Dr Swee Ang, ‘The Wounds of Gaza’, 19 Jan 2010 in Oxford Town Hall – Report on meeting
At a packed meeting in Oxford Town Hall, a year and a day after the ceasefire that ended Israel’s blitz on Gaza, Dr Swee Ang showed slides and spoke of the horrors she found in the hospitals there.
The bombs used in ‘Operation Cast Lead’, the Israeli attack on Gaza 27 Dec 2008 – 18 Jan 2009, included the huge ‘vacuum bombs’, other high explosives, plus white phosphorus bombs (legal for battlefield illumination, not for densely populated urban areas), dart or ‘flechette’ and DIME anti-personnel bombs.
Among the children’s drawings in the exhibition mounted by NOW in the Town Hall gallery, several show served arms and legs lying on the streets. These would likely be the result of DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) which are set to explode just above street level, sending out thousands of inert metal pellets which evaporate within a short radius; they sheer through people’s bodies and limbs but leave no trace on buildings. Such weapons are too new to be banned, and seem to have been used in Gaza as though testing them out. Swee saw the results of DIME, and the horrific phosphorus that carries on burning even when the surgeon has cut out the initial burnt flesh. Fragments of white phosphorus were still lying around, igniting as one trod on them, when she photographed a peace garden in Gaza.
Many of the killed and injured in Gaza were victims of traditional missiles, and of bullets; Swee showed a child’s body with a bullet hole in the chest, one of many lined up and executed by IDF soldiers. As she said, how could this child be a ‘terrorist’?
The audience of 120, clearly moved by Swee’s presentation, were very positive about wanting to find ways to help, from writing to MPs about ending the blockade of Gaza, to providing aid. The collection at the meeting plus that at the preceding opening event at the exhibition itself raised £450 for the Gaza Community Mental Health Centre, which helps traumatised children and adults.
[Swee is of Chinese descent, grew up in Singapore, and has worked since qualifying as a surgeon in London hospitals. Swee’s first word of Arabic was ‘Gaza’, because that was the name of the hospital in Lebanon the Red Cross sent her to, in 1982. Gaza Hospital was in Sabra and Shatila camps, where Palestinians were massacred soon after she arrived. One of her photos from that time showed a gaping hole where an eleven-storey building had been reduced to rubble by a ‘vacuum bomb’. Her comment: ‘No need for doctors there’. But there was plenty of need for doctors to aid the survivors. Over 2,000 died, as Lebanese Falangists went on the rampage, while Israeli troops surrounded the camps, shooting anyone who tried to escape. Sharon, an IDF general, was indicted for this war crime but never punished and went on to become prime minister of Israel. From this experience, Swee herself changed from being an ardent supporter of Israel, to sympathising with the Palestinians. She founded Medical Aid for Palestinians, and has been going to Palestine to help with her medical skills, for 28 years. She is willing to speak to any number of people anywhere.]
Jenny Stanton
26.01.2010