Dear friends,
I didn't know what to think or feel when I read that six or eight residents
of our former hometown of Rafah were killed yesterday by IDF tank fire.
It's difficult sometimes to know what to believe. Were those killed non-combatants?
Was the tank fire an appropriate response to gunmen who chose to fire
from within populated areas?
Then tonight our phone rang. It was a child who had apparently pushed
a button on his father's mobile phone. He apologized and was about to
hang up. But I recognized the number on the screen; I'd seen it dozens
of times over the last several years. It belonged to the family of Mohammed
Abu Hillal, a 15-year-old boy from Rafah. I asked to speak to the father,
Abu Mohammed.
He had first contacted us years ago because Mohammed's
heart was weak and hugely dilated, and doctors in Gaza thought the only
hope for him was a heart transplant. Mohammed was a shy, humble boy, small
for his age, but with big droopy brown eyes and occasionally a big smile.
We sent him up to cardiologist Dr. Aki Tamir at the Wolfson Medical Center
in Israel. He observed an abnormally fast heartbeat in Mohammed, and thought
that could be the cause of the weakening of the heart. He sent Mohammed
over to Prof. Bernard Belhassen, Israel's leading expert in electrophysiological
study of the heart.
With financial support from the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Mohammed
underwent advanced radiofrequency treatment and the abnormality in his
heartbeat was eliminated. In my files I have a fading fax from May 17,
2000, in which Prof. Belhassen wrote: "I think we did a good job
with the young boy." I was moved to see the care, compassion, and
world-class medical treatment given in Israel to an unknown boy from a
refugee camp.
On follow-up examination in August 2001 Dr. Tamir wrote that "Mohammed
is doing well [and] claims to be able to perform exercise...the size of
the left ventricle decreased significantly from last echo and contraction
improved." Our families drew close throughout this period and shared
several meals in each other's homes. Mohammed was the same age as my oldest
son Josh, and was an honored guest at one of Josh's birthday parties in
Rafah.
So it was a shock when the child on the phone tonight blurted out that
"Mohammed was martyred!" His father came on the phone and confirmed
that Mohammed was indeed one of those killed yesterday by the tank shelling,
while standing by his school in the refugee camp.
"Are you sure it was from the army?" I asked. "It wasn't
his heart?"
"No, he was hit in the head by a shell fragment."
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz speculated that the army was again using
in the Gaza Strip a flechette dart tank shell, which upon explosion in
the air releases thousands of five-centimeter-long steel darts over a
large radius. According to a US Army manual, the round is "designed
for close-in assault against massed infantry assaults and for offensive
fire against exposed enemy personnel."
Three innocent Bedouin women were killed in Gaza in June 2001 by the use
of one of these shells, which the Jerusalem Post said "are highly
lethal against infantry but inflict serious indiscriminate damage."
Were they, or was other indiscriminate force, used again in Rafah? This
should be investigated, and I believe it will be.
What is clear to me is the difference it makes when one of those involved
has for us a name and a story. We've seen it again and again in recent
years as Palestinian children come into Israeli hospitals for heart surgeries:
face-to-face, we can any longer close our eyes to the humanity of our
enemies.
Jonathan Miles
Coordinator
Shevet Achim
