Israeli snipers have killed more than 30 people

Robert Azzi

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Transcribed from the clipping

Nothing. There is only suffering. "The need to let suffering speak," Theodor Adorno wrote, "is a condition of all truth," and we, who live in privilege, must learn to listen. Listen to suffering – to those speaking in many languages, including those who speak in the language of protest, resistance and, yes, sometimes violence. Listen closely.

Listen to what happened and is happening in Gaza. On March 30, on Land Day, Gazans organized "The Great Return March," a scheduled six-week exercise of nonviolent demonstrations centered in five encampments.

The protests, now in their third week, will continue until May 15, the day Israel celebrates as Independence Day and which Palestinians commemorate as the beginning of the Nakba, "Catastrophe," when more than 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted from their homes.

While some Gazans threw rocks and burned tires near the border, human rights monitors present saw no evidence that they threatened Israelis in any way that justified lethal force. These protests are not about Hamas; they are occurring in spite of them, their criminality, rocket launchings and tunnels. They are about dignity, rights and suffering.

In Gaza, since the March began, Israeli snipers have killed more than 30 and wounded more than 2,000 Palestinians, all of whom were in the Gaza Strip – no infiltrators, none in contact with Israelis, all behind miles of barbed wire and watch towers and a deadly no-go zone – a 300-meter-wide buffer strip running along the entire border that encompasses some of Gaza's richest agricultural land.

Indeed, during the protests snipers shot several Palestinian journalists – one fatally – all of whom were wearing blue vests prominently labeled "Press." [...] Eyeless in Gaza.

In February, when IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot warned the Israeli cabinet that Gaza was on the verge of collapse and confrontation due to worsening living conditions, Lieberman responded "there's no humanitarian crisis." Today, we all have eyes on Gaza.

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.

Context added by this archive

Opinion column, not news. Tagline at the foot reads "(Robert Azzi is a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter. He can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com.

His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.)" The Eisenkot reference is used against the Israeli government rather than as a quotation of Eisenkot himself: the columnist cites Eisenkot's February 2018 warning about Gaza's collapse in order to convict Defense Minister Lieberman of denying it. No Eisenkot words are quoted directly.

Cite this clipping

"Israeli snipers have killed more than 30 people," Concord Monitor, 18 April 2018, p. jump page; jump line reads "GAZA FROM B1". Covering Palestine archive, CP-2018-029. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2018-029