The shooting continues
Just came home from a concert in Givatayim, by singer Lubna Salame from Nazareth, Shlomo Grunich a Tel Avivian musician and song writer and the Arab Jewish Youth Orchestra. Lubna is simply a great singer and good performer, specializing in materials perviously sung by Fairouz and the late Om Kalthoum.
This time however, she sang songs about peace. Peace for all of us, referring to the terrible bloodbath on Gaza beach last saturday, in which 7 members of the Raila family lost their lives and many others were badly wounded, apparently by an Israeli artillery shell. (The IDF spokesperson suggests there may be other explanations for the explosion, but does that really make things "better"?) Tens of people, sitting peacefully on the beach with their children, enjoying the cold of the sea and the softness of the wonderful Gaza beach's sand got wounded and killed. A whole family wiped out in an instant, as if they never existed.
It's indeed difficult to sing these days.
On my way home, almost midnight, passing through "Gan Tamar" at the the Rabbi Nachman-Yefet junction, the street was being closed off by the police; The results of yet another shooting incident. A 20 year old man from Jaffa had been shot. Luckily, he was only slightly wounded.
The police cordon off the street, place little numbered cards next to what looks like a spent cartridge and a bullethole in a parked white car. Photographs are being made. Visual testimony for a legal process which is very unlikely to take place. Murders in Jaffa go unpunished, barely investigated. Victims won't talk, witnesses never see a thing and can't recall anything in any case. The police were only alerted by the hospital emeregency room staff, who took care of the victim. In Jaffa, in Al Ajami at least, you don't call the police, see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing.
Newspapers barely mention what;s going on here. It is no longer considered "newsworthy" when the young men from Jaffa get killed and even less so, when they are "merely" wounded.
This time however, she sang songs about peace. Peace for all of us, referring to the terrible bloodbath on Gaza beach last saturday, in which 7 members of the Raila family lost their lives and many others were badly wounded, apparently by an Israeli artillery shell. (The IDF spokesperson suggests there may be other explanations for the explosion, but does that really make things "better"?) Tens of people, sitting peacefully on the beach with their children, enjoying the cold of the sea and the softness of the wonderful Gaza beach's sand got wounded and killed. A whole family wiped out in an instant, as if they never existed.
It's indeed difficult to sing these days.
On my way home, almost midnight, passing through "Gan Tamar" at the the Rabbi Nachman-Yefet junction, the street was being closed off by the police; The results of yet another shooting incident. A 20 year old man from Jaffa had been shot. Luckily, he was only slightly wounded.
The police cordon off the street, place little numbered cards next to what looks like a spent cartridge and a bullethole in a parked white car. Photographs are being made. Visual testimony for a legal process which is very unlikely to take place. Murders in Jaffa go unpunished, barely investigated. Victims won't talk, witnesses never see a thing and can't recall anything in any case. The police were only alerted by the hospital emeregency room staff, who took care of the victim. In Jaffa, in Al Ajami at least, you don't call the police, see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing.
Newspapers barely mention what;s going on here. It is no longer considered "newsworthy" when the young men from Jaffa get killed and even less so, when they are "merely" wounded.
My downstairs neighbors, sitting on the porch at the entrance of our building, with some hot tea and enjoying the late evening cool breeze coming in from the sea, welcomed me with a friendly; "Isn't it great to live in Chicago?".
We don't know yet exactly who's been wounded, but the grapevine in Al Ajami works quickly.
How does one stop a gangwar? Or the ongoing, bloody, over a decade old Hamada/Ashur family feud?
Jaffa
Violence
Police
Israel
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