Indonesian medical volunteer in Gaza, Fikri Rofiul Haq, says he will remain at the hospital and will not evacuate.
**Medan, Indonesia – At this time of the year, it should be strawberry season in the Gaza Strip.
Instead, the fields traditionally planted with strawberries in September and harvested from November are now battlefields.
One of the most fertile regions for Palestine’s renowned strawberries is Beit Lahia, with its good climate, rich soil and high-quality water supplies.
Located in north Gaza, Beit Lahia is also the home of the Indonesia Hospital where medical volunteer from Indonesia Fikri Rofiul Haq is based with the Indonesian humanitarian organisation the Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C).
“The Israeli forces have been bombing fields across the Gaza Strip and a lot of crops have died”, Haq told Al Jazeera.
“This year, there won’t be the usual produce like strawberries, even though it is the winter season,” he said.
Amid the horror of Israel’s war on Gaza, the destruction of Palestine’s strawberry harvest may seem insignificant.
But for Haq – one of three Indonesian MER-C volunteers based at the Indonesia Hospital – the memory of Gaza’s strawberries helps him cope. Each day is now a matter of survival in the territory, where Israel is now concentrating its attacks on hospitals.
“At the beginning of the war, we were still able to get some goods from the area around the hospital, like vegetables and instant noodles, but now it is impossible to get fresh produce like onions, tomatoes and cucumbers,” he said, speaking to Al Jazeera through WhatsApp voice messages.
“At the Indonesia Hospital now, staff only get a meal once a day at lunchtime, which is provided by [the neighbouring] Al-Shifa Hospital. For breakfast and dinner, staff eat biscuits or dates,” he said.
I’d have more goodwill if they were willing to risk their own soldiers to kill Hamas instead of killing children in air strikes.
They’re all cowards, from my perspective. Even Americans sent troops in to take out a scumbag like Uday Hussein.
What a load of revisionist crap.
America has (often deliberately) bombed hospitals. Remember Chelsea Manning? She was arrested at least in part because she leaked footage of American soldiers laughing after they’d killed journalists. They bombed Al Jazeera’s offices in Afghanistan too. They bombed the red-cross twice in Kabul, the second time after they’d been notified of red cross locations, but bombed them anyway.
It’s not even a secret. They’ve admitted they did it deliberately in at least one instance:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/12/09/us-military-admits-we-deliberately-bombed-hospital-iraq
Last time I checked, roughly 50,000 people have died in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948. The War on Terror has likely killed at least a million innocent civilians.
The last time someone suggested putting American soldiers on trial for war crimes in the Hague, the US signed the ‘Hague Invasion Act’ into law, effectively allowing the US to invade the Netherlands rather than have an American GI go on trial for even the most heinous crimes.
I mean, remember Colin Powell? He first rose to prominence white washing the My Lai massacre. They raped, mutilated and murdered children. Only one person was convicted, and ultimately only a few years of house arrest before the president commuted his sentence. Those who initially tried to prevent or hinder the massacre, were initially denounced as traitors. The guy who whitewashed the whole thing, became one of the most senior members of the US military.
If Israel acted like the US military, they would have carpet bombed the whole gaza strip by now. CNN would have been gushing about how brilliant it all was. Shock and Awe! Mass precision bombing. Surgical strikes. No mention of the thousands who died, just like happened during the initial invasion of Iraq, where up to 10,000 innocent civilians died, commemorated by a throw-away line about how advanced the US military is and how they managed to keep ‘collateral damage’ to an absolute minimum.
Americans have absolutely done their fair share of indiscriminate bombing.
Israel is just doing an even better job.
Haha, “hey come walk into this super dense urban environment that we transformed into a fortress for guerilla warfare filled with traps! Fight us on our terms else you are cowards!”
The absolute dumb shit one can read on lemmy knows no bounds.
Americans did it.
Completely different scenarios but you don’t care, right?
I mean, you don’t care about my point that Israelis value revenge and the lives of their soldiers more than the lives of children.
Why should I care about yours?
You’re right. Genocide by bombing civilians is preferable to urban warfare in an environment they created. Truly it shows the Israeli government desires to exterminate Palestinians and the Hamas attack was no more than a convenient excuse for Netanyahu to start.
Strange way showing that by evacuating Palestinians from the north, protecting them from Hamas who want to force them to become martyrs. Hint: nonsense does not become truth if you repeat it often enough.
Ah yes. Forcibly evacuating people so they can bomb your homes into rubble. Let’s just ignore all of the news reports that say the evacuations are failing due to bombed roads, lack of resources and nowhere to really go. “Leave or die” and then if you do leave, you’ve nowhere to return to. Great plan. Not genocide at all…