Not a single one.
My friend from Israel has given me permission to share this post. Again, a translation from Hebrew.
''Kipah Halim is a good and dear friend, a political activist, an Israeli Palestinian, who accompanied me in the production of "Children" movies. And this is what she has to say:
How is A. Halim
An open letter to the people of Israel.
I feel privileged by my ability to sit on the computer and write this letter. Actually I slept in bed last night and had a good and nutritious breakfast in the morning. The fact is that I can still walk on the street without fear that a plane will bomb my neighborhood and my world will be destroyed in an instant. The fact that my family is a short, whole and healthy drive away and doesn't lack anything, gentle.
The way it's so hard for me to hear the conversation of hate and fury in the media and networks, I see and feel the pain you feel, and I'm not alone. This probably won't be told to you in the media, but the Arabs in Israel did not protest this time and did not go out to the streets even after Israel imitated entire neighborhoods in the strip and killed more than 2000 people, a woman and a child, and despite all the unprecedented horror sights that do not stop coming from Gaza.
Most Palestinians in Israel understand that killing the citizens in the south was abhorrent and wrong, and no one needs to explain it to them or convince them. No religion and no international laws needed - the muscular killing in the South was neither moral nor inhumane. Period. Whoever opposes for years harming Palestinian citizens cannot come and kill Israeli citizens so that the other side will hurt too, so that he can stand in his place for a moment. In the same way, those who are shocked by the murder of families in the south cannot warn the murder of entire families in Gaza (more than 50 families so far and the number is rising) that some of whom can no longer be rescued from the ruins. You didn’t do it justice. To no law, to no logic and to no scale.
More than 700 children were killed in a week of days in Gaza, in bombings, in the darkness, in panic, without warning and without injustice in their hands. There are bodies of babies that need to be glued before they are buried, bodies that pile up with no time and place to bury them, doctors and paramedics who collapse from the horrors they see and witnesses who lived to tell with empty and terrified eyes. THE FEAR OF THE LORD. So true it's scary to hear a siren and then boom but it's also a kind of privilege. Because there is no alarm, there is no shelter and nowhere to run.
People here have gotten so used to not seeing the humans on the other side. But most of those who are killed these days are citizens who have nothing to do with the operation in the South or Hamas. Simple people, flesh and blood. Each of them has a name and a story - and the stories are creepy. The dimensions of destruction and death are inconceivable. And I wonder, how will you explain this destruction to future generations? What will you tell them when they ask you how you supported it? Why didn't you stop the evil? Are you murdering the children? Even after a few generations, the Germans fail to explain and attack a sin. And yes, there is something to compare and should be ashamed of but instead the commentators on TV and radio want revenge. They talk about human animals that need exterminating. Without even blinking a wink. Just hearing it makes my heart pinch. How blind to the people on the other side, to their lives, to their pain.
All the horrible acts that we witness these days only harm our humanity, all of us. Like we became less human in less than two weeks. We lost something of our humanity and it doesn't matter who started it and who is right. Therefore specifically now, out of the loss and pain, this is the time to insist on our humanity and yours. On the sanctity of human life wherever it is. This is the time to choose life and not war. Choose peace and not revenge. Only this will stop the cycle of violence.
I refuse to lose hope, and want to believe that there are people in Israel who know and feel that it's not right. People should not die in this horrible way. That they should live in the arms of their families, in love and security and peace. True, some Palestinian friends will say it's balconies but at this point I no longer care what it looks or sounds like. I just want this to end and no one else gets killed. Enough. Enough of those that have been killed. This killing poisons the soul and life - and the machine of evil and death will not stop alone.
I ask all the mothers in Israel to stop the children in Gaza. I call women here, Palestinians and Jews, to make a clear human voice in the middle of the madness - that we want to live, not win. I call on all men to think about the fathers in Gaza who fail to protect their families, who cannot promise them anything these days. To think about the helplessness of the little people in front of the great evil machine. Please don't give a hand to this. Don't give a hand to the destruction and killing, don't give your hand to the destruction of the people in Gaza. If you want to live in peace, if you truly desire peace, now is the time to talk. It's time to do something. It's time to see humans on the other side.
"I wish the children weren't dead.. I wish they would temporarily go to heaven until the war is over, and after that they would return home in peace. And when their parents ask embarrassingly: "Where have you been?" "They will answer amused" "We played with the clouds"
Jessan Kanfani''
