Report from Ground Zero

By Samah Jabr With Betsy Mayfield

Breathing a sigh of relief, and knowing that I had two whole days of “weekend” to spend at home, I left the hospital in a rush to get to my mother’s kitchen in Dahiat Al-Barid, where I knew strong Arabic coffee would be prepared as soon as I entered the house.

In the hospital, there has developed a kind of ongoing, droning discussion about what Israelis have done and are doing. The talk goes on and on, and the taxi driver taking me home made me feel that the voices of dissent had simply moved without a break from operating room to vehicle. The taxi’s radio was tuned to our “local” Israeli station, where the Israeli newsman was chattering on and on about the armed ship Israeli commandos had captured in the Red Sea. That the ship was taken illegally while still in Sudan/Saudi waters was a point of pride.

Unlike the hush-hush non-reporting of the Israel commando raids against the USS Liberty in June 1967, as the Six-Day war was drawing to a close, save for Israel’s sneak attack on the Golan Heights, today’s announcer had no compunction whatsoever in asserting his views about what had happened. Indeed, he spoke as if he, himself, had been on board. “We got them before they even came near Israel,” the voice proudly intoned. “That this ship was taken is ‘proof’ that Mr. Arafat, the only possible person responsible, doesn’t want peace. All Palestinians everywhere want to execute all Jews everywhere and annihilate the land of Israel. We must fight on.”

The taxi driver switched the dial to Palestinian news, The Voice of Palestine. Our news carried full coverage of the visit of American envoy Anthony Zinni and his efforts to bring peace to our land, and included the story of three Palestinian boys, Muhammad Labad, 15, Muhammad Al Madhoun, 15, and Ahmed Banat, 16, all murdered by Israeli troops. The news account explained that Israeli soldiers had killed the youths because it was assumed that they were on their way to do damage at the Ailey Sinai Israeli settlement in Gaza and had to be stopped.

“Ah,” I said with as much aloofness as I could muster, “Israelis have all the answers. Arafat put a boat of explosives in the Red Sea; any and all young men from a Gazan camp are out to do evil. All this from the democratic state of Israel. Whatever happened to the idea of having trials and no one is assumed guilty until proven so?”

The radio report continued. It seems that it took international intervention to retrieve the boys’ bodies four days after they were killed. The soldiers had reported that “we ‘thought’ we ‘may’ have killed three armed Palestinians who were on their way to Ailey Sinai.” When doctors at Al-Shifa Hospital examined the bodies, however, they discovered that the boys had been tortured, stabbed and burned. Their limbs and skulls were fractured and two of them had been shot, before a missile had been fired to rip them to shreds, along with all evidence of what really had happened.

Thoughts of a relaxed, pleasant weekend began to drain from me. I was glad to get out of the taxi and, in merciful silence, cross the Al-Ram Checkpoint that separates Jerusalem’s C-Zone from its B-Zone—Oslo’s infamous classification of who is in and who is out of the city. I began the walk through the newly installed metal barrier, a long and narrow tunnel-like impediment that tears at the heart of anyone passing through. I was just a few meters from the end of the tunnel when I began to catch up with a tall, well-built Palestinian laborer. He appeared to be a painter, because his hair was dusty and speckled with “unhairlike colors.” Except for henna, our ancient dye, few Palestinians color their hair, and it would be quite unusual for our young people to go out deliberately looking as hip or funky as this man did. In his hand, he carried his Arab headgear, his keffiyeh tied neatly, as a sort of lunch box. Most of our laborers use their keffiyehs as bundles. It’s a sight one sees every day at every checkpoint. The young man I was fast approaching wore a tight muscle-shirt that showed off his huskiness. Even though his jeans were as patched with paint flecks and remnants of plaster dust as his hair, he displayed a quiet dignity that made me proud. “If only Hollywood could see this hunk,” I thought, a little irreverently.

As the man and I reached the checkpoint at the end of the tunnel, a soldier stepped out and put his gun barrel against the man’s chest. With great calm and pride, the man simply gripped the gun barrel and moved it away from his chest. Seeing this, I was even more proud of this man because he reacted strongly, but with extreme gentleness. His was a beautiful human response.

Immediately, however, three more soldiers jumped from their jeep, took hold of the man and pushed him against a nearby cement wall, gabbed his bundled keffiyeh and tossed it behind them. Neither the soldiers nor the man spoke, but the soldiers began to beat their victim of the morning. I and others who had come through the tunnel were ignored, but we dared not move. The soldiers pounded the painter’s head against the wall over and over and kicked his abdomen and groin with their large boots. They struck his chest with their gun butts. I knew that the beating was breaking the man’s ribs.

Crippled With Fear

Those of us watching were crippled with fear and anger. We could see how helpless we were, given that we were among not only four violent soldiers, but a fully armed unit of Israeli military watching in amusement from the other side of the street. Finally, two middle-aged women tried to stop the soldiers, but were shoved down into the mud of the street. The soldiers continued to beat the man until he collapsed and fell on the ground, his mouth and head bleeding. He did not move.

As if washing their hands of the victim and the rest of us, the soldiers didn’t trouble themselves to check anyone else. I wanted to step forward and ask if I could call for an ambulance, but the soldiers started shooting in the air and waving us away. As I and the others trudged off, I looked back at the fallen man, his once food-filled keffiyeh lying beside him as bloody as he. The contents of the bundle, oranges and a bag of bread, were scattered nearby. Stomping around on the oranges and bread as if they were mere stones, the four soldiers who had beaten the young man appeared oblivious to what they had just done.

That was on Jan. 4, a few days after the New Year. As I entered my mother’s kitchen, the only thing I could feel was a sickening sensation brought on by the smell of food. An image of the provision lying around the destroyed body of another proud young Palestinian man replaced any hope I might have had of a pleasant weekend at home.

That was on Jan. 4, 2002.

Samah Jabr is a medical intern in her native city of Jerusalem. Betsy Mayfield is a writer living in Ames, Iowa.