Natalie Abou Shakra: You are not helpless!

Tuesday January 6, 2009

10:46a.m.

We didn't sleep at all. Afar from the cocktail of explosions, shootings, and shellings, we talked. The sounds were deafening and we had to come closer to speak.
Yesterday, when they hit Qasr el Hakem, the government's meeting place, two people killed, and in my adjacent building, one person was killed. Both are on my block.
My flue has subsided and I am ready to take my shift at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. Layla and Vittorio are to be joining me tonight.

As Dr. As'ad comes in the house after leaving to bring in some groceries. He tells us that there are no vegetables and no cheese, no milk and no bread near us… so, we decide to write down a schedule of the quantity and quality of food to be eaten per day…

I am receiving your emails, messages, and calls… I appreciate them, but I do not ever appreciate it when you tell me you are helpless… no one is helpless [only against the Zionists machines of death and terror! Only!]

Even during wars and massacring no one is helpless… am I helpless? I refuse to be helpless… not only is it a humiliating existence… it is a shame, and living in what Sartre [yes, I know he supported the state of Israel's creation…let us just consider the context of his "acceptance"] would call "bad faith"…

Remember that you are a citizen… you have the right to vote and pressure those who represent you… do that! You also have a choice in boycotting companies and products that support the Zionists' weaponry production, thus massacring and killing… that also support the Zionist Apartheid regime… someone once told me, "Jerusalem is the most beautiful city to me in the world, but after I saw the extent of racial discrimination against Palestinians and Arabs in by the Zionists… it became the most horrid."
(Consult BNC and PACB for details on boycotting)… you can demonstrate as well (and throw your shoes, of course!)… You are an active human being… active in your political and social choice… thus, you are called citizen. Be a citizen, by doing!
On another note, there are people who told me they want the "Palestinian cookies" recipe… I will not write them down here now… I have them… when this horrid massacring ends… I might post it… so, stay… posted

I went out to the veranda. It was the first time since the massacring began that I had gone out on the veranda. Not because I didn't want to. But, because Sitt Wafaa piled everything from broken windows, chairs and doors on the veranda door.
Sitt Wafaa, her seven year old, Abdel Aziz, and I placed the wet laundry on plastic chairs out in the sun for them to dry. We washed the laundry with regular soap and cold water (as in the one you use to wash you hands… can someone send me some washing powder with my bazookas from the Rafeh entrance?)

The sky was clear with no clouds and the sun shined, to me, like never before… the sun became so precious, and realized I never appreciated it as much as I do now… it made my cold body warm. Abdel Aziz hugged his mother as she laid her shoulder on the wall. We looked at the sun shining on all the destruction. I wished at that moment that the whole world was with us, looking. We stayed outside for around thirty minutes, after which they bombed close in Hay el Zaytoun (tanks are shooting extensively as I am typing). We saw the Apache as it came closer after it bombed. (Where is my bazooka?). I was wearing my pink pajamas, and was afraid that the Israelis might mistake me for Hamas. (Remember? Israelis targeting children in pajamas on the donkeys… I am staying away from donkeys, as there are many now in Gaza since there is no petrol… and the donkey proves its efficiency again in history! The donkeys in Gaza are so courageous. Now, donkeys are martyrs in Gaza). My pajamas are pink. Are there any pink Qassam rockets? Please assure me so that I stop wearing pink pajamas. I cannot jeopardize my "family's" (surrogate family?) safety.

Natalie Abou Shakra
International Solidarity Movement
Gaza, Palestine