Palestinian doctor calls Israeli reporter on television and tells him an Israeli tank just hit his house and injured or killed his children

January 16, 2009 2:11 pm henrymunsonjr Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Email from Alex Grab in Tel Aviv, Jan, 16, 2009, 11:34 AM (posted with his permission)

I don’t watch much TV because it is so useless. They only bring Israeli generals and officials, ministers and reporters who are so uncritical of Israel that it is a waste of time. I mean after 1/2 an hour I turn it off.

But an hour ago or so something unbelievable happened. I turned on the TV and about 5 minutes into the program on the situation in Gaza, a Palestinian physician who worked in Israel many times and lives in Gaza with his children and knows Hebrew very well called the Israeli reporter in the studio (whom he knew very well) on his cell phone, and he was crying uncontrollably. He said that an Israeli tank just hit his house and injured or killed his children. This was live and it was unbelievable. The reporter kept his cell phone on for several minutes in the studio and you heard this physician shouting and crying into the cell repeating “Ya Allah why did they do it?” (in Hebrew). It was stunningly painful and obviously the Israeli reporter, who knew the physician, said that he would not turn off the cell in the studio, and we kept hearing the hysterical yelling of this poor Palestinian with his children bleeding around him. (I obviously could not see anything, I could only hear the man’s voice on his cell phone.) The reporter asked the physician where he lives and then asked the Israeli army on the air to send an ambulance to his home to help that family. After 3-4 minutes, the reporter excused himself and left the studio with his cell phone on to talk with the physician privately.

It was surreal and immensely painful. You heard the guy’s pain so very clearly and loud. It was not clear how many people were killed in that house.

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