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'The Israelis Killed My Father'

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Jan 5, 2009 1:54 PM CST

(Newser) – Fares Akram’s family farm was a small “beloved place,” so close to the Israeli border that they’d always feared it would be hit by errant rockets launched by Hamas, he writes in the Independent. Instead, it was blown up by an Israeli bomb while Akram’s 48-year-old father was inside. There was no way to get an ambulance there with the Israelis blocking the roads, but there was nothing left to save anyway. “Just a pile of flesh,” Akram’s brother remarked.

“My father was no militant,” Akram notes. He was a Palestinian Authority lawyer who quit and became a farmer when Hamas took over. “My grief carries no desire for revenge,” he writes, but “I am finding it hard to distinguish between what the Israelis call terrorists and the Israeli pilots and tank crews who are invading.”

[Images (2)]

[Quotes (4)]

A Palestinian woman walks down the street as smoke caused by explosions from Israeli forces' operations rises over a building in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, Jan. 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Khaled Omar)

A Palestinian looks down at rubble of a destroyed building, following Israeli forces' operations in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, Jan. 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Khaled Omar)

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We buried my father and Mahmoud yesterday morning in a very quick funeral, knowing Israeli tanks were just 3 km away. - Fares Akram

The Israelis may say there were militants in the area of our farm, but I'll never believe it. The most advanced point for rocket-launchers is 6km south. Up at the border, it is just open farmland with nowhere to hide.
- Fares Akram

My grief carries no desire for revenge, which I know to be always in vain. But as a grieving son, I am finding it hard to distinguish between what the Israelis call terrorists and the Israeli pilots who are invading Gaza. - Fares Akram

Ironically, we always thought the biggest danger there was not from Israeli troops, who usually went straight past if they were mounting an incursion, but from stray Hamas rockets aimed at the Israeli towns north of us. - Fares Akram

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