Tag: Gaza

Book: The Saladin Murders

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

The Saladin Murders (Omar Yussef Mystery Series)The Saladin Murders by Matt Rees

Frankly I found this a very depressing read, and knowing that reality probably mirrors this fictitious tale in many of its grisly dimensions was very bitter to contemplate.

This is the second Omar Yussef mystery and it plays out in Gaza, a dump in every sense of the word according to the protagonists. The dirt, the sandstorms, the corruption, the religious zealotry, the garbage, the ruins, and so many deaths and corpses are the order of the day in that terrible place.

Omar Yussef comes to Gaza as part of a UN group. He is investigating with his UN boss the arrest of a colleague who is also a part time lecturer at Al-Azhar University. This innocuous beginning quickly spirals into something sinister as one UN man gets kidnapped and another is assasinated. Soon the corpses pile up among Palestinians rival factions from one killing to another revenge. I lost track of the motives, the agendas and the rivalries. What is left is the deep sense of futility as corrupt politicians fight it out and squabble over this pile of garbage that is Gaza. In this story Israeli violence and hostility do not exist; it is all about Palestinian internal strife. The violence between rival factions is extreme and almost mindless, and the distasteful part is that you cannot even dismiss LAW wielding fighters as far-fetched. Just because the events take place in Gaza, the craziest and the most mindless violence is possible.

A woman in the story says: “Sometimes I think that the only Palestinians who do not weep are the dead ones”.

I was saddened by a little boy, who showed Omar Yussef the doves he is raising on the roof, an innocent child who would soon be struck by tragedy and grief. Nobody remains innocent for long in this environment. Yet people laugh and joke, they exchange wisecracks in the face of death and enjoy a distinct gallows humor, which rang very true. Those Palestinians are tough, and they can put up with a lot of suffering. Omar Yussef says: “I am Palestinian” by way of explanation of his tough nature and tolerance of hardship, but even he was pleased to leave the dust of Gaza, its graves and graveyards behind.

Gaza

~ marobbie ~ Leave a comment

Whenever I think of Gaza I remember a cartoon I saw many years ago when I was still a citizen of the troubled Middle East.  The cartoon could have been by the late Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al Ali, but I could not trace it on his official website.  In the cartoon the Arab nation is depicted as a wounded woman; a knife had just stabbed her chest. An arrow points to the bleeding wound, proclaiming it as Gaza غزة . The cartoon works best in Arabic and particularly for those of us familiar with the Eastern Mediterranean version of spoken Arabic, where غزة (Ghazzah) means a stab, and is perhaps a derivative of غرزة a stitch, usually made with a sharp needle or similar instrument.

In my mind Gaza is still bleeding, and it is a wound in the heart of the whole world. I feel sorry for those who are forced to endure life within its borders, because I know that most wouldn’t want to live there if they had a choice.

Gaza is worse than a Bantustan. It is one of the most densely populated regions of the world. The living conditions of the people there are among the worst in the world. Now they are living under the shadow of death,  destruction and war. I have nothing but sorrow and sympathy to offer them.

This blog is not about politics.  I do not want to stand for a cause or declare myself as a militant supporter of one side over the other. I will not write from the viewpoint of an Arab, although I spent the best part of my youth in the Middle East, and I am familiar with the pain, the disappointment and their by-product of extremism.  I am writing because I do not understand how some South Africans Jews who have never been to the Middle East and know nothing about the conflict, choose to support the attack on Gaza.

I performed a google image search on Gaza and came up with over 15 million pictures. They are mostly of death, destruction and misery without end. Gaza is still a wound that is bleeding the world. Nothing has changed in the last two decades; violence breeds extremism and then more violence. So the the bloody history is poised to repeat itself again and again, as long as radicals on both sides of the divide keep calling for each others blood. It is never going to end.