Grief

My dear friend Alice (no, not that dear friend Alice of Oxford, the other one :-) is in the Rafah refugee camp of Palestine.

Alice is someone I care for deeply. So, when the first news in ages was "Yesterday my friend was killed", I felt that deeply too. To be honest I don't recall ever feeling such a painful grief over someone's death before. (None of my close family have died, yet. Nobody I have ever felt close to has died, yet.)

So I was quite grief stricken, for a while, to learn that my friend's friend has been killed beneath an Israeli bulldozer, as she tried to protect a family's home, or at least protest against its destruction.

Alice is engaged in very similar activities. (Enormous hugs).

(Some articles and emails say the home was a terrorist base, or an end-point for a secret weapon smuggling tunnel. They say that the International peace activists are really terrorist sympathisers who don't know that they are. (Does the idea even make sense?) I don't know about that. But think! Can all the hundreds of homes that have been destroyed in this way all be terrorist bases? Isn't it suspicious they are in places where Israel needs the land? And if so, why are the families that lived in them now homeless? (Well, that opens a bigger question about Palestinian government I suppose)).

Now, a few hours later I begin to analyse why I am so touched by this. Another death. Another maiming. Awful things happen every day on the news. Awful things happen to people I know, occasionally. So why this hurt now?

I think it is because, all these years, I've read and listened about violence and suffering, but it lacked reality. Sure, it depressed me and made me think seriously about what is important in this life. But now, when (I hope) I will see Alice again perhaps back in England, and she tells me stories about life in the Middle-East, this time I won't be listening for the bias, for the one-sided belief, for the distorted view. Now I won't be listening in skeptical mode. Not any more. Now I will be listening for simple truths for what they are. They are big enough by themselves.

Links:

Pictures Rachel Corrie: In her own words Google News Search UNRWA: Camp Profiles (Rafah) Rafah Alice Moments from death in Israel