Despite the Israeli government’s threat to forcibly stop them the Free Gaza group made a second successful sailing to Gaza Strip today. Their first sailing, on 24 August, made them the first people to freely enter Gaza Strip in forty-one years.
Israel has imposed an immoral and illegal blockade on Gaza Strip since June 2007, in an attempt to undermine Hamas, who won the elections in January 2006, and as collective punishment of Gazans for electing them.
The blockade means Gazans have been unable to travel in or out of Gaza Strip to see family members or go to universities they’ve been accepted into, or receive medical care. It also means an increasing lack of things like spare machinery parts and all the other things that go into running a civilised world.
This kind of cowardly collective punishment has been carried out before in this part of the world and that is estimated to have cost the lives of a million people, half of whom were children.
Let’s hope Free Gaza is just the beginning of the breaking of this siege.
Notes:
Jonathan Cook on Dr. Shlomo Sand’s new book:
Dr. Shlomo Sand argues that the idea of a Jewish nation—whose need for a safe haven was originally used to justify the founding of the state of Israel—is a myth invented little more than a century ago.
In addition, he argues that the Jews were never exiled from the Holy Land, that most of today’s Jews have no historical connection to the land called Israel and that the only political solution to the country’s conflict with the Palestinians is to abolish the Jewish state.
… he predicted a rough ride from the pro-Israel lobby when the book is launched … in the United States next year.
In contrast, he said Israelis had been, if not exactly supportive, at least curious about his argument.
There’s a documentary drama on the UK’s Channel 4 tomorrow night at 9 PM, telling the story of Thomas Hurndall’s murder by an Israeli sniper, and his family’s fight to uncover the truth.
I met Tom on the human shield action to Iraq in 2003. He left Iraq when war became inevitable and travelled on to Gaza where he was eventually shot in the head by Hayb, an award-winning Israeli marksman, while trying to save Palestinian children who were having pot shots fired around them by Israeli snipers.
From his diary:
What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that satisfy our instincts only satisfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven’t done.
External links:
Outgoing Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, recently quoted as saying:
(I am saying) what no previous Israeli leader has ever said: we should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in East Jerusalem and in the Golan Heights.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki, in response:
We wish we had heard this personal opinion … (before) he resigned.
No shit. But this all pre-supposes the dead end that is the two-state solution. As Ghada Karmi wrote last week in The Guardian:
A unitary state is inevitable. Establishing an exclusive state defined along ethnic-religious lines and excluding its previous inhabitants was unjust and ultimately unsustainable. No political acrobatics will alter this. The sooner the UN, which unwisely created Israel in the first place, takes charge of the consequences, the better it will be for Palestinians, for Israelis and for the region as a whole.
Here’s recent footage of the Israeli navy firing machine guns at unarmed Palestinian fishing boats.
The Sunday Herald reports:
The footage, taken on September 6 by Andrew Muncie, who is from the Highlands, shows an Israeli gunboat engaging fishing boats while international observers hold their arms in the air and scream for them to stop firing.
No-one was injured in the incident, but Palestinian fishermen claim 14 colleagues have been murdered at sea by the Israeli navy since the onset of an economic blockade imposed after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. Israel says patrolling these waters is a vital security measure to stop weapons being smuggled into Gaza.
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