Sailing aid’s not enough; break blockade ─ REMEMBER Rafah

Barred

 Break through passivity ─ Remember PALESTINE

Blockaded

Excerpt, editing by 

Carolyn Bennett

No one wants dependency

The passivity of the world, the passivity of the European Union, Western world passivity and support for Israel are central to the problem.

The siege of Gaza and especially the maritime siege of Gaza is an abomination. It is illegal and should be stopped immediately — Dror Feiler

European activist Dror Feiler with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition was on the Freedom Flotilla 2010, the Freedom Flotilla 2011, on the French boat Dignity, which succeeded in breaking the siege, coming close to Gaza, and most recently “on the Estelle” Swedish mission to Gaza.

“What we were doing is trying to send the message of solidarity,” he said. “What we were trying to do is to tell the people of the world that —

[t]his is not the question of ethnicity,

[t]his is not the question of nationality,

[t]his is not the question of religion.

We are together with Muslim, Christian, Jews, and atheist on the mission for human rights and international law.

 

Woman and child in the rubble

“If a terrorist or extremist is to defend international law, human rights, Geneva Convention, then, okay, we are extremists ─ if this is extremism. But I do not think it is. I think this is mainstream international policy and Israel’s policies are the extreme.”

The flotilla missions, Dror Feiler said, put the focus back on the Gaza and Palestine problem.

We put the focus on the fact that people should not be silent when others are suffering injustice — even if they live in countries far away from one another.

We put international solidarity on the map again and we will continue.

But sailing alms ─ many boats carry varieties of “aid” from crayons for children to wheelchairs ─ do not reach the heart of the problem.

Despair

“No Palestinian I have met wants to be dependent on aid,”  journalist Hassan Ghani says. “That is not a long-term solution.”

“The primary objective of these flotillas is not about taking aid,” he says. 

“The main objective of flotillas headed for Gaza is to break the siege so that Palestinians can trade with the world, access the international waters; and then, through commerce, lift themselves out of the [oppressive] situation.”

Import of flotilla missions

Though Palestinians are not yet at the point of starvation, Ghani says, they are “slowly being dragged to that point by the Israelis.

The Israeli siege is expanding. From their implementation on land, the Israelis are extending the siege to the sea — whether the Rafah border or the border with Israel — they are extending into the sea, where they have no legal right.

The young in rubble of Rafah

“Wave upon wave of boats” put the situation “back into the headlines and set precedent,” he says. Flotillas keep what is happening in Gaza — “the slow collective punishment of the Palestinian people” — on the news agenda.

REMEMBER Rafah, Remember PALESTINE

Sources and notes

Press TV interviews with

Independent journalist and documentary maker Hassan Ghani

Co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement from Paris Greta Berlin

Representative of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition from Sweden Dror Feiler

“‘Flotilla message was Palestinians not alone,’” (Interview), November 3, 2012, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/11/03/270286/flotilla-message-was-palestinians-not-alone/

“‘Flotillas after breaking Gaza siege not delivering aid,’” November 3, 2012, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/11/03/270284/flotillas-after-breaking-gaza-siege-not-delivering-aid/

Britannica image

“Gaza Strip: Palestinians crossing the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt: Palestinians crossing the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt at Rafaḥ, southern Gaza Strip (Mohammed Saber—epa/Corbis)

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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BLOCKADE Gaza women suffer, far-reaching human costs

Jilbāb, Zanzibar
image for illustration

Guardian article “Women in Gaza: how life has changed” by Angela Robson, a journalist who covers development, gender and human rights
Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Israel against people of Gaza

“Before the blockade,” her husband made “good money working in Israel,” a woman of Gaza tells uardian reporter Angela Robson. The blockade ended all that and she took the brunt of his pain. 

When he can’t find any work and we have nothing to eat, he blames me. He is like a crazy animal.  

I stay quiet when he hits me.  

Afterwards, he cries and says, if he had a job, he wouldn’t beat me. 

This 23-year-old woman (Eman) is described further by Robson as being “dressed in a black veiled jilbab and living in a collapsing shack on the outskirts of Gaza City” where “an open sewer flows past her front door and rubbish streams into her kitchen” when the rain comes. She is a woman who left school at the age of 10 and seven years later was married and a mother.

“Behind the blockade, conservatism rises,” the news story reports, as do “unemployment, poverty, depression, and domestic violence.”

Fact and consequence of oppression 

The blockade cuts off 1.6 million Palestinians from the rest of the world. Unemployment reports show “more than 45 percent of working-age people are jobless, one of the highest rates in the world.”  

Deepening unemployment, fear of violence and restrictions on movement leave women and children to bear the brunt of men’s reaction to these unacceptable conditions. A staffer with Oxfam Gaza told the press that, as unemployment deepens so does domestic violence and underneath the acting-out behaviors are multiple issues: “psychological trauma, the feeling of being trapped, rampant poverty.” 

Women of Gaza 

Azza al-Kafarna is a women’s rights activist, manager of the Gaza news agency Ramattan and someone described as refusing to bow to conservatism. However, she said women of Gaza generally have been frightened into covering up and keeping silent.   

“Up until the 1980s, she said, “we were wearing swimsuits on the beach.”  Now women “are covering themselves more, not necessarily because Hamas tells them to; but because they are afraid.”

Though the pressure backward does not return women to conditions prevalent during the 1987 intifada when stones were thrown and criticism hurled at women who did not cover up, life for women “still feels precarious. The veil for some women is perhaps a physical shield against the world,” Azza al-Kafarna said; but “it may also … be one of the few things over which [a woman] feels she has control.”

Sources and notes

Some names in the news report were changed to protect women’s identities.

“Women in Gaza: how life has changed” (Article by Angela Robson, a journalist covering development, gender and human rights), July 30, 2012, http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/world/2012/jul/30/women-gaza-life-changed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/30/women-gaza-life-changed

http://khamakarpress.com/2012/07/page/2/

Image: Woman weaing jilbāb, Zanzibar, http://www.flickr.com/photos/funkstop/50161592/
Pembuat rahimadatia
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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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Israeli Blockade starves 60 percent ─ UN report

“Gaza food supplies are strangled by 1,000-day blockade.” From UN reports edited excerpts by Carolyn Bennett

Citing UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) findings, the Integrated Regional Information Networks reported in May of this year, “the amount and quality of food available to the estimated 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip has been severely restricted by more than 1,000 days of a near-complete blockade.”

Sixty-one percent of people living in Gaza are “food insecure” [hungry, undernourished or starving]

• Israel’s import and access restrictions have suffocated Gaza’s agricultural sector, directly contributing to rising food insecurity
• Protein-rich foods such as meat and poultry are especially difficult for Gazans to afford
• The number of Palestine refugees unable to access food and are lacking the means to purchase basic items ─ such as soap, school stationery and safe drinking water ─ has tripled since the imposition of the blockade in June 2007.
• Israeli naval forces since January 2009 have restricted the access of Gaza fishing boats to only three nautical miles from shore, often in practice reduced to two nautical miles.
• Reduction in electricity supplies to Gaza as part of the Israeli blockade causes significant damage to vegetable crops due to the lack of refrigeration, adds to production costs
• Movement of goods through tunnels from Egypt then sold at inflated prices and inaccessible to most Gazans is not a viable solution.… Unregulated entry of livestock and veterinary medicines to Gaza from Egypt via tunnels result in animal diseases in Gaza and trans-boundary disease outbreaks in the region.

Sources and notes
Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) is part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, but its services are editorially independent. Its reports do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations and its agencies or its member states. Founded in 1995 to improve the flow of vital information to those involved in relief efforts in the Great Lakes region following the 1994 Rwandan genocide, IRIN’s headquarters are in Nairobi, Kenya. The principal role of IRIN “is to provide news and analysis about sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia for the humanitarian community.”

Occupiers’ impunity persists amid world outrage, UNSC meets

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
Blood on our hands...

Israeli commandos today off the coast of the Gaza Strip attacked the “Freedom Flotilla,” a convoy of six aid-carrying ships. This Israeli attack early Monday killed up to 19 people and injured dozens on board the vessels.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said nothing justifies the appalling outcome of this operation. She went on to “unequivocally condemn what appears to be disproportionate use of force, resulting in the killing and wounding of so many people attempting to bring much-needed aid to the people of Gaza, who have now been enduring a blockade for more than three years.” Without the blockade, she said, “there would be no need for flotillas like this.” She also called for an investigation and accountability.

The blockade, Navi Pillay said, “lies at the heart of so many of the problems plaguing the Israel-Palestine situation, as does the impression that the Israeli Government treats international law with perpetual disdain.”

The UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk charged that “Israel is guilty of shocking behavior by using deadly weapons against unarmed civilians on ships that were situated in the high seas where freedom of navigation exists, according to the law of the seas.” He went on to say that “unless prompt and decisive action is taken to challenge the Israeli approach to Gaza all of us will be complicit in criminal policies that are challenging the survival of an entire beleaguered community.”

Palestinian Civil Society Organizations and International activists are calling for worldwide pressure on governments to end Israel’s abductions and killings in attacks against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and pressure on governments to begin global efforts to “hold Israel accountable for the murder of civilians at sea and the illegal piracy of civilian vessels carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza.”

Amnesty International today recounts “the nearly three years, Israel, the occupying power in the Gaza Strip, has implemented a policy of banning all movement of goods and people, except for the most basic humanitarian necessities, which are imported by international aid agencies. A fraction of patients needing treatment outside Gaza are allowed to leave and dozens have died while waiting for a travel permit from Israel.”

By restricting the entry of food, medical supplies, educational equipment and building materials, Israel’s blockade does not target armed groups but rather punishes Gaza’s entire population. The impact falls heaviest “on the most vulnerable among Gaza’s 1.5 million people: children, the elderly, and the sick.” Under international law, Israel’s “blockade constitutes collective punishment and must be lifted immediately.”

In its latest assault, the Israeli government persisted in claiming self-defense but Al Jazeera reporters found something else. From aboard the flotilla’s lead ship, the reporters said a white surrender flag had been raised from the ship but “Israeli troops assaulted with “live ammunition.” About 50 flotilla activists (among them students, Nobel laureates, children, and Jewish holocaust survivors) were subjected to extensive security checks and imprisoned, the goods they carried taken and placed in a terminal. Activists were given the choice if going home immediately, in which case they would be taken by bus to Tel Aviv airport; or, if they resisted deportation, taken to a nearby detention center and held for at least 72 hours.

International solidarity movement’s call from Gaza for global response has been signed by several organizations: The One Democratic State Group, University Teachers Association, Arab Cultural Forum, Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel, Association of Al-Quds Bank for Culture and Info, Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements, International Solidarity Movement, Palestinian Network of Non-Governmental Organizations, Palestinian Women Committees, Progressive Students Union, Medical Relief Society, The General Society for Rehabilitation, Gaza Community Mental Health Program. General Union of Palestinian Women, Afaq Jadeeda Cultural Centre for Women and Children, Deir Al-Balah Cultural Centre for Women and Children, Maghazi Cultural Centre for Children, Al-Sahel Centre for Women and Youth, Ghassan Kanfani Kindergartens, Rachel Corrie Centre, Rafah, Rafah Olympia City Sisters, Al Awda Centre, Rafah, Al Awda Hospital, Jabaliya Camp, Ajyal Association, Gaza, General Union of Palestinian Syndicates, Al Karmel Centre, Nuseirat, Local Inititiative, Beit Hanoun, Union of Health Work Committees, Red Crescent Society Gaza Strip, Beit Lahiya Cultural Centre, Al Awda Centre, Rafah [Updated on May 31, 2010].

People of Gaza are calling on people across the world to

Demonstrate and support the courageous men and women who went on the Flotilla, many now murdered on a humanitarian aid mission.
Insist on severing diplomatic ties with Israel, bringing to trial for war crimes, securing International protection of the civilians of Gaza
Join the growing campaigns of international boycott, divestment and sanction of a country proving again to be so violent and yet unchallenged
Join the growing critical mass around the world with a commitment to the day when Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as any other people, when the siege is lifted, the occupation is over, and the six million Palestinian refugees are finally granted justice.

By the afternoon today Eastern Time, reports from international waters were still coming in. In New York City, the UN Security Council was meeting to discuss Israel's attack on the Freedom Flotilla. The League of Arab States also was expected to hold an urgent session on the matter.

Sources and notes
“Deadly Israeli raid on aid,” May 31, 2010 fleethttp://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/05/201053113252437484.html
“Israeli killings of Gaza ship activists must be investigated,” May 31, 2010, http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/israeli-killings-gaza-ship-activists-must-be-investigated-2010-05-31
“Call from Gaza for global response to killings on the freedom flotilla,” May 31, 2010, http://palsolidarity.org/2010/05/12597/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+palsolidarity+%28International+Solidarity+Movement%29
“Secretary-General 'shocked' by deadly raid on Gaza aid flotilla,” May 31, 2010, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34863&Cr=gaza&Cr1=

Irony
Today in history: Adolf Eichmann was hanged ─ On May 31, 1962, Israel hanged German official Adolf Eichmann for his part in “the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II.” Eichmann had escaped from a prison camp in 1946 and spent some 14 years in hiding [Britannica].