I witnessed

I have witnessed with my own eyes how is made the decline of human beings in savage beasts…
I am a son of a refugee, living in Aida refugee camp…
Aida, a tragic opera, but this time written not by Verdi, but by the Israeli occupation…
An opera, where the Israeli offense army plays music that changes rhythm and force every day, and every hour… The gun machines, automatic guns - light or heavy - on entrée, then a main dish of F16 and Apachi Helicopters with some spices from the tanks all around… And finally, the dessert, blood and tears of the victims ripped and spread at every corner of the streets…

The eyes of my father are drowned in sorrow…
No light neither in the eyes of my mother…
No tears for our joy or hope or melancholy…
The field of tears, dryness…
The fire of our emotion, flameless…
The ocean of our forgiveness, evaporated…
The force of resistance and belief is lost in our loneliness and abandon by those our relatives and those who are not relatives…
The river of our memory is still running, fertile as always…

WE DO NOT FORGET…

What remains for us, human beings, so that we could attach ourselves to this dress full of holes that the humanity wear for the dancing nights?

Be happy, world enveloped by the silence…
Be happy people of this world, enriched by the silence…

On March 8th, of the year 2002, the Israeli missiles and the automatic gun machines of the Apachi helicopters have transformed the asphalt in Aida streets into a volcano… the floor was boiling fire… the fire escaped from the shelled cars and the bombarded houses…. The blood of innocent people and animals was irrigating the streets and the floors of the houses hit… Israeli soldiers, of the powerful army equipped with the highest and latest

technologies, hiding behind his heavy machines, started to dig the walls of the houses, destroying the walls and opening tunnels between the neighboring houses to pass from one house to the next, like moles… What a courageous tactic for the undefeatable army…

Go on soldiers…. In position… fire
There, probably a man… maybe armed… on the other side his son… and there behind, his pregnant wife and her little daughter…
Go on soldiers… fire…

There, an old man… he doesn't stop telling stories about some rights of return to ancestral villages, and other idiocies as well…
Go on soldiers… prepare yourselves… fire…

And there, on the other corner of the street, a woman… her husband in prison… her eldest son exiled… the second is a terrorist… her youngest son is a martyr, I want to say dead like a dog… this woman is dangerous… go on soldiers… fire…

And there also… walk some cats… they violated the curfew… go on soldiers of Israel… fire…fire…fire…
Here… there…. And there a house… and another… this place and somewhere else….
Fire soldiers…
Fire everything that moves or does not move…
We have nobody to care about… we are not afraid from anybody… we do not deliver accounts to anyone except our respected leaders…
We are the soldiers of Israel… no body will dare to ask us anything, to criticize our actions… otherwise… anti-Semitism is the accusation for him…
Let us kill these barbaric Arabs… these savage terrorists…. These rats that fled as fast as they can our helicopters and F16s and our tanks… and our skilled snipers…
Let's demolish all the houses, homes of martyrs who dared to resist the arrogance of Israel…
Go on soldiers… take the bodies of these Palestinian beasts… exhibit them on our tanks and bulldozers…
Let all who see them be terrorized forever…
And let's take a photo for memory beside these bodies… how skilled hunters we are!
Let's devastate all the houses and the shops and institutions and schools and hospitals...
Let's vandalize... steal… rob… divest all what we can…
Let's leave nothing… take everything… money… electronics… cellular phones... computers… jewelry… things to eat…
Everything is good to be stolen by the army of Israel…
Soldiers of a regular army… not mercenaries…
Thieves and assassins of no values… without honor… without any respect for the uniform they wear…if the uniform of a soldier, even though army of occupation inspires respect…

Go soldiers… prepare yourselves…
In that houses, a lot of cries… someone is dead… an old woman…
No body shall be allowed to go there…. Blocks on all the roads… no ambulances… fire… no doctors… fire… no hospitals… fire…no journalists… fire…
Let's do better… soldiers… let's send the Special Forces… they are very clever these stupid Palestinians…
So let's prepare a plan…
Take an ambulance… go in and infiltrate in the middle of Palestinians… kill all the activists, terrorists… and while you are there, fire on everything that moves… or anything that has the intention to move even if it does not move…
Let's shell that hospital,
No protestations what so ever… No protestation from the Red Cross?
Let's destroy that statue of virgin Marie on that church… religion is dangerous for peace… No protestation from religious world?
Let's demolish their entire infrastructure… No protestation from the European Union and the donor countries?
Let's kills some journalists… no protestation from the media?
Well… we do not care… who dares to protest against Israel? And even if someone dares, we shall say that we will do an investigation… no body will follow up the results of an investigation that will remain with no results….
But… what is wrong? Why don't you feel victorious? Why are you ashamed of your achievements?
What will happen to you soldiers when you return home, to your mothers… wives and children… how would you look in their eyes and feel again as a human being? How would you look at yourself in the mirror?

People of this world… whether you are politicians or simple citizens… intellectuals or alphabets… rich or poor… oppressor or oppressed… powerful or powerless…
No one can say today that he didn't know… that he was not informed… that he is not responsible of what the others do…
I will cry as Emile Zola did: I accuse…

I accuse you of being witnesses on the massacres committed… and not doing anything…

Your silence is hypocrisy…

Your silence permits the massacre of an entire people…
Your silence is a good prize for the injustice and the oppression…
Your silence is against human rights… children rights…animal rights… and living things rights to live in dignity…
Your silence sacrifices embryos that are not yet born… pregnant women who did not give birth… children who did not learn how to speak yet… old men who still live a dream of return to their ancestral lands… young people who have the power to hope, to live and to resist the oppression and negation and abandon and forgetfulness…
Your silence is unjust…
Your silence is nonhuman…
Your silence kills us all…

AbdelFatah Abu-Srour