{"id":11214,"date":"2011-09-30T12:13:13","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T08:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=11214"},"modified":"2011-10-05T13:17:46","modified_gmt":"2011-10-05T09:17:46","slug":"a-boy-from-gaza-is-blown-to-pieces-apart-from-his-family-who-cares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/showcase\/a-boy-from-gaza-is-blown-to-pieces-apart-from-his-family-who-cares\/","title":{"rendered":"A Boy from Gaza is Blown to Pieces: Apart from his Family, Who Cares?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cBoth of Ibrahim\u2019s arms were cut off. He had a hole in his lung. Parts of his legs\u00a0were missing. His kidney was in a bad condition\u2026we need people to stand with us.\u201d\u00a0These were the words of an exhausted man as he described the condition of his dying\u00a0son in an interview with The Real News, an alternative news source.<\/p>\n

Ibrahim Zaza was merely a 12-year-old boy. He and his cousin Mohammed, 14, were hit\u00a0by an Israeli missile in Gaza, fired from an unmanned drone as they played in front of\u00a0their house.<\/p>\n

The story started on August 18. The next day, the British Telegraph reported:\u00a0\u201cIsrael launches fightback after militant attack on Egypt border,\u201d The whitewashing\u00a0of the recent Israeli strikes at besieged Gaza leaves one wondering if all reporters\u00a0used Israeli army talking points as they conveyed the story. Palestinians were\u00a0punished for an attack at Israelis that reportedly accrued near the Israeli border\u00a0with Egypt. There is no evidence linking Gaza to the attack, and Egyptian\u00a0authorities are now disputing the Israeli account altogether.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least six Palestinians were killed in the first wave of bombing. Israel said\u00a0they were members, including the leader, of the militant group known as the Popular\u00a0Resistance Committees it accused of responsibility for the attacks,\u201d wrote Phoebe\u00a0Greenwood and Richard Spencer (The Telegraph, August 19).<\/p>\n

The Popular Resistance Committees had dissociated themselves from the attack, as had\u00a0Hamas and all Palestinian factions. But that was hardly enough to spare the lives of\u00a0innocent men and women in Gaza, already reeling under untold hardship. Among thedead in the first wave of attacks that targeted \u2018militants\u2019 were two children, one\u00a0aged three and the other 13.<\/p>\n

In the media, Palestinian casualties only matter when they amount to a sizable\u00a0number. Even then, they are placed within a context that deprives the victims of any\u00a0sympathy, or worse, blames Palestinian militants for indirect responsibility\u00a0(pushing Israel to resort to violence to defend its security). In fact, the term\u00a0\u2018Palestinian security\u2019 is almost nonexistent, although thousands of Gazans have been\u00a0killed in the last three years alone.<\/p>\n

Even the news of Palestinian children killed in the August strikes was reported with\u00a0a sense of vagueness and doubt. News networks downplayed the fact that the majority\u00a0of Palestinian victims were civilians. The Telegraph reported that: \u201cHamas, which\u00a0runs Gaza, said that two children were also killed in the air raids\u2026\u201d Quoting Hamas,not human rights groups or hospital sources, is hardly shocking when the reporter is\u00a0based in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Neither was it shocking when the boy, Ibrahim Zaza, died. His heart was the only\u00a0organ that had continued to function for nearly thirty days after the drone attack.\u00a0The father, who was allowed to accompany Ibrahim and Mohammed to an Israeli\u00a0hospital, was then prevented from leaving the hospital for he constituted a security\u00a0threat. He kept circulating around his son\u2019s frail body, hoping and praying. He\u00a0appealed to people to stand by his family, stressing his lack of means to buy a\u00a0wheelchair, which he thought Ibrahim would need once he woke up again.<\/p>\n

There is no need for a wheelchair now. And Mohammed\u2019s unyielding pain continues. His\u00a0legs are bare with no skin. His belly area is completely exposed. His screams are\u00a0haunting.<\/p>\n

Ibrahim\u2019s death seemed to compel little, if any, media coverage. There were no New\u00a0York Times features, no Time magazine pictorials of the weeping mother and the\u00a0devastated community. Ibrahim\u2019s existence in this world was short. His death was\u00a0mostly uneventful outside the small circle of those who dearly loved him.<\/p>\n

There will be no debates on Israel\u2019s use of airstrikes that kill civilians, and no\u00a0urgent UN meetings over the incessant killings caused by Israeli drones, which in\u00a0themselves constitute a highly profitable industry. Clients who have doubts about\u00a0the effectiveness of the Elbit Systems Hermes 900 UAV, for example, need only view\u00a0Israeli Air Force videos of the drone gently gliding over Gaza. According to sUAS\u00a0News, it \u201ccan reach a higher altitude of 30,000 feet\u2026(and) can be quickly and easily\u00a0converted for the operator\u2019s needs, without the need to adjust the operating\u00a0infrastructure for every mission\u201d (June 6, 2011).<\/p>\n

Israel has been testing its drones on Palestinians for years. In Gaza, these\u00a0vultures can be observed with the naked eye. Whenever the glider draws near, people\u00a0scramble for cover. But it took a WikiLeaks report to verify Israel\u2019s use of drones\u00a0for the purpose of killing. According to a recently leaked document, Israeli army\u00a0Advocate-General Maj. Gen. Avichai Mandelblit had, in February 2010, informed\u00a0previous US Ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, of Israel\u2019s use of weaponized\u00a0unmanned aircrafts to kill suspected militants.<\/p>\n

In The Real News video report, Lia Tarachansky spoke to Lt. Col. Avital Leibowitz, a\u00a0spokesperson for the IDF, to try and understand why Ibrahim and his cousin were\u00a0targeted.<\/p>\n

Lia Tarachansky: \u201cThere was only one missile shot, according to witnesses, and it\u00a0was at two children, one 12 and one 14, sitting outside of their house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Avital Leibowitz: \u201cThe logic is that when someone is trying to launch a rocket at\u00a0you, then the logic is – we better target that person before he targets us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The one photo I could retrieve of Ibrahim Zaza showed him posing shyly for the\u00a0camera, his hair brushed forward. My heart breaks now as I think of him, and all the\u00a0other victims of Israel\u2019s \u201clogic\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAMZY BAROUD: An unmanned Israeli drone fired a missile at Ibrahim Zaza. For thirty days, against all odds, he survived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":11227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,83,483,119,60,482],"tags":[18300,278,227,1572,18311,8904,2605,726,2883,1253,3819,18297,2904,2289,387],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11214"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}