Gazan On Lockdown In US Discovers What Actual Siege Like

The National Guard imposed the siege despite a complete lack of rockets, incendiary balloons, attack tunnels, and other military threats.

New Rochelle, New York, March 17 – A Palestinian spending time on this side of the Atlantic found himself subject today to a genuine cordon that imposes severe restrictions on the movement of people and goods into and out of the zone it delimits, confronting him with a real-life instance of a phenomenon his people’s leaders and allies often invoke to describe the situation in his homeland, but which does not, in fact, exist there.

Sa’id Bukhri, 30, wound up inside a perimeter that the New York National Guard created around this hamlet north of New York City to contain a concentration of coronavirus patients, with only authorized medical personnel and basic deliveries permitted through. The postdoctoral fellow disclosed today that his previous experience with a situation widely described as a “siege” bears only a passing resemblance to his current circumstances, and that the expectations the earlier use of the term created in his mind set him up for no small amount of shock when the soldiers imposed an actual siege and implemented restrictions far more extensive than anything Gaza has ever undergone.

“I think I understand what the word means now,” he whispered, an empty look in his eyes. “Like, before, I’d have told you a ‘siege’ means more or less the same border controls normal countries have with neighbors when the relationship isn’t friendly, and that the only goods allowed through are whatever anyone wants to import that isn’t weaponry or explosive ingredients. I mean, that’s what we had in Gaza. This is… this is different. I thought I siege was what we had back at home.”

Bukhri also noted that the National Guard had imposed the siege despite a complete lack of rockets, incendiary balloons, attack tunnels, and other military threats from within the zone under containment. “I might need to adjust my understanding not only of what a siege is, but to what circumstances it applies, and the various levels of sensitivity with which it is implemented,” he conceded.

The Palestinian patriot reassured his countrymen that his allegiances have not shifted. “I am here in an area infested with Zionists,” he declared, referring to New Rochelle, where a vibrant Modern Orthodox – and therefore in the main staunchly pro-Israel – Jewish community flourishes. “But I have not abandoned the principles with which I was raised – I still secretly wish all these people a violent death, even as I greet them warmly as neighbors and wish them only the best. The only other thing I think I need to reexamine is the term ‘genocide.’ Is that what you call it when your population increases tenfold?”

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