[News] The Women of Beit Hanoun

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/ernshire11072006.html

November 7, 2006


Who Was Perpetrating the Terror?


The Women of Beit Hanoun

By ELIZA ERNSHIRE

Gaza.

The winter rains have started and the temperatures are falling 
everyday. Unsealed roads are fast becoming muddy tracks. The heavens 
are weeping too, witness to the frightful events that are unfolding 
now in that devastated and forgotten strip of land that we call Gaza, 
home to 3 million Palestinians.

In this dreary weather the joy of the festive holiday of Eid has 
vanished. There is only cause for sorrow now and tears that will 
rival the heaven's showers. Before dawn on Friday morning the Al Quds 
Radio station in Beit Hanoun, Gaza, called on the women of the city 
to stage a protest outside the mosque inside which 40 of their 
resistance fighters were trapped.

Twelve hours later an Israeli spokesman announced "The militants used 
women as human shields. This is a clear example of the use of 
innocent population for terror." This statement was duly swallowed by 
the western media, most of which have covered the present crisis and 
growing tragedy in Gaza as little as possible.

But what was the terror and what was the threat? Who was threatening 
and who was perpetrating the terror?

There have been three days of bloodshed in Gaza which followed an 
ominous build up of the Israeli military on the borders. We watched 
in horror and yet again failed to do anything until it was too late. 
Only now, after 43 Palestinians have been killed in the course of 
three days, is the international community calling on Israel to 'show 
restraint'.

Again, too late and too little.

When those in the position to force some restraint fail to act then 
it is left to desperate people to act in desperate ways. The women of 
Beit Hanoun acted in response to the radio call for help because the 
international community had not been bothered to mediate. Their men 
were under siege. Their brothers, husbands and sons were being killed 
and their mosque was being bulldozed to the ground.

Many did not have to think twice when they were called on to act. 
What were they risking? A life where missile attacks are a daily 
occurrence, where funerals to bury their relatives are a weekly 
event, where fresh water and proper food are dreams they hav long given up on.

For many of the women who left their homes at sunrise and walked for 
an hour or more to the scene of terror their only hope was that their 
actions might save some lives and the world might be woken up to the 
reality of their tragedy. Instead, their actions have been used to 
further vilify their loved ones who had spent a night holed up inside 
a house of worship that was being systematically bulldozed from 
outside. Walls were crushed and the ceiling caved in. The women 
outside were looking for one glimpse of their husbands and sons. The 
Israeli forces opened fire and women were among the dead.

A heartbreaking photo bears witness to the scene of carnage, 
published in West Bank newspapers and kept away from the rest of the 
world media: Women rushing for cover behind a wall. A lamp post 
covered with blood and a crumpled woman on the ground. Faces turned 
heavenward in disbelief and anguish.

'The Army was forced to open fire on the crowd because two militants 
were among the women.' The Israeli media announced. And instantly the 
action is excused.

Of course, Israel must protect its citizens. 'This offensive is to 
halt hand-made rockets being fired into Israel across the border.' 
Israel as been "protecting its citizens" with increasing ferocity for 
the past four months, at the cost of more than a thousand Palestinian 
and Lebanese lives.

Meanwhile we are ladled propaganda about militants and their threat 
to Israel security, even when it means accepting the fact that Israel 
opened fire on a group of women, killed two, wounded more than ten 
and then denigrated their action into "an action supporting 
Palestinian Terror."

Why can we not even give honor where honor is due?

Give some credibility to the bravery of the women of Beit Hanoun who 
dared the tanks and fire of the strongest military in the world for 
the love of their men!

There has been a continual strike in the West Bank over the current 
situation in Gaza. On the day the rains started the streets were 
empty in Ramallah and the shops were shut. There was an atmosphere of 
horror, deepened by night-time invasions in all the major cities of 
the West Bank. It seemed on Saturday that everyone had some one to 
mourn and bury; a relative, a friend or just the impossible hope that 
the present situation was going to improve before winter came with 
its added hardships of rain and mud and freezing nights. A winter 
difficult enough for the villagers who are reliant on wood-fires for 
warmth, but compounded a million fold for the people of Gaza who are 
still trying to piece together lives shattered by the last bloody 
actions of the Israeli military.

There were actions in solidarity with the people of Beit Hanoun on 
Saturday in Ramallah and Nablus and afterwards, as I walked the 
quieter streets in the evening rain, I stopped women I saw walking 
and asked them what they would have done if the Ramallah radio 
broadcast such a call for help.

"Of course I would have gone," one elder woman answered. "If it was 
not my son or husband or brother besieged inside our mosque, it would 
have been my neighbor's. Our men are risking their lives to try and 
forge our children a better future, it is our duty to fight by their sides."

One young and beautiful woman added: "It would have been an honor to 
act as our sisters in Gaza have acted."


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