COMMENTARY: Mournful Mideast fireworks usher in new year

print this

By Jukka Huusko
     
      Megatons of fireworks were sent up into the sky around the Western world on Wednesday night. Champagne bottles popped open, and people wished each other a Happy New Year.
      Not so in the Middle East. In Gaza and in nearby areas on the Israeli side, the sky went dark with fighter planes and missiles, the unhappy fireworks of a new and senseless war.
     
During a week I met people on both sides of the front line, who had fallen victim to the war between Israel and Hamas.
      In Ramallah, on the West Bank, a Palestinian mother was crying because her 18-year-old son had been so angered by what he had seen on television about the bombings in Gaza that he took a defiant stance at an Israeli checkpoint and was shot dead by the soldiers.
      In the port city of Ashdod, members of a Jewish family crying, because a rocket fired by Hamas killed a mother who had been waiting for a bus next to a park.
      The sorrow of the residents of Gaza could not be seen directly, because Israel closed the area to outside journalists.
      When I called a family in Gaza, which had been under attack by bombs for more than five days, children could be heard crying in the background. I did not even ask what they were crying about; as Maisha Barzagi told her story, I had to struggle to keep from shedding tears myself.
     
The war between Israel and the Palestinians seems to be one in which it is easy to choose sides.
      The Arabs, who are like this, did this and that in the year whatever, and therefore the Israeli attack is justified.
      The Israelis, who are like that, did this and that in one year or another, and that is why the actions taken by Hamas are understandable at the very least.
      This kind of logic is a big smokescreen, which only serves to justify the next mindless war. Serving as fuel for this war are oppression, racism, bitterness, and a thirst for vengeance.
     
Violence has become an integral part of the way that both communities resolve the problems that they have with each other.
      One side uses stones, self-built Qassam rockets, and outlandish threats, while the other side uses the world’s deadliest war machine.
      As long as there are those on both sides who are apologists of violence, the Palestinian mother, the Jewish family, and the children in Gaza will continue to weep.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 3.1.2009


See also:
  Foreign Minister Stubb calls for immediate Gaza ceasefire (5.1.2009)

JUKKA HUUSKO / Helsingin Sanomat
jukka.huusko@hs.fi