But I Thought Everyday Was Halloween on The Gaza Strip
From Vice's Jason Mojica comes an interesting report from the Gaza Strip on Halloween. Take it away, Jason:
…a group of masked members of Al Ahrar, a Hamas-affiliated group that started in 2007, gave a pop-up press conference on a busy sidewalk in downtown Gaza City. The five young men armed with Kalashnikovs seemed to appear, like phantoms, from nowhere. They read a prepared statement condemning Israel to a small cluster of cameras and barely amused children before posing for a few photos. And like that, they were gone. The camera crews packed up, the kids dispersed, and everyone went back to complaining about the constant, high-pitched buzzing of Israeli drones overhead.
Mojica notes
Although Gaza was once a paradise for pagans, in recent centuries this disconsolate stretch of land has taken on more of an Islamic flavor, giving rise to groups like Hamas [and] Islamic Jihad…
What a massive amount of human suffering and misery all around is packed into that "in recent centuries" descriptor. And those kids' faces.
Check out Mojica's recent (and stunning) Vice documentary on the Congo: "The Heart of Bleakness."
And do watch former Reasoner Michael Moynihan's Vice Guide to Belfast, featuring the most adorable and hate-filled little people on film since Darby O'Gill darkened American drive-ins back in the day.
