500 Days. The Nightmare of Gaza goes on. Part One of Two

Tell me. Where do the children play?

Part One of Two

17 February 2025 marked 500 days since the darkest day since the formation of the state of Israel in 1948. On 7 October 2023, Hamas militants entered Israel killing 1200 people, committing sexual violence and taking more than 200 hostages.

Background

• Introduction

• Investigations and evidence of extent of Israel’s war on Gaza

• Destruction of hospitals and health care services

• Moral Certitude and Steadfastness of Palestinian Culture

• Suffering of the Children

• Drones and Bombs

• Has Israel lost its way?

• Killing Journalists

I visited Israel and Palestine every year from 1992 to 2019. My primary work addressed suffering and its resolution as the hub of the teachings in the Buddhist tradition.

Israeli and Palestinian friends offered exceptional kindness and hospitality on every visit, including a decade of two visits a year. Israeli friends dropped me off at the checkpoints, and Palestinian friends picked me up on the other side of the checkpoint.

This 9000-word analysis in two parts contains sharing of around 20 meetings mostly with Palestinians. They share an experience with me.I start these meetings with the words I Recall.

I have written this analysis to

• A). Highlight the extent of events in Gaza since 7 October 2023

• B). Show the response of respected international bodies to these events

• C) Comment with short critiques of the response of four religions to Gaza.

• D) Can Israel start a process of change?

Introduction

We witness on our television, tablets and mobile phones, film and pictures of the unimaginable horror inflicted on every single person living in Gaza. Heartbreaking reports and photos have become available to us due to the eyewitness accounts.

Many of us cannot remember a single city in the last few decades, which has suffered so much, far worse than the 1000 missiles launched in Baghdad or the bombing of Kabul after 9/11. Gaza has suffered nearly 500 days of unprecedented bombing and shelling leaving death and decimation everywhere.

The official death toll of Palestinians has come to 48,219 including, 70% women and children. Men, women and children lie buried under the rubble. The names of these deceased may never reach the Palestinian authorities/hospitals in Gaza.

An estimated 125,000 Palestinians have experienced intense suffering and pain due to their injuries. Nearly all citizens of all ages continue to experience unimaginable levels of stress.

Western countries continue to provide the Israeli government with weapons despite major international agencies gathering information to prosecute Israeli leaders for genocide.

The obscene violence Hamas inflicted on Israel can never justify the Israeli government’s relentless orgy of bombing, shelling and shooting of Palestinians. Evil does not end with evil but ends through the development of non-evil.

Israel seems to have inflicted upon itself a moral defeat through an unwillingness or inability to stop the terror the Israeli army (IDF) unleashed upon Gaza since 7 October 2023, nor show a way forward for ending the Palestinian nightmare to negotiate a major change.

How can this happen? How can so called civilised Western countries arm and act as cheerleaders for the Israeli government and Israeli army? Isn’t it time for many Israelis to stop labelling worldwide criticism of Israel’s policies as anti-Semitic? What if the horror was the other way around with the Jewish community living in the world’s largest prison? Would we have the same view?

The arms manufacturers, arms dealers and politicians in the USA, UK and Germany have to take responsibility for their endorsement of the war on Gaza through the ongoing provision of weapons to make it possible.

Isn’t it time to stop labelling worldwide criticism of Israel’s policies as anti-Semitic?

Drones can spend days hovering 3000 metres above the ground making an incessant noise with ability to shoot men, women and children. Every citizen lives in fear as they can become a target for the drone.

I found one opnion poll on Israel’s view of the war on Gaza, which was published on 20 May 2024 of 1000 Israelis by the Pew Research Centre.

This poll revealed,

• 34% of Israelis felt that the military had not gone far enough.

• 39% of Israelis felt the military response against Hamas was appropriate,

• 19% thought it had gone too far.

• 4% of Israelis felt the response was excessive.

The opinion poll did not provide any figures for those opposed to the military response.

Tell me. Where do the children play?

Investigations and evidence of extent of the Government of Israel’s war on Gaza

These respected international organisations gather independent evidence of various kinds of war crimes. We have to sit up and take notice of their findings.

International Criminal Court, ICC. ICC issued arrest warrants in November 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Joa Gallant, alongside the utterly depraved Hamas leaders, including Mohammad Deif, probably dead, a major organiser of the slaughter of Israelis, sexual violence and kidnapping of Israelis and non-Israelis.

ICC accuses Israel of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.

ICC states it has evidence that Israeli Army uses starvation as a method of warfare.

ICC states Israeli army engages in intentional acts of killing of civilians.

Israel’s government did not try to investigate violations of international agreements.

United Nations investigations accuse Israel of indiscriminate attacks on civilians, forced displacement of the population of Gaza, starvation policies and genocide.

UN Special Committee report in November 2024 concluded Israel's methods were consistent with genocide.

UN Special Committee cited mass civilian casualties and systematic destruction.

UN Human Rights Council. The Council highlighted evidence of attacks on properties, use of incendiary weapons and wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure. In February 2025, Switzerland opened an investigation into Israel regarding soldiers who have killed civilians, engaged in destructions of homes, hospitals and forced displacement.

Brazil, Spain, Thailand, Italy and other countries have filed complaints or opened investigations, such as Switzerland, regarding atrocities allegedly committed by Israeli soldiers.

US Advocacy groups urged the US Department of Justice to investigate the Prime Minister of Israel under human rights and special prosecution section for genocide and torture of kidnapped Palestinians and other Palestinian prisoners.

Amnesty International concluded Israel's actions amounted to genocide, citing deliberate deprivation of essentials such as food, water and medicine with mass civilian casualties.

Human Rights Watch documented forced displacement of Palestinians as a Crime against Humanity. The organisation called for an arms embargo on Israel.

Hind Rajab Foundation filed over 50 global complaints against Israeli soldiers, including an ICC case against 1000 personnel backed by 8000 pieces of evidence

International Court of Justice accused Israel of violating the Genocide Convention, with hearings ongoing.

These investigations have brought about increased international condemnation of the conduct of Israel and certain Western countries. The core message seems to state that Israel needs to stop defending the indefensible.

Tell me. Where do the children play?

Destruction of hospitals and health care services

Hospitals face bombing, tanks and shelling. Under the orders of their Army Generals and senior military officers, IDF soldiers enter hospitals in search of Hamas officials and tunnels under the hospitals for Hamas insurgents.

Israeli army destroyed 19 out of 36 hospitals. Doctors, medical staff, patients, men, women and children lost their lives. Some staff were taken away for interrogation.

With the huge additional pressure of the wounded, sick and malnourished, the remaining 17 hospitals can only partially function due to a desperate shortage of medicines and equipment for saving lives.

World Health Organization (WHO) verified 516 attacks on health facilities in the Gaza Strip. Bombing included roads leading to hospitals, which stop the few remaining ambulances getting through. Hospitals have run out of morphine to reduce the agonising pain of the victims of the atrocities.

Countless Palestinians cannot receive treatment for a health crisis, such as cancer, disease, tumours and countless chronic problems unrelated to the war.

The entire health care system stands on the brink of collapse.

I Recall

I recall an Israeli army general attending a retreat I gave in a retreat centre in the north of Israel. During a silent sitting meditation, the Iman walk up to the top of the minaret in the village, turned on the loudspeakers, to call the faithful to prayer. I loved listening daily to the call.

When the meditation finished, we all got up to walk out of the Dharma hall. I had 1-1s with the practitioners under a tree, 50 metres or so from the hall. The General approached me. “I need to talk to you.”

I said: “I will see you later as it is the time for the 1-1 interviews with those who have signed up.”

The General replied with raised voice sounding like an order to obey his command. “We have to talk right now.”

The General didn’t realise that this Dharma teacher is a General in the non-violent army of the Sangha, not a subordinate.

“We can meet for five minutes,” I told him.

He replied, “That’s enough time” and added, “I listened to the Iman. I experienced intense fury and hatred when I heard him say Allahu Akbar. These are the last words of suicide bombers before killing Israelis and themselves. “

(Allahu Akbar means Allah – God - is the Greatest).

The General burst into tears and then said “The Iman was calling people to prayer. My mind has become so conditioned to hate Muslims and anything that reminds me of Muslims. What has happened to me?”

I Recall

I stayed in a Palestinian home during my visits to the West Bank. IDF had issued a daily curfew from 6 pm until 8 am the following morning. My host’s son, aged about 11, played football in the street near his home. The boys forgot the time.

An Israeli sniper in the hills above Nablus took aim with his telescopic high-powered rifle. The bullet missed the boy by a fraction of a centimetre but the heat of the bullet singed the cells around his eye.

The youngster could not see out of one eye so his parents urgently needed to get him to an eye specialist in Jerusalem. IDF refused permission for the family to travel so his parents spoke with an alternative eye specialist in Nablus. After examining the boy’s eye, the doctor told the parents their son must wear an eye mask for six weeks on the good eye to force the blind eye to work.

The youngster refused, “I can see OK with one eye,” he retorted. He finally agreed to the recommendation.

To the great relief of his parents, he could see with both eyes six weeks later.

Tell me. Where do the children play?

Moral Certitude and Steadfastness of Palestinian Culture

Week after week, Israeli strikes through intensive bombing and shelling appears to be intent to make Gaza unliveable and uninhabitable. Is to force all citizens out of Gaza? Human rights lawyers state exclusion of Palestinians from their homeland constitutes ethnic cleansing.

USA governments, past and present, along with the UK and Germany, continue financing the horror in the Gaza ghetto.

Those of us who know Palestinian culture and values find it hard to believe the Palestinians will leave Gaza. Two generations or more ago, 700,000 Palestinians fled to Gaza from other areas of Palestine in the first major wave of forced displacement in the creation of Israel in 1948. The second wave of forced displacement took place in June 1967 with the illegal forced expansion of ‘Greater Israel.’

I sense the Palestinian people resident in Gaza have a moral certitude and a steadfast resolve to stay where they are despite the grief, disappearance or death of their loved ones. In the depths of despair, Palestinians, adults and children, have told Arab/Palestinian reporters at their lowest times they envy the dead because the suffering of their dead has stopped.

I Recall

Israelis would mention to me on a regular basis in a 1-1 sessi0n, a meeting, public talk, a retreat that its army was the ‘world’s most ethical army.” People in Israel would tell me reasons for this including:

• Doctrine of restraint

• Ethical code for soldiers

• Using force only when necessary

• Minimising suffering of civilians

• Worldwide legitimacy

• Dropping leaflets in war zones

• Obedience to international law.

When asked about my view, I said “My view is not important. Israel’s view is not important. The view of the people of Palestine in Gaza, West Bank and displaced Palestinians in neighbouring countries can tell you their experience and view of the IDF.”

I Recall

Around 2005, I recall giving a retreat 10 kilometres from Gaza in a kibbutz with only flat barren land between the kibbutz and Gaza. Israel said Hamas sent some rockets into Israel. IDF retaliated. Army spokesperson told Israeli media the army launched 172 rockets.

When the Israeli rockets landed in the city of Gaza, we felt the reverberations in the ground. I got up in the middle of the night and meditated in the hall, the tremors went through the walls.

What is the sound of 500 kilograms or 1000 kilograms of bombs, not rockets, hitting buildings and the ground day after day for many of the 500 days?

Palestinians experience unimaginable horrors day after day.

Tell me. Where do the children play?

Suffering of the Children

UNICEF reported that more than 14,500 children were killed in Gaza since the start of the war from the bombing, shelling, drone attacks and being shot to death by Israeli snipers. Number of individuals who have sustained wounds amounts to 110,265 with 25,000 children injured in Gaza since the start of the conflict.

World Health Organisation reports around 22,500 life altering conditions, including amputations, loss of eyesight, terrible wounds and emotional-mental breakdown. Recuperation from such terror might take days, months, years, if at all, to recover from the harm inflicted on citizens.

The war on the children of Gaza has led to the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world.

Lifelong disabilities impact children affecting the rest of their lives.

Drones and Bombs

Israeli army employs three types of military drones.

1. For military strikes and surveillance.

2. Drones used for dropping explosives.

3. Sniper drones for firing single rounds at individuals or small groups.

Israeli air force dropped a 1000 kilo bomb on Jabalia refugee camp crowded with displaced families. Drones were used to kill children and adults who managed to crawl their way out of the camp. With an accuracy of within five metres of target, the bomb left a massive crater, also destroying water/sewerage facilities and shattering foundations of buildings half a kilometre away.

Another example, IDF used drones to kill students waiting for a bus and killed children besides a truck in Jabalia refugee camp.

In clusters of five fighter planes, IDF pilots take off from Israel with the capacity to carry up to several 1000 kg bombs or twice as many 500 kg bombs to drop on Gaza. In February 2025, the US approved a $8 billion weapon sale to Israel, including 3000 missiles to enable the continuity of the war on Palestinians and Hamas whenever Israeli government decides.

Bombing and shelling of schools has disrupted children’s education through destruction of facilities for education or closing of schools due to fear of further targeting of schools.

The total death toll of children is much higher because of starvation due to IDF blocking thousands of trucks with food aid for Gaza.

I Recall

I recall around 20 years ago listening to the voice of a pale-faced Palestinian woman, aged in her mid-20s, speaking through her tears in one of my workshops in Palestine on the theme of Suffering and its Resolution. All participants listened to her story concerning her husband, children and herself.

She spoke of three Israeli soldiers breaking into her home in the middle of the night, ordering her husband, two young children and herself out of bed to stand in front of the soldiers. One soldier pulled out a gun and shot her husband dead and then they left. Two years later, she remarried. Some months later, another IDF death squad broke into her home with the same outcome.

The young mother told the workshop participants and myself her husband was not a member of Hamas, nor Islamic Jihad, nor any other organisation engaged in armed rebellion against the occupation. Why would she tell a lie in front of a hall full of people? Several would surely have known her and her executed two husbands

Crying, she said the children needed a father and she needed a husband. She told us she met a wonderful man, who knew her painful history. She experienced much fear for this man’s life. They were discussing if to get married. If they did, he would live with his parents four days a week and stay with her three days a week.

“What would you advise?” she asked.

Both would place their faith in Allah that her new husband would be with his parents if the death squad came back a third time. She felt torn about if to agree to his marriage proposal.

Tell me. Where do the children play?

Has Israel lost its Way?

Has the Israeli government betrayed the vision of a homeland for Jews to live happily and in safety with each other and the neighbours?

Has incessant blame and conflict, decade after decade, of the Arab/Muslim world, contributed to the horror of the past 500 days and its continuity?

People in Israel find themselves trapped in a nightmare situation, getting worse and worse, sapping all the sympathies of much of the international community. Neither the Israeli government nor its citizens, see a way out of the nightmare except to threaten to continue the bombing and shelling. Punishment continues to minimise electricity, gas, water, medicine, food supplies and other basic needs.

Israeli government orders their army to kill all Hamas officials with no regard for the innocent living in Gaza. Israeli government believe it has no choice. They are right. That attitude confirms an obsession, sharing much in common with Hamas. An ingrained obsession denies choice.

Both sides have one primary desire - to inflict mass suffering on the other. Both sides reveal a self-righteous attitude. Israeli and Palestinian citizens find themselves helpless to replace their respective government with a leadership committed to co-existence.

I Recall

From time to time in Palestine, I had conversations with supporters of Hamas. I asked one supporter, a young man, aged about 20, why he supported Hamas and engaged in meetings with university students to vote for Hamas. He told me an IDF soldier shot and killed his 18-year-old cousin, who had no interest in politics.

He said: “I felt angry. I realised we have got nowhere with decades of non-violent resistance. I supported an armed struggle against Israel.”

I told him violent action, armed rebellion, suicide bombers increase the level of suffering, especially for Palestinians. I made clear non-violence functions as a campaign requiring immense creativity and bold initiatives, not just demonstrating, shouting and handing out leaflets.

Killing of Journalists

International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reported the IDF killed 166 Palestinian journalists and media in 2024. Gaza government's media office said in January 2025 that the number had risen to 202 journalists. Journalists wear the navy-blue vest with the words ‘PRESS’ printed in capital letters on the vest. This made them a target for the IDF.

IDF injured another 80 journalists from rocket attacks, rocket shrapnel, and live ammunition. Israeli government banned all foreign reporters and film crews from entering Gaza.

The government also banned from Israel television Al Jazeera, the worldwide respected Arab television channel.

We cannot expect Israelis to know the depth of death and destruction in Gaza. Israeli television, radio, newspapers and other media reflect the government narrative, which the media passes onto the public. Friends in Israel tell me primary censorship comes from Israelis, who refuse to hear dissident voices. Concerned citizens about the horror find themselves shouted down by family members, friends and strangers.

I subscribe to Haaretz, a daily newspaper, providing a range of views in its news columns and from the columnists on the past 500 views. Columnist Gideon Levy has criticised the war, its escalation, ongoing Israeli threats and the critical role of the US. Other Haaretz columnists have expressed supportive views of the invasion.

Politically liberal media like to offer readers a range of views in the name of providing balance. Ethics gives priority to the resolution of suffering and stays true to the principle.

Haaretz reaches 6% - 8% of the Israeli population.

Army officers have been visiting the schools decade after decade telling pupils and students of the threat from Arabs and the need join the army to protect the country. Demonstrations in the past 500 days have focussed on release of Israeli hostages, a temporary ceasefire, not on ending the war.

International Criminal Court investigates the deliberate targeting of journalists. Despite being a suspected war criminal with a mountain of evidence, Prime Minister Netanyahu continues to have major support in the country. Those army officers and soldiers, who cannot stand Netanyahu and the rest of his supporters in the Knesset, will still engage in the death and destruction of Gaza as their patriotic duty. There has been no radical change of policy towards the Arab world since the concept of the state of Israel, except to increase suffering in the region and in Israel.

The Israeli government remains determined to minimise information about the genocide in Gaza going out to the world's media. International television news reporters sent many of their reports with a backdrop of Jerusalem in their accounts. These journalists might as well have used the South Pole as a background. They have no firsthand experience of the last 500 days in Gaza. Killing of journalists and media employees belongs to a determined effort of Israeli government to minimise press freedom.

Owing to lack of access to Gaza, journalists reports contain press releases from the Israeli government as their primary source of information and rely on the bravery of individual Palestinian/Arab journalists in Gaza, who can only report a snippet of the overall terror.

UNESCO awarded its 2024 World Press Freedom Prize to Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

No precedent exists for the number of journalists killed in any previous war in such a brief period of time. No previous war has had an army deliberately intent on killing journalists. Mortality rate for journalists in Gaza is 10% higher than any other professional group in the area.

Graphic film and photographs daily on our television screen in news, newspapers and social media reveal the wilful destruction and damage of 70% of Gaza's infrastructure and agricultural land. Israeli army sews despair and helplessness for all Gazans. Israeli cabinet ministers and senior politicians speak of all Palestinians in Gaza with contempt.

Journalists, who remain the most vulnerable, tend to be self-employed or work for Arab news agencies. They do not have the backing of large media organisations that can put pressure on the Israeli government to protect their staff working in the war zone.

Journalists daily face extreme danger in reporting the humanitarian crisis on Gaza, regarded for decades as the world’s largest prison with more than two million defenceless citizens.

Families of journalists remain trapped in Gaza or live in other Arab countries where they experience fear, distress and anxiety for their loved one reporting the war. Israeli children worry for their parents wanting him or her to be at home to give them hugs. The same worry takes place for Israeli children with a father in the army in Gaza.

Tell me. Where do the children play?

I Recall

An Israeli heard about my annual visits to Israel and Palestine. He said to me, “You don’t live here. You know nothing about what’s going on. We live here 12 months a year.”

I asked him, “You look like you are about 40 years old. How many meetings have you had with Palestinians?

He stopped still. I waited several seconds. He did not have an answer.

I replied, “You obviously have never had a single conversation with a single Palestinian on the ‘conflict.’ You have only ever heard one version. I have had countless conversations with Palestinians and Israelis. I know a lot more than you do.”

I Recall

Years ago, a Palestinian journalist sat a silent retreat, based on the Buddha’s teachings, with me in Israel. She asked me not to mention to anybody she was a Palestinian in case some Israelis reacted. In a 1-1, I listened to one of her experiences. IDF arrested her due to her critiques of the occupation and for supporting non-violent action. Mossad (Israeli secret service) wanted information from her.

They placed her in the basement of the interrogation centre. Interrogators locked her into a small space – a wall around a metre high and a metre wide. They turned the lights out and left her in this cramped, black space unable to lie down fully or stand up. She did not know if she would be released from this form of slow psychological/physical torture.

I asked her how she got through it. “I kept reminding myself ‘I am the Queen of this Space.’” she replied. After 10 days or so, the guards released her. The interrogators could not break her will. She did not flinch from observing noble silence.

What kind of mind wants to design and manufacture tools to torture people?

Tell me. Where do the children play?

Israeli leadership press the Palestinians to make the exodus to Egypt and Jordan. To weaken the Palestinian resolve to stay in Gaya, Israeli government issue frequent orders to displace thousands of Palestinians from one part of Gaza to another, and then to another part, and then another.

Sometimes, the air force drops leaflets telling Palestinians to leave the area in a short period of time. This forms a strategy of creating collective despair and homelessness to break the will of the people so they give up and depart from Gaza. The new US government supports ethnic cleansing.

The poisoned minds of the Gazan government and the Israeli government show that they have more in common than what separates them regarding inflicting acts of terror and death.

We read little in the way of reports of thousands of Palestinian hostages, men, women and children, held in political prisons. Media in the West refers to these hostages as ‘prisoners,’ even though the army made many random acts of selection of Palestinians to take away. Some ‘hostages’ men and women face torture and sexual abuse to gather information about Hamas operatives in Gaza.

I Recall

A Palestinian mother rang me during a family crisis. She told me 20 years earlier; she fell in love with an Israeli. The couple had a happy marriage living in Israel. Her family in Palestine refused to speak to her, regarding her as a traitor.

Nobody in Israel knew she was a Palestinian from the West Bank, except her husband and her son. Her son had reached the age of 17. He faced a compulsory three-year conscription in the IDF in the months ahead when he turned 18. Her son told his parents that boys in his class would boast about how many Palestinians they would kill and beat up when they Became soldiers.

Can you say anything that might be helpful for our family?

Mother and father heard him say several times, “I will never put on an Israeli army uniform and go into Palestine to shoot or arrest my own people.” She said she and her husband lived in daily torment of how things would turn out.

Tell me. Where do the children play?

Part 2 of 2.

A critical analysis of four religions in relationship to the war on Gaza.

• Judaism

• Islam

• Christianity

• Buddhism.

MAY ALL BEINGS LIVE IN PEACE

MAY ALL BEINGS LIVE IN HARMONY

MAY ALL BEINGS LIVE IN PEACE AND HARMONY

www.anengagedlife.org

www.christophertitmuss.net

www.mindfulnesstrainingcourse.org