*OPINION: What can Israel be hated for now

ANITA SĘK

At about 9 am local time on  November 17th an Israeli F16 jet fired two missiles at a football field in Gaza City. One of them hit a goalpost, leaving a 2-meter-deep crater full of sand and bits of metal. The other one landed behind the opposite goal, just missing the goalposts but creating another big hole. (…) They prompted a joke from Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh when he spoke to a group of visiting European parliamentarians in his residence nearby on Sunday (December 2nd). Noting that he used to play football at the stadium on Wednesdays with friends from his university days in the 1970s, he said: “They scored a goal with their F16.”  I cannot recall when was the last time that a piece of news touched me so deeply as the one read on Wednesday December 5th on EUobserver portal.

No, I am not a person particularly insensitive to people’s suffering in the Middle East. It is a rather sad fact of an already-taken-for-granted never-ending-conflict, lasting since a creation of the Jewish state in the middle of 20^th century, that the international community, as well as – let’s admit it – us all, regular citizens worldwide, have become indifferent to the pain caused by Palestinians and Israelis to each other.

For me, the bombing of the football pitch is metaphorically the most tragic picture of this protracted and hopeless war that I can only imagine. In the last eight-day incident 180 Palestinians died, almost half of them being women and children. On the Israeli side, six people lost their lives. Not only this disproportion of deaths should make us aware of callous Israeli retaliation. As EUobserver reports, an UNWRA children’s school, a Jordanian-run hospital, a sports centre for disabled people, several media buildings, mosques, olive farms, wells and police stations were smashed by Israeli attack.

No, I am not going to come back now to never-ending discussions upon ‘who started’ and ‘with what force’. In none of the conflicts throughout our globe’s history neither of the sides is only black or white. Nevertheless, for me it is clear that if scoring goals with bombs on a football pitch was a presentation of surgical skills and hi-tech equipment of Israeli air strike, then it is hard to believe that the civilian targets were stroke by a mistake. It must therefore in consequence work against Israel.

And however I try to explain it to myself, I still cannot comprehend this ruthless and cruel presentation of power capabilities. Not only for me, who grew up on such a pitch, but I believe for millions of people, young and old, boys and girls, Arab, Jews and Christians, and all others – for all of us a football pitch is something more than just a piece of grassed land. Especially in such a tragic corner of Earth as Palestine, football might give kids and teens a moment of relax, joy and happiness. As a social sport, it teaches a team work, a respect towards a competitor, a fair play rule. Not only does it exercise a body, depriving players of negative feelings and aggression, but also a mind, forcing to think about tactics and strategy. It represents a palette of emotions: a passion, a battle with one’s own weaknesses, a taste of success and a bitterness of a defeat. Finally most importantly, it is a place where friendships are born…

With the bombing of the pitch not only a piece of land was destroyed; these were the people’s dreams which suffered the most.

It also smeared the reputation of Israel, which was shown by the vote of the UN in favor of upgrading the status of the Palestinian Authority to a ‘non-member observer state‘. It is understandable that each country has a right to protect its citizens and its territory – but shooting the goals with bombs? What was the aim of it? Fun? This is something I cannot find any justification for.

* Views expressed in the article are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect positions of the Centre for International Initiatives.

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