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January 5, 2009

Independent reporter loses father to invasion of Gaza

By Dominic wireposts

The Independent’s reporter in Gaza, Fares Akram, has written that his father was one of the first casualties of the Israeli invasion.

Akram writes today in the paper that his father’s farmhouse near the Israeli border was “reduced to little more than powder” by an F16 airstrike on Saturday. Of his father, 48-year-old Akrem al-Ghoul, there was “just a pile of flesh”.

Akram said that his father hated what Hamas was doing to Gaza’s legal system, introducing Islamist justice, and opposed violence.

He writes: “My grief carries no desire for revenge, which I know to be always in vain. But, in truth, as a grieving son, I am finding it hard to distinguish between what the Israelis call terrorists and the Israeli pilots and tank crews who are invading Gaza.

“What is the difference between the pilot who blew my father to pieces and the militant who fires a small rocket? I have no answers but, just as I am to become a father, I have lost my father.”

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