Qalandiya: My pals

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Observers: 
Tamar Fleishman
Dec-25-2024
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Afternoon

My pals

I stood at the entrance of the vehicle checkpoint and look at its activity from afar. Suddenly arms waved at me, a mouth of a policeman opened and closed, standing far enough so I could not hear him but his body language spoke clearly. As I did not respond, he came toward me yelling and threatening and summed it up with “Go on, get out of here, go to your pals.”

So I did. I came to the children and boys who break my heart. I sat next to the corn-on-the-cob vat whose wonderful scent and fire keeps the cold away, and was surrounded by children and boys. My pals.

All that time, like a bothersome mosquito, I am haunted by the pictures of children starving to death, freezing to death, and simply murdered in the Gaza Strip. I know that in comparison, the fate of “my pals” is still so much better, but there is no reason in the world for children who are not even ten-years-old yet to live under the yoke of poverty and want and endless threats.

On my way back I wanted to go to the ambulance waiting for its double in order to pass over its human cargo back-to-back (occupation procedure), but was halted again by the same policeman, body, rifle and yells, and again that “Go on”, “Only I speak, not you”, and then turning to his obedient woman subordinate: “Then she will tell the media that they did so and so…” As he never stopped yelling and threatening, I realized that if he walks like Ben Gvir, talks like Ben Gvir, yells like Ben Gvir, threatens like Ben Gvir – he must belong to the cult with which I cannot even speak, for fascism has taken over law and compassion and all the rest of anything good.