AGAINST ZIONISM

Marya Aman is a five-year old Palestinian girl who is paralyzed from the neck down.

Last May, she and seven other family members were travelling in a car to visit a sick relative when an Israeli missile blew them up. Marya’s mother, brother, and uncle were killed. Her grandmother was crushed beyond recognition. Her father was wounded, but survived.

Marya is now a quadriplegic who lives in the respiratory ward of Alyn hospital in Jerusalem. For the rest of her life she will be confined to a chair that is operated by a mouth-stick. She needs equipment, care, and somewhere to live near the hospital.

Her father, 29-year-old Hamdi Aman, tends her round the clock — feeding her, bathing her, and changing her catheters. Hamdi is still recovering from his own wounds. If he sets foot outside the hospital, he will be deported to Gaza. His daughter will die. He has no money.

He says, “This little girl is my heart. I’ll live the rest of my life for her–but what if something happens to me?”

He describes the Israeli attack:  “The first thing I noticed was that the street was suddenly empty and silent. Then I felt someone leaning on me. It was my dead mother. Her skull was smashed. I began to shout, ‘Mum, mum, wake up!’ I pushed her brain with my hands, trying to squeeze it back into her skull. I couldn’t get out of the car at first, because the door was warped, but eventually I crawled out and saw my dead wife. The others were dead or injured. Only then did I notice that Marya was not there.”

Little Marya had been blasted out of the car, her spine fractured, both her lungs punctured. She recalled her final moments of happiness with her family. “I remember very well,” she said, smiling shyly. “I was dancing and singing. Then the missile came.”

Her father explains that although she knows exactly what happened, she does not talk about it much.

Marya has already mastered Hebrew, and learned to operate her special chair. She speaks with the maturity of a girl twice her age.

The high point of her day is a telephone conversation with her younger brother Muaman,who is in Gaza. Little Muaman was also blasted out of the car, but he got up and ran away, traumatized.

“Marya spends hours talking to her younger brother,” her father said. “Her happiest day was when the Israelis allowed him to visit her.”

At night he lies on the floor next to his daughter’s bed, even though he is still recovering from his own injuries. He has no privacy, and nowhere else to stay.

“I’m not asking the Israeli government for compensation for my late wife,” he said. “I’m only asking that they take care of Marya, as I won’t be around forever.”

The Israeli defence ministry has refused to meet the cost of a lifetime’s care, which has been estimated at £10,000 a month ($19,640, or 82,300 Israeli sheckels).

Adi Lustigman, a young Jerusalem lawyer (female) has taken up Marya’s case. “If we don’t receive a proper answer, in the next couple of days we’re going to appeal to the High Court,” she said.

In the meantime, Marya and her father are trapped.

Marya does not ask to return to Gaza. She knows there are no facilities to look after her there. And even if she did go home, her mother would not be waiting for her.

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