Learning The Hard Lesson Of Gaza

“I don’t know who I am but life is for learning…”
Woodstock – Joni Mitchell

That line, from that song, bubbles up into my boomer brain every once in a while and reminds me of a couple very important points:

1) I don’t know everything.
2) That’s OK, because that gives me something useful to do.

Like many Type As, I live in a constant state of anxiety: am I doing the right thing? Am I even thinking the right thing?

This anxiety makes me obsessive about what I do and do not know. It leads me to clutch my opinions fiercely, as if they can save me from my ignorance, and it leads me to shut out the thoughts and feelings of others, as they just complicate matters.

Sadly, I don’t think I’m unusual. Which is why so many of us hold fierce opinions based on no knowledge whatsoever. For example: the Middle East.

How many of us really know what’s happening? It’s an immensely complicated situation and even the people caught in the crosshairs of the conflict don’t know what to think. Yet, does that stop us from lining up alongside Israel or the Palestinians, depending on our world view? I don’t think so.

On the site today, we have a story from Heba in Gaza, which teaches me that I really don’t know anything about the Middle East.

Heba is a brave woman who studies whenever the electricity is on while trying to feed and protect her family in the face of violence and deprivation from all sides. Heba’s voice is so powerful, it cuts through the glaze of my unexamined opinions and reminds me how little I know.

What I do know about Gaza I learned from Wikipedia. More than 1.4 million Palestinians live in a strip of approximately 139 square miles, a tiny little strip along the coast of the Mediterranean. By comparison, my city Vancouver is 1905 square miles, more than 10 times the size and only twice the population. It is green and lovely, the exact opposite of Gaza, which is not. I suspect that at some lost moment in the past, Gaza might have been a Mediterranean paradise, but by the looks of its potted history, it has been the locus of military occupation and misery for all recorded history.

But has life in Gaza ever been more miserable than it is today? Those million-plus people are sealed off by Israel from without and subject to violent factionalism from within. Gaza is currently controlled by Hamas, which ousted the remnants of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party, the previous landlord. Now it’s an offense even to commemorate Arafat’s death, as Gazans found out when Hamas suppressed an Arafat demonstration last November, killing 7.

This is a recipe for even greater disaster than the most recent violence between Gaza and Israel in which blood was shed on both sides of the border, which is more like a giant cage that keeps the Palestinians imprisoned on their side of the border. A Hamas attack on a Jewish seminary left 9 students dead, and in the wake of that tragedy, Israeli retaliations have led to more than 120 deaths in Gaza, many of those “minors”.

A tragedy. But Gaza is all about tragedy. The Israelis have imposed sanctions on Hamas because they don’t recognize the legitimacy of its rule, understandably, I suppose – as Hamas seized control in a coup last June, killing and injuring fellow Palestinians in the process. At the same time, rocket attacks on Israel escalated, and Israel has become increasingly oppressive. There are no jobs, no roads, no electricity, no fuel, no food, and there is no future. Every day, Gaza sinks further into chaos, and every day, the lives of its benighted residents become more fragile.

Until today, I somehow believed that Israel, which I have always viewed as enlightened and humanitarian, was the victim of left-wing propaganda, collateral damage in the war of words between clashing ideologies. I have been to Israel and seen all the wonderful things the Israelis have done with their desert. I have visited the Palestinian towns on the West Bank, and for the most part, they appear prosperous, even peaceful now that the intifadah is over. But I can’t ignore Heba’s voice; I have come to see that the Gazans need help, and Israel is a barrier to their emancipation. She calls it the siege of Gaza and that’s exactly what it is.

Somehow, the Gazans must be rescued from their hell on earth, even as Israel’s security is maintained. This means that Israel should cede control over Gazan airspace, and sea access to ports in Gaza, as well as freedom of movement in and out of the area. As long as that embargo exists, Heba and her family will continue to suffer, and I can think of no reason for that suffering to continue another day. Yes, there are militant terrorists lurking in the shadows of the Gaza strip, but how is the situation any different than in Darfur, where politics are also killing the people?

I invite you to read more about Heba and her family. Go to her blog. Learn about her favorite movies: Crash, Forrest Gump, The English Patient, Walk the Line, Pride and Prejudice, The Way We Are and Babel. Walk the Line? Well, Johnny Cash played Folsom Prison, so maybe he appeals to the imprisoned imagination, wherever it lives.

Heba herself is a poster girl for the indomitable human spirit. “I choose to be an observer of life and others!” she writes. “I continuously question what others take for granted and look for beauty in the absurd ! What cheers me up, amidst the gloomy surrounding, is a smile on my two little daughters' faces.” In the midst of unspeakable conditions, she is able to see her blog as a journey of “self-examination and self-improvement”.

Here’s to Heba. Here’s to anyone who can stay alive in Gaza, never mind set such a trenchant example of bravery and optimism. Life is for learning, and thanks to Heba, I learned something today.