Israel destroys home of celebrated Gaza long distance runner
And, unsurprisingly, Israel has also radicalized liberal Palestinians who had formerly despised the Islamist and violent Hamas. But then again, since 1948, Israel's violence, lies, and greed and selfishness for land has always been successful at radicalizing previously moderate, non-political ordinary Palestinians to extremes which they normally would never have turned.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/world/middleeast/for-a-gaza-athlete-there-is-nowhere-to-run.html?_r=0
For a Gaza Athlete, There Is Nowhere to Run
By JODI RUDORENAUG. 25, 2014
BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip Everything looked about the same in this town near Gazas northern border with Israel: piles of smashed concrete to the left and right, up ahead and in the rearview. As we drove through the destruction earlier this month, Fares Akram, my Gaza-based reporting partner, somehow recognized a certain street as one we had been on four months before, to visit Nader al-Masri, Gazas premier distance runner.
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We found Nader at a United Nations school-turned-shelter not far away, along with about 80 of his relatives. He said they had left home July 21, the day after Israel dropped leaflets and sent text messages warning that the neighborhood would not be safe. When he took advantage of a halt in the hostilities to return, he said,
I did not recognize the street, though he had lived there for 33 of his 34 years.
He said that he retrieved some of his awards from the rubble, but that others remained buried. He wore a fine black Adidas running shirt with yellow piping on the sleeves and Palestine in Arabic on the back, but his feet were in flip-flops; his sneakers were under the pile, too.
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Just as Mr. Masri stopped running,
Andalib Adwan Shehada stopped cooking. A crusader for womens rights who loved to create fresh seafood feasts, Ms. Adwan said she had been feeding her husband tuna out of cans...
Ms. Adwan, 49, is a secular dissident we profiled in October 2012. She has no love for Hamas, the Islamist faction that dominates the Gaza Strip, and when we first met, she described the territory as a dark heaven.
But now, she said, theres no one who can tell you Im not supporting Hamas.