Previously (Grapevine, August 1st 2024) I related the story of Mohammed Al Zaza, a young Palestinian refugee co-sponsored by the B.C. Muslim Association and the Vancouver Chapter of Independent Jewish Voices (I.J.V.) who lived with us in Vancouver for several months last year. To recapitulate briefly, Mohammed was badly injured in 2011, when he was fifteen, during an IDF bombing of Gaza that killed 124 people and wounded several hundred more. He was miraculously saved by the intervention of an Israeli peace organization, B’Selem, which managed to get him to a Tel Aviv hospital where he was treated for horrendous burns and severe injuries to one leg and arm. After almost three years he was sent back to Gaza, still in need of medical attention, which he finally received in Turkey. Unable to return to Gaza, after many ordeals he ended up in Vancouver in February 2023. Since then he has undergone more operations and rehab., narrowly avoiding the loss of his leg after an infection. He is now enrolled at Langara College and struggling to make a life here, while deeply preoccupied by the terrible human catastrophe in Gaza that is affecting his own family as well as two million others who are living hell on earth. As I explained before, he is trying to raise funds to get them out of there (many thanks to those who have contributed!). A group has been working on applications for his family members to be eligible for a family reunification programme, once they can leave. The Canadian government normally requires documentation for sponsorships (birth certificates, transcripts etc.) that is currently impossible to obtain in Gaza. He was elated to learn on September 16th – his birthday, and the same day he had another operation on his hand – that the applications for some of his family had finally been completed and submitted, beginning with his closest brother and his wife and two young children.
You can imagine his horror and distress on learning, that very day, that this brother, Mahmoud, was killed by a bomb while fetching water for the family. He leaves behind his wife and two young daughters. This is the second brother to die, Abdullah is still buried beneath rubble. He also leaves behind a wife and two children. We visited Mohammed in his small Kitsilano studio and saw how devastated he is. Still dazed by heavy doses of painkillers, he is struggling to maintain any hope of rescuing some of his family. We looked around his room, decorated with idyllic images of Palestine, the Canadian Rocky Mountains, khafir shawls, a Palestinian flag wrapped around his computer chair, and a large photo of the brother he hoped to welcome to Canada. He tells us that he was hurriedly buried with a dozen more victims in an unmarked grave: just one more casualty among the tens of thousands of civilians slaughtered in a war gone berserk. It’s heartbreaking. Mohammed now has many close and generous friends in Vancouver providing material and moral support – Jews, Moslems, and a spectrum of other human beings with no specific religious or political tags. But this cannot compensate for the agony of wondering each day how many of his family are still alive.
Because we have got to know Mohammed well, the war in the Middle East has become a major focus of attention in our family. What shocks me most is the silence of our politicians, who seem to be completely paralyzed when asked to take a moral stand on this gruesome massacre. Two of our children are teachers in Vancouver, and they hesitate to talk about the situation at work for fear of being labelled anti-semitic. Within Israel, anti-war protesters and human rights groups like B’Selem and Breaking the Silence are being harassed and threatened with arbitrary detention (according to a U.N. Commission of Inquiry). Similar actions against journalists and peace activists are now occurring in Britain and Germany. We have all seen how organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace have been suspended and threatened by lawsuits on American University campuses. We know how important it is for our friend Mohammed – and all Palestinians who have no hope of ever seeing their own country again – that those of us who can do so continue to express our support in whatever way we can. Our hearts go out to them, and to all those in Israel who still hope and wish that they could live in peace with their neighbours rather than hatred and destruction.