For the victims and the handful of survivors, it was a 36-hour holocaust without mercy. It was deliberate, it was planned and it was overseen. But to this day, the killers have gone unpunished. Each act was barbarous enough on its own to warrant fear and loathing. It was human savagery at its worst and Dr Ang Swee Chai was an eye witness as she worked with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society on the dying and the wounded amongst the dead. What she saw was so unimaginable that the atrocities committed need to be separated from each other to even begin comprehending the viciousness of the crimes. ■ People tortured. Blackened bodies smelling of roasted flesh from the power shocks that had convulsed their bodies before their hearts gave out -- the electric wires still tied around their lifeless limbs. ■ People with gouged out eye sockets. Faces unrecognisable with the gaping holes that had plunged them into darkness before their lives were thankfully ended. ■ Women raped. Not once -- but two, three, four times -- horribly violated, their legs shamelessly ripped apart with not even the cover of clothing to preserve their dignity at the moment of death. ■ Children dynamited alive. So many body parts ripped from their tiny torsos, so hard to know to whom they belonged -- just mounds of bloodied limbs amongst the tousled heads of children in pools of blood. ■ Families executed. Blood, blood and more blood sprayed on the walls of homes where whole families had been axed to death in a frenzy or lined up for a more orderly execution. Richard Irvine is education officer for the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign and joint co-ordinator of the Palestine Education Initiative. He has taught in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and he now teaches a course exploring the Israel-Palestine conflict at Queens University. He holds qualifications in Law, History, Education and Literature.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 03:37:35 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015