Olive trees in Hebron, Palestine
Elaine Bradley is a human rights activist working on the West Bank.
She writes this morning.
Today I learned the skill of bilocation. As I stood attentively in a hospital ward in Hebron, listening to the 19-year-old woman who had both her legs blown off by an Israeli drone as she fled her bombed house with husband and two little children; as I looked at her pale face and sunken eyes; saw the bandage on her broken arm; the bandaged stumps where her legs should be; as I watched her embarrassedly trying to lengthen her nightgown over the stumps, as I listened to the doctor tell me later how she needed a skin graft from half way down her back due to severe burns; as I listened to him tell me how she lost her unborn child; that her husband – in a different hospital – had also lost a leg and was severely burnt; as I listened as he told me that one of her two children is in a Jerusalem hospital with severe burns; as the doctor reminded me that drones have cameras and therefore the targetting of this family was deliberate; as he told me of the psychological trauma she is experiencing, compounded by being separated from her family; as I looked into her pained eyes and listened to this account and three more besides including the story of 9-year-old Hala, the strange fruit found in an olive tree with a fractured skull and broken limbs – blown there by the bomb blast that killed her mother and siblings; as I heard the doctor tell me of the 10,000 people injured in Gaza, 2/3 of these injuries serious – similar to those I witnessed today; as I listened to all this and remembered the details, remembered to turn on and off my recorder, as I smiled in response to sad smiles and greeted people and said thank you and offered good wishes; as I did my job, noticing details, breathing deep, staying calm, being present, I simultaneously stood on the top of a cliff in Allihies facing the wild Atlantic and I screamed and screamed my despair to the wind and the crashing waves.
Elaine Bradley
Previously: Dear Israelis
The Mask Is Off And People Know
Gaza Ceasfire Extended By One Day (BBC)
‘Your’
You may as well delete this comment of mine too Broadsheet.
Harrowing.
Mind yourself Elaine.