As A Gaza Protester, I Don’t Know How Actual Injured People Use These Crutches

By Hussein Jabari

I’ve been lugging these crutches around for days, participating in staged incidents that purport to showcase Israeli brutality against innocent Palestinians – I play the role of a wounded youth; thus the accessories – and I have to tell you: I have no idea how people who genuinely need crutches handle the damn things.

At first I thought it would be a cinch: you just rest the top part in your armpit and maneuver the crutches with your hands. But it turns out that’s not such an easy thing to accomplish when you’re negotiating unpaved ground as I have. I keep losing my concentration and using my “bad” foot by mistake, and that ruins the entire effect we want to generate for the cameras.

On top of that, some nitpicker decided that fake injury or not, it’s a bad idea to put any weight on the armpit, because of pressure on nerves or something, and has been bugging me to adjust the crutches to a shorter setting, and that means learning how to use them all over again. I’d rather concentrate on hobbling in a convincing manner away from the tear gas, burning tires, and general mayhem to participate in creating a picture of Israeli-inflicted misery that can be neatly packaged as atrocities by the BBC, CNN, the Guardian, and the New York Times.

But that’s a serious challenge when I can’t take more than a couple of steps in character before almost stumbling and using my “injured” foot to steady myself. It’s embarrassing, especially considering that there’s probably someone in the Shifa Hospital emergency room right now who can’t get the crutches he or she needs because I’m using them. It’s a sacrifice I’m sure they’re willing to make for a noble cause, of course, but it doesn’t make it any less awkward to know I’m not doing such a convincing job of it.

Not that I have to be all that convincing for the media to run with the atrocity narrative, and that’s a relief, at least. Guys on stretchers who are supposed to be incapacitated are miraculously getting up and walking away once the cameras are out of sight, but the media reports take the injuries and fatalities at face value. But there’s still that nagging sense of inadequacy that I can’t play the part as expected.

To express my frustration I guess I’ll have to hurl a Molotov cocktail or two.

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