Local residents give eyewitness accounts from Palestine
Posted:
https://www.news10.com/news/local-residents-give-eyewitness-accounts-from-palestine/
".... She described “constant bombs and sirens and bullets and arrests and harassment” and was surprised at how well everyone handles it.
“The calm chaos that the Palestinians now are just like, ‘Ok. The soldiers are coming in from this way. We need to move this way. This is where the snipers are,’ and the way they just navigate this oppression is super shocking,” said Maaih, who detailed her account in a blog.
Jeid Ebanks is a nurse and worked with the International Medical Corps while she was out there. She describes what galvanized her into taking action in Gaza.
“From the time I first saw what was happening in Gaza my heart was just completely broken for the innocent people and the children and the healthcare workers. I’m a healthcare worker myself and to see how they were being targeted and the just desperate, dire need they had. I knew that I had to do more,” said Ebanks.
She was a supervisor of wound care, helping perform surgeries at a field hospital in Deir Al-Balah.
“There were bombs dropping around us every day. People were getting shot in the waiting rooms while we’re trying to save lives,” said Ebanks. “These people just were complete heroes. The healthcare workers in Gaza were facing the same health disparities and the same crises that they were treating the patients for, but they still showed up every single day to save lives. So I mean, I was honored and humbled to work alongside them.”
She thanks the Capital Region community for going door to door in Albany, Schenectady and Troy and raised the funds – $10,000 – to send her there to help. She said the Palestinian people taught her a lot.
“They gave me a lot of levity. Being with the children, handing out lollipops, making jokes, and you know just encouraging each other, and reminding each other that we’re never alone,” said Ebanks.
John Paarlberg is a former pastor, at First Church Albany, and has been to Palestine several times over the last 20 years.
His first trip, he said, came after a Palestinian woman went to his church and spoke to the congregation about what her life was like under occupation in the West Bank.
“And I asked what could we do? And she said, ‘Come and see’,” said Paarlberg.
After he was invited he went the next year, in 2005, with Christian Peacemaker Teams and, “by doing so to offer some degree of a protective presence.” Both he and Maaih said just the presence of foreigners offers a degree of protection from occupying forces.
“Much of what was happening 20 years ago is continuing to happen, only it’s been ramped up in the West Bank,” said Paarlberg.
His most recent trip was this past August. He was directly invited by Palestinian Christian leaders who wrote a letter calling for support.
“They wrote a letter to Christians here in the U.S. and elsewhere and said we very much appreciate your prayers but what we really need right now is for you to come and stand with us,” said Paarlberg.
He said he witnessed more demolitions, more detentions and more
settler violence. He described how a village of sheep farmers had been
forced from their homes after constantly being harassed and threatened
by Israeli settlers...."
