Free Gaza Movement Seeks Help

Note: After a lifetime of fighting bigotry I have been called anti-Semite and Jew Hater (at Daily Kos yesterday). Such is the mindset of those dedicated to war and militarism. Stand up for innocent Palestinian families and you are a "Jew hater". [See The Politics of Anti-Semitism for a discussion of this repulsive tactic.]

An effective voice against Israeli militarism is the Free Gaza Movement, a "human rights group that in August 2008 sent the first international boats to land in the port of Gaza in 41 years ... (raising) international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip ... ."

Of course, militarists seeing Palestinians as less-than-human have said the effort to ship aid to starving families is inherently anti-Semitic or sympathetic to terrorists, yada, yada.

It's a lie. Support the Free Gaza Movement.

Israeli Troops: 'Thirst for Blood in Gaza'

Ethan Bronner has what should be a blockbuster in the NYT, excerpted below.

[Shot at right shows Israeli humanism at work, an all too typical photo from the Gaza Strip.]

How long are we going to support this hyper militarism and continuing war crime?

JERUSALEM — In the two months since Israel ended its military assault on Gaza, Palestinians and international rights groups have accused it of excessive force and wanton killing in that operation, but the Israeli military has said it followed high ethical standards and took great care to avoid civilian casualties.

Now testimony is emerging from within the ranks of soldiers and officers alleging a permissive attitude toward the killing of civilians and reckless destruction of property that is sure to inflame the domestic and international debate about the army’s conduct in Gaza. On Thursday, the military’s chief advocate general ordered an investigation into a soldier’s account of a sniper killing a woman and her two children who walked too close to a designated no-go area by mistake, and another account of a sharpshooter who killed an elderly woman who came within 100 yards of a commandeered house.

When asked why that elderly woman was killed, a squad commander was quoted as saying: “What’s great about Gaza — you see a person on a path, he doesn’t have to be armed, you can simply shoot him. In our case it was an old woman on whom I did not see any weapon when I looked. The order was to take down the person, this woman, the minute you see her. There are always warnings, there is always the saying, ‘Maybe he’s a terrorist.’ What I felt was, there was a lot of thirst for blood.”

The U.S. - Israel's Godfather

Noam Chomsky speaks about Gaza, Palestine, and Israel at a meeting in Boston, 1-21-09, filmed by Paul Hubbard at the Palestine Cultural Center for Peace, www.socialistworker.org

Israel Stands Accused

See Sarah Shields in Informed Comment.

Blind support of militarism, Israeli or otherwise, is wrong

Update: Rights group: Israel uses white phosphorus in Gaza
Sunday, January 11, 2009 3:41 PM EST
The Associated Press By JASON KEYSER Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM (AP) — Human Rights Watch said Sunday that Israel's military has fired artillery shells with the incendiary agent white phosphorus into Gaza and a doctor there said the chemical was suspected in the case of 10 burn victims who had skin peeling off their faces and bodies.

This is what Rep. Tammy Baldwin and others are supporting. It's wrong, period.

Reform Dem has an insightful piece out.

Yesterday Representative Tammy Baldwin (D-Madison) voted for a resolution that unconditionally supports Israel's attack on Gaza, and places full blame for both the attack and the resulting civilian deaths on Hamas. The resolution passed overwhelmingly.

The lessons of the Vietnam War, the illegal invasion of Iraq, one can go on, are lost on today's Congress, most strikingly on congressional Democrats.

The thing about war is that it is an utterly destructive act and should be avoided whenever possible, you know?

Most Democrats who voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq know this truism, but voted for the war anyway out of perceived political convenience.

Now Rep. Tammy Baldwin and most Democrats are making the same mistake on Israeli militarism of the same stripe.

Baldwin is a particular disappointment because we know damn well that she knows better but chooses political convenience over the lives of innocent Palestinian families (and actually Israel's long-range security) out of a cynical political calculation.

SOP? Sure, but one expects better out of Baldwin.

Mitchell: Attack on Gaza: U.S. Media Silent - As Israeli Newspaper Raises Doubts

Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, has a great piece discussing the typically deafening silence of the U.S. media vis a vis Haaretz on Israel's crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Check out Mitchell's piece at Huffington.

The moral indignation at Haaretz could not be more dissimilar to the indifference and cowardice of most American politicians and the U.S. corporate media.

Media Blacks Out Israel's Aggression

To listen to corporate American media, Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza, its illegal collective punishment of human beings who live in Gaza, and its illegal ground war do not matter.

The only question is will this ground war cost too much: For Israel?

The same timid, unthinking analysis by the American media that led up to the Iraq War (an illegal war of aggression similarly based upon an array of fabrications and distortions) is on display as the 1,000s of casualties pile up in Gaza.

The United Nations Security Council has scheduled emergency consultations to address Israeli aggression: Its relevancy is, well, less than certain. That the overwhelming number of nations in the world, and the UN itself, condemn Israeli human rights violations thus far has not resulted in any anything approaching substantial influence in this sordid affair.

Recollection of a Bush Imbecility

Considering the Israeli-Arab conflict early in his administration, George W. Bush was warned by Secretary of State Colin Powell that comprehensive American action in the peace process [such as it was] is imperative to prevent the emergence of a more militaristic Israeli foreign policy, and to avoid dire consequences for innocent Palestinians.

Bush's response to the warning was stunning.

As recounted by Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill (O'Neill, The Price of Loyalty, Simon & Schuster; pp 71-72), Bush said, "Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things. ... [and restore 'balance']."

Putting aside the striking ambiguity of Bush's idea of balance and clarity as foreign policy objectives in arguably the most important region in the world, the results of the stupidity of Bush's hands-off-let-Israel-wage-war stance is now on display as just another catastrophe of the Bush administration as the death toll in Gaza mounts.

Let's hope the new Obama administration restores some rationality in foreign affairs.

Pictured below is a Palestinian woman and child at the site of a house damaged by Israeli air strikes on a nearby governmental building, December 30, 2008. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)

Fisk's Sober Analysis on Israeli Brutality

Robert Fisk from the Independent:

We hear the usual Israeli line. General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Israeli army's "research and assessment division" announced that "no country in the world would allow its citizens to be made the target of rocket attacks without taking vigorous steps to defend them". Quite so. But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level.

Yes, Israel deserves security. But these bloodbaths will not bring it. Not since 1948 have air raids protected Israel. Israel has bombed Lebanon thousands of times since 1975 and not one has eliminated "terrorism". So what was the reaction last night? The Israelis threaten ground attacks. Hamas waits for another battle. Our Western politicians crouch in their funk holes. And somewhere to the east – in a cave? a basement? on a mountainside? – a well-known man in a turban smiles.

Israeli Navy attacks Dignity ship in International Waters

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Date : 12-30-2008

(Larnaca, Cyprus, 10:00 am) On Tuesday, December 30, at 5 a.m., several Israeli gunboats intercepted the Dignity as she was heading on a mission of mercy to Gaza. One gunboat rammed into the boat on the port bow side, heavily damaging her. The reports from the passengers and journalists on board is that she is taking on water and appears to have engine problems. When attacked, the Dignity was clearly in international waters, 90 miles off the coast of Gaza.
The gunboats also fired their machine guns into the water in an attempt to stop the mercy ship from getting to Gaza.

As the boat limps toward Lebanon, passengers have been in contact with the Lebanese government who have said the captain has permission to dock and are willing lend assistance if needed. Cyprus sea rescue has also been in touch, and has offered assistance as well. The Dignity clearly flies the flag of Gibraltar, is piloted by an English captain and has a passenger manifest that includes Representative Cynthia McKinney from the U.S. The attack was filmed by the journalists, and the crew and passengers will report on Israel's crime at sea once they arrive in Lebanon.

On board the boat are doctors traveling to this impoverished slice of the Mediterranean to provide badly-needed relief at the hospitals there. The crew and passengers were also hoping to take wounded out for treatment, since the hospitals are not coping. In addition, the Dignity was carrying 3 tons of medical supplies at the request of the doctors in Gaza.

The three physicans on board who were sailing to Gaza are: Dr. Halpin (UK), an experienced orthopaedic surgeon, medical professor, and ship's captain. He has organized humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza on several occasions with the Dove and Dolphin. He is traveling to Gaza to volunteer in hospitals and clinics. Dr. Mohamed Issa (Germany), a pediatric surgeon from Germany is traveling to Gaza to volunteer in hospitals and clinics. Dr. Elena Theoharous (Cyprus), MP Dr. Theoharous is a surgeon and a Member of the Cypriot Parliament. She is traveling to Gaza to assess the ongoing conflict, assist with humanitarian relief efforts, and volunteer in hospitals.

Yet Israel thumbs its nose in the face of maritime law by attacking a human rights boat in international waters and has put all of these human rights observers at risk. At no time was the Dignity ever close to Israeli waters. They clearly identified themselves and the Israeli attack was willful and criminal.
The Dignity is still in international waters, 40 miles off Haifa. Everybody on board is safe at the moment as the boat slowly makes its way to safety in Lebanon.
###

Savage

A Palestinian father of five young girls who were killed in an Israeli air strike mourned as he held his wounded son.
Photo: Mohammed Salem/Reuters

Sickness

From the Electronic Intifida:

Why would Israel bomb a university?

Dr. Akram Habeeb writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine,
29 December 2008

The Islamic University of Gaza, February 2007. (Wesam Saleh/MaanImages)

As a Fulbright scholar and professor of American literature at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), I have always preferred to keep silent about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I always felt that it was my mission to preach love and peaceful coexistence. However, Israel's massive offensive against the Gaza Strip has spurred me to speak out.

Last night, during the second night of Israel's unprecedented attack on Gaza, I was awakened by the deafening sound of intensive bombardment. When I learned that Israel had bombed my university with American-made F-16s, I realized that its 'target bank' had gone bankrupt. Of course Israeli politicians and generals would claim that IUG is a Hamas stronghold and that it preaches terrorism.

As an independent professor, not affiliated with any political party, I can say that IUG is an academic institution which embraces a wide spectrum of political affinities. I see it as prestigious university which encourages liberalism and free thought. This personal point view might seem to be biased; therefore, I would invite anyone who would doubt about my assertions to browse IUG's website and research its history. They would learn about its membership in various international academic institutions, the active role its professors play in scholarly research as well as prizes and research grants they have received.

Why would Israel bomb a university? Israel did not only target my university last night. It also bombed mosques, pharmacies and homes. In Jabaliya refugee camp Israeli bombs killed four little girls, sisters from the Balousha family. In Rafah they killed three brothers, aged 6, 12 and 14. They also killed a mother, along with her one-year-old child from the Kishko family in Gaza City.

These acts made me reflect on some of the commandments given by God to the 'Chosen People:' Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. No one could be chosen by God to annex the land of other people and kill them. Israel made these ethical choices by itself. Israel itself chose to wage its wars to eliminate the indigenous people of Palestine.
- Dr. Akram Habeeb is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the Islamic University of Gaza.

Another Voyage Breaks Through Siege of Gaza

The Free Gaza Movement brings Palestinian fiends medical supplies and high-protein baby formula as the Free Gaza Movement again breaks the siege that Israel denies exists:


(GAZA, 9 December 2008) - The Free Gaza Movement ship ‘Dignity’ successfully broke through the Israeli blockade for the fourth time since August, arriving in Gaza Port (toay).

The ship carried one ton of medical supplies and high-protein baby formula, in addition to a delegation of international academics, humanitarian and human rights workers.

Three earlier missions made landfall in Gaza in August, October, and November through the power of non-violent direct action and civil resistance. The Free Gaza ships are the first international ships to reach the Gaza Strip in over 41 years.

Ewa Jasiewicz, a Free Gaza organizer, journalist, and solidarity worker, pointed out that, ‘Tomorrow is International Human Rights Day, and it's hightime the world turned its rhetoric on human rights into reality. We mounted this mission to give our solidarity to the people of Palestine and to highlight the strangulating conditions Israel causes in besieged Gaza. The inhumane effects of this siege threaten to stunt an entire generation - both in terms of physical and mental growth due to malnutrition, terrorization by bomb attacks, incursions and the use of sonic booms - but also in terms of the generation of students which have won places at academic institutions around the world but cannot fulfill them, and those undermined on the ground in Gaza by a lack of food, medicine, electricity, materials, and the peace and space to make use of them in.’

For over two years, Israel has imposed an increasingly severe blockade on Gaza, dramatically increasing poverty and malnutrition rates among the 1.5 million human people who live in this tiny, costal region. The World Bank recently warned that the entire banking system in Gaza may soon collapse resulting in ‘serious humanitarian implications.’

Already, over eighty percent of Gazan families are dependent on international food aid in order to feed their children.

Lubna Masarwa, another Free Gaza organizer and the current delegation’s leader, pointed out that, ‘The Palestinians of Gaza don't need charity. What they need is effective political action that changes their lives and ends the Occupation. We can't bring electricity to Gaza on our boats. We can’t import freedom of movement or safety. But we can get into Gaza and we are intent to keep coming. We will come again and again and again until the world breaks its silence and we shatter this siege once and for all.’

First-Person Account: Opposing Collective Punishment in Gaza

The macabre and brutal tools of militarism are nothing new.

But the determination of the oppressed in Gaza though seems fresh and innovative.

How many deaths and how much tyranny before Israel decides militarism is not the way forward?

Gideon Spiro reports on his experience breaking the Israeli blockade of Gaza, continuing the mission of bringing medicine and supplies to the besieged people though voyages though the Mediterranean Sea to Gaza this Autumn as part of the Free Gaza Movement's series of ships engaging in direct action and civil disobedience on the high seas.

In Besieged Gaza, a Journal of the Voyage by Gideon Spiro: A Call for civil Disobedience

- Translated for Occupation Magazine by George Malent [Original Hebrew] -

by Gideon Spiro
- 27 October 2008
When Mairead Maguire, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate from Northern Ireland, called me and asked me to join the sea-voyage of the humanitarian delegation from Larnaca (Cyprus) to Gaza to break the Israeli closure and to bring medicine to the besieged city, I answered positively without hesitation.

It was to be the second sea-voyage to Gaza, the first having arrived in August. I oppose the closure of Gaza because it is a collective punishment of a million and a half residents, including babies, children, women and old people, not to speak of sick people whom the siege prevents from getting medicine; a completely innocent population that is suffering because of no crime it has committed.

Therefore I had no difficulty in agreeing to the invitation to be part of the international delegation. I also considered my participation to be important because I am a journalist, whose duty is to report from places to which most people do not have access.I departed early in the morning from Israel to Cyprus, a flight that lasts no more than 45 minutes, and at 8:30 we landed in Larnaca.

After a quick passage through passport control I was in a taxi that took me to the hotel where the delegation was staying.Most members of the delegation had already arrived; I was among the last. The delegation comprised 25 members, and together with the boat’s crew we were 30 people. Its composition was diverse and interesting. Most of them from Europe (Britain, Ireland, Italy), but also from the USA. There was a fair representation of Palestinians, most from the diaspora.

Among the participants was Mairead Maguire, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize from Northern Ireland who, as I have said, initiated my participation, and Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian parliament and former member of the Palestinian unity government.

As a delegation bringing medicine, we also included 4 doctors. The age of the members was very diverse, starting from the 20s up to a doctor from Scotland who is pushing 80.

During the whole trip we were accompanied by a crew from Al Jazeera.

Members of the delegation met for several preparatory discussions, mainly regarding the Israeli government’s announcement that it would not permit the boat to pass. A number of possible scenarios were raised, including how much time the boat could hold up if the Israeli navy barred its route in the open sea.

The food would suffice for three days. After that we would have to go to the nearest port, the preferred option being Beirut. I was already imagining landing in Beirut and what would be awaiting me there, but the Palestinians in the delegation reassured me: don’t worry, nothing bad will happen to you. You are not alone but with the delegation, and we’re all guarantors for each other.

- 28 October 2008
At midday we headed towards the place where the boat was docked. The local media was already waiting for us. Interviews, photographs and leave-taking from the organizers, who remained in Larnaca as liaisons for assistance from shore in case we encountered difficulties during the voyage.

Among those who saw us off was a 12-year-old Palestinian boy in a wheelchair, who had been seriously wounded by the Israeli occupation army’s gunfire. His leg was entirely cut off, and he had arrived in Cyprus with the boats of the first flotilla that returned from Gaza. There is no medical facility in Cyprus that can take care of him and he is waiting to be accepted for treatment in a European country.

The vessel or the boat is in fact a medium-sized yacht from the 1970s, acquired by the Free Gaza Movement which is organizing the entire trip. The yacht was intended for a family of four or five people at the most, but not 30 people. It was indeed crowded. All the space in the yacht up to the last millimetre was taken up for the passengers’ baggage and crates of medicines.

We also took a megaphone with us, in case our way should be blocked by the navy, and I was assigned the task of addressing the sailors in Hebrew and explaining to them that blocking our way would violate international law and that it was an illegal order that they were obliged to refuse to carry out.

We left the marina at 5 PM. The crowding did not affect the good atmosphere among members of the delegation. Before sleeping, we arranged sitting-places. But at night, the yacht looked like a refugee boat. Everyone grabbed whatever place they could and tried to sleep. It was not easy. It was not a large boat, and it was unstable even when the sea was not particularly stormy. Every trip to the toilet, especially at night, practially required the skills of a contortionist in order not to step on those who were sleeping, and moreover walking involved losing one’s balance because of the fluctuations of the boat, and everyone was knocked around a little as a result of the tipping. Some suffered from seasickness and vomited their guts out. And there were also those who managed to sleep for several hours.

A night sail in the Mediterranean Sea in a small boat with very limited lighting is a unique experience. Complete darkness all around, clear skies and stars lighting the cosmos.

- 29 October

With the dawn we were approaching the coast of Gaza. Someone sees vessels of the Israeli navy on the horizon. I was the pessimist in the group and thought that we would be stopped. I lost a bet on that with Greta Berlin, one of the leaders of the organization that had taken the initiative to break the closure. We receive a radio communication from the Israeli coast: what is the name of the boat? How many are you? What is your port of destination?

The captain replies: Gaza, and the reply: thank you and shalom. The way is free, no one stops us, and there is much joy among members of the delegation.

The naval vessels remain at a distance from us. I was happy about losing the bet. I said to my friends in the delegation that contrary to expectations, the Israeli government was behaving with wisdom this time, someone in the ruling circles there understood that to detain in the open sea a boat that is bringing medicines and a delegation including a Nobel Peace Prize laureate would give Israel a bad reputation all over the world. Definitely a pleasant surprise.

After 15 hours of sailing we approach the Gaza coast. Palestinian fishermen blow their horns and cheer at us. At 8:30 in the morning we docked. On the shore dozens of television cameramen were waiting for us. Dozens of Palestinian police were on the scene. As soon as we docked armed police approached in order to prevent any unauthorized person from boarding the boat. We went on shore and got a warm reception from everyone.

'Welcome' was heard again and again. As we were about to arrive at Gaza, I experienced a certain degree of stress. I did not know how I would be received by the Gazans in the knowledge that I am Israeli. The surprise was total.

Not only was I warmly welcomed everywhere I went, but I received repeated requests for interviews. Gaza, I learned during my stay there, contains scores of TV camera operators. Some of them represent famous international channels, others are freelancers who hope to sell their product to a TV station, whether in Gaza or in the Arab world.

In all the interviews I was asked: what is my message to the people of Gaza? My reply was: my message to Gazans and Israelis is identical: don’t shoot, talk; and I added that the closure is a crime, the collective punishment of innocents. I am not the only Israeli who opposes the closure; there are many others like me. We are neighbours and must learn to live together with mutual respect and respect for human rights. A precondition for all that is the end of the Occupation. I got the impression that the words fell on receptive ears. I also emphasized in all the interviews that there must be an exchange of prisoners between Israel and the government of Gaza. That is a confidence-building measure. That too was welcomed.

After we got off the boat, and after the members of the delegation finished being interviewed, which lasted a not insubstantial length of time, we got onto a bus that the government of Gaza put at our disposal during our tour in Gaza. The bus had known better days, but no one complained, for we knew that it was a consequence of the siege. They treated us as very important guests. The bus was always escorted by police cars with flashing lights and sirens which took care to clear the way for us. Security people travelled with us and guarded us to make sure nothing bad would befall us. I have never felt more secure.

Our first stop was the Marna House hotel. The hotel manager Basil Shawwa gave us a warm and courteous welcome. The hotel has a beautiful courtyard that serves as a restaurant and a cafי. Every two members of the delegation received a room. The rooms were large, there was a TV (which I did not succeed in turning on, maybe because of my general incompetence with remotes) and a bathroom. The hardships were manifest in small things, the flow of water was not always adequate and such things as that, but we always received extremely courteous service. After we deposited our bags in the rooms and drank a cup of coffee, we got on the bus for a visit to the Shifa hospital. In the hospital we were received by the Health Minister, Dr. Basim Naeem. As would be the procedure in subsequent visits, we first assembled to hear a report on the place and its hardships. Naturally the closure and the siege played a starring role in all the lectures as the primary reason for the great distress that was everywhere in evidence. The Shifa hospital is the biggest of the Palestinian hospitals. A complex with several buildings. After the ceremony of handing over the medicines that we had brought, we toured the various departments, cancer, radiology and others. My layman’s impression is that the hospital is making efforts to give as much as it can to the patients, but that is not enough. We saw this in every department: it would be possible to give much better and more efficacious care were it not for the closure and the shortage of medicines.

After it became known that one of the members of the delegation was Israeli, a man wearing a jalabiyya approached me, and in fluent Hebrew requested that I help him to transfer his brother, who is a cancer patient, to Israel. The man is Ismail Yusuf Abu-Zor, who worked for years in renovations in Tel-Aviv. He said to me with much emotion, look what the closure is doing to us, it kills sick people. His brother, Muhammad Yusuf Abu Zor, is sick with blood cancer and the doctors at Shifa recommended that he receive treatment in Israel. There is a chance that he will recover if he receives appropriate treatment. But the cruel closure does not permit that, and few succeed in crossing the seven circles of Hell of the Israel Security Agency [ISA, also known as Shin Bet or Shabak – trans.], which determines who will live and who will die, and in most cases it sentences patients to death for 'security reasons', and Ismail is bursting with frustration. I explained to him that I do not have the right connections to the ISA, that I am here because of my opposition to its policy. I told him about the organization Physicians for Human Rights in Israel which perhaps can be a life-line for him.

The attending physician in Gaza has connections with the organization and we hope that he can help. From the cancer department we passed on to the MRI machine. The doctors inform us that the machine is only partially functional because Israel does not permit the passage of additional parts that would permit it to be fully exploited. Another example of the wickedness and evil that are at the base of the closure which harms patients who need the machine. The hospital has set aside two rooms for a modest museum that is dedicated to the consequences of Israel’s bombing.

The museum contains mainly pictures of citizens who have been harmed by the bombs, including children and women, certainly not a combatant population, and also tables on which fragments of Israeli bombs and missiles are displayed.

The museum is impressive due to its very modesty. Not the splendour and the technology of Yad Vashem (Israel’s official Holocaust Museum), but it clearly demonstrates the hellish consequences of the Israeli bombardments.

As an Israeli I felt the unpleasant feeling that comes over Germans who visit Yad Vashem. In order to avoid any misunderstanding, I would like to emphasize that I am not equating the bombing of Gaza to the Holocaust; only expressing the feeling of discomfort that afflicts the visitor who comes from the country that has committed the crime.

From the hospital we returned to the hotel for lunch. Not a gourmet meal at a fancy Tel Aviv restaurant, but definitely a tasty and satisfying meal. At the end of the meal we received an announcement from the organizers that our agenda had been changed a little because the Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, wanted to meet the delegation.

The Prime Minister’s office is in a villa at the end of a quiet street. At the entrance to the premises stood two policemen, who saluted the delegation. What impressed me was the simplicity of entering the building, compared to the practice in Israel. No checking of bags, no machines to detect metal, no guards scanning the visitor’s body with metal-detectors, no need to empty our pockets. The whole time I was thinking to myself: there is an Israeli in the delegation. But they did not discriminate against me; I did not undergo a more rigorous inspection. Comparison to the Israeli practice cannot be avoided. When any delegation, no matter how friendly, meets with the Prime Minister in Israel, its members have to undergo a very strict inspection, and if it includes an Arab, he will be separated and humiliated by a series of inspections reserved for Arabs only.

The Prime Minister’s office is definitely impressive. In the reception room the government ministers stood in a line. Each of us shook hands with the ministers until we reached Haniyeh, a man of large dimensions, wearing a suit but not a tie. I introduced myself by name and the country I came from, added a few words in condemnation of the closure and I expressed the hope that there would soon be an exchange of prisoners between the two sides, and he replied, inshallah [Arabic expression meaning 'If Allah wills'].

Not for nothing was the reception room full of photographers. The Gaza government had planned a ceremony in the full sense of the word.

Ismail Haniyeh [ Hamas leaders in Gaza] spoke first. He highly praised the delegation’s members, called them heroes who had risked their lives, and he offered Palestinian citizenship to each one of us. The Palestinian people, he continued, is a people that loves peace and justice, but they will not waive their legitimate rights. He did not mention Israel by name, but spoke of the Occupation and the occupiers that deprive the Palestinians of their rights, and as long as it continues, the resistance too will continue.

We are not against the Jews, he said, and in fact there is a Jew in the delegation – he said while facing in my direction – but against the Occupation and the occupiers that are depriving the Palestinian people of their basic rights.

Gaza is a place that is tolerant of all religions, and as evidence of that he pointed in the direction of the Catholic priest of Gaza who was present. Some members of the delegation spoke after Haniyeh.

The first was Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, who as we have said is a member of the Palestinian parliament and formerly a minister in the national unity government. Barghouti, a secularist who heads the Palestinian National Initiative, received much honour because he refused to be a part of Abu Mazen’s government (which he criticizes harshly as collaborating with the Israeli Occupation and to which he referred in conversation with me as a 'Pיtain government').

He called for Palestinian unity and Haniyeh jumped in and invited him to participate in a session of the government in Gaza. Barghouti replied something that caused much laughter, but was not translated into English (my guess: 'I have enough problems, and now you want to get me into more trouble?'). This is what is known as a 'bear-hug'.

Other members of the delegation also spoke, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, who condemned the closure and stressed the importance of non-violent struggle. The problems that must be dealt with in the conflict between the two peoples are difficult and complex, but the peace accord in Northern Ireland proved that even protracted and difficult conflicts can be resolved by negotiations, and she expressed the hope that Israeli-Palestinian peace would be achieved to the benefit of both peoples.

After the speeches, Ismail Haniyeh presented each member of the delegation with a scarf in the colours of the Palestinian flag and a gilt medallion on which was printed a map of Palestine with Gaza outlined in red with the words 'Free Gaza' in Arabic and English.

At the end of the ceremony we accompanied the entire entourage of ministers and other VIPs to another room where light refreshments were awaiting us, cans of non-alcoholic drinks and cakes.

After the ceremony, I tried my luck with the issue of the captive Gilad Shalit. I turned to the Catholic priest, a short-statured man with a full body, wearing a beret, who smiled a lot and exchanged words with everyone, and I got the impression that he was an insider on the Gazan political scene.

I approached him, introduced myself, and told him about my desire to meet Gilad Shalit [Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas since]. I told him that it was important that Shalit meet during his captivity with an Israeli from the Israeli peace movement, and hear about the circumstances of his long captivity from the lips of a man who opposes the policies of the government of Israel. He thought it was an excellent idea.

I asked him whom I should speak to among the present public figures, and he pointed to the Health Minister as one who is very close to Haniyeh. The Health Minister was a kind of half-acquaintance, for we had met that morning during the visit to the Shifa Hospital, and I had exchanged a few words with him there. That made my mission a little easier. I turned to the Minister and requested to meet with Gilad Shalit.

I repeated the reasons I had mentioned to the priest. I told the Minister that I was aware of the sensitivity of the subject, and I was prepared to be taken to the place of captivity with my eyes blindfolded, to be uncovered only in the room where Gilad Shalit is located, and for the conversation between us to be in the presence of one of his captors who speaks Hebrew, so that nothing would be hidden.

The Minister did not reply in the negative, only said that this is a very complex issue, but he promised to look into it and give me an answer the next day. To my regret it did not work out.

From conversations with people of lower rank, I understood that there are very few people who know where Shalit is located, and the main reason why visits are not permitted (for example by representatives of the Red Cross) stems from the fear that Israel, with its technological superiority, could trace the route of the visitors and thereby find the place where he is being held.

Paradoxically, it can be said that Hamas wants to keep Gilad alive at all costs, and to prevent Israel from carrying out a military rescue operation that could cause his death, as happened with Nahshon Waxman [the Israeli soldier killed after being abducted by Hamas in October 1994], who was captured ('kidnapped' in the language of the Establishment that has been adopted by the media), and whose place of captivity was found.

Instead of conducting negotiations for an exchange of prisoners they sent a military unit to 'liberate' him, and in consequence, Waxman was killed with his captors and during the action another Israeli soldier was killed.

In other words, as things look from Gaza, Gilad will be freed only as a result of negotiations in which Israel will accede to Hamas’ demand that it free prisoners, or he will not be released at all. (Until, God forbid, he evaporates like the navigator Ron Arad).

To the government of Israel, Gilad Shalit is no longer a soldier who must be liberated in an agreement for exchange of prisoners, but merchandise on which the price-tag is too high. Thus does the government betray its soldiers.

In the evening we met with civil society, which is composed of various organizations the greater part of which are secular in orientation. In the room we saw pictures of Dr. Haidar Abd al-Shafi, a physician by training, among the foundation-stones of the secular Palestinian left.

In the Second World War he fought against the Nazis in the desert army that the British army set up. He was among the founders of the PLO, he founded the Palestinian Red Crescent, was an interlocutor of the Israeli left and the head of the Palestinian-Jordanian delegation at the Madrid Conference (1991).

He supported the two-state solution but opposed the Oslo Accords because they circumvented the issue of the settlements. Of course he was a strong opponent of the Israeli occupation from the beginning, and he was exiled several times from his home in Gaza, once to Sinai, another time to Lebanon, but he always returned to his home in Gaza. He died in 2007 at age 88. There is no doubt that Dr. Haidar Abd al-Shafi is the political polar opposite of the Hamas regime.

But the circumstances under which we met with the civil society did not permit a serious discussion of the problems of Palestinian society. The closure and its problems cast their shadow over everything. Left and right suffer together and resist together, the main message at the meeting with the guests from abroad was: lift the closure.

One of the civil society leaders is Dr. Mona El-Farra, a veteran Palestinian secular and feminist activist, with whom I talked a little in the evening at the hotel. She is a fervent supporter of a secular democratic state for the two peoples. If a two-state solution cannot be avoided, then she sees it as a transitory stage to the single state. Since we’re already talking about vision, I said to her, let us dream of a free democratic and secular Middle East. The idea definitely appealed to her. There is no doubt that the Hamas regime and the Israeli closure are not the optimal environment for secular and democratic political activism, but it is clear that she and her comrades are active in grassroots organizing among the population.

- 30 October 2008

In the morning we set out for a tour of the Strip, on our way to the Jabaliya refugee camp and Beit Lahiya. The traffic on the streets of Gaza is conspicuous for its absence. The guide who accompanied us told us that we were now travelling on the main street of Gaza, a road usually packed with traffic, but the results of the Israeli closure that had drastically reduced the supply of petroleum transferred to Gaza are clearly visible. There are hardly any walls without slogans written on them, some of them political, not just Hamas, but mostly so, and some of them praise the martyrs who fell in battle for Gaza. The route to Jabaliya goes by partially-paved roads and others that are still sand roads full of holes and puddles. The guide explained to us that it was all a consequence of a shortage of construction materials. Buildings that had begun to be constructed and roads that had begun to be paved, all stopped due to the closure which keeps construction and paving materials out of Gaza.

The sides of the roads are full of garbage, junk, and suchlike devastation. The regime is not free at the moment to clean the streets and collect garbage. Most energy is devoted to survival, both that of the regime and of the residents. The refugee camp, home to over a hundred thousand people, is a very congested place. Houses touch houses, some of the streets are very narrow and the bus has difficulty maneuvering between the parked and moving cars.

As things look from the moving bus the traffic seems to be heavier in the camp, the shops are open but the merchants sit outside awaiting customers. We are on our way to Beit Lahiya and from there to the point nearest to the Israeli border.

We got off the bus and found ourselves with a small group of demonstrators, most of them youths, some of them children, waving flags, yelling and chanting slogans against Israel and the closure. Photographers accompanied us the whole time. We walked towards a demolished house, the house of a farmer near the Israeli border that was destroyed by one of the bombs.

Not far off a heavily-fortified position of the Israeli army was visible. Speeches were given which I did not understand but the contents of which I could guess. Michele Giorgio, the Middle East correspondent for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto, asked me how I felt here, facing an Israeli army position, in the midst of a Palestinian demonstration against Israel? I replied to him that undoubtedly it is not a comfortable position, but I came to Gaza because I oppose the closure, and that is my message to the Palestinians as an Israeli and as a citizen of the world, even here in front of the Israeli army.

On our way back to Gaza, we stopped at the Jabaliya camp in order to visit the community centre. At the entrance to the building we were welcomed by a group of young men and women who were waiting for us, dressed in traditional costumes. A secular hand had left its imprint on this centre, which among other things was manifest in the fact that we shook hands with the young women – usually not the practice in a very religious Muslim society. In the centre we received a crash course on the situation in Gaza by means of a projector and the explanations of the director.

Most of the facts were known to me, for example that this is the most densely-populated place in the world and that Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into the biggest prison in the world, but I also learned one or two new things, for example, that the birthrate in the Strip is 5.7 per woman, which the speaker pointed out with pride. I thought to myself that that is not a cause for celebration, because societies in which the birthrate is high are usually also societies that suffer from poverty and underdevelopment. After the lecture the community centre’s dance troupe, boys and girls together, performed dabke dances for us, into the circle of which most members of the group were drawn. At the end of the artistic segment we got onto the roof of the building where the children drew a large mural, and each of us was asked to sign our name on the drawing.

Before our departure we received an album of photos of Gaza, which, if we did not know where we were and the circumstances under which we had gone there, might have given the impression that Gaza was one of the most beautiful touristic and recreational places in the Middle East, if not the world, for truth to tell, Gaza has the potential for tourism, if only peace would come. We proceeded to a rehabilitation centre. A new and well-equipped building, contributed from abroad. There children and youths wounded by Israel’s bombing undergo rehabilitation. Most of them had serious disabilities as a result of loss of limbs.

All of them sat in the hall in wheelchairs. I felt ashamed to be Israeli. This visit, like all the previous ones, was accompanied by speeches, and they were not pleasant to the Israeli ear, for the consequences of the bombings were displayed before us in their full ugliness. It was one of those moments when solidarity and compassion come very close together.

At the end of the visit the delegation received a large map of historical Palestine as it existed before the birth of the State of Israel.

- Return to Israel

I took leave of the group in the afternoon, on my way to the Erez checkpoint. I was compelled to leave a day and a half before the others because of a previous commitment to participate in a symposium on Friday 31 October 2008 that was organized by the Committee Against Torture at Artists’ House in Tel Aviv as part of the events around the exhibition 'Silence over the abyss'.

Those who were responsible for the group immediately arranged for a police car to take me to the Erez checkpoint. It was the scariest ride of my life. The driver drove through the narrow streets of Jabaliya at an insane speed, and the siren was operating non-stop as if they were transporting a head of state for whom the route had to be cleared. Beside the driver sat an armed policeman, and another one sat beside me in the back seat, lest, God forbid, any harm befall me.

We arrived at the last point to which Gazan vehicles are allowed to go, I thanked the policemen for their services, and proceeded on foot to the Erez checkpoint.

Between the last Palestinian point and the Israeli checkpoint there is a zone devoid of humanity for about a kilometre or two, which must be crossed on foot. While the official policy is 'not to talk to Hamas”' the reality is that they talk to it all the time. The last Palestinian inspection point reports to the ISA at Erez on every person who is about to arrive, in my case as well.

After I crossed the demilitarized zone I arrived at the entrance gates of Erez. A small group of people were already waiting there, most of them journalists and UN people and a few Palestinians, and me, the only Israeli. The doors to the “inspection palace” (and indeed they have built a structure of impressive dimensions) were sealed and all the area was surrounded by a mighty wall which conveys the message that only an atom bomb could destroy it.

Suddenly a Palestinian approached me and handed me his cellular telephone to talk to somebody from Israeli security. The Palestinian worked at the place under orders from the ISA, which instructs him whom to let in and who must return to Gaza. The anonymous voice asked me my name, my ID card number (pure bureaucracy, they already knew everything from the information that had been transmitted to them from the Palestinian inspection point) and hung up.

A few more minutes passed and the Palestinian (who was anonymous to me – there was no time to start a conversation) asked me to accompany him to one of the steel doors which opened like in a James Bond movie. I found myself in a vast hall, full of electric doors and electronic inspection cubicles.

The Palestinian worker asked me to open the zipper of my suitcase and put it on a conveyor belt that undoubtedly transported it to a sealed room made of reinforced concrete in case there was a bomb in it. That was the last time I saw a flesh-and-blood human being in that vast inspection hall. From that point I was addressed by means of loudspeakers like in Big Brother, but here it was not a TV game, but more like 1984 than George Orwell’s book.

The anonymous voice from the loudspeaker constantly gives me instructions. Enter by the door on the right when the green light is lit, then enter the inspection cubicle, spread your legs and put them on the foot marks impressed on the floor, raise your hands, take everything out of your pockets and hold it in your hand. A machine scans me all over, 360 degrees.

I exit the cubicle and then the voice tells me to enter the door on the right (or to the left facing me) on which there is a green light and I find myself again in a locked and sealed area awaiting the next order. I wait and wait and then the voice instructs me to open another door. I look for it.

The voice sees all, and tells me not there; to the left (or to the right facing me, it depends where you’re standing) and after a process of trial and error I find the door and lo, I am in the baggage-inspection room and I see people again, thank God. Now comes baggage-inspection stage. I am permitted to watch the inspection, but at a distance more than an arm’s length. The female inspector wears white gloves and goes through each item. Every sock, all underwear undergo a meticulous inspection lest explosives be concealed in them. Even my medications are inspected one by one, as if she knows what they are. (How is it that there is no pharmacist or doctor on the premises who can verify which medications are legitimate and do not contain explosives? Such laxity!)

The inspector informs me that she will take the suitcase for an additional inspection without my presence. I protest and request to be present, but the officer responsible for security informs me that that is the procedure. I protest and tell him that just as you do not believe me I do not believe you, maybe you will plant something incriminating, and the reply – typically Israeli – was: 'don’t worry'. Blessed be he who always worries, I tell him. You have the power, and the fact is I have no real option to resist apart from verbally.

The suitcase is taken for that secret inspection. While I was waiting for my suitcase to return from the secret inspection, the security officer approached me and informed me that I must return to the body-search hall where they spoke to me, as I said before, through a loudspeaker. What happened? What more is there to check after they scanned me from all directions? 'Supplementaries' he calls it. And so I find myself once again in that inspection cubicle, spreading my legs and raising my hands, but this time, upon completion of the additional scan, I am taken to another sealed room where I am asked to strip down to my underwear.

'Big Brother' orders me to put the clothes into a scanning machine. Of course they found nothing suspicious. But that was not enough. In the twisted brain of the ISA at Erez, maybe I had swallowed an unexploded Israeli cluster-bomb unit, which the Palestinians wanted to return to Israel my means of me, and so a security inspector came into the room, equipped with a metal detecting device which he passed over my naked body. Nothing incriminating was found. After the inspection I was permitted to get dressed.

With my clothes – which had been suspect until a moment ago – now on my body, I wait for the instruction from the loudspeaker to open the steel door and again find myself in the baggage inspection hall. What was the purpose of the additional body search? In my opinion it was intended for humiliation only.

They treated me like a suspect Palestinian. I am filled with hate for the harassment, the harassers and those who came up with the idea for that course of humiliation. If that is how I feel after a single inspection, it is not hard to imagine what Palestinians feel who undergo that measure of humiliation, which has nothing to do with the security of the State, hundreds of times.

Maybe here can be found one of the sources of willingness to carry explosive belts or pipe bombs. The conclusion of the security orgy was stage 1 of my return to Israel. My passport was transferred to immigration control, but it was not stamped, and so in that sense I am still outside Israel. My passports were transferred to the border station police post. I have more than one passport, including a World Citizen passport, which was produced by an organization that believes in a world without borders according to which all humanity are citizens of the globe.

That passport aroused the suspicions of the ISA people and they photographed it several times. As I learned later, they transferred it to the police with a note indicating that they suspected that it was a falsified document.

For the ISA people at the Erez checkpoint a World Citizen is a suspicious thing, for in their world-view, which is as small as an ant, whoever wants to live in a world without borders is at least a forger if not worse. I was asked to wait in the departure lounge where I sat for about an hour.

Suddenly I hear a policeman shouting from the other end of the hall 'Sapiro (thereby mispronouncing my name), come here'. I rebuked him for the way he addressed me. The last time anybody talked to me like that was when I was an army recruit 55 years ago.

I was transferred to another policeman, who informed me that I would now be transferred to the Sderot police station for questioning. My passports were in his hand. Bravo for the police, which sent a special vehicle to transport a perpetrator from a well-known crime family directly to the police questioners. I arrived at the Sderot station at nine in the evening in full police glory, and I was led to the investigator on duty.

The policeman who transported me gave the investigator the passports as well as the ISA note according to which the World Citizen passport was suspected to be fake.

The investigator, Command Sergeant Meir Abergil, read me the accusation, the main point of which was that I had violated a military order that bars Israeli citizens from entering the Gaza Strip. I am not obliged to say anything, but anything I say may be used against me. If I say nothing, that too will be considered against me. I am entitled to consult with a lawyer before the interrogation begins. The investigator strikes me as businesslike, and he does not make a fuss, which is a pleasant surprise.

I waived my right to consult with a lawyer. Even though I face what is formally a criminal offence, in reality it is a political investigation, and I have lots of experience with those.

My policy is always to talk and to elaborate so much that sometimes my testimony turns into a political speech; and who knows, maybe it will even influence the investigator. I do not intend to report on all my testimony, which lasted more than an hour. It is already late and besides, this report has stretched out longer than planned.

In essence, I focused on the fact that I had been invited to participate in a delegation as a journalist and also as a person who is known as an activist and opponent of the Occupation and the closure.

It is the duty of a journalist to be in places where other citizens have difficulty going. Regarding the military order: it is not clear to me that it applies universally, and certainly there are situations in which it does not apply. If I were returning after having met Gilad Shalit I certainly would not be investigated but rather welcomed very warmly.

Therefore the application of the order derives from political considerations which are necessarily arbitrary. I explained to my questioner that for the purposes of the investigation I declare that I visited Gaza, not just as an Israel but as a citizen of the world who opposes collective punishment of the kind that Israel is imposing on Gaza.

I elaborated on my explanations, that not only is my World Citizen passport not fake but it expresses a humanistic and democratic world view. I got the impression that that point persuaded the investigator to agree that it was not a falsified document, but the edict of the ISA is stronger than any logical explanation, so the passport remained with the police for 'verification'. (On 12 November the Sderot police informed me that there was no reason the passport could not be returned to me. I asked them to send it to me, but the investigator insisted that I go to pick it up personally, and so I was bullied into going once again from Tel Aviv to Sderot).

At the end of the interrogation I was released on bail, with a commitment not to visit Gaza in the next 30 days. I got home near midnight. The second part of my return to Israel was over.

The next day, according to plan, I participated in the symposium at Artists’ House in Tel Aviv.

- In conclusion

I am full of satisfaction that I had the honour of being part of the humanitarian delegation that set out on the second voyage to break the Israeli closure of Gaza. (My friend Jeff Halper, chairman of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, participated in the first voyage).

Aid for a million and a half besieged human beings outweighs any military order. And besides: in a democratic state, generals do not give orders to civilians. Another example of how Israel is not a normal democracy.

In Gaza I found people who yearn for peace. If I may be permitted to use a somewhat flowery expression: they thirstily drank my messages of peace, which of course were not just mine but spoke for a large constituency in Israel, even if it is not a majority, it is still a great many people. The closure affects everything. There is no aspect of civil life in Gaza that is not affected by it, and of course those who suffer worst are the sick, especially babies and children.

In the Gaza Strip there is no hunger of the type that is seen in parts of Africa, but there is great hardship, and we do not have to wait until the situation gets to such a low point.

The Hamas regime is a concrete political fact, at least at this stage. The refusal to talk to it is reminiscent of the old refusal to talk to the PLO. It was not wise then and it is not wise today. The impression that I got was that there are people to talk to and there is something to talk about. I have no doubt that Israeli gestures such as lifting the closure would be more fruitful – including on the Gilad Shalit issue – than a continuation of Israel’s policy of force would be.

These days it is becoming clear that the Defence Minister has gotten tired of the calm that has been respected by the Hamas regime, and has decided on baseless grounds to return to the language of missiles, bombs and raids. As usual, the military correspondents have acted as an extension of the IDF Spokesperson’s office and they have justified the violation of the calm by the Israeli invasion army. During the two very full days I spent in Gaza, I also succeeded in making several acquaintances with impressive people, and I hope to strengthen my ties with them.

My sojourn in Gaza did not turn me into a Hamas supporter, for as a secular person I oppose all religious fundamentalism, whatever form it takes. There are many Israelis who believe that the internal Palestinian rift that the Israeli Occupation encourages and to a great extent creates is good for Israel. That is the short-term wisdom of fools.

The Palestinian people must be permitted to choose their own path free of the shackles of the Occupation. I call on peace-loving Israelis who oppose the closure to implement Nobel Peace Prize laureate Reverend Martin Luther King’s principles of civil disobedience.

The appeal is directed mainly to retirees in their 60s and 70s whose health permits them to sail from Cyprus to Gaza. The youth among us, like the brave Occupation refusers who are sitting in military prisons, are implementing civil disobedience with their refusal to enlist in the Occupation army.

We retirees can fulfill a similar role by breaking the closure of Gaza. The Gazans warmly welcomed those who went. The greater the number of people who refuse to obey the military order, the harder it will be to put them on trial. It will be difficult for the State to jail scores and maybe hundreds of old people who tell the regime: any law that forbids us to express solidarity with suffering people through non-violent action is patently illegal

US Activist Detained in Israeli Jail, Condemns Gaza Blockade

Update: BBS: One Gaza border crossing opened temporarily

Kidnappings, killings, terrorism, piracy, employment of the tools of militarism; all of this is kind of a downer after the election of president-elect Obama.

Bear in mind that these deplorable actions described and committed against real, living human beings are being done by arguably America's closest ally: Israel.

[Pictured above is Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, Nobel peace prize laureate, who was part of the recent second breaking of the siege of Gaza, by the Free Gaza movement Ship Dignity.]

It's a story attracting scant attention in the American press, as Israel's blockade of over one million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continues obstructing food, fuel and other humanitarian supplies from entering an area Israel decided to cordon off from the world.

Darlene Wallach, an American peace activist, remains jailed in the Masiyahu Prison near Tel Aviv, arrested days ago for fishing off the shores of the Gaza coast that Israel denies is under blockade.

The Free Gaza Movement, a group dedicated to breaking "the siege of Gaza .... (and raising) international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip, ... (and upholding) Palestine's right to welcome internationals as visitors, human rights observers, humanitarian aid workers, (and) journalists," maintains its mission to break the blockade and bring attention to the routine Israeli kidnappings, killings, and terrorism of innocent Palestinians and international human rights activists.

Israel is currently blocking all journalists from entering Gaza, a move that has drawn the condemnation of free speech and free press organizations. See Foreign Reporters’ Group Fights Israeli Prohibition on Entering Gaza (NYT).

Unlike many of the huge problems facing the incoming Obama administration, this problem has an easy solution: Halt the billions in annual subsidies to Israel unless it stops its militaristic enterprise in the occupied territories.

As an anonymous writer commenting on Israeli human rights violations wrote a few years back: ‘Israel cannot be half-humanistic and half fascist.”

Democracy Now's Amy Goodman reports:

"Nam, Nehnu Nastatyeh!" Is Arabic for "Yes, We Can!"

Update: Protest boat arrives in Gaza, despite Israel's vow to block it (Barak Ravid, Haaretz)

The Palestinians in Gaza will not stop believing that they are human beings.

By Ramzi Kysia

GAZA CITY, FREE PALESTINE (29 October 2008) - This morning I walked to the Indian Ocean and made salt in defiance of the British Occupation of India.

This morning I marched in Selma, I stood down tanks in Tiananmen Square, and I helped tear down the Berlin Wall.

This morning I became a Freedom Rider.

The Freedom Riders of the 21st Century are sailing small boats into the Gaza Strip in open defiance of the Israeli Occupation and blockade.

This morning I arrived in Gaza aboard the SS Dignity, part of a Free Gaza Movement delegation of twenty seven doctors, lawyers, teachers, and human rights activists from across the world, including Mairead Maguire - the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

When I close my eyes, I still hear the crash of ocean waves, I still feel the warm sun on my face, and I still taste salt from the sea spray. When I close my eyes, I can still see the Israeli warship that tried to intimidate us when we reached the twenty-mile line outside Gaza, and I can still see a thousand cheering people crowding around our ship when we refused to be intimidated and finally reached port in Gaza City.

Today, the proudest boast in the free world is truly, "Nam, Nehnu Nastatyeh!" - "Yes, We Can!"

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, an independent member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, sailed aboard the Dignity, along with six other Palestinians from the West Bank, from 1948/inside the Green Line, and from countries in Europe. What should have been a ninety-minute drive from Ramallah to Gaza City became a three day odyssey as he travelled from the West Bank to Jordan, then flew to Cyprus, before finally coming aboard the Dignity for the fifteen hour sea voyage to Gaza.

"We're challenging Israel in a manner that is unprecedented, " said Dr. Barghouti. "Israel has prevented me from visiting Gaza for more than two years now. I am so pleased that we managed to defy Israel's injustice so that I can see all the people I love and work with in Gaza. Israel's measures are meant to divide us, but it is our defiance and resistance which unite us. "

This is a resistance which can and should light the fire of all our imaginations, and bring hope not just to Palestinians, but to peoples suffering the terrible tides of oppression and injustice the world around.

After watching the Dignity's arrival, Fida Qishta, the local coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the Gaza Strip, said "If Gaza is free then it's our right to invite whomsoever we wish to visit us. It's our land and it's our sea. Now more groups must come, not only by sea but also the crossings at Erez and Rafah must be opened as well. This second breaking of the siege means a lot, actually. It's the second time in two months that people have come to Gaza without Israel's permission, and that tells us that Gaza will be free."

For over forty years, Israel has occupied the Gaza Strip. Despite the so-called "Disengagement " in 2005, when they shut down their illegal settlements here, Israel maintains absolute control over Gaza's borders and airspace, severely limiting the free movement of goods, services, and travel. Israel is still an occupying power.

For over two years, Israel has maintained a brutal blockade of Gaza. Less than twenty percent of the supplies needed (as compared to 2005) are allowed in. This has forced ninety-five percent of local industries to shut down, resulting in massively increased unemployment and poverty rates. Childhood malnutrition has skyrocketed, and eighty percent of families are now dependent on international food aid just to be able to eat. An hour after we arrived, I watched a teenage boy digging through the garbage, looking for something he could use.
Israel's siege isn't simply illegal - it's intolerable.

Renowned human rights activist Caoimhe Butterly also sailed aboard the Dignity, and will remain in Gaza for several weeks as Project Coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement. But, said Butterly, "My feelings are bittersweet. Although we're overjoyed at reaching Gaza a second time, that joy is tempered by the fact that the conscience of the world has been reduced to a small boat and 27 seasick activists. This mission is a reminder of not only the efficacy of non-violent direct action, but also of the deafening silence of the international community."

Our first voyage in August, the first voyage of any international ship to Gaza in over forty years, showed that it was possible to freely travel. This second voyage shows that it is repeatable, and this sets a precedent: The Siege of Gaza can be overcome through non-violent resistance and direct action.

Today, the Free Gaza Movement has a simple message for the rest of the world: What are you waiting for?
-------
Ramzi Kysia is an Arab-American writer and activist, and one of the organizers of the Free Gaza Movement.

To find out more about Free Gaza and what you can do to help support their work, please visit http://www.freegaza.org/

Will Israel Pirate Human Rights Ship Under Cover of US Campaign

What will Israel do after being embarrassed by human rights workers in August as a similar mission, the SS Dignity, journeys to Gaza to bring needed supplies and break the illegal blockade of Gaza that Israel denies exist?

The 27 unarmed civilians sailing aboard SS Dignity represent 13 different countries. We are doctors, lawyers, teachers, and human rights advocates. We are Christians, Muslims, Jews, and agnostics. ...

This morning, the Free Gaza Movement was informed through the media that the Israeli Navy is threatening to forcibly stop the SS Dignity from entering Gaza tomorrow morning. Israel has not bothered to inform us of a legitimate reason for preventing us from delivering medical supplies, doctors, lawyers, and prominent human rights advocates to the Gaza Strip.

Some militarists, a minority, have seriously suggested that the Israeli Navy kill them. Let's hope more civilized action takes place.

Freedom Sailors Break Gaza Blockade

Update II: Time: Breaking the Gaza Blockade

Update: ABC News: Boats carrying pro-Palestinian activists reach Gaza Strip with humanitarian supplies

As the world press takes in the selection of Senator Joe Biden as Barack Obama's running mate, across the world on the Mediterranean Sea, modern-day freedom sailors are running the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza, bringing in medical supplies and calling attention to the illegal occupation of the Gaza Strip.

From the Free Gaza Mission:

Ashdod Marina , Saturday August 23. 15.00 p.m.

Despite all odds, with scrambled radio, jammed phones, ... in rough waves with a storm brewing, ... I hear that 20 boats left Gaza Harbour to welcome FREE GAZA and LIBERTY, but are now doing a U-turn to go back... .

... Palestinians in Gaza said earlier there was NO ISRAELI NAVAL PRESENCE on the horizon, but the U-turn was apparently due to warning shots having indeed been fired.

I received a phone call from Gaza : it’s obvious there’s a demonstration there, with extreme excitement. It gave one goosebumps, feeling freedom beginning to flow.

The media boat was not far from the FREE GAZA and LIBERTY, but relayed co-ordinates (they couldn’t make contact with each other) show that for the FREE GAZA and LIBERTY to have met the press, the two boats would have had to turn round: inadvisable, if they’re to make land in daylight.

If the radio had been working. If the satellite phones were unjammed. These are regrets, but the fact is that the boats are now about to turn into Gazan waters, and may God speed them safe to land.

Please alert your correspondents in Gaza to cover the arrival… insha’allah it will take place. How they then get out? -- Chapter Two of this ongoing saga. Online talkbacks wish them to stay in Gaza and join the freedom fight, where they belong! The online words far more explicit.. as is the hate mail. (And so the oppressor is oppressed.) But maybe today freedom and justice will warm a few Palestinian hearts. The Free Gaza Movement will be in great danger of too many cups of tea. And of being swamped by the 200,000 people whom, we’re told, will be on the beach to welcome them. And the Israeli Government must now be on warning that yes, indeed, the World cares. That civil society has a voice. And that voice is saying NO. Human beings have sacred rights, and people are ready to defend them, wherever they may be. Even in the prison that is Gaza.

Angela Godfrey-Goldstein
Media Team

www.freegaza.org
www.anis-online.de/office/events/FreeGazaSong.htmwww.flickr.com/photos/29205195@N02/

Threats and Intimidation Against Free Gaza Freedom Sailors

Update: Israeli Government Recognizes “Humanitarian” Mission to Break the Siege of Gaza

The Free Gaza Movement, modern-day freedom riders of hues and persuasions, is sailing towards its objective in the Mediterranean Sea, approaching the Gaza strip that remains blockaded, the object of often savage Israeli occupation, starving and preventing the lives of the 1.4 million human beings living there.

The Free Gaza Movement movement is attempting to ship medical supplies in two boats, the Free Gaza and the Liberty, as they challenge the illegal Israeli occupation of what should be this sovereign land, the Gaza strip.

The Free Gaza Movement movement is not counting on the Israeli government's commitment to human rights during it voyage, and is prepared to die in its cause, though the mission is so well covered in the British press that Israel risks pariah status should its military kill the members of this mission.

One gets a flavor of rightwing reaction supporting Israeli militaristic policy (by no means enjoying majority support in Israel) by reading the commentary to the mission's coverage in the Jerusalem Post.

An update from Free Gaza Movement:

Across the world, there are laws against threatening other people. Verbal threats give rise to great personal and emotional insecurity, and they can be the midwives to terrible violence. Many of us on board the SS Liberty and SS Free Gaza have been threatened in these past few days. It’s appalling enough to receive phone calls, warning us that our boats will be blown up or asking us if we know how to swim, but when the callers go after our families, then that crosses the line from adolescent intimidation to psychological terrorism. This past Thursday, Lauren Booth received one such call.

“On the 14th of August 2008, an anonymous man called my home in France as my daughters played hide and seek in the garden. This stranger spoke to my husband, warning him that 'your wife is in great danger. These ships will be blown up.' My husband asked how it was this person had obtained our private home number. No response was forthcoming, but the illicit threats carried on.”

Other members of our nonviolent project have had their families in Occupied Palestine threatened with violence as well. From these threats, a pernicious pattern of intimidation is beginning to emerge. The question, of course, is just who benefits the most by trying to terrorize and stop us from breaking Israel’s terrible siege on 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza?

In April, 2008, The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel released a report stating, “The illegal exploitation of family members, who, in most instances, are not suspects themselves, has on many occasions caused severe psychological suffering to interrogees and to their innocent relatives. In more extreme cases, this method takes the form of psychological torture of a detainee rendering him a victim of a cruel psychological manipulation via the illegal exploitation of a close relative.”

Today in the Israeli newspaper, Haartez, Amos Harel writes:

“Defense officials favor forcefully blocking two boats, which a group of U.S.-basedactivists plan to sail to Gaza ... A position paper by the Foreign Ministry's legal department says Israel has the right to use force against the demonstrators as part of the Oslo Accords ... the Foreign Ministry's paper means that security forces could detain the vessels upon entry to Gaza's territorial waters, arrest the passengers and haul the ship to Israel, where the detainees could be interrogated.”

The Oslo accords expired in 1999, but even when they were in place they never advocated or allowed Israel to use deadly force against nonviolent human rights workers. However, Israel has decided to interpret the now-defunct accords as giving them permission to act violently against us.

Given this situation, we, the members of the Free Gaza Movement, would like to make two things very clear to the government of Israel:

1) We are nonviolent human rights activists and we have vowed to take nonviolent action, in either word or deed, against any other human beings -including against Israeli government and military officials who, apparently,wish us harm.

2) The threats and intimidation that we have received these past few days,though disturbing, do not even come close to the suffering imposed on 1.4million Palestinians through the illegal and immoral Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Given the enormity of this crisis, we will not be deterred.

We will sail to Gaza, and this siege will be lifted.

- Members of the Free Gaza and Liberty, setting sail this week.

Freedom Sailors to Gaza and Nixon

Update: Gaza mercy mission delayed by fault on ship, ship headed to Crete. Press Release below.

Prof. Donald Downs (University of Wisconsin-Madison) used to like to shock his classroom during his administrative law classes and say words to the effect that the press "got" Nixon.

[Free Gaza Cyprus Press Conference August 4, 2008]

A reasonable position, but one that misses the irony that ultimately Nixon was made to account by Congress and the legal system for his lawlessness and militarism, as should occur in a democracy.

The fact that the press to a certain extent held Nixon accountable in its editorial product by stating some facts is trivial.

We have less rule-of-law and reformist forces at work in our society today than the early 1970s; perhaps because the ferment of the American public opposing lawlessness and violence is a shadow of 35 years ago.

Free Gaza

American militarism and lawlessness are arguably worse today that these diseases were 35 years ago.

And nowhere is this more true than in the US-supported Israeli program “intended to isolate the democratically-elected government of Palestine and break its power to resist Israeli attempts to impose an apartheid regime over the entire country… ,” as Jeff Halper puts it in CounterPunch).

But we do see American direct action confronting US-Israeli militarism, reported in the British press (BBC and so on) and in Israel (Haaretz), but not in the American corporate mass media, yet.

The the California-based Free Gaza Movement has set sail, perhaps yesterday (departure date is secret) from Cyprus to Gaza in defiance of the illegal Israeli blockade of the occupied territory.

The objective of the Free Gaza Movement: Bringing medical supplies, including "a cargo of 200 hearing aids which are destined for children in Gaza whose hearing has been damaged by explosions and sonic booms," reports the BBC [first BBC dispatch below]. These Free Gaza people are fiendish indeed.

"The project is intended to awaken the conscience of the nations of the world, who have turned their backs on a people whose human rights, welfare and very existence are being sacrificed to political expediency. Follow our progress ... and help break the siege of Gaza. ... Palestinian and Israeli civilians will sail to Gaza to challenge Israeli control and isolation of the 1.4 million Palestinians who live there," reads the Free Gaza newsletter. "... We've tried to enter Palestine by land. We've tried to arrive by air. Now we're getting serious. We're taking a ship."

The departure date is secret, but we will be informed with dispatches that Free Gaza will be sending from the open sea to an e-mail list that many supporters are signed on to.

And a BBCreporter in on board, so hopefully this will keep Israel from shooting up the boats: Would be a bad PR move.

Yet one cannot help but wonder if these atrocities occurring in the occupied territories were covered by the American corporate mass media, the press, if the US-supported Israeli military would be able to get away with the war crimes and obscenities they are committing against innocent people, including 1,000s of children. Watch the Death in Gaza documentary, though it is understated.

As reported by the BBC, the California-based Free Gaza movement is composed of:

Activists ... planning to sail from Cyprus to Gaza in defiance of an Israeli blockade of the territory. The BBC's Rachid Sekkai will be on board and sends his first diary entry.

About 45 people are here in the port of Larnaca in Cyprus, preparing to sail south to Gaza. [The ships have presumably left by today.]

The group includes Americans, Palestinians and Israelis among the 15 nationalities represented.

President of the Free Gaza Movement, Greta Berlin explains the mission.

"This is a non-violent resistance project to challenge Israel's siege of Gaza. Israel claims that Gaza is no longer occupied, yet Israeli forces control Gaza by land, sea and air".

Israel imposed an economic blockade on Gaza after Hamas forces violently seized control from Fatah in June 2007. The squeeze is also aimed at stopping militants firing rockets at southern Israel.

No Israeli authorisation

The organisers' plan is to enter Gaza from international waters without Israel's authorisation, to recognise Palestinian control over its own borders.

Two wooden boats, Free Gaza and Liberty, will also carry a cargo of 200 hearing aids which are destined for children in Gaza whose hearing has been damaged by explosions and sonic booms.

Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair who is now an international envoy to the Middle East, tells me she is travelling as both supporter and reporter.

"I dearly want to go to Gaza again to support the Palestinians and to show the world the reality of what's going on there".

Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein is making the journey - at the age of 83 - for humanitarian reasons.

"We intend to open the port, fish with the fishermen, and work in the schools".

Danger

The organisers have been open about the risks involved in making such a trip.
Greta Berlin says if the first boat is stopped or attacked by Israeli forces, the passengers will use non-violent resistance, and the second vessel will follow "no matter what".

Our pre-trip training has included lessons on how to behave if things don't go to plan.

The departure date is a secret for our own safety. All we know so far is that the journey is meant to take 20 hours.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SS Free Gaza and SS Liberty Arrive in Chania, Crete,

Saturday, 9 August at 21:00 p.m.

For further information, contact:

Nicosia/Lefkosia, Cyprus, August 7. - The Free Gaza Movement announced today that their boats, destined to break the Israelis' siege of Gaza, will arrive in Chania, Crete, on Saturday, August 9, at 9 p.m. and that a press conference will be held to welcome their arrival.

"Internationals are gathering across the world – in Beijing and Cyprus – with the common dream of peace and justice for everyone."

Human rights activists Lauren Booth, journalist, (sister in law of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair), Huwaida Arraf (a Palestinian-American residing in Ramallah, Palestine), and Jeff Halper (an Israeli Jew who was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for opposing demolitions of Palestinian homes) will be available at the press conference for interviews.

"This will be the first time that our two boats will be publicly displayed and photographers are welcome to come, take photos and post their images." said Paul Larudee, on board the boats sailing toward Chania.

The Free Gaza Movement is endorsed by an impressive array of international groups and personalities including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Former Prime Minister of Lebanon Dr. Salim Al-Hoss.

For additional information, http://www.freegaza.org/

We are a week late, but we are more determined than ever to go to Gaza. By now, almost half of the people are on board or traveling to the boats, and those of us left in Cyprus are finishing up our training, working on banners and trying to control our impatience.

When we called the people of Gaza to tell them we would arrive a week late, their reply was, "Don't worry. We know you are coming. And we are waiting," a testament to their confidence that 40 Internationals, two small boats, and tremendous media attention can somehow defeat the Israeli Navy.Some of the survivors of the USS Liberty have written to us and asked us to be on one of their programs tomorrow night. They wrote this request of us:

What is the possibility of you and the crew of the SS Liberty throwing 34 long stemmed roses into the sea as a memorial to the 34 Americans who were killed aboard the USS LIberty? We will pay for the roses or whatever else you have in mind. I guarantee you our newspaper American Free Press will give a HUGE spread in the paper for it. The survivors of the LIberty and their familes would be eternally grateful to you and your ship mates for this gesture as no one has ever done anything like this before.

Another wrote:

I am one of the survivors of the USS Liberty. A very tired man who woke up somewhat when I heard of the SS Liberty. I was the petty officer in charge of the body recovery and identification, and I remember it almost like it was yesterday.

May God Be With You

So, when we leave Cyprus next week, we hope to have a ceremony for all of those Americans killed by the Israelis on board the ship in 1967.

The media attention has been intense in Europe, people calling constantly asking for interviews. If you GOOGLE Free Gaza, Cyprus, you will see dozens of stories about us and the boats and the response from here. So many angels have stepped in to help, from offering us their homes, feeding us, and driving us around to media appointments. One man called us today and told us that he would loan us the money to cover our expenses for the boats and the equipment, because, "You are making history."

Greta Berlin, The Free Gaza Movement

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