It is not enough for them to destroy homes, and offices, and infrastructure, and to massacre human beings. Their goal is to massacre and destroy joy, pleasure, sense of self. Their goal is to shatter the soul.
“…the Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” Moshe Yaalon, former Israeli military Chief of Staff, 2002
What kind of subhuman beast targets a zoo, and shoots the caged animals at point blank range? The same kind of beast, I suppose, who forces a hundred or so men, women, children, infants, and elderly people into a house, holds them there for hours, and then proceeds to shell the hell out of the house.
They have destroyed two zoos now in Gaza, terrorizing and slaughtering the animals, and demolishing the facilities. The first one was a small children’s zoo in 2004 (see the second article). It is not an accident or a coincidence, it is completely intentional, and intended to kill any joy or pleasure or sense of identity or control over their own lives for Palestinians. It is intended to reduce them to the most base and basic existence.
It has long been their practice to systematically destroy Palestinians’ cultural, social, educational, and recreational facilities, particularly those for children. They have repeatedly targeted these types of facilities in the West Bank, and in Gaza. It is part of the effort to convince the Palestinians “in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people”.
Whatever the Palestinians are able to build for themselves, Israel will destroy. And yet somehow they are unable to destroy the Palestinians themselves and their will to survive. The Palestinians will never be defeated. The Palestinians represent the personification of the word صمود. Steadfastness, perseverance, endurance, resistance.
Israeli troops shot and killed zoo animals
By Ashraf Helmi, Videographer, and Megan Hirons, Photographer
January 25, 2009The Gaza Zoo reeks of death. But zookeeper Emad Jameel Qasim doesn’t appear to react to the stench as he walks around the animals’ enclosures.
A month ago, it was attracting families – he says the zoo drew up to 1,000 visitors each day. He points at the foot-long hole in the camel in one of the enclosures.
“This camel was pregnant, a missile went into her back,” he tells us. “Look, look at her face. She was in pain when she died.”
Around every corner, inside almost every cage are dead animals, who have been lying in their cages since the Israeli incursion.
Qasim doesn’t understand why they chose to destroy his zoo. And it’s difficult to disagree with him. Most of them have been shot at point blank range.
…The few animals that have survived appear weak and disturbed.
“The foxes ate each other because we couldn’t get to them in time. We had many here.” There are carcasses everywhere and the last surviving fox is quivering in the corner.
…
Inside the main building, soldiers defaced the walls, ripped out one of the toilets and removed all of the hard drives from the office computers. We asked him why they targeted the zoo. He laughs. “I don’t know. You have to go and ask the Israelis. This is a place where people come to relax and enjoy themselves. It’s not a place of politics.”
…
Inside one cage lie three dead monkeys and another two in the cage beside them. Two more escaped and have yet to return. He points to a clay pot. “They tried to hide”, he says of a mother and baby half-tucked inside.
…
We ask him why it’s so important for Gaza to have a zoo. “During the past four years it was the most popular place for kids. They came from all over the Gaza Strip. There was nowhere else for people to go.”
And they’ve done it before, in 2004. Nothing is safe, not even animals in a children’s zoo. And oddly, this somehow demonstrates the wantonness and viciousness of their inhumanity more starkly and more vividly than the horrors they visit on human beings.
And of course, as always, like a five year old caught stealing cookies from the cupboard, they simply could not keep their lies straight, and thus proved themselves liars by changing their stories as each successive one proved implausible.
May 22, 2004 by the Guardian/UK
The Day the Tanks Arrived at Rafah Zoo
Among ruined houses, a haven for Gaza’s children lies in rubble
by Chris McGreal in al-Brazil, RafahAsk to be directed to the latest wave of Israeli destruction in Rafah’s al-Brazil neighborhood and many fingers point towards the zoo.
Amid the rubble of dozens of homes that the Israeli army continued yesterday to deny demolishing, the wrecking of the tiny, but only, zoo in the Gaza Strip took on potent symbolism for many of the newly homeless.
The butchered ostrich, the petrified kangaroo cowering in a basement corner, the tortoises crushed under the tank treads – all were held up as evidence of the pitiless nature of the Israeli occupation.
“People are more important than animals,” said the zoo’s co-owner Mohammed Ahmed Juma, whose house was also demolished. “But the zoo is the only place in Rafah that children could escape the tense atmosphere. There were slides and games for children. We had a small swimming pool. I know it’s hard to believe, looking at it now, but it was beautiful. Why would they destroy that? Because they want to destroy everything about us.“
…
The army also initially denied that soldiers deliberately wrecked the zoo that provided Rafah’s children with virtually their only contact with live animals, even ordinary ones such as squirrels, goats and tortoises.
Among the zoo’s more popular exhibits were kangaroos, monkeys and ostriches, which children could sit on.
The destruction was comprehensive. The fountain and its tiles were a jumble of rubble in one corner. There was no sign of the swimming pool.
One of the ostriches lay half buried in the rubble. Guinea fowl and ducks were laid out in a row. Goats and a deer struggled with broken legs.
Some of the animals were still on the loose, if not buried under the debris. One of the two kangaroos was missing; the other was cowering in the basement. A snake and three monkeys were unaccounted for. Mr Juma accused Israeli soldiers of stealing valuable African parrots.
The army’s explanation evolved through the day. At first it said it had not destroyed the zoo, then it said a tank may have accidentally reversed into it.
By the end of yesterday, the military said its soldiers had been forced to drive through the zoo because an alternative route was booby-trapped by Palestinian explosives.
Finally a spokesman said the soldiers had released the animals from their cages in a compassionate gesture to prevent them being harmed.
صمود
Steadfastness, perseverance, endurance, resistance.
فلسطين
Palestine.
احنا لا ننساك فلسطين
We will not forget you, Palestine.