From Gaza, with Love

The following was written by Mona El-Farra, a doctor and women's rights activist living in Gaza City. Mona runs the blog, From Gaza, with Love:

We will pay a high price, long after the bombing has stopped. I am already starting to lose track of days and nights, of how many bombs have dropped. Since the main power plant was destroyed, we have had to live with no electricity. What we get is patchy, an hour or two at most, just enough to recharge our laptops and mobile phones so that we do not lost all touch with
each other and with the outside world.

As a physician, I fear for the hospitals, for our patients. Twenty-two hospitals have no electricity at all. They have to rely on generators. But the generators need fuel to run and our fuel supplies are running dangerously low. We have enough for a few days at most. But our borders are completely sealed so no fuel can get in. Hundreds of operations have been postponed. The lives of patients on life support machines, children in intensive care, renal dialysis patients and others are threatened because there is no power. Our pharmacies were already nearly empty because of the closed borders and economic sanctions inflicted on us. What little supplies were left have gone bad because they needed to be refrigerated.

More than 30,000 children suffer from malnutrition today, and this number will increase as diarrhea spreads because of the limited supply of good clean water and high rates of food contamination.

As a mother, I fear for our children. I can see the effects of the continuous sonic booming and artillery shelling on my daughter. She is 13 years old and she is restless, panicked. She is afraid to go out, yet frustrated because she can't see her friends. When the Israeli planes break the sound barrier, which they do at all times of the day and night, the sound is terrifying. My bed shakes tremendously. My daughter usually jumps into bed with me, shivering with fear. Then both of us end up crouching on the floor. My heart races, yet I need to pacify my daughter, to make her feel safe. Now she knows that we need to pacify each other. She feels my fear. When the bombs sound, I flinch and scream. I can't help myself. I am a doctor, a mature, middle-aged woman. But with the sonic booming, I become hysterical. I am only human after all, and we all have our threshold for fear and pain.

This aggression will leave scars on the psychology of our children for years to come. Instilling feelings of fear, anger and loss in our children will not bring peace and security to Israelis.