I spent about 1 1/2 hours on the phone with Mohammed in Rafah today, speaking about the articles we need to do for the upcoming month and his book, which I've agreed to work on him with. We have a publisher...now I just have to get the outline and finish editing the first two chapters by this Friday! Yikes.
Given what is occurring in Gaza for the past six months, Mohammed has fallen into a state of apathy and depression. I just found out today that the paper we've been supplying with weekly articles in Norway, their number one weekly, hasn't paid him since the first of the year, (I take no money or credit on the articles). I'm livid. How dare they. Currently I'm checking with a few friends in International law to see what our options are.
Writing is the only source of income he has to support eight people in a war zone. Given the book, I decided to take a tour through his archived photos and like the first time I saw them in 2002, I continue to be in awe. Run a Google on 'Palestinian' and you get a lot of Israeli hate photos. These are the photos you should be seeing. I've linked to the July 2007 pictorial. The full scope of his work can be seen here:
rafah.virtualactivism.net/news/todaymainmain.htm [rafah.virtualactivism.net/news/todaymainmain.htm]
Today he got quite angry at the American people, frustrated that we continue to support Israeli oppression. How much longer, he wondered, before Americans realize what they are doing?
I told him not long. We're an extraordinary self-centered, self-righteous people who care little about anything as long as we can put gas in our cars and live in nice houses. But that is ending. With that ending, people will begin to question and with questions they will see. Our endless wars on tactics, our supporting Israel while our own people in New Orleans starve and become homeless, this will end and end soon.
He replied, "I don't see this changing until after 2010."
I agreed. But I also told him America is in for a world of hurt and we're just now starting to pay for decades of oppression, imperialism, gluttony, waste, selfishness, blindness, unjust laws and invasions. Give it time. Nothing mobilizes change like the inability to feed, clothe and house your family...and we're heading that way now. Americans cannot afford Israeli elitism much longer. We cannot even afford to pay our mortgages.
As we wrapped up our conversation at quarter to midnight his time, I heard a rat-tat-tat in the background in quick succession. Referencing the F-16 that had flown over a half hour before, I asked, 'Is that the F-16 firing?" Israeli pilots often blow up homes in Gaza under the guise of security.
He responded, "No, that's not an M-16," misunderstanding me but answering my question anyway. "Those are Kalishnakov's; they sound different than M-16's."
For me to hear the Kalishnakov's over a cell phone connection means they were within 250 ft of him. I cannot even imagine living like that.
