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JPN is a spin-off project of Jewish Voice for Peace. Below is JPN's invaluable roundup on the Siege of Gaza. Since this edition of JPN was originally posted on January 27:
What follows is a combination of sources about or from the convoy, including: 1) A primer on the siege of Gaza by Dr. Eyad al-Sarraj (founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program) and Dr. Sara Roy (senior research scholar at the Center for Middle East Studies at Harvard). Sarraj and Roy discuss the many components of the siege, describing Israel’s decisions and actions and their economic, physical and psychological consequences on Gazans. On these, they say “Gaza is no longer approaching economic collapse. It has collapsed.” 2) A personal report by a convoy participant, Rebecca Vilkomerson, who wrote about her experience in an email to the American organization Jewish Voice for Peace, which held rallies around the U.S. in solidarity with the convoy (http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/). Rebecca gives an overview and a narrative of yesterday’s event, including descriptions of the moving speeches by Dr. Eyad al-Sarraj – via telephone, because he is stuck in Gaza - and Shir Shozdik, a young woman from Sderot, the nearby town that is facing the brunt of the Qassam-rocket fire. 3) A link to video of the convoy and rally, including parts of Dr. Sarraj’s moving speech, among others. Rela Mazali writes a brief introduction to the video. 4) The text of the speech given at the rally by Nurit Peled-Elhanan. About the speech, Rela Mazali writes that “About half of it is quoted from Bialik's poem "Be'ir Hahareiga" (In the City of the Slaughter) about the scene of a pogrom, that Israelis of my generation (roughly the same age as the state) recognize immediately. It's a very effective subversion of the Zionist, nationalist, comfortably self-righteous and victimized way in which the poem has been read for half a century.” This Bialik poem about the 1903 Kishinev pogrom was also a staple of the Jewish and Zionist education I received growing up in the U.S. in the 1980s. JPN readers will be familiar with Peled-Elhanan’s haunting, incisive way with words. This speech is as powerful and heart-wrenching as any she has delivered, and equally calls on us to respond with our highest moral, feeling and thinking abilities. 5) Uri Avnery’s latest column on Gaza, “Worse than a Crime.” In this column, Avnery describes the politics and decision-makers behind the siege as well as the exhilarating breach of it through exploding the Rafah wall. Avnery explains that the Israeli government could end the Qassams falling on Sderot tomorrow if they were to respond to Hamas’ repeated attempts to establish a ceasefire. The government’s first priority, he says, isn’t to protect Sderot. Instead, their policies are motivated by the goal of overthrowing Hamas in Gaza and preventing Hamas from taking over in the West Bank.
7) Finally, a list of the Israeli organizations that participated in the convoy. Sarah Anne Minkin ***** Ending the stranglehold on Gaza Eyad al-Sarraj and Sara Roy January 26, 2008 http://tinyurl.com/2z8xrs
Israel's minister of justice, Haim Ramon, had pushed for cutting off Gaza's "infrastructural oxygen" - water, electricity, and fuel - as a response to the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel. Last Sunday, Ramon's wish came true: Israel's blockade forced Gaza's only power plant to shut down, plunging 800,000 people into darkness. Food and humanitarian aid were also denied entry. Although international pressure forced Israel to let in some supplies two days later, and the situation further eased when Palestinians breached the border wall with Egypt, the worst may be yet to come. The Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, agrees with Ramon's strategy, saying that it is "inconceivable that life in Gaza continues to be normal." The rapid and deepening desperation of Gaza's sick and hungry is of no moral concern to her. For Livni, like Ramon, the siege is a tactical measure, a human experiment to stop the rockets and bring down a duly elected government. The siege on Gaza and the West Bank began after Hamas's 2006 electoral victory with an international diplomatic and financial boycott of the new Hamas-led government. Development assistance was severely reduced with the improbable aim of bringing about a popular uprising against the very government just elected to power. Instead, this collective punishment resulted in a steady deterioration of Palestinian life, in growing lawlessness, and a violent confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, which escalated into a Hamas military takeover of Gaza in June 2007. Since then, the siege has been tightened to an unprecedented level. Over 80 percent of the population of 1.5 million (compared to 63 percent in 2006) is dependent on international food assistance, which itself has been dramatically reduced. In 2007, 87 percent of Gazans lived below the poverty line, more than a tripling of the percentage in 2000. In a November 2007 report, the Red Cross stated about the food allowed into Gaza that people are getting "enough to survive, not enough to live." Why is this acceptable? The reduction in fuel supplies that the Israeli government first approved in October not only threatens the provision of health and medical services but the stock of medicines, which is rapidly being depleted. This has forced the critically ill to seek treatment outside the Gaza Strip. However, according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, many patients are being denied permission to leave, because of new bureaucratic restrictions imposed on top of an already inefficient and arbitrary system. The organization has also accused the Israeli intelligence service of forcing some patients to inform on others in order to be granted passage. Since June, Israel has limited its exports to Gaza to nine basic materials. Out of 9,000 commodities (including foodstuffs) that were entering Gaza before the siege began two years ago, only 20 commodities have been permitted entry since. Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent. Not surprisingly, there has been a sharp increase in the prices of foodstuffs. Gaza also suffers from the ongoing destruction of its agriculture and physical infrastructure. Between June and November 2006, $74.7 million in damage was inflicted by the Israeli military on top of the nearly $2 billion already incurred by Palestinians between 2002 and 2005. Over half the damage was to agricultural land flattened by bulldozers, with the remainder to homes, public buildings, roads, water and sewage pipes, electricity infrastructure, and phone lines. The psychological damage of living in a war zone may surpass the physical. According to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, between Sept. 1, 2005, and July 25, 2007, 668 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli security forces. Over half were noncombatants and 126 were children. During the same period, Qassam rockets and mortar shells killed eight Israelis, half of them civilians. Gaza is no longer approaching economic collapse. It has collapsed. Given the intensity of repression Gaza is facing, can the collapse of its society - family, neighborhood, and community structure - be far behind? If that happens, we shall all suffer the consequences for generations to come. Eyad al-Sarraj is founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program. Sara Roy is senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. *****
Hi JVP'ers-- today i participated in the gaza convoy against the siege, and i wanted to give a quick report back, especially since so many of you worked so hard to support it. we met early in tel aviv (there were also meet ups in nazareth, haifa, jerusalem and beersheva) and right away it was clear that it was going to be big--at 8:30 am there were already about four buses and at least 50 cars from tel aviv alone (press reports said 1000 people total and about 100 cars but i believe it was more than that--probably closer to 1500-2000 people. there were 14 buses that i counted, and i think quite a bit more than 100 cars). we had been told ahead of time to decorate our cars and bring food for the convoy. when we got there, we found that despite what we thought of as our pretty minimal attempts to decorate, we were the only car that came painted with our own slogans, so we got a lot of attention for our efforts. (see pics of the whole rally by clicking http://picasaweb.google.com/rvilkomerson/GazaSiegeProtest ) it was a good thing we did that, because there was heavy rain as we drove south, and many of the posters attached to our cars were washed away. everyone stopped at the last rest stop before the checkpoint to rendezvous with the mini-caravans coming from all over the country. it was pretty funny to see about 500 israeli leftists doing what they do best--drinking coffee-- at this border outpost! the last few kilometers took a long time, because there were simply so many cars and buses--farther than the eye could see in either direction. the rain had conveniently stopped just as we got back in our cars, and the area was green and lush and hilly, in stark contrast to the giant checkpoint station, protected by a wall, which was protected by barbed wire, which was patrolled by attack dogs. at a certain point we had to all park on the side of the road, unpack our flour, lentils, oil, sugar, school supplies, etc. and walk the rest of the way. although we had been asked not to bring flags, there were quite a few palestinian flags, and a few communist ones. I would estimate (really a guess) that about 40% of the participants were palestinian israelis, and they were for sure the most spirited, organized, and loud of anyone. We pressed farther and farther toward the checkpoint itself. especially knowing what happened in rafah in the last couple of days, it felt for a moment like we could have pushed right through the barrier. a few of the people associated with the anarchists against the wall moved up and started knocking on the fence with rocks--gently, just making noise, not trying to break through, and that was the only moment that the many, many policemen in attendance got jittery and aggressive.
the two most moving speakers, for me, were Dr. Eyad Sarraj, the founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, and a very young woman (about 17) from Sderot who closed the rally. Dr. Sarraj was leading the palestinian side of the protest, we heard him by holding a cell phone on speaker up to the microphone. he spoke in english, and he spoke of the rally as a historic day. he said he was so proud of all of us that we were there, together, and he said that any time blood is spilled, in gaza, in sderot, or anywhere, it is an affront to humanity. he spoke so beautifully, and his deep sense of humanity came through so strongly, and especially to think of his ability to be that generous of spirit while in a state of siege and disaster all around, made tears come to my eyes, and i noticed that i wasn't the only one. to think that anyone could say there is no non-violent movement in Palestine! Jeff Halper, when he spoke, mentioned all the rallies of support for the convoy happening around the world. The last speaker was this teenager from Sderot, it was her first rally ever, and she talked about how she and her family suffer from the Qassams, but also how she also always remembers how much deeper and worse the suffering is in Gaza. at the end of the rally they announced that the negotiating team had succeeded in persuading the border cops to let the supplies through, i think they said they will go on monday. a neighboring kibbutz offered their storage space until then, which again shows that not everyone living with the qassams is vengeful. during our coffee break earlier in the day, my friend/driver/fellow former bay area resident emily had a conversation with one of the most committed activists in the movement about what the purpose of the protest really was. they agreed that being more confrontational might have been more fun and maybe more satisfying, but that in the end, of course, a rally, even one that is relatively large (at least for this location: 1000 people in tel aviv is nothing, but at erez it is quite remarkable), doesn't change much. but, the important thing is that we showed that there is an alternative to war and siege and destruction, and that there is a substantial part of the israeli public who are willing to fight for it, and that the partners are there to make it happen. i was amazed to discover that it took only an hour to return to tel aviv. rebecca vilkomerson tel aviv (formerly bay area) ***** Video Below is a link to a video report created by the Israeli group, "Social TV", on the End the Siege of Gaza rally at "Erez" checkpoint. The introduction and concluding texts are in Hebrew but it also shows fragments of speeches made in English. The visuals and atmosphere need no translation. The camera first runs alongside the convoy, giving a sense of its length as it drives to Erez in the rain. It goes on to show the demonstrators walking towards the checkpoint and collecting provisions to transport into Gaza. Then it moves on to the rally with slogans called by MC Hulud Badawi and others, concluding with selections from the speeches by Uri Avnery, Eyad al-Sarraj (from Gaza via cellphone; in English), Jeff Halper and young seventeen year old Shir Shusdig, from the Israeli town of Sderot, that has been under bombardments from the Gaza Strip for years now. The piece ends with the long list of local organizations that jointly, cooperatively created the event. Rela Mazali www.tv.social.org.il/medini/stv-gaza-relief-convoy-26-1-08.htm ***** At the gates of Gaza Nurit Peled-Elhanan 26 January 2008 These words are dedicated to the heroes of Gaza who have proven once again that no fortified wall can imprison the free spirit of humanity and no form of violence can subdue life. The appeal to go today to the gates of Gaza at the height of the pogrom being carried out by the thugs of the Occupation army against the residents of the Gaza Strip has terrible echoes of another appeal that was sent out into the air of the impassive world more than a hundred years ago.* "Arise and go now to the city of slaughter; Into its courtyard wind your way; There with your own hand touch, and with the eyes of your head, Behold on tree, on stone, on fence, on mural clay, The spattered blood and dried brains of the dead." What can one think as one stands at the gates of Gaza? Only this: "There in the dismal corner, there in the shadowy nook, Multitudinous eyes will look" What can we imagine today as we stand at the gates of Gaza, other than "A babe beside its mother flung, Its mother speared, the poor chick finding rest Upon its mother's cold and milkless breast; And "how a dagger halved an infant's word, Its ma was heard, its mama never heard. O, even now its eyes from me demand accounting," And what can we say to this infant, who demands from us accounting - we who stand helpless at the gates of Gaza? What will we explain to him and to all the hungry, sick children locked in that terrible ghetto, surrounded by wire fences, what can we say to the babies whose lives have been choked out of them in incubators before they began their lives because the State of the Jews shut off the flow of oxygen? What can we say to all the mothers who are searching for bread for their children in the streets of Gaza and what can we say to ourselves? Only this: sixty years after Auschwitz the State of the Jews is confining people in ghettoes and is killing them with hunger, asphyxiation and disease. "Brief-weary and forespent, a dark Shekinah Runs to each nook and cannot find its rest; Wishes to weep, but weeping does not come; Would roar; is dumb. Its head beneath its wing, its wing outspread Over the shadows of the martyr'd dead, Its tears in dimness and in silence shed." Because today, as we stand at the gates of Gaza, we have no voice, we have no words and we have no deeds. There is not a single Yanosh Korchak among us who will go in and protect the children from the fire. There are no Righteous Gentiles who will endanger their lives in order to save the victims of Gaza. We stand forlorn and contemptible in front of the gates of evil, in front of the fences of death, and obey the racist laws that have taken control over our lives, and all of us are helpless. When Bialik wrote: " Satan has not yet created Vengeance for the blood of a small child," It did not occur to him that the child would be a Palestinian child from Gaza and his slaughterers would be Jewish soldiers from the Land of Israel. And when he wrote: Let the blood pierce through the abyss! Let the blood seep down into the depths of darkness, and eat away there, in the dark, and breach all the rotting foundations of the earth. He did not imagine that those foundations would be the foundations of the Land of Israel. That the Jewish and Democratic State of Israel that uses the expression "blood on his hands" to justify its refusal to release freedom fighters and peace leaders would submerge us all in the blood of innocent babes up to our necks, up to our nostrils, so that every breath we take sends red bubbles of blood into the air of the Holy Land. "And I, my heart is dead, no longer is there prayer on my lips; All strength is gone, and hope is no more. Until when, How much longer, Until when?" * The poems "City of Slaughter" and "On Slaughter" were written by the Jewish poet Haim Nahman Bialik in tribute to the victims of the Kishinev Pogrom in 1903, Russia - trans. ***** Uri Avnery 26.01.08 http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1201278309/ Worse than a Crime IT LOOKED like the fall of the Berlin wall. And not only did it look like it. For a moment, the Rafah crossing was the Brandenburg Gate. It is impossible not to feel exhilaration when masses of oppressed and hungry people break down the wall that is shutting them in, their eyes radiant, embracing everybody they meet - to feel so even when it is your own government that erected the wall in the first place. The Gaza Strip is the largest prison on earth. The breaking of the Rafah wall was an act of liberation. It proves that an inhuman policy is always a stupid policy: no power can stand up against a mass of people that has crossed the border of despair. That is the lesson of Gaza, January, 2008. ONE MIGHT repeat the famous saying of the French statesman Boulay de la Meurthe, slightly amended: It is worse than a war crime, it is a blunder! Months ago, the two Ehuds - Barak and Olmert - imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, and boasted about it. Lately they have tightened the deadly noose even more, so that hardly anything at all could be brought into the Strip. Last week they made the blockade absolute - no food, no medicines. Things reached a climax when they stopped the fuel, too. Large areas of Gaza remained without electricity - incubators for premature babies, dialysis machines, pumps for water and sewage. Hundreds of thousands remained without heating in the severe cold, unable to cook, running out of food. Again and again, Aljazeera broadcast the pictures into millions of homes in the Arab world. TV stations all over the world showed them, too. From Casablanca to Amman angry mass protest broke out and frightened the authoritarian Arab regimes. Hosny Mubarak called Ehud Barak in panic. That evening Barak was compelled to cancel, at least temporarily, the fuel-blockade he had imposed in the morning. Apart from that, the blockade remained total. It is hard to imagine a more stupid act. THE REASON given for the starving and freezing of one and a half million human beings, crowded into a territory of 365 square kilometers, is the continued shooting at the town of Sderot and the adjoining villages. That is a well-chosen reason. It unites the primitive and poor parts of the Israeli public. It blunts the criticism of the UN and the governments throughout the world, who might otherwise have spoken out against a collective punishment that is, undoubtedly, a war crime under international law. A clear picture is presented to the world: the Hamas terror regime in Gaza launches missiles at innocent Israeli civilians. No government in the world can tolerate the bombardment of its citizens from across the border. The Israeli military has not found a military answer to the Qassam missiles. Therefore there is no other way than to exert such strong pressure on the Gaza population as to make them rise up against Hamas and compel them to stop the missiles. The day the Gaza electricity works stopped operating, our military correspondents were overjoyed: only two Qassams were launched from the Strip. So it works! Ehud Barak is a genius! But the day after, 17 Qassams landed, and the joy evaporated. Politicians and generals were (literally) out of their minds: one politician proposed to "act crazier than them", another proposed to "shell Gaza's urban area indiscriminately for every Qassam launched", a famous professor (who is a little bit deranged) proposed the exercise of "ultimate evil". The government scenario was a repeat of Lebanon War II (the report about which is due to be published in a few days). Then: Hizbullah captured two soldiers on the Israeli side of the border, now: Hamas fired on towns and villages on the Israeli side of the border. Then: the government decide in haste to start a war, now: the government decided in haste to impose a total blockade. Then: the government ordered the massive bombing of the civilian population in order to get them to pressure Hizbullah, now: the government decided to cause massive suffering of the civilian population in order to get them to pressure Hamas. The results were the same in both cases: the Lebanese population did not rise up against Hizbullah, but on the contrary, people of all religious communities united behind the Shiite organization. Hassan Nasrallah became the hero of the entire Arab world. And now: the population unites behind Hamas and accuses Mahmoud Abbas of cooperation with the enemy. A mother who has no food for her children does not curse Ismail Haniyeh, she curses Olmert, Abbas and Mubarak. SO WHAT to do? After all, it is impossible to tolerate the suffering of the inhabitants of Sderot, who are under constant fire. What is being hidden from the embittered public is that the launching of the Qassams could be stopped tomorrow morning. Several months ago Hamas proposed a cease-fire. It repeated the offer this week. A cease-fire means, in the view of Hamas: the Palestinians will stop shooting Qassams and mortar shells, the Israelis will stop the incursions into Gaza, the "targeted" assassinations and the blockade. Why doesn't our government jump at this proposal? Simple: in order to make such a deal, we must speak with Hamas, directly or indirectly. And this is precisely what the government refuses to do. Why? Simple again: Sderot is only a pretext - much like the two captured soldiers were a pretext for something else altogether. The real purpose of the whole exercise is to overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza and to prevent a Hamas takeover in the West Bank. In simple and blunt words: the government sacrifices the fate of the Sderot population on the altar of a hopeless principle. It is more important for the government to boycott Hamas - because it is now the spearhead of Palestinian resistance - than to put an end to the suffering of Sderot. All the media cooperate with this pretence. IT HAS been said before that it is dangerous to write satire in our country - too often the satire becomes reality. Some readers may recall a satirical article I wrote months ago. In it I described the situation in Gaza as a scientific experiment designed to find out how far one can go, in starving a civilian population and turning their lives into hell, before they raise their hands in surrender. This week, the satire has become official policy. Respected commentators declared explicitly that Ehud Barak and the army chiefs are working on the principle of "trial and error" and change their methods daily according to results. They stop the fuel to Gaza, observe how this works and backtrack when the international reaction is too negative. They stop the delivery of medicines, see how it works, etc. The scientific aim justifies the means. The man in charge of the experiment is Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a man of many ideas and few scruples, a man whose whole turn of mind is basically inhuman. He is now, perhaps, the most dangerous person in Israel, more dangerous than Ehud Olmert and Binyamin Netanyahu, dangerous to the very existence of Israel in the long run. The man in charge of execution is the Chief of Staff. This week we had the chance of hearing speeches by two of his predecessors, generals Moshe Ya'alon and Shaul Mofaz, in a forum with inflated intellectual pretensions. Both were discovered to have views that place them somewhere between the extreme Right and the ultra-Right. Both have a frighteningly primitive mind. There is no need to waste a word about the moral and intellectual qualities of their immediate successor, Dan Halutz. If these are the voices of the three last Chiefs of Staff, what about the incumbent, who cannot speak out as openly as they? Has this apple fallen further from the tree? Until three days ago, the generals could entertain the opinion that the experiment was succeeding. The misery in the Gaza Strip had reached its climax. Hundreds of thousands were threatened by actual hunger. The chief of UNRWA warned of an impending human catastrophe. Only the rich could still drive a car, heat their homes and eat their fill. The world stood by and wagged its collective tongue. The leaders of the Arab states voiced empty phrases of sympathy without raising a finger. Barak, who has mathematical abilities, could calculate when the population would finally collapse. AND THEN something happened that none of them foresaw, in spite of the fact that it was the most foreseeable event on earth. When one puts a million and a half people in a pressure cooker and keeps turning up the heat, it will explode. That is what happened at the Gaza-Egypt border. At first there was a small explosion. A crowd stormed the gate, Egyptian policemen opened live fire, dozens were wounded. That was a warning. The next day came the big attack. Palestinian fighters blew up the wall in many places. Hundreds of thousands broke out into Egyptian territory and took a deep breath. The blockade was broken. Even before that, Mubarak was in an impossible situation. Hundreds of millions of Arabs, a billion Muslims, saw how the Israeli army had closed the Gaza strip off on three sides: the North, the East and the sea. The fourth side of the blockade was provided by the Egyptian army. The Egyptian president, who claims the leadership of the entire Arab world, was seen as a collaborator with an inhuman operation conducted by a cruel enemy in order to gain the favor (and the money) of the Americans. His internal enemies, the Muslim Brothers, exploited the situation to debase him in the eyes of his own people. It is doubtful if Mubarak could have persisted in this position. But the Palestinian masses relieved him of the need to make a decision. They decided for him. They broke out like a tsunami wave. Now he has to decide whether to succumb to the Israeli demand to re-impose the blockade on his Arab brothers. And what about Barak's experiment? What's the next step? The options are few: (a) To re-occupy Gaza. The army does not like the idea. It understands that this would expose thousands of soldiers to a cruel guerilla war, which would be unlike any intifada before. (b) To tighten the blockade again and exert extreme pressure on Mubarak, including the use of Israeli influence on the US Congess to deprive him of the billions he gets every year for his services. (c) To turn the curse into a blessing, by handing the Strip over to Mubarak, pretending that this was Barak's hidden aim all along. Egypt would have to safeguard Israel's security, prevent the launching of Qassams and expose its own soldiers to a Palestinian guerilla war - when it thought it was rid of the burden of this poor and barren area, and after the infrastructure there has been destroyed by the Israeli occupation. Probably Mubarak will say: Very kind of you, but no thanks. The brutal blockade was a war crime. And worse: it was a stupid blunder. ***** Left-wing activists protest Gaza blockade at Erez border crossing http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3498945,00.html Dozens of buses carrying a thousand leftists arrive at Erez crossing to bring food, humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza Strip and to protest blockade on enclave. MKs from Balad and Hadash, youth from Sderot take part Yonat Atlas More than a thousand left-wing activists made their way to the Erez border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel on Saturday in order to bring food and medical equipment to the costal enclave. The activists held a demonstration against the Israeli-imposed blockade on the Strip. Palestinians on the opposite side of the crossing also organized a rally of their own. Twenty-five buses and around 100 cars arrived at Erez from all over Israel. The activists collected three tons of food and medical supplies during the demonstration. The items will be brought to the Kerem Shalom crossing where, according to the protesters, they will be transferred to Palestinians in Gaza on Monday. MK Jamal Zahalka (Balad) attended the event and called for an end to the blockade and the reopening of border crossings to the Hamas-held enclave. "The Israeli government holds the responsibility for the humanitarian disaster in Gaza," Zahalka said during the protest. According to the MK, Israel is employing "fascist methods" by preventing food and fuel from reaching the area. "We'll continue to protest and reveal the war crimes (being carried out) against one and a half million Palestinians in the Strip," he said. Shir Shodzik, 17, a resident of the battered town of Sderot also took part in the demonstration in order to express her opposition to the Israeli-imposed sanctions. Despite the fact that Shodzik's aunt and cousin were injured in a Qassam rocket attack in Zikim, the teen wanted to express her dissatisfaction with Israeli government policy vis-à-vis the Gaza Strip. "I came to show my identification with the Palestinian people. There is no need for violence or (the use of) force in order to solve this situation," she said. Shodzik added that she "knows it is absurd that I am taking part in this protest," but explained that it is the path she has chosen. 'We won't be party to this crime' Left-wing activist Uri Avnery made a speech during the rally in which he said: "Three days ago, a wall fell here, like the Berlin Wall fell, like the separation wall and all walls and fences will fall. But the inhumane closure that has been imposed on one and a half million Gaza residents by our government and by our army in our name – this closure will continue with all its cruelty. "As Israelis who came here with basic supplies, in our desire to tell the Israeli public and the whole world: We won't be part of this crime. We're ashamed of this siege," Avnery said. Avnery added that: "Our hearts are with our Palestinian brothers who are demonstrating with us on the other side of the fence. Don't lose hope that one day we will meet without fences and walls, without weapons and violence, as two nations living together in peace, in friendship, in partnership. "Our hearts are also with our brothers in Sderot. The Qassam threat must be stopped, but it won't be stopped through a policy of an eye for an eye or 100 eyes for one, because this leaves us all blind. It will end when we speak with the other side. Yes, yes, with Hamas," Averny said. AnnaLynne Kish, an activist from the left-wing New Profile organization also took part in the rally. "We decided to come here as a sign of identification with the Palestinians in Gaza. The closure on the Strip is inhuman and goes against international law. This is an instance of collective punishment. "We decided to bring food and water to the residents and if only we could bring them electricity – we would do this too," she said. Another Sderot resident who wised to remain anonymous told Ynet in response to news of the demonstrations that "for seven years we haven't seen one of them in Sderot. They didn't come to (see) us even once after a Qassam barrage. "Suddenly, they discover that the other side is suffering and come to protest, but what about our suffering? They should stop trying to look so good (in the eyes of others) and return to their strongholds in northern Tel Aviv. "I invite them to spend a week in Sderot with their children. Then it will be interesting to see if they continue to protest in favor of the Palestinians." Sharon Roffe-Ofir contributed to this report ***** Israeli organizations that participated in the convoy: Gush Shalom, Combatants for Peace, Coalition of Women for Peace, ICAHD - The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Bat Shalom, Bat Tzafon for Peace & Equality, Balad, Hadash, Adalah, Tarabut-Hithabrut, Physicians for Human Rights, Alternative Information Center, Psychoactive - Mental Health Professionals for Human Rights, ActiveStills, Student Coalition Tel-Aviv University, New Profile, Machsom Watch, PCATI - Public Committee Against Torture, Yesh Gvul, Gisha, Social TV on the internet, Faculty for Israel-Palestine Peace. http://gush-shalom.org.toibillboard.info/gaza_eng.htm .............................. Photos by Rebecca Vilkomerson .................................. -------- Jewish Peace News editors: Joel Beinin Racheli Gai Rela Mazali Sarah Anne Minkin Judith Norman Lincoln Shlensky Alistair Welchman ------- Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to www.jewishpeacenews.net |
