Another level of repression... Forbidden mourning for Palestinians in Israel for their relatives in Gaza

Palestinians inside Israel cannot hold mourning ceremonies for their martyrs in Gaza for fear of a hostile environment (Anatolia)

Living in a society governed by discrimination against you is something that Israeli Palestinians have become accustomed to for decades, but most of them did not expect that one day they would be deprived of the right to cry for their relatives in Gaza, according to what Samah Salaima wrote on the Hebrew website “Siha Mekumit” in a report entitled “Another Layer of Persecution... The suppressed mourning of Palestinian citizens,” some of whom chose to hide their grief while others chose to declare it publicly.

The death toll in Gaza is nearly 30,000 (not counting the missing). It is the hell that Israeli President Isaac Herzog chose to leave his mark on - as Samah Salaima says - when he wrote a message on a shell before launching it last Christmas, as a gift from Santa Claus to the children of the Gaza Strip.

All the harsh words like "massacre" and "ethnic cleansing" do not reflect the pain in the real images coming from there: the bodies of children in white bags smeared with blood, men crying in front of long rows of dead before being buried.

Salaymeh: Mourning from a distance in a hostile environment that does not even allow you to express yourself is heavy on the soul (Anatolia)

Without a corpse or mourning

Samah adds that burial ceremonies in Gaza are no longer available at all, as the three days of mourning have turned into 124 days of continuous great mourning.

She also says that as long as the matter is from a distance, it hurts you from a distance. In the end, they are atrocities on a television screen. However, while it may be related to relatives you know, mourning from a distance in a hostile environment that does not even allow you to express yourself weighs heavily on the soul, and she points out Thousands of Palestinians from the cities of central Israel - especially Ramla, Lod, and Jaffa - have relatives in Gaza (often first-degree) who have lived there for years, and most of them do not communicate with the rest of their families except remotely, and they did not meet much, until the fateful news came to them.

Samah Salaima meets one of these people, his name is Adel (a pseudonym), who was born in Gaza and has lived in Israel for 20 years. Three days later, he received news of the killing of his brother, whom he had last met 15 years ago, on WhatsApp.

Adel says: “May God have mercy on him. We were able to pull him out of the rubble, and the body was intact. Let us pray to God that the rest of the family will be saved.”

But how can he continue his mourning when Israel is persecuting everyone who sympathizes with the victims of Gaza?

Adel feared that the authorities would ask him after he announced the news of his brother’s death.

As for his wife, Maryam (a pseudonym), she says, “I did not get to know my brother-in-law well enough, but his brother grew up with him, and he no longer knows what to do. He wakes up crying at night, and sits alone for hours in the guest room, unable to even scream. He has a nervous breakdown.”

According to Maryam, her husband wants to understand exactly what happened the night his brother’s house and his family were bombed, and is searching videos and the phones of relatives and neighbors, but he is afraid that others will share his research.

They told him that the body remained under the rubble for days until someone took it out, and they did not recognize it, and the hospital had to communicate with the neighbors, and even then no one dared to go to identify it. Only when the hospital decided to bury the body in its backyard - where those whose relatives did not come to bury them lie - did a young man from the family undertake the task and return with the body.

Virtual blacksmith

Maryam adds that the family did not dare to spread the unfortunate news in WhatsApp groups, and thus “we appear as normal human beings on the outside, and we must refrain from expressing any feeling for fear that they will consider us to be Hamas, but inside the house is surrounded by a terrible feeling of loss.”

However, in the end, Maryam managed the matter in her own way through alternative mourning ceremonies. She invited relatives and close friends to a charity dinner for his soul, and distributed memorial gifts in his name. Then everyone prayed the “funeral prayer” as if the body were in front of them, and only then “Adel’s condition improved and he felt that he had done something for his brother, and he called his second brother outside and participated in the ceremony.” Praying remotely, and virtual prayer restored some reassurance to him.”

Thus, they are relatives of Gaza families in Israel; They hide their mourning, says Samah Salaima, and they have to arrange alternative rituals without being able to prepare the body in the Islamic way, pray over it in the mosque, carry it in a funeral to the cemetery, or even offer dates and coffee to the mourners and share the news in a post on Facebook.

Samah asked: How can a person declare his mourning while living in an Israeli society, and at the same time have to mitigate any potential ties with Gaza?

“Is there any message of condolence?”

This is also the case of Sherine Assaf, a social assistant from Lod, who heard from Al Jazeera the news of the killing of her brother-in-law, Dr. Raed Mahdi, after the bombing of Mahdi Hospital in Gaza City.

Sherine said, “After difficult days, my niece called me from the United States (where she lives) and said to me: May God have mercy on him, my condolences. I asked her: Who? She said: Your sister Iman, her husband Raed, and all of their seven children died in the bombing of the hospital.”

"I felt like the world had stuck a dagger in me. I couldn't believe it. I was confident that someone would be pulled out from under the rubble. My sister's neighbor was able to contact me and told me that he had collected the bodies."

Sherine adds, “I was on my way to the airport towards Canada, where my parents and brothers live, and after two weeks there I was informed that they had been able to bury them. My parents and brothers did not believe that the entire family had left until they received the burial records. In Canada, we held a remote burial ceremony, and instead of the nine bodies, we prayed.” Behind 9 pictures, we opened a mourning pavilion, and hundreds of Palestinians came from Toronto and all of Canada to console us.”

Shirin says that being surrounded in this way in Canada eased their loneliness a little, but she did not want to return to Israel at first. “I asked my husband to return alone, because who can live among someone who killed his sister, her husband, and their seven children?!”

But she eventually returned, declared mourning on social media, and documented it with audio and video. “They advised me to cover up the matter and delete what I posted for fear of being arrested like many others, but I did not care, and why should I care when 9 lives were lost?!”

Sherine was not satisfied with just declared mourning, but went the extra mile. She wrote to the Human Resources Department in the Department of Health Services where she works, and informed them of her deep condemnation for their ignoring the condolence message that an employee usually receives when a relative loses. “That message was my way to heal my wound. I am a human being who complains and sighs, even as a Palestinian whose family is being bombed.” The message remained unanswered!

Mask for a normal day

There is also Abeer (a pseudonym), a teacher in the city of Lod whose aunt was killed in Gaza, and she chose not to tell her sick mother the news, because “we have nothing to do with the matter; When the war is over." She left her mother mourning all of Gaza.

Abeer says, "Every day I wear the mask of normal life and go to work. I know that this harms my health, and that the effects of this denial and escape from reality will affect me, but I am not strong enough now to bear more pain."

According to the clinical psychologist and researcher in the field of bereavement, Dr. Hind Ismail, preparing the dead for burial and funeral ceremonies and the subsequent mourning pavilions and other rituals are essential to confront the catastrophe of death. Among the basic rights of the family of the dead, “but the Palestinians of Israel were robbed of this basic right, the right to bid farewell to father, mother, brother, and sister, and the wound has not yet healed, and the pain will resurface in one way or another in the near or distant future.”

Hind Ismail calls this phenomenon “deferred shock,” and says that its effects are dire on the mind, including anxiety, depression, and guilt. It also weakens the body’s immunity to diseases such as diabetes and heart attacks, which in 2014 killed a woman who received news of her mother’s killing in Gaza.

The clinical psychologist adds, "Another layer has been added to the layers of persecution that befell Arab citizens who mourn for their relatives. Indeed, this bereavement in Israeli society is desirable and deserved."

Source: Israeli press