149 October 17, 2023
You live in a crowded wasteland. It’s so dry that you can’t grow a garden without extra water, if you can find it. Your family and neighbours are crammed into houses and apartments with over two million others. Mainly in two cities, squeezed into a strip of desert about six miles across and twenty miles long. One side is the sea. The other three are walls and fences. On all sides are guns, pointed your way. For you, there is no way out. This is all you’ve known. Only the aged, over seventy-five, have lived anywhere else.
You know the history, that your grandparents either fought against the Jews when they declared their independence in 1948, or fled to Gaza at the urging of Egypt, Syria and Jordan when they attacked the new Israel, assuming that the Jews would be pushed into the sea. When the combined Arab forces won, they assured you, all Palestinians would return. They were wrong. Not surprisingly, the Palestinians who left were not welcomed back by the new Israel. So, your grandparents had to stay. You are the results. Four generations later.
You hate the Israeli Jews with all that you are. But you have no love for ‘others’ for they could have changed things. There’s no need for the continuation of this, the ‘largest open-air prison in the world.’ The countries that made war with Israel could have accepted you long ago.
Your time is largely wasted, giving opportunity for hatred to burn. You’re lucky if you can find a few hours a week of any work. Hunger is a constant companion. It’s more crowded each year; the population over the years has more than doubled.
It’s worse than ever, since Israel literally closed down Gaza sixteen years ago after the last uprising. This ‘closure’ is all that you know, being only twenty.
You can’t see any chance for change. The countries of the world give aid to keep you alive, but just barely. There’s no reason to think they will do more to really solve the problems. They don’t want you in their countries. So, if there’s no chance of change, there is no hope.
The leaders and clerics of Hamas assure you that things will be better in the next life. So why not join them in a suicide mission that will express your hatred and frustration and maybe, wake people of the world up. So yes, I will train. I will gladly destroy every Israeli that I meet, no matter their age, killing them until I am killed. At least I will be remembered. I will have lived for something, not to merely rot in this crowded stink-hole, living on hand-outs of the ‘free world’, from people who in their luxury could easily change all of this. What-ever death has to bring, it can’t be worse than my future here.
(In the writing of this, it is hard to hold back the tears. Anthony)
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Anthony Gifford
118 Ford Street Kingston, ON K7K4Z6
Judy’s phone number 613 985 1029
House phone number 613 344 2322
anthonygifford42@gmail.com
