Photo from the ISM
So at the moment, the Wafa hospital, the ONLY rehabilitation hospital of its kind in Gaza, is under Zio threat of being bombed… in spite of the fact that its occupants are 16 invalids and 8 internationals who are attempting the prevent the hospital from being attacked. The ISM reported:
“El-Wafa hospital has already been struck by five Israeli missiles on 11th July, and international activists have been maintaining a constant presence ever since.”
That the Zios would attack Wafa is neither surprising nor new. In Jan 2009, with nearly tens of patients–the vast majority of whom we unable to move of their own accord–the Zionist army proceeded to bomb in on Jan 12 and to repeatedly attack the hospital complex over the night of Jan 15, leaving it aflame from shelling, including White Phosphorous, and its residents terrified. When I was able to reach the area many days later, the blobs of White Phosphorous littered in and around the hospital lit up intensely when poked and oxygen was introduced.
**photos from Jan 2009
I knew one of the patients, a Palestinian teen who had been severely maimed in a 2008 Zio attack on Gaza. Maimed in 2008, under threat of obliteration in 2009, same in 2012, same now…The Zionist regime is threatening to again attack the hospital for the disabled in eastern Gaza, whether they bomb it full on like in 2009, and as with the Al Quds hospital remains to be seen. They’ve thus far already bombed twice [see ISM report].
“The patients were not evacuated; there is nowhere for them to go. The entire Shajajia area where the hospital is located, with a population of around 100,000 inhabitants, has also been ordered to evacuate, as well as other areas around the Gaza Strip. For so many people to move to other areas cannot be done, and without shelter they can only rely on God and their luck.
During the night’s bombardment, when el-Wafa hospital shook several times with explosions, suspicions were raised that the hospital had been hit. In fact, the building close by, el-Wafa Elderly Nursing Home was shelled by the Israeli military.
The upper part of the Nursing Home was peppered with machine gun fire and non-explosive grenades penetrated the concrete walls.”
You’d think that this MIGHT be a priority for the UN and such benevolent bodies….
So here is Abed’s sordid and un-ending story:
Abed is one of the injured (think about that word, how lightly or heavily its ramifications can be…in Abed, and many Palestinians cases, it means a life of being bed-ridden, or comatose, later dying of your injuries, missing limbs, or at best scarred and traumatized) in the sadistically-dubbed “Hot Winter” Zio-assault on Gaza. I met him in a Cairo hospital in July 2008, before I ever entered Gaza, while trying to do so.
When I met him, he was wasting away, malnourished, nearly dead, massive bed-sores, due to poor hospital care in Egypt. Through contacts, we had Abed sent back to Gaza, to the Wafa Rehabilitation centre…where he improved markedly.
In Jan 2009, Abed was in Wafa when the Zionist forces repeatedly bombed the hospital, containing roughly 70 invalids who couldn’t move of their own accord…many of them, ironically, rendered immobile by previous Zionist bombings/shootings, like Abed.
He was rooftop in March 2008, checking the water tank which had stopped functioning. Rather than reflect, I’ll copy paste what I wrote of Abed in 2008:
Around 11 am on 2 March, Abed stood on the roof of his family’s home, observing as Israeli tanks overran the area. No curfew had been announced, and he was unaware of the presence of soldiers on a neighboring rooftop. The youth was struck from behind by an Israeli sniper’s bullet that dug into his spine, destroying three of his vertebrae and leaving him paralyzed and bleeding on the roof where he lay for 15 minutes before his younger brother found him. The 13-year-old dragged Abed to the stairs and down into the family’s home, dodging further sniper fire as he went. The invasion outside continued, preventing ambulances from coming for Abed. Three hours after his injury, the teen finally reached a hospital in Gaza City where doctors, after seeing his injury, were surprised to see the youth was still alive. Unable to provide adequate emergency care in Gaza, they immediately loaded him into an emergency transfer ambulance bound for the Rafah border crossing to Egypt.
Due to the siege and its detrimental impact on the availability of essential medicines and functioning equipment, Gaza’s own hospitals are not able to meet patients’ needs. Among the more critically injured, Abed was transported to a hospital in al-Arish, roughly 50 kilometers from the Rafah border, and eventually to Cairo’s Nasser Hospital, where he arrived 15.5 hours after being shot…”
His story goes on, to the negative–he has no happy ending, he’s disabled from the Zionist bullet to his back and is one of countless…, but for the sake of time I’ll link to prior entries:
–Injured, time doesn’t heal all wounds
–…Yet He Still Smiles
–example of an injured Palestinian still suffering critical complications 6 years later
***
Back to the present. It is people like Abed, as well as elderly, who are in Wafa, always under threat of being severely attacked.
When you spend enough time living Palestine, breathing Palestine, you get accustomed to what a new observer might call outrageous, atrocious, unbelievable Zionist attacks and policies (like the Gaza starvation diet, for example). It gets normal, you start saying “aadi” as Palestinians do. Aadi, it’s normal.
But it is not normal, we have to continue to find ways to bring these criminal acts to light, to awaken new people, and to call our reprehensible elected ‘officials’ out when they sing and dance for Israel, as Harper has, and join in demonstrations applauding Israel’s massacre, as Baird will.
Petition: Obama: Don’t Let Israel Bomb Gaza Hospital
Photo from the ISM
Photo from the ISMFiled under: Zionists attacks on Gaza, Zionsts wars on Gaza