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Islamic Human Rights Commission
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12 May 2009

Alert: UK/Palestine – AFTERMATH: Gaza in the days after The 22 Day War; a new IHRC report by Musthak Ahmed and Fahad Ansari

Contents
1. Summary
2. Background
3. Review

1. Summary

AFTERMATH: Gaza in the days after The 22 Day War, a report by Musthak Ahmed and Fahad Ansari, is a diary account of two lawyers who visited Gaza to collect testimony from victims of the war. The report is fully downloadable without charge via the following link:
https://www.ihrc.org.uk/show.php?id=4078

2. Background

In the days after the trauma that was the 22 day assault on Gaza at the end of 2008 and early 2009, two of the IHRC team visited Gaza with the purpose of taking detailed testimony from the countless victims of aggression: those who lost family, homes and businesses, or were maimed and psychologically injured.

Aftermath is a journal of both from their short trip, including summaries of some testimony and photographic evidence of the horrendous event: the blood spattered walls and possessions of young girls killed by a raid, the burned out shells of ambulances, the haunted faces of those who witnessed their family members executed.

As legal machinery the world over slowly begins to ponder the enormity of what happened in Gaza, this report brings a human face to a people whose suffering only seems to strengthen them more in their defence of the rights of the oppressed.

3. Review

“In the light of Israel’s banning journalists from Gaza, Musthak Ahmed and Fahad Ansari’s first-hand account, on behalf of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, of what had happened there is informative and valuable. Their report introduces us to some of the Palestinians whose suffering we first heard about through the filter of a censored media. What the media ultimately told us of Israeli targeting of hospitals, ambulances, schools, mosques, parks is here confirmed and enlarged on. Ahmed and Ansari describe not only the slaughter but the blatant and obscene racism even in graffiti. They also report Gazans’ desire for peace as well as the determination and defiance even of the children. This is what we hear little about. The Palestinians refuse to be driven out despite the pain and suffering the Gaza war still causes and the suffocating Israeli blockade which continues.”

“Ahmed and Ansari contrast the welcome and generosity of Palestinians despite their impoverishment, with the rough uncaring treatment they received from officialdom in Egypt. The armed police were reluctant to let them cross into Gaza and inspired fear even when the two men were on their way home to Britain.”
– Michael Kalmanovitz, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (UK)

To read the full review visit:
https://www.ihrc.org.uk/show.php?id=4078

For further information and review copies please contact Dawud Mwilwa Kapansa at dawud@ihrc.org or on +44 20 8904 4222 or +44 7984 542 289.

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“And what reason have you that you should not fight in the way of Allah and of the weak among the men and the women and the children, (of) those who say: Our Lord! Cause us to go forth from this town, whose people are oppressors, and give us from Thee a guardian and give us from Thee a helper.”
Holy Qur’an: Chapter 4, Verse 75

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