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INTERNATIONAL

I am Gaza, I am bleeding

  • 15 August 2014

It was 30 degrees centigrade and sunny in Gaza, as our small band of around 20 kept vigil in the cold night rain at Melbourne’s Federation Square. We shed silent tears for the people of Gaza. A place that should have been beautiful; but that is the setting for misery death and horror. 

In the last month an estimated 2000 Palestinians including 400 children have been killed and 10,000 injured. Much of Gaza is reduced to rubble and rendered uninhabitable, with bodies that lie still and silently entombed beneath destroyed buildings. 

It is only during the fragile stingily brief ceasefires, that people of Gaza emerged from flimsy shelters, to search for and bury their dead. They return to see if their homes have survived the bombing and shelling. 

It is a time to pull a prayer rug from beneath the ruins, or to salvage precious objects. How many have there been, these halts to the killing? No sooner announced than breached? We held tea candles powered by battery to resist the extinguishing of their flames. 

We stood in silence. Jewish, Christian, Muslims and atheists, united in sorrow. The bell, activated by a mobile phone, tolled from a laptop for the dead. We shivered. We heard words from a Jewish person, a Catholic and a Muslim mother. Her daughter recited a poem, ‘I am Gaza I have a dagger in my heart.  I am bleeding’.

I wished that I could hold this jewel of a poem in memory, but the words slipped away. Where is the world?  On Swanston Street, the world walks on by. It is Saturday night in Melbourne, and the town is in party mode. No exploding bombs light the skyline. Just the city lights, and the moon, if you can find it. It is soothing to hear the words of peace, and to share sorrow. Some of us hug and others stand in stillness. St Paul’s Cathedral stands solidly on the corner opposite, festooned with ‘Lets fully welcome refugees’.

There are now estimated to be over 500,000 displaced people in Gaza. The borders are controlled and the UN shelters full. There is nowhere for them to go in the aptly named Gaza Strip, which is a mere 10 by 45 kilometres. Rain falls, my hands like frozen water clutch my candle and I think about the images I have seen and stories that I have read on my screen. The two and a
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