the war. In Gaza, Hamas likewise focuses on remaining in power rather than on the well-being of Palestinians.

Conversely, Americans whose hearts bled for the 1,200 Israelis murdered in the Hamas terror attack too often seem inured to the 50,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has warned that Gaza may be facing “the gates of hell,” which seems about right. He also threatened to annex parts of Gaza if Hamas did not release the hostages. Is this a cause the US should supply weapons for?

Some 280 UN workers were killed in Gaza, along with more than 150 journalists. The United Nations reported this week that it had recovered the bodies of 15 rescue workers from ambulances, a fire truck and a UN vehicle. They had been killed while trying to assist the injured.

Is this war the best use of American weaponry?

It is a credit to Israel that some civil society groups and leading security figures have shown great courage in condemning their country’s Gaza policy. A former defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, has repeatedly warned that Israel is committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing. Ami Ayalon, a former director of the Shin Bet intelligence agency, has protested Israel’s Gaza policy as “immoral and unjust.”

For my part, I don’t see Hamas and Israel as moral equivalents. But I see a moral equivalence among an Israeli child, a Palestinian child and an American child. And I fear that Netanyahu, based on political calculations, will employ American munitions to claim the lives of thousands more children.

All these lives set to be lost, all these children to be maimed, for what?

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