For a man who lost 11 close relatives during the Israeli offensive in January, Moeen Deeb is remarkably philosophical. Donald Macintyre meets him and other survivors of Operation Cast Lead
The Independent
".....Yet there is something remarkable about the capacity of some bereaved Gazans to cope with their losses. Maysa Samouni, 20, was one of those who say they were ordered the previous day by Israeli troops to take shelter in the warehouse in which 29 civilians – mainly Samounis – were killed by Israeli shelling early on the morning of 5 January, when three of her husband's male relatives ventured out of the door to bring an uncle to what they thought was safety.
Mrs Samouni, whose husband Tawfiq was killed and whose one-year-old daughter Jumana lost three fingers, gave precise – and often inevitably gruesome – testimony by telephone to the Israeli human rights organisation Btselem the next day: testimony which has held up in every subsequent inquiry by reporters and human rights organisations.
One shell killed the three men, and as Tawfiq, a former bulldozer driver who was trying to make ends meet by running a grocery business from his home, ran to help, another missile hit the roof, killing another 26 people. Even today she swiftly corrects a reporter's reference to 30 being killed in one of the worst events of the war. "It was 29," she says, adding of her testimony, "details are important."......."
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