Rami Aldraimli watched in disbelief as the building he had worked in for more than 20 years came crashing down.
Following a missile “warning”, Israeli fighter jets late on Tuesday afternoon bombed al-Awqaf building, the latest structure to be targeted by Israel during its relentless 10-day offensive on the besieged Gaza Strip.
The five-storey building in western Gaza City housed a number of offices, including of Mashareq, one of Gaza’s oldest and most prominent media production firms.
“It wasn’t just a company,” Aldraimli, Mashareq’s 43-year-old executive director, said. “It’s a dream I’ve been working on, building it up until we had 60 employees.”ranslation: The bombing of the building that includes the Mashareq Advertising Company and a stationery shop, in a move to destroy the Palestinian economy.
Established in 1999, the company grew to offer advertising and photography services, as well as film production and sound engineering.
“Popular singer Mohammed Assaf, before he became famous, recorded in our studios many times,” Aldraimli recalled, proudly. “The place was a dream for many people to work with us,” he said. “We were like a family.”
The impact of the building’s destruction, he added, extended beyond the material losses, which are nonetheless significant given the expensive equipment inside the office.“It’s not about the money,” Aldraimli said. “It was a place to work, hang out at and build memories. It was about the space we created for ourselves. Money can be compensated, but decades of our work as well as our personal memories lost in the rubble cannot be.”Translation: In the blink of an eye, Israel destroyed my place of work, my income, the income of dozens of families. They destroyed Mashareq, the oldest and biggest production and advertising company in Gaza.
0 Comments