This Week In Palestinian Blogs: Tragedy at The Beach

Tragedy and shock has captured the minds and hearts of Palestinian bloggers this week. The Israeli shelling of Gaza which lead to the death of several civilians including women and children, has some calling it Bloody Friday.

As Palestinian families built sand castles on a Gaza beach an Israeli shell shattered their peaceful day. Blogger and human rights activist, Mona El-Farra best describes the scene with the story of a little girl who lost both her parents and three brothers and sisters.

Moi posts a video from a news report filmed after the attack and with absolute sadness says:

“I cannot get her voice out of my head. Her screams pierced through my body and soul as she began to fathom the fate of her father lying lifelessly in front of her. “Yaaaabaaaa” means “Daaaaddyyyy”. Her Daddy is no more. Her Mommy is no more. Her siblings are no more.”

The video has had it’s affect on other Palestinian bloggers such as Haitham Sabbah who says: “While watching all this and more on Palestine TV and Aljazeera, I, my wife and all my kids, all started crying.”

Khaled Nazzal cannot get over the feeling of uselessness, a sentiment that is shared by blogger Al-Falasteenyia and Gaza resident Laila El-Haddad who so far from home right now says: “We called my Aunt, who works with the al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza. She was hysterical, and this is a woman who seldom loses her grip.”

One thing is for sure: the week can change quickly in Palestine. Far from recent events Amal Amireh had some interesting thoughts on the Judeo-Arab music heritage earlier on in the week.

As the World Cup kicks off Moi writes of an interesting film entitled “World Cup Inshallah” that looks into the difficulties of formation and training of a Palestinian National team attempting to qualify for the World Cup. Meanwhile May at KabobFest blogs of joint Palestinian-Israeli outrage at World Cup subscription fees.

Ohoud is happy to hear that the city of Ramallah set a Guiness World record after a resteraunt produces the largest plate of Tabouleh.

Elsewhere, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is launching its annual Freedom Summer Campaign that runs through July and August, but sadly they’ve been faced with some recent slanderous confrontations that are trying to undermine their mission. Nevertheless, it appears to have only emboldened their mission for non-violent resistance.

3 comments

Join the conversation

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.