Israel destroys home of celebrated Gaza long distance runner

[brentspeak]

And, unsurprisingly, Israel has also radicalized liberal Palestinians who had formerly despised the Islamist and violent Hamas. But then again, since 1948, Israel's violence, lies, and greed and selfishness for land has always been successful at radicalizing previously moderate, non-political ordinary Palestinians to extremes which they normally would never have turned.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/world/middleeast/for-a-gaza-athlete-there-is-nowhere-to-run.html?_r=0

For a Gaza Athlete, There Is Nowhere to Run

By JODI RUDORENAUG. 25, 2014

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip — Everything looked about the same in this town near Gaza’s northern border with Israel: piles of smashed concrete to the left and right, up ahead and in the rearview. As we drove through the destruction earlier this month, Fares Akram, my Gaza-based reporting partner, somehow recognized a certain street as one we had been on four months before, to visit Nader al-Masri, Gaza’s premier distance runner.

snip

We found Nader at a United Nations school-turned-shelter not far away, along with about 80 of his relatives. He said they had left home July 21, the day after Israel dropped leaflets and sent text messages warning that the neighborhood would not be safe. When he took advantage of a halt in the hostilities to return, he said, “I did not recognize the street,” though he had lived there for 33 of his 34 years.

He said that he retrieved some of his awards from the rubble, but that others remained buried. He wore a fine black Adidas running shirt with yellow piping on the sleeves and “Palestine” in Arabic on the back, but his feet were in flip-flops; his sneakers were under the pile, too.

snip

Just as Mr. Masri stopped running, Andalib Adwan Shehada stopped cooking. A crusader for women’s rights who loved to create fresh seafood feasts, Ms. Adwan said she had been feeding her husband tuna out of cans...Ms. Adwan, 49, is a secular dissident we profiled in October 2012. She has no love for Hamas, the Islamist faction that dominates the Gaza Strip, and when we first met, she described the territory as a “dark heaven.” But now, she said, “there’s no one who can tell you I’m not supporting Hamas.”

[cpwm17]

1. It all seems so hopeless

and it's only going to get worse before it gets better. Israel is totally incapable of behaving in any way that isn't selfish and cruel, and Israel's supporters are just fine with that.