BLOODSTAINED memorabilia, relics of a barbaric Israeli air raid on a primary school in the Nile Delta province of el- Sharqiya about 40 years ago, are carelessly piled up in a dark room in a tiny ramshackle museum in the city. About 40 schoolchildren were killed and 50 were seriously injured when Israeli war jets bombarded Bahr el-Baqar Primary School, since renamed el-Shohada (Martyrs) Primary School. Local residents were further angered when much of the school's premises was seized by wealthy people to build highrises. “There seems to be a concerted plan to eradicate all evidence of the Israeli massacre in the village,” says one resident. Villagers living next to the museum claim that the collection, which include the bloodstained exercise books and uniforms of the children who died, were condemned to obscurity, after the school was paid a secret visit seven years ago by an Israeli team. Although the Israeli massacre took place four decades ago, the victims' families and the survivors are battling to have the Israeli generals and pilots responsible brought to trial. “Our nightmare will only end when the Israelis responsible for killing our children are tried and punished,” says Saeed Soleiman Metwali, who was seriously disabled in the attack, adding that they went through their nightmare all over again when the Israelis savagely attacked Palestinian women and children in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009. Metwali, 53, was in the fifth grade when Israeli planes dropped their huge bombs on his school. He sustained serious head injuries and had to have several operations abroad. “But they couldn't cure me of my disability,” he says sadly. Metwali's classmate Ahmed el- Demeri suffered serious head and leg injuries and still has terrible nightmares about what happened. They and the other pupils who were disabled in the attack are determined to continue with their legal battle until Israel, a barbaric state, compensates them adequately. El-Demeri is critical of the officials, who decided to dump the memorabilia of his late classmates in a dark corner. In fact, he says that they have mysteriously disappeared. The mother of a child who was killed instantly during the raid says that Egyptian officials have failed to keep their promises. Hajja Nabila Ali Mohamed's son, Mamdouh, was killed when the ceiling of his classroom collapsed. “It was a brutal attack by Israel on Mamdouh and other innocent children,” she says, as she struggles to keep back her tears. “His father had died just a few days before the attack, so for me it was a double blow.” Fifteen years ago, sympathetic governmental officials promised to give this widow and her five surviving children five feddans of land to grow crops on. “But we're still waiting for it,” says Hajja Nabila. As for Hajj Abdel-Aal Mohamed, the circumstances of his son Ahmed's death in the raid were even more tragic. The boy was born miraculously after his mother had a years-long medical battle to conceive. “I was 50 when Ahmed was born. The Israelis killed my only son, the apple of my eye, for whom I had great expectations,” the grief-stricken father told the press. “I will only be at peace when I get my revenge on his killers.” Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. But anti-Israel sentiment still runs high in Egypt.
