I am a political activist who has worked and lived in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This blog chronicles my time in Palestine and also provides news and analysis about Palestine and the situation on the ground in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Brazilian cartoonist, Carlos Latuff's tribute to Vittorio
Dear friends, so soon after losing Juliano Mer Khamis, Palestinians and Palestine solidarity activists around the world have been shock to hear about the brutal kidnapping and killing of Palestine solidarity activist, Vittorio Arrogoni.
Vik, who was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), had been active in the Palestine cause for almost 10 years. He was one of the siege breakers on the first Free Gaza boats and for the last two and half years had been working in Gaza with the ISM.
I first heard the news of Vik's kidnap when one of my IWPS team mates, who had worked on the ground in Gaza for many months and who was friends with Vik, notified the IWPS team about it. She told us she could not get the video of Vik made by his kidnappers (which I have not include) out of her mind. Before we heard the news of Vik's death, our team mate told us that she had been in contact with other friends and activists in Gaza and that protests events were being organised to demand his release and that the Palestinians were shocked and appalled at Vik's kidnapping.
Part of me doesn't really know what to say or do hearing this news. All I can think of is to tell people about this remarkable human being who gave himself so selflessly to the struggle of an oppressed people.
Vale Vittario, you will be missed by those who knew and loved you and all of us struggling for a better world.
Dear friends, as you will be aware, the Free Gaza Movement's flotilla of 9 ships, with 700 activists from 40 countries is making its way to Gaza in attempt to break Israel's illegal siege and to bring 10,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.
In response, Israel has announced that it will stop the boats and has gone on a PR propaganda blitz arguing that the aid is not needed because there is supposedly no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Al Jazeera, however, has challenged this claim with an excellent report from reporter, Sherine Tadros (see video below).
As part of its media propaganda blitz, the Israeli government has also claimed that Cyprus "banned" the Free Gaza Movement (FGM) flotilla from landing in Cyprus. Reports in the Cypriot media have made it clear that this is not true and simply just more Israeli government spin.
The Cyprus Mail (see: http://www.cyprus-mail.com/cyprus/gaza-aid-flotilla-will-pass-cyprus/20100526 ) on Wednedsay published an article on the flotilla, which reveals the FGM had no plans to dock in Cyprus and therefore did not ask permission to dock. The article makes it clear that the Cypriot government has not banned the FGM flotilla.
According to the Cyprus Mail:
"This is the ninth aid trip conducted by FGM. However, unlike previous journeys when the ships would meet in Larnaca, today they will meet international waters before they attempt to breach the blockade.Asked why they are not docking in Cyprus, Greta Berlin, FGM Spokeswoman said they had not received permission, as the Cypriot Government is following international law and maritime regulations, which state that ships can only go between legal international ports. The Cyprus Government has been wonderful, helping us the previous eight times, but it is not fair to ask Cyprus to deal with this by itself. They are being leaned on by Israel and the US."
"A senior source within Cyprus' Foreign Ministry agreed that they would be following all the rules and international maritime regulations. However, he said that he was not aware of any request being made by the organisers of the flotilla. "It is up to the organisers, and they have decided not to visit Cyprus. But if any such request had been put forward, the decision will take place according to international and maritime law, and any rules that exist."
Another story circulating in the Israeli media is that the FGM also refused a request from the father of Gilad Shalit to take a letter to him. The FGM movement has stated this is a blatant lie.
In a media release about Israel's disinformation campaign, the FGM states: (see:http://www.freegaza.org/en/home/56-news/1174-israels-disinformation-campaign-against-the-gaza-freedom-flotilla )
"Israel claims that we refused to deliver a letter and package from POW Gilad Shalit's father. This is a blatant lie. We were first contacted by lawyers representing Shalit's family Wednesday evening, just hours before we were set to depart from Greece. Irish Senator Mark Daly (Kerry), one of 35 parliamentarians joining our flotilla, agreed to carry any letter and deliver it to UN officials inside Gaza. As of this writing, the lawyers have not responded to Sen. Daly, electing instead to attempt to smear us in the Israeli press.[5] We have always called for the release of all political prisoners in this conflict, including the 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners languishing in Israeli jails, among them hundreds of child prisoners"
I have included the full text of the FGM media release regarding Israel's disinformation campaign below.
The Free Gaza Movement flotilla is due to arrive in Gazan waters on Saturday (Palestinian time).
Israeli anti-occupation activists are planning to hold a solidarity action on Saturday in support of the FGM flotilla to oppose their government stance and to support the call for breaking the siege and for the FGM flotilla movement to be allowed safe passage. International actions around the world are also taking place in support of the flotilla and the people of Gaza.
The FGM will be updating supporters and the media with what is happening with the flotilla. You can follow their updates at: www.freegaza.org
Solidarity with the Free Gaza Movement and the people of Gaza! End the Siege Now!
in solidarity, Kim
Al Jazeera
****
Israel's Disinformation Campaign Against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla
Written by Free Gaza team | 28 May 2010 Posted in News
WitnessGaza.com
For over four years, Israel has subjected the civilian population of Gaza to an increasingly severe blockade, resulting in a man-made humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions. Earlier this month, John Ging, the Director of Operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza, called upon the international community to break the siege on the Gaza Strip by sending ships loaded with humanitarian aid. This weekend, 9 civilian boats carrying 700 human rights workers from 40 countries and 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid will attempt to do just that: break through the Israel's illegal military blockade on the Gaza Strip in non-violent direct action. In response, the Israeli government has threatened to send out 'half' of its Naval forces to violently stop our flotilla, and they have engaged in a deceitful campaign of misinformation regarding our mission.
Israel claims that there is no ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Every international aid organization working in Gaza has documented this crisis in stark detail. Just released earlier this week, Amnesty International's Annual Human Rights Report stated that Israeli's siege on Gaza has "deepened the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Mass unemployment, extreme poverty, food insecurity and food price rises caused by shortages left four out of five Gazans dependent on humanitarian aid. The scope of the blockade and statements made by Israeli officials about its purpose showed that it was being imposed as a form of collective punishment of Gazans, a flagrant violation of international law."[1]
Israel claims that its blockade is directed simply at the Hamas government in Gaza, and is limited to so-called 'security' items. Yet When U.S. Senator John Kerry visited Gaza last year, he was shocked to discover that the Israeli blockade included staple food items such as lentils, macaroni and tomato paste.[2] Furthermore, Gisha, the Israeli Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, has documented numerous official Israeli government statements that the blockade is intended to put 'pressure' on Gaza's population, and collective punishment of civilians is an illegal act under international law.[3]
Israel claims that if we wish to send aid to Gaza, all we need do is go through 'official channels,' give the aid to them and they will deliver it. This statement is both ridiculous and offensive. Their blockade, their 'official channels,' is what is directly causing the humanitarian crisis in the first place.
According to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter: "Palestinians in Gaza are being actually 'starved to death,' receiving fewer calories per day than people in the poorest parts of Africa. This is an atrocity that is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza. It is a crime... an abomination that this is allowed to go on. Tragically, the international community at large ignores the cries for help, while the citizens of Gaza are treated more like animals than human beings."[4]
Israel claims that we refused to deliver a letter and package from POW Gilad Shalit's father. This is a blatant lie. We were first contacted by lawyers representing Shalit's family Wednesday evening, just hours before we were set to depart from Greece. Irish Senator Mark Daly (Kerry), one of 35 parliamentarians joining our flotilla, agreed to carry any letter and deliver it to UN officials inside Gaza. As of this writing, the lawyers have not responded to Sen. Daly, electing instead to attempt to smear us in the Israeli press.[5] We have always called for the release of all political prisoners in this conflict, including the 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners languishing in Israeli jails, among them hundreds of child prisoners.[6]
Most despicably of all, Israel claims that we are violating international law by sailing unarmed ships carrying humanitarian aid to a people desperately in need. These claims only demonstrate how degenerate the political discourse in Israel has become.
Activists from the Freedom flotilla
Despite its high profile pullout of illegal settlements and military presence from Gaza in August—September 2005, Israel maintains “effective control” over the Gaza Strip and therefore remains an occupying force with certain obligations.[7] Among Israel’s most fundamental obligations as an occupying power is to provide for the welfare of the Palestinian civilian population. An occupying force has a duty to ensure the food and medical supplies of the population, as well as maintain hospitals and other medical services, “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” (G IV, arts. 55, 56). This includes protecting civilian hospitals, medical personnel, and the wounded and sick. In addition, a fundamental principle of International Humanitarian Law, as well as of the domestic laws of civilized nations, is that collective punishment against a civilian population is forbidden (G IV, art. 33).
Israel has grossly abused its authority as an occupying power, not only neglecting to provide for the welfare of the Palestinian civilian population, but instituting policies designed to collectively punish the Palestinians of Gaza. From fuel and electricity cuts that hinder the proper functioning of hospitals, to the deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid delivery through Israeli-controlled borders, Israel’s policies towards the Gaza Strip have turned Gaza into a man-made humanitarian disaster. The dire situation that currently exists in Gaza is therefore a result of deliberate policies by Israel designed to punish the people of Gaza. In order to address the calamitous conditions imposed upon the people, one must work to change the policies causing the crisis. The United Nations has referred to Israel’s near hermetic closure of Gaza as “collective punishment,”[8] strictly prohibited under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. All nations signatory to the Convention have an obligation to ensure respect for its provisions.[9]
Given the continuing and sustained failure of the international community to enforce its own laws and protect the people of Gaza, we strongly believe that we all, as citizens of the world, have a moral obligation to directly intervene in acts of nonviolent civil resistance to uphold international principles. Israeli threats and intimidation will not deter us. We will sail to Gaza again and again and again, until this siege is forever ended and the Palestinian people have free access to the world.
WitnessGaza.com
One of the ships from the Freedom Flotilla in port.
NOTES:
[1] Amnesty International, Annual Human Rights Report (26 May 2010); http://thereport.amnesty.org/
[2] "The pasta, paper and hearing aids that could threaten Israeli security," The Independent (2 March 2009)
[3] "Restrictions on the transfer of goods to Gaza: Obstruction and obfuscation," Gisha (January 2010)
[4] "Carter calls Gaza blockade 'a crime and atrocity," Haaretz (17 April 2008), http://www.haaretz.com/news/carter-calls-gaza-blockade-a-crime-and-atrocity-1.244176
[5] "Gaza aid convoy refuses to deliver package to Gilad Shalit," Haaretz (27 May 2010) [6] "Comprehensive Report on Status of Palestinian Political Prisoners," Sumoud (June 2004); Palestinian Children Political Prisoners, Addameer, http://www.addameer.org/detention/children.html
[7] Article 42 of the Hague Regulations stipulates, a “territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army,” and that the occupation extends “to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.” Similarly, in the Hostage Case, the Nuremburg Tribunal held that, “the test for application of the legal regime of occupation is not whether the occupying power fails to exercise effective control over the territory, but whether it has the ability to exercise such power.” Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, like those in the West Bank, continue to be subject to Israeli control. For example, Israel controls Gaza’s air space, territorial waters, and all border crossings. Palestinians in Gaza require Israel’s consent to travel to and from Gaza, to take their goods to Palestinian and foreign markets, to acquire food and medicine, and to access water and electricity. Without Israel’s permission, the Palestinian Authority (PA) cannot perform such basic functions of government as providing social, health, security and utility services, developing the Palestinian economy and allocating resources.
[8] John Holmes, Briefing to the U Security Council on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question, 27 January 2009.
[9] Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949, Article I stating, “The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances.” See also, Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion, I. C. J. Reports 2004, p. 136 at 138; http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/131/1671.pdf.
Its New Year's Eve and my team mate and I are on our way to Israel's Erez Crossing, one of the 6 border crossings into Gaza which has been repeatedly closed by the Zionist state as part of its illegal collective punishment of the Palestinian people in Gaza. We have joined three bus load of Israeli and Palestinian activists in Jaffa to make the hour long journey to the Gaza border crossing to protest Israel's ongoing siege. As we wait for the buses in Jaffa, I look around the slowly gathering crowd and recognize some of the faces from demonstrations in the Occupied West Bank: several of the courageous and dedicated activists from Anarchists Against the Wall, as well as some activists from Gush Shalom and others from Ta'ayush. But there are many I don't recognize - young people, as well as older folk - all of whom are outraged at Israel's repeated war crimes and collective punishment of the Palestinian people of Gaza.
It's now been a year since Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli war which killed more than 1400 Gazan Palestinians and more than two and half years since Israel declared the region an "enemy entity", imposing an almost total siege on 1.5 million people. In September this year, the Goldstone report provided the most accurate and damning account of Israel's actions in Gaza both during Operation Cast Lead, as well as Israel's actions before and after its brutal all out war on Gaza .
According to the report, the Israeli military carried out indiscriminate attacks on Palestinian civilians, as well as deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians during both ground and air attacks [1]. In addition, the report outlined how Israel's war machine used Palestinian civilians as human shields on at least four occasions and well as its systematic and “reckless” use of chemical weaponry such as white phosphorus (which burns through flesh and bone) and small arms fletchettes missiles in densely populated urban areas. Despite claims of bias by both the Israeli state and its supporters, including the Obama Administration in Washington, the Goldstone report also addressed the issues of Palestinian made Qassam rockets being fired into Israel, noting that while they constituted an indiscriminate attack on a civilian population, they also "caused little damage".
While the Goldstone report key recommendations were not binding, the report called for the immediate lifting of the Israeli siege of Gaza; the cessation of Israeli restrictions on Palestinian sea access; the lifting of Israeli restrictions on freedom of movement between Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, as well as Israel to pay reparations for the destruction its assault wrought on Gaza [2]. Other key recommendations included a call for Israel to release all Palestinian political prisoners detained as a result of the Zionist state's ongoing illegal occupation and that the Israeli authorities should end its attempts to intimidate internal Israeli dissent and opposition to the government's policy and its military operations in Gaza.
Three months after the release of the report, however, Israel has continued to tighten its Gaza noose. Three months after the release of the report, Israel continues to bomb Gaza regularly and continues its illegal colonisation of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and Occupied East Jerusalem, while deepening its apartheid policies within Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
A year after Operation Cast Lead, as we gather in the small part in Jaffa, in Cairo 1400 internationals have also gathered in an attempt to break the siege as part of the Gaza Freedom March. Their attempts to reach Gaza, however, have been actively stymied by the brutality of the Egyptian police and security forces obeying the orders of a corrupt and brutal Egyptian regime which long ago decided that the human rights of own people or those of the Palestinian people matter little.
Soon the buses arrive and we start to board and I find myself sitting next to a young Palestinian woman who is from a village in what is now the north of Israel. We chat for a while and she tells me about the campaign she is involved in to stop the demolition of Palestinian homes in Jaffa and to prevent the further ethnic cleansing of the city. In front of me, I hear my team mate talking with an older Israeli woman, who is recounting a story from her early years as an anti-occupation activist.
Soon, we have left the traffic congestion of Jaffa and are traveling through the open countryside. In all my previous visits, I have never traveled to this region of what is now the Israeli state. The landscape is different from that in the Occupied West Bank. There, the land is hilly and rocky, dotted with ancient olive groves and sparse shrubbery. Its rocky beauty is something I fell in love with just weeks into my first visit to Palestine. Here in the South, however, the land is flat and open and the fields have been cultivated into blankets of greenery, with almost every trace of Palestinian heritage wiped clean.
But every now and again, it reappears. In a field, here and there, you will see what's left of a beautiful old Palestinian house, with its square cut sturdy blocks of stone. These houses, now derelict or used dismissively as agricultural storage areas, stand as a last defiant reminder that this land once belonged to another people.
As I gaze out the window of the bus, I notice the location signs dotted along our route. Soon we are passing the junction turns for Ashdod, Asheklon, Sderot. At the junction for Sderot, we turn into a gas station, as this is to the convergence point for all the buses traveling to the demonstration. The buses from Jaffa are the first to arrive and over the next 30 – 40 minutes, we are joined by buses carrying solidarity activists from Jerusalem, Haifa, Lod (formerly the Palestinian city of Lydda), Bethlehem and other cities within Israel. Once all the buses have arrived, we re-board and make the final leg of the journey, which too my surprise only takes 8 or so minutes.
My first sight of Erez Crossing is like a punch in the stomach. I immediately felt nauseous. Before me is a massive terminal, with the apartheid wall snaking out from either side of it. My immediate thoughts fly to the 1.5 million people of Gaza trapped in devastation behind this ugly wall and building. It is hard to fathom that they are so close and we can not see them, reach them or speak to any of them. In a daze, still trying to fully comprehend that I am at the Gaza border, I leave the bus along with my traveling companions.
Several hundred protestors, many of whom are Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, have already gathered near the terminal gate. The protest crowd soon swells as bus load after bus load of demonstrators join their ranks. In front of one section of the crowd are Palestinian women dressed in traditional dress leading chants and holding up photos of the devastation in Gaza. Lifeless bodies of children, destroyed homes and a ravaged homeland. Near the terminal gate are some older Palestinian men, who have attached a banners to the crowd rails set up by the Israeli police. One banner says: "ISRAEL end your persecution. WORLD end your indifference". Another proclaims definitely: "Our Will is Stronger than your Siege". For the next two hours, chants ring out in Hebrew and Arabic, calling not only for an end to the siege, but also calling for national unity between Fatah and Hamas and for defiance against Israel's occupation of their homeland.
As I stood listening to the women chant and sing, suddenly jubilant cheering erupted. A older Palestinian woman dress in black with a lone suitcase is being surrounded by the protesting women, who are now dancing and singing. The woman, a resident of the besieged strip, had just exited Erez Terminal and was being embraced by the women in the rally. Within seconds, she is enthusiastically joining the singing and dancing. As I stood smiling, watching the women in their exuberance embrace their sister from Gaza, I could not help wondered about the well being of those we could not see, still left behind the concrete wall.
Video by Kim
Unlike the demonstrations in the Occupied West Bank where rubber bullets and teargas are fired on non-violent protests like clockwork, this does not happen today. The Israeli state, however, is still omnipresent. On the hills surrounding the protest, at least three dozen Israeli border police stood watching the demonstration. At the fences near the terminal were many more, as well as mounted police. Unlike a year ago, the Israel state apparatus does not attack or arrest any demonstrators. The fact that we even make it to the Terminal Crossing is a surprise for many of the Israeli demonstrators. A year before, at the height of the war, they were arrested and prevented from even making it anywhere near the Crossing.
As the demonstration starts to wind down and the demonstrators start to board the buses, I find it hard to leave. Part of me want to run to the terminal and shout and try to fruitlessly tear down the fencing, part of me wants to cry and part of me is more angry then ever at the inhumanity and injustice of what lies in front of me. But there is another part of me which is buoyed by the solidarity and strength I had witnessed today and the knowledge that at the same time we were protesting at Erez that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza were also definitely marching on the other side of the wall that divided us and that we were also joined in spirit by the more than 1400 internationals in Egypt and tens of thousands around the world who stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle for freedom and justice.
[1] & [2] UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/FactFindingMission.htm
Dear friends, the Free Gaza Movement has issued an appeal for financial support and solidarity action in order to help them make their next trip to Gaza. If you can help please contact that Free Gaza Movement at the details below.
Please find below also footage from the latest moments on the Free Gaza Movement ship, the Spirit of Humanity, before it was attacked and boarded by the Israeli navy. The unarmed human rights workers were forcibly kidnapped by Israel and held in prison for several days. This was despite the fact they were in international water and had no intention of entering Israeli waters and posed no threat to the Israeli state or the Israeli military.
In solidarity, Kim
***
We need your help to prepare the next mission to Gaza
Dear friends,
As part of our Summer of Hope campaign, the Free Gaza Movement was planning to make 3 boat voyages to Gaza this summer, one in June, one in July and one in August. On our July and August voyages we had planned to take into Gaza all of the books that you have sent us as part of our Right to Read campaign (see below for update).
Due to Israel’s hijacking of our boat, the Spirit of Humanity last month, we have had to change our plans. No, we are not backing down. Now, more than ever, we believe it’s critical to continue these missions, and demonstrate the power of the international civilian community to stand up to cruelty, human rights abuses, and oppression. If we let Israel’s attack on our last mission stop us, we will be giving in to the violence that is perpetrated 100-fold against the occupied Palestinian people. The risks that we take by getting on these boats are nothing compared to the existential threats that Palestinians face every day of their lives. But to make this next voyage happen, we need your help urgently! We need to raise a substantial sum of money and engage in considerable outreach over the next few weeks in order to be able to send the next mission before the weather changes and the Mediterranean Sea starts becoming unpredictable.
Earlier Free Gaza Boats arriving in Gaza
Earlier Free Gaza boats arriving in Gaza
Please share this email with friends and family and decide on one or more ways you can get involved. We will not be able to do this without you. Suggestions for things that you can do:
(1) Donate. You have donated to us so generously to us in the past, we need you to do it again. Please consider making a donation of $100 ( 100 or £100) and asking 9 friends to do the same. Go to: http://www.freegaza.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=109&Itemid=147. Please do it now.
(2) Fundraise. Plan a fundraiser for the Free Gaza Movement in your home or community. A dinner, movie screening, house party or other could be a great way to get your friends and family more aware of and involved in our efforts, while contributing to our goal of purchasing a cargo ship and accompanying passenger boats to go to Gaza.
(3) Educate. We have volunteers in various countries that might be available to come speak at your school, university or other venue about their experiences in Gaza, the horrifying effects of Israel’s illegal blockade, and what the Free Gaza Movement is doing to break the siege. Consider hosting an event or a speaking tour for the Free Gaza Movement. For help in doing this, please contact us (friends@freegaza.org).
(4) Outreach. We would like to get celebrities, dignitaries, and community leaders to join our next mission in order to draw more attention to the dire situation in Gaza and the need for immediate action. If you have contact to an actor, singer, athlete, artist, producer, politician or other public personality, including prominent human and civil rights leaders, ask them to lend their voice and presence to this nonviolent action in defense of human rights. Reach out to your member of congress or parliament and ask him/her to join us. If someone is not able to physically be on our boat, ask him or her for a statement or letter or endorsement.
VIDEO by Ishmahil Blagrove - RicenPeas. Video time: 9.16 minutes
(5) Contribute. We would like to get as many local, national, and international groups and organizations involved in the success of this mission as possible. Approach a local group or organization about donating cargo to send to Gaza on the next Free Gaza boats. One of the two areas our next mission will focus on is education, taking in books (see information about Right to Read campaign below), paper, ink and school supplies. Ask your local school, church, mosque, synagogue, social justice group, or other NGO to commit to this effort. Even primary schools can contribute to breaking the siege on Gaza by writing letters to schoolchildren in Gaza. Please contact us (friends@freegaza.org) about the items that we are accepting for cargo.
The second area our mission will focus on is building supplies. It is now more than six months since the end of Israel's brutal 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip, which led to the killing of over 1400 Palestinians, and the people of Gaza are still living in rubble. Consider approaching a local business about sponsoring reconstruction cargo for Gaza. Please contact us (friends@freegaza.org) for details.
(6) Right to Read campaign. The response to the Right to Read (http://www.freegaza.org/right-to-read) campaign has been heartening. In addition to the books that the universities in Gaza requested, some of you sent us school supplies for children, as you know that paper, pencils and crayons are among the thousands of items that the Israeli authorities do not allow into Gaza. Others approached their local universities about offering free e-library and other database access to Palestinian universities; this is invaluable! Also a few authors have donated copies of their books to the campaign; thank you! As great as the response has been, we still have not acquired all of the books we need. Please, let’s keep going! We will start taking these books in on the next voyage. Visit: http://www.freegaza.org/right-to-read
How soon we can make this next voyage happens will depend on our collective effort. We are aiming for September/October. Let’s make it happen!
In solidarity & struggle, FREE GAZA MOVEMENT http://www.FreeGaza.org
Dear friends, please find below the call by the ISM for their Freedom Summer Campaign in Palestine.
To find out more, please visit their website at www.palsolidarity.org
in solidarity, Kim
** The International Solidarity Movement is issuing a call-out for internationals to volunteer as field activists and office workers in the West Bank, Gaza, and occupied East Jerusalem this summer.
www.palsolidarity.org
Whether you can come for only few weeks or several months, your presence is needed to support Palestinian communities who are nonviolently resisting the Israeli occupation. Freedom Summer 2009, which will run from June 6th until August 15th, aims to challenge the continued theft of Palestinian land for the rapid expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and their infrastructure in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Volunteer training sessions will be held every week on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Visit our “Join Us in Palestine” section to read more information about volunteering.
Below are some of the actions ISM volunteers can anticipate this summer:
1. ISM volunteers will stand in solidarity with the Palestinian families of occupied East Jerusalem who face dispossession.
International activists will join families in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, Shu’fat, and other neighborhoods whose residences are threatened, in resisting evictions and demolitions with non-violent, direct actions methods. ISM volunteers will also participate in demonstrations against discriminatory Israeli policies and support ongoing organization of Palestinian heritage and cultural events.
2. In the West Bank, volunteers will join Palestinian villagers in nonviolent demonstrations against the Wall, and other apartheid infrastructure of the occupation such as checkpoint, settlements, and Israeli-only roads. Activists will be working in communities such as Ni’lin, Bil’in, Jayyous, Husan and Tulkarem to support direct actions under Palestinian popular leadership. Recently Israeli military violence during nonviolent demonstrations has escalated, making it more important that international solidarity activists are present to help deter and document the repression from Israeli forces. Additionally, volunteers will accompany farmers and shepherds to deter violence from the Israeli military and settlers. In the South Hebron hills, the army’s designation of large areas as military closed zones will be challenged.
3. The ISM volunteers in the Gaza Strip will continue to accompany Palestinian farmers who frequently face live fire from the army as they work their land in the buffer zone. Volunteers will stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza against the crippling siege and sporadic attacks on the region. Several ISM activists will be joining the Free Gaza Movement’s Hope Fleet that will sail into Gaza’s port at the end of May. International activists will mass on the Egyptian border with Gaza between the 22nd of May and the 14th of June, in an attempt to challenging the ongoing closure and isolation of the people of Gaza. Individuals interested in volunteering with ISM Gaza must have previous experience with ISM in the West Bank.
Come to Palestine to support the Palestinian people in their struggle against occupation. Become an eyewitness to the Palestinian struggle for freedom! ISM volunteers have become better advocates for the freedom and self-determination of the Palestinian people in their home communities. . This summer, support and participate in the Palestinian non-violent resistance to the Occupation by using direct action methods to defend the land of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
***
Israeli occupation forces invade Nil'in village and uproot village olive trees 11 February, 2009 - Video by ISM Palestine
About ISM
Who We Are The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles. Founded by a small group of activists in August, 2001, ISM aims to support and strengthen the Palestinian popular resistance by providing the Palestinian people with two resources, international protection and a voice with which to nonviolently resist an overwhelming military occupation force.
Why ISM? Occupation is not going to be defeated by words alone; occupation, oppression an domination are going to be dismantled the same way they were erected — through people’s action. The Israeli army and the Israeli occupation can be defeated by strategic, disciplined unarmed resistance, utilizing the effective resources Palestinians can mobilize — including international participation.
In April 2002, with help from Palestinians, international activists were able to outmaneuver the Israeli military during two of its biggest military operations, entering and providing support to those trapped inside the Presidential Compound in Ramallah and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. More recently, ISM has supported strong Palestinian-led, nonviolent resistance movements against Israel’s Apartheid Wall in villages like Budrus and Biddu. In these villages peaceful community marches have succeeded in altering the Wall’s path and even stopping Wall construction.
International participation is important for a number of reasons:
1. Protection: An international presence at Palestinian civilian actions can ensure a degree of protection for Palestinians engaged in nonviolent resistance. 2. Message to the mainstream media: The Palestinian struggle is not accurately reported by the mainstream corporate media. The mainstream media portrays Israelis and Palestinians as two equal sides who can’t live together fighting over a piece of land, instead of an Israeli military occupation and a Palestinian struggle for freedom, self-determination and human rights. People from all over the world that join us can reach out to their respective media and help dispel this notion. 3. Personal witness and transmitting information: International civilians joining Palestinians can bear witness and return home to talk to their communities about what is happening. 4. Break isolation and provide hope: The occupation isolates Palestinians and cuts them off from the rest of the world and from each other. International ciivilians coming in, despite restrictions, send a message to the Palestinian community - "we see, we hear and we are with you." Hope that people acting together can change things is a cornerstone of our philosophy and message.
Internationals with the ISM are not in Palestine to teach nonviolent resistance. Palestinians resist nonviolently ever day. The ISM lends support to the Palestinian resistance to the occupation and their demand for freedom through the following activities:
* Direct Action - challenging crippling checkpoints and curfew, confronting tanks and demolition equipment, removing roadblocks, participating in nonviolent demonstrations, accompanying farmers to their fields and protecting families whose homes are threatened with demolition. * Emergency Mobilization - escorting ambulances through checkpoints, delivering food and water to families under curfew or house arrest, assisting the injured or disabled to access medical care and walking children to school. * Documentation - documenting and reporting to local and international media about the daily life under occupation and the countless human rights and international law violations by the Israeli military. Get Involved ISM offers many ways for you to get involved in the struggle for Palestinian freedom. Whether you’re thinking of traveling to Palestine to work with us, or you’d like to work to educate your community about the reality in Palestine, we welcome your involvement.
Structure The ISM is not an organization, but rather a movement which all organizations, groups and/or individuals who agree our principles can join. The ISM is based in Palestine and is led by Palestinians on the ground. Many ISM support groups around the world assist the ISM by dissemenating information, recruiting and training individuals to join us.
To join the ISM in Palestine, you must adhere to the following principles:
1. Belief in freedom for the Palestinian people based on all relevant United Nations Resolutions and international law. 2. Using only nonviolent, direct-action methods, strategies and principles to work towards our goal.
The ISM is non-hierarchical. Actions on the ground are ccoordinated with the larger Palestinian community and moved through a core group of committed activists. The core group is open to all activists, Palestinians or otherwise, who make a commitment to ISM’s work and take on coordinating responsibilities. The ISM uses consensus decision making in all of it’s activities.
Funding International volunteers who join the ISM are responsible for paying their own way and covering all their expenses in Palestine. The ISM does not receive any funding from any state, government or association. We rely on donations from average people all over the world that support peace and the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
Support groups abroad fundraise to help activists who need assistance to come to Palestine. In Palestine, we use our funds to coordinate work on the ground — communications, transportation and legal fees are our major expenditures.
Yoni Goodman, a main animator for Ari Foldman's "Waltz with Bashir" which won a Golden Globe for best foreign film and a nomination for an Academy Award in the same category has illustrated a new film for the Israeli human rights organisation, Gisha, the Legal Centre for Freedom of Movement. The film life of a fictional boy living in the Gaza Strip under the Israeli blockade.
in solidarity, Kim
Gisha - Legal Center for Freedom of Movement calls on the State of Israel to fully open Gaza's crossings and to allow the real victims of the closure - 1.5 million human beings - the freedom of movement necessary to realize their dreams and aspirations. http://www.closedzone.com
Two days ago, R, a close friend and a wonderful fellow international activist from Australia, who I worked with in 2007/2008 in the Occupied West Bank, managed to make it into Gaza. R spent several days waiting at the border waiting to get in before being allowed through.
With her permission, I am sending out an edited version of the email she send myself and her other friends to let us all know she was okay. In it, R, describes the devastation of Gaza and ongoing assaults taking place despite the “ceasefire” supposedly being in place.
In solidarity, Kim
*** Letter from Gaza From R
.... Since then, I've mostly been in Rafah and Khan Younis - following up on stories of devastation and violations of the ceasefire.
It has been a strange time to enter Gaza. There is so much devastation mixed with so much everyday life. Most people just trying to get on with their lives, whilst others sit on the piles of sand and rubble that were once their houses, with nowhere else to go. Re-arranging the rubble to make better seats. "Most days we just sit here in the sun", explained a woman from the Samouni family - who have received a lot of media attention since 29 members of the same family were killed as their houses were destroyed with people inside, but little material assistance. "We don't want to have to go to a neighbour's house. We want our own house".
And whilst many people seem to be coping in a way that is unfathomable to me, recounting their stories for all the journalists and human rights workers who come round, there is so much grief and anger, that, as a foreigner, I magnetise. Not that they are angry with me, but, as a representative of the outside world, which mostly stood by while the Israeli government dealt out their deadly "education" to the Palestnian civilians (educating them not to vote for Hamas; not to allow anyone in their community to resist Israel's occupation and siege), I am an easy outlet for them.
Also, I am witness, apparently, to a level of goods and services that haven't been seen in Gaza for a long time. There are fresh fruits in the markets - Israeli and expensive, but accessible. There is electricity a lot of the time in the places I have been. And water, whilst unsafe to drink from the taps, at least runs. Life seems strangely normal.
It was only last night that I realised this, when visiting the family of a young farm worker who was shot in the neck and killed by Israeli snipers from across the Green Line, whilst he was picking parsley and spinach for a meagre sum of 20 shekels ($6) a day. His mother was trying to explain to us the hardship of their lives. How his father is sick and paralysed. How he has two small children and a young wife left behind. How they have no source of income now. How the one year old baby doesn't crawl properly because they can't feed it well enough. How they had electricity that day, but before that, they were cooking on fires and using kerosene lamps.
This visit came straight after we had been in the village where Anwar was killed - Al Farahin. There it was explained that villagers are drowning economically, as they can't go to their lands near the Green Line. That they've been shot at everyday since the ceasefire. That their radishes are dying from lack of water; that their chickens and pigeons are already dead because it's been so long since they could go to feed them. And even this is not as bad as it was, explained one woman. "We were ready to start eating dirt, and then they stopped the bombing".
A lot of the precarity of the situation here only became real for me when we returned to Rafah last night, to the house that I have been staying in. There was no electricity - hadn't been since the afternoon. And then at 2am, there was a renewed airstrike by the border - about 1 km from here. It sounded much closer. It was only really then that I viscerally understood the oft-repeated cry of so many in Gaza: "Where could we go? There is nowhere that is safe. We would think to go to the school, but they bomb the schools. We would go to the mosque, but they bomb the mosques".
I know a lot of you have expressed worry over my well-being since the war on Gaza started, and were quite relieved to find out I was in the West Bank where there was a relative level of calm. I hope my coming here doesn't cause too much concern. My plan is to be here for ----, before heading to -----, a plan that involves me leaving here in one piece.
Many of you will (hopefully) be pleased to know that this plan also involves me coming home in ----- . I look forward to seeing everyone.
Propaganda, democracy and war: justifying Israel’s war crimes in Gaza (published as Gaza: Propaganda does nothing for peace, indeed) By Kim Bullimore www.palestinechronicle.com
In the midst of Israel’s massacre of more than 800 people in Gaza, including more than 200 children and 100 women, as well as 3000 injured, apologists for Israel’s war crimes have sought to defend the Zionist state. Not only have many of them sought to blame the Palestinian people for Israel’s massacre in Gaza, ignoring the fact that Palestinians have suffered 60 years of non-stop aggression at the hands of the Israeli Zionist state, many of them have also sought to paint Israel as the beacon of democracy and pluralism in order to silence Israel’s critics.
A recent example of this can be found in the article which appeared on January 9 in Australia’s only national newspaper, The Australian. In the article, Propaganda Does Nothing for Peace, Niv Horesh - an Israeli-Australian – seeks, in part, to shut down critics of Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza by regaling us with examples of Israel’s supposed democratic credentials [1]. In the article, Horesh writes, “There are very few countries in the world that would allow demonstrators to denounce their government while hoisting enemy flags in the midst of war. Yet, this is precisely what happened last week in Tel Aviv: not a single Israeli flag was in sight amid hundreds of Palestinian, communist and anarchist banners. Such is the strength of Israeli democracy that not a single incident interrupted the demonstration”.
Protest in Tel Aviv
What Horesh and other Israeli apologists conveniently leave out is that the Israel’s security forces have been dragging in for questioning Palestinian citizens of Israel who have opposed the war, as well Israeli Jewish activists, who have taken a stand against the brutal massacre in Gaza. In the past two weeks, hundreds of Palestinian Israeli and Jewish Israeli activists and citizens opposed to the war have been arrested, jailed and prosecuted for speaking out and taking a stand. According to the Haifa based, Mossawa Centre, which advocates on behalf of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, more than 200 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship alone had been arrested by the Israeli state for demonstrating between December 27 and December 31 [2]. On January 6, Palestinian News Agency, Maan News, reported that the number had increased substantially and that more than 300 Palestinian Israeli youth had been arrested by Israeli police. Maan noted that “the youth had been placed for the most part in administrative detention [detention without charge or trail] or put away on minor charges for short periods of time” [3]
On January 2, this beacon of democracy arrested and jailed for almost three days more than 20 Israeli anti-war demonstrators, who demonstrated outside Sde Dov airbase. The Israel state, claiming that the anti-war demonstrators were a threat to the security of the state, sought to have the three day incarceration extended until the end of legal proceedings, which could take several weeks or months to conclude. The request for the extension, however, was over ruled by the presiding judge [4]
19 activists arrested after blocking entrance to Israeli air force base protesting the killing in Gaza. Tel Aviv, Israel, 2.1.09 Photo by: Yotam Ronen/ Activestills.org
19 activists arrested after blocking entrance to Israeli air force base protesting the killing in Gaza. Tel Aviv, Israel, 2.1.09 Photo by: Yotam Ronen/ Activestills.org
At Haifa University on January 6, hundreds of Israeli Border Police – the Israeli security force that regularly brutalises Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories – stormed the campus, attacked students, arresting 15 anti-war student activists [5] According to students who were at the demonstration more than 250 Border Police attacked the anti-war protest without provocation.
Israeli anti-occupation group, Anarchists Against the Wall, who were recently jointly awarded the Carl Von Ossietzky Human Rights medal in Berlin with the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, have reported that many of their members and supporters, as well as other Israeli anti-occupation activists are being harassed, arrested and had their houses raided by the police as a result of being involved in anti-war activism.
Protest in Haifa
On January 7, in an editorial titled “The Right to Express Protest”, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper noted that “in the last few days, the Shin Bet security service questioned dozens of Arab Israelis, while others were subjected to warnings aimed at deterring them from participating in demonstrations against the Israel Defense Forces operation in the Gaza Strip” [6]. The editorial went onto note that Israeli “security services are using intimidation tactics to prevent legitimate protest against the current campaign [in Gaza].
Just one day after the editorial appeared, Haaretz ran a news article which outlined how four Palestinian citizens of Israel, aged between 19 and 26 years, had been arrested by the Israeli state for holding a demonstration outside the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv. According to the January 8 report, Israeli state prosecutors sought to restrict the movement of the anti-war protesters, saying their protest during a time of war “damages national morale” [7].
Demonstration in Israel against the War
Israel far from being a “beacon of democracy” has sought to harass, intimidate, threaten and brutalise its own citizens, who have spoken out against not only the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories but also the massacre taking place in Gaza. Those who seek to wave Israel’s democratic credentials in the face of those who oppose the mass murder in Gaza of hundreds of civilians ignore this, just as the conveniently ignore the fact that Israel’s current war is a direct result of the refusal of Israel, the USA and the international community, as well the leadership of the Fatah party in Palestine, to accept the democratic will of the Palestinian people.
In 2006, the Palestinian people elected Hamas to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority in what were the most democratic elections ever to be held in an Arab country. In these elections, Hamas won 44% of the vote to Fatah’s 41%, giving them 76 seats of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Since Hamas’ democratic election, however, the Israeli Zionist state sought to put the Palestinian people, in the words of senior Israeli government advisor Dov Weisglass, “on a diet”. In the past three years, Israel has sought to strangle and starve the Palestinian people into submission for their democratic choice, deepening their occupation and initially placing all of the Occupied Palestinian Territories under siege. Israel was only to release its grip slightly on the West Bank, when Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, eagerly took on the role of Israel’s quisling in the territory. In doing so he abandoned completely his people in Gaza to the capricious dictates of the Israeli state.
For the past two years, Israel has been tightening the noose on Gaza, cutting off power, electricity, fuel supplies, medicine and food in the hope it would turn the Gazan population on their democratically elected representatives. When this didn’t work, Israel began its most recent bombing campaigning, killing indiscriminately in order to teach the Palestinian people that “real democracy” - the type that Israel, the US and the international community support - consists of bowing to the dictates of their occupier and oppressor, never defending themselves and dying silently while they are starved, beaten, abused and bombed to death.
Demonstration in Yaffa against the war in Gaza
And for those supporters of Israel, who seemed surprised at Israel’s current behaviour and lament the corrosion of Israel’s democracy as a result of its mass murder in Gaza, it is time to point out to them that Israel’s supposed democratic record during so-called “peace time” is equally appalling. For the past 41 years, “the only democracy in the Middle East” has been engaging in a military dictatorship in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, which suspends indefinitely the right of Palestinian people to democracy and human rights [8]. For the past 41 years, the 5 million Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem have been subject to military law, which allows the Israel state and its military to do whatever it likes, including removing democratically elected officials from office, forbidding the election of trade union officials, as well as being able to control and oversee the election of trade union officials (including being able to demand a list of nominees and removing nominees from running). The very undemocratic Israeli military dictatorship in the Occupied Palestinian Territories can also prohibit the publication of anything political in any medium, including painting, videos, films, poems and novels, whether it pertains to Palestine or not. This same military dictatorship also has the power to prohibit the display of the Palestinian flag and can arrest and detain anyone displaying it and to censor and prohibit what books are utilised by Palestinian schools (in recent years, up to 60 books have been prohibited by the Israeli military and state). In addition, the Israeli security forces can and does use “arbitrary detention” to detain Palestinians indefinitely without charge or trail. Those detained, along with their lawyers, have no right to know what they are charged with or what evidence there is against them.
Under Israel’s military dictatorship in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Palestinian people have no input or democratic protection regarding Israeli military law, including how or why these laws are written, how or why they are implemented, how or when they come into effect. There are also very few avenues for appeal against these laws or for review of them.
Police arrested a resident of east Jerusalem who works as a reporter for an Iranian television station under suspicion of reporting of Israel's entrance into Gaza against standing orders. Photo by Nir Landu/ Activestills.org
Within Israel itself, where supposedly democracy for all prevails, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are systematically discriminated against. Many people are not aware that Israel has no constitution; instead it simply has Basic Laws, which supposedly act a mini-bill of rights. However, these Basic Laws do not explicitly protect the right to equality and Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are regularly discriminated against. Instead as Adalah, the Israeli Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel notes since its creation Israel has never sought to integrate its Palestinian citizens, instead it has treated them “as second-class citizens and excluding them from public life and the public sphere” [9]. In 2001, in a report to the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, Adalah identified more than 20 Israeli laws which result in the systematic and institutionalised discrimination against Palestinian Israelis, including in the areas of education, culture, employment, land, economics and political participation.
In the broader democratic arena, over the years, Israel has also sought to introduce legislation which has restricted the political participation of anyone who does not agree with the “Jewish character” of the Israeli state. Since 1985, when Israel amended its Basic Laws, no political parties or political candidate are able run for political office if they advocate that Israel become a secular, democratic state with equal rights for all its citizens.
The apartheid nature of the Israeli state and its discriminatory and undemocratic policies, which are enacted both inside Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories are regularly and systematically ignored by Israel’s apologists. Instead, they seek to silence critics of Israel’s occupation policies, human rights abuses and war crimes by waving the “democracy” card. A democracy in the modern sense of the word, however, can be defined as a system which guarantees basic human rights for all it citizens, including equal rights in the civil, social, economic and political spheres, while also guaranteeing freedom of speech, expression and assembly and allows religious freedom for all its citizens. To argue that Israel meets these requirements, either in times of war such as now or so-called peace times is nothing short of propaganda. And the one thing that Niv Horesh does get right in his article is that “propaganda does nothing for peace”.
-Kim Bullimore has recently spent 12 months living and working in the Occupied West Bank with the International Women’s Peace Service www.iwps.info . Kim writes regularly on the Palestine-Israel conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action www.directaction.org.au and has a blog at www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
[1] Horesh, N., Propaganda does nothing for peace, The Australian, 9 January, 2009 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24889002-7583,00.html [2] Mossawa Centre http://www.mossawacenter.org/default.php?dp=2&fl=27&lng=3&pg=1 [3] Israeli police arrested 300 Palestinian-Israelis since Gaza attacks began, Maan News, 6 January, 2009 http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=34668 [4] Police arrest 21 left-wing activists protesting Gaza op at Sde Dov IAF base, Jerusalem Post, 2 January, 2009 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1230733142300 [5] Clashes break out between Arab students and police in the Israeli universities, Menassat, Arab Media Network, 8 January, 2009 http://menassat.com/?q=en/alerts/5671-clashes-break-out-between-arab-students-and-police-israeli-universities [6]The Right to Express Protest, Haaretz editorial, 7 January, 2009 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052995.html [7] Edelman, O., (2009) Tel Aviv judge defends right of Arab anti-war protesters, Haaretz, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053790.html [8] Kirshbaum, D.A., (2007) Israeli military oppression and exploitation of Palestinian society in Gaza and the West Bank: How it works. http://www.geocities.com/savepalestinenow/israelmilitaryorders/essays/israelimilitaryordersessay.htm [9] Adalah http://www.adalah.org/eng/backgroundhistory.php
Images from Al Jazeera www.Aljazeera.net and Palestine Chronicle www.palestinechronicle.com
Dear friends, please find below an eyewitness report by Ewa Jasiewicz from the Free Gaza Movement on Israel's bombing of Gaza and the devastation caused. Ewa's article has also been published on Palestine Chronicle www.palestinechronicle.com
The current causalty toll is now 285 dead and more than 900 injured (about half critically).
The Israeli airstrikes, which saw 100 tonnes of bombs dropped across the region took place at 11.30 am (Palestinian time) just as thousands of Palestinian school children were breaking from school to go home, resulting in many of them being killed or seriously injured.
Journalists and human rights activists on the scene at Gaza Hospital are reporting gruesome scenes; shocked families pick through body parts to identify loved ones - amputated bodies are strewn throughout hallways because morgues in the city can no longer accommodate the dead.
Israel has declared Gaza a "special military zone". According to the Palestinian news agency, Maan News: "The classification is one degree below a declaration of total war against an enemy state".
Israel in particular sought to target Palestinian police stations, justifying their attacks and the deaths of civilians by blaming Palestinians for having police and military bases in amongst residental/civilian areas. However, as Ali Abunimah, from Electronic Intifada has pointed out, Palestinian police stations like police stations all over the world [including Israel] are located in civilian areas.
The Israeli media are also reporting that this is the largest number of Palestinians killed in a Israeli military offensive since 1967.
Emergency rallies are being organised across the world to denounce Israel's barbaric massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilians.
Please join the rallies in your cities, or if there is none scheduled as yet, please consider organising one and stand in solidarity with the Palestnian people of Gaza.
Now more than ever we need to raise our voices and say no to Israel military agression and stand up for human rights and justice for the Palestinian people.
in solidarity, Kim www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com
****** Gaza today: 'This is only the beginning' By Ewa Jasiewicz
As I write this, Israeli jets are bombing the areas of Zeitoun and Rimal in central Gaza City. The family I am staying with has moved into the internal corridor of their home to shelter from the bombing. The windows nearly blew out just five minutes ago as a massive explosion rocked the house. Apache's are hovering above us, whilst F16s sear overhead.
UN radio reports say one blast was a target close to the main gate of Al Shifa hospital – Gaza and Palestine's largest medical facility. Another was a plastics factory. More bombs continue to pound the Strip.
Sirens are wailing on the streets outside. Regular power cuts that plunge the city into blackness every night and tonight is no exception. Only perhaps tonight it is the darkest night people have seen here in their lifetimes.
Over 220 people have been killed and over 400 injured through attacks that shocked the strip in the space 15 minutes. Hospitals are overloaded and unable to cope. These attacks come on top of existing conditions of humanitarian crisis: a lack of medicines, bread, flour, gas, electricity, fuel and freedom of movement.
Doctors at Shifaa had to scramble together 10 make shift operating theatres to deal with the wounded. The hospital's maternity ward had to transform their operating room into an emergency theatre. Shifaa only had 12 beds in their intensive care unit, they had to make space for 27 today.
There is a shortage of medicine – over 105 key items are not in stock, and blood and spare generator parts are desperately needed.
Shifaa's main generator is the life support machine of the entire hospital. It's the apparatus keeping the ventilators and monitors and lights turned on that keep people inside alive. And it doesn't have the spare parts it needs, despite the International Committee for the Red Cross urging Israel to allow it to transport them through Erez checkpoint.
Images from Al Jazeera www.Aljazeera.net and Palestine Chronicle www.palestinechronicle.com
Shifaa's Head of Casualty, Dr Maowiye Abu Hassanyeh explained, 'We had over 300 injured in over 30 minutes. There were people on the floor of the operating theatre, in the reception area, in the corridors; we were sending patients to other hospitals. Not even the most advanced hospital in the world could cope with this number of casualties in such a short space of time.'
And as IOF Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenaz said this morning, 'This is only the beginning.'
But this isn't the beginning, this is an ongoing policy of collective punishment and killing with impunity practised by Israel for decades. It has seen its most intensified level today. But the weight of dread, revenge and isolation hangs thick over Gaza today. People are all asking: If this is only the beginning, what will the end look like?
11.30am Myself and Alberto Acre, a Spanish journalist, had been on the border village of Sirej near Khan Younis in the south of the strip. We had driven there at 8am with the mobile clinic of the Union of Palestinian Relief Committees. The clinic regularly visits exposed, frequently raided villages far from medical facilities. We had been interviewing residents about conditions on the border. Stories of olive groves and orange groves, family farmland, bulldozed to make way for a clear line of sight for Israeli occupation force watch towers and border guards. Israeli attacks were frequent. Indiscriminate fire and shelling spraying homes and land on the front line of the south eastern border. One elderly farmer showed us the grave-size ditch he had dug to climb into when Israeli soldiers would shoot into his fields.
Alberto was interviewing a family that had survived an Israeli missile attack on their home last month. It had been a response to rocket fire from resistance fighters nearby. Four fighters were killed in a field by the border. Israel had rained rockets and M16 fire back. The family, caught in the crossfire, have never returned to their home.
I was waiting for Alberto to return when ground shaking thuds tilted us off our feet. This was the sound of surface to air fired missiles and F16 bombs slamming into the police stations, and army bases of the Hamas authority here. In Gaza City , in Diere Balah, Rafah, Khan Younis, Beit Hanoon.
We zoomed out of the village in our ambulance, and onto the main road to Gaza City , before jumping out to film the smouldering remains of a police station in Diere Balah, near Khan Younis. Its' name - meaning 'place of dates' - sounds like the easy semi-slang way of saying 'take care', Diere Bala, Diere Balak – take care.
Eyewitnesses said two Israeli missiles had destroyed the station. One had soared through a children's playground and a busy fruit and vegetable market before impacting on its target.
Images from Al Jazeera www.Aljazeera.net and Palestine Chronicle www.palestinechronicle.com
Civilians Dead There was blood on a broken plastic yellow slide, and a crippled, dead donkey with an upturned vegetable cart beside it. Aubergines and splattered blood covered the ground. A man began to explain in broken English what had happened. 'It was full here, full, three people dead, many many injured'. An elderly man with a white kuffiyeh around his head threw his hands down to his blood drenched trousers. 'Look! Look at this! Shame on all governments, shame on Israel, look how they kills us, they are killing us and what does the world do? Where is the world, where are they, we are being killed here, hell upon them!' He was a market trader, present during the attack.
He began to pick up splattered tomatoes he had lost from his cart, picking them up jerkily, and putting them into plastic bags, quickly. Behind a small tile and brick building, a man was sitting against the wall, his legs were bloodied. He couldn't get up and was sitting, visibly in pain and shock, trying to adjust himself, to orientate himself.
The police station itself was a wreck, a mess of criss-crossed piles of concrete – broken floors upon floors. Smashed cars and a split palm tree split the road.
We walked on, hurriedly, with everyone else, eyes skyward at four apache helicopters – their trigger mechanisms supplied by the UK 's Brighton-Based EDM Technologies. They were dropping smoky bright flares – a defence against any attempt at Palestinian missile retaliation.
Turning down the road leading to the Diere Balah Civil Defence Force headquarters we suddenly saw a rush of people streaming across the road. 'They've been bombing twice, they've been bombing twice' shouted people.
We ran too, but towards the crowds and away from what could possibly be target number two, 'a ministry building' our friend shouted to us. The apaches rumbled above.
Arriving at the police station we saw the remains of a life at work smashed short. A prayer matt clotted with dust, a policeman's hat, the ubiquitous bright flower patterned mattresses, burst open. A crater around 20 feet in diameter was filled with pulverised walls and floors and a motorbike, tossed on its' side, toy-like in its' depths.
Policemen were frantically trying to get a fellow worker out from under the rubble. Everyone was trying to call him on his Jawwal. 'Stop it everyone, just one, one of you ring' shouted a man who looked like a captain. A fire licked the underside of an ex-room now crushed to just 3 feet high. Hands alongside hands rapidly grasped and threw back rocks, blocks and debris to reach the man.
We made our way to the Al Aqsa Hospital. Trucks and cars loaded with the men of entire families – uncles, nephews, brothers – piled high and speeding to the hospital to check on loved ones, horns blaring without interruption.
Hospitals on the brink Entering Al Aqsa was overwhelming, pure pandemonium, charged with grief, horror, distress, and shock. Limp blood covered and burnt bodies streamed by us on rickety stretchers. Before the morgue was a scrum, tens of shouting relatives crammed up to its open double doors. 'They could not even identify who was who, whether it is their brother or cousin or who, because they are so burned' explained our friend. Many were transferred, in ambulances and the back of trucks and cars to Al Shifa Hospital.
The injured couldn't speak. Causality after casualty sat propped against the outside walls outside, being comforted by relatives, wounds temporarily dressed. Inside was perpetual motion and the more drastically injured. Relatives jostled with doctors to bring in their injured in scuffed blankets. Drips, blood streaming faces, scorched hair and shrapnel cuts to hands, chests, legs, arms and heads dominated the reception area, wards and operating theatres.
We saw a bearded man, on a stretcher on the floor of an intensive care unit, shaking and shaking, involuntarily, legs rigid and thrusting downwards. A spasm coherent with a spinal chord injury. Would he ever walk again or talk again? In another unit, a baby girl, no older than six months, had shrapnel wounds to her face. A relative lifted a blanket to how us her fragile bandaged leg. Her eyes were saucer-wide and she was making stilted, repetitive, squeaking sounds.
A first estimate at Al Aqsa hospital was 40 dead and 120 injured. The hospital was dealing with casualties from the bombed market, playground, Civil Defence Force station, civil police station and also the traffic police station. All leveled. A working day blasted flat with terrifying force.
At least two shaheed (martyrs) were carried out on stretchers out of the hospital. Lifted up by crowds of grief-stricken men to the graveyard to cries of 'La Illaha Illa Allah,' there is not god but Allah.
Who cares? And according to many people here, there is nothing and nobody looking out for them apart from God. Back in Shifa Hospital tonight, we meet the brother of a security guard who had had the doorway he had been sitting in and the building – Abu Mazen's old HQ - fall down upon his head. He said to us, 'We don't have anyone but God. We feel alone. Where is the world? Where is the action to stop these attacks?'
Majid Salim, stood beside his comatosed mother, Fatima. Earlier today she had been sitting at her desk at work – at the Hadije Arafat Charity, near Meshtal, the Headquarters of the Security forces in Gaza City. Israel's attack had left her with multiple internal and head injuries, tube down her throat and a ventilator keeping her alive. Majid gestured to her, 'We didn't attack Israel, my mother didn't fire rockets at Israel. This is the biggest terrorism, to have our mother bombarded at work'.
The groups of men lining the corridors of the over-stretched Shifaa hospital are by turns stunned, agitated, patient and lost. We speak to one group. Their brother had both arms broken and has serious facial and head injuries. 'We couldn't recognise his face, it was so black from the weapons used' one explains. Another man turns to me and says. 'I am a teacher. I teach human rights – this is a course we have, 'human rights'. He pauses. 'How can I teach, my son, my children, about the meaning of human rights under these conditions, under this siege?'
It's true, UNRWA and local government schools have developed a Human Rights syllabus, teaching children about international law, the Geneva Conventions, the International Declaration on Human Rights, The Hague Regulations. To try to develop a culture of human rights here, to help generate more self confidence and security and more of a sense of dignity for the children. But the contradiction between what should be adhered to as a common code of conducted signed up to by most states, and the realities on the ground is stark. International law is not being applied or enforced with respect to Israeli policies towards the Gaza Strip, or on '48 Palestine, the West Bank, or the millions of refugees living in camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
How can a new consciousness and practice of human rights ever graduate from rhetoric to reality when everything points to the contrary – both here and in Israel ? The United Nations have been spurned and shut out by Israel , with Richard Falk the UN's Special Rapporteur on Human Rights held prisoner at Ben Gurion Airport before being unceremoniously deported this month – deliberately blinded to the abuses being carried out against Gaza by Israel . An international community which speaks empty phrases on Israeli attacks 'we urge restraint…minimise civilian casualties'.
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet. In Jabbaliya camp alone, Gaza 's largest, 125,000 people are crowded into a space 2km square. Bombardment by F16s and Apaches at 11.30 in the morning, as children leave their schools for home reveals a contempt for civilian safety as does the 18 months of a siege that bans all imports and exports, and has resulted in the deaths of over 270 people as a result of a lack of access to essential medicines.
A light There is a saying here in Gaza – we spoke about it, jokily last night. 'At the end of the tunnel…there is another tunnel'. Not so funny when you consider that Gaza is being kept alive through the smuggling of food, fuel and medicine through an exploitative industry of over 1000 tunnels running from Egypt to Rafah in the South. On average 1-2 people die every week in the tunnels. Some embark on a humiliating crawl to get their education, see their families, to find work, on their hands and knees. Others are reportedly big enough to drive through.
Last night I added a new ending to the saying. 'At the end of the tunnel, there is another tunnel and then a power cut'. Today, there's nothing to make a joke about. As bombs continue to blast buildings around us, jarring the children in this house from their fitful sleep, the saying could take on another twist. After today's killing of over 200, is it that at the end of the tunnel, there is another tunnel, and then a grave?', or a wall of international governmental complicity and silence?
There is a light through, beyond the sparks of resistance and solidarity in the West Bank, '48 and the broader Middle East. This is a light of conscience turned into activism by people all over the world. We can turn a spotlight onto Israel's crimes against humanity and the enduring injustice here in Palestine, through coming out onto the streets and pressurizing our governments; demanding an end to Israeli apartheid and occupation, broadening our call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and for a genuine Just Peace.
Through institutional, governmental and popular means, this can be a light at the end of the Gazan tunnel. -----
Ewa Jasiewicz is an experienced journalist, community and union organizer, and solidarity worker. She is currently Gaza Project Co-coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement.http://www.FreeGaza.org
