Gazans Form Human Chain Along Israeli Border In Protest at Blockade
Palestinians today formed a human chain in protest at Israel’s blockade of Gaza as Israel deployed thousands of troops and police officers along the border.
About 5,000 people, many of them women, schoolchildren and university students, joined the chain outside the town of Beit Hanoun, about four miles from the border.
The crowd hoisted banners in English and Arabic, saying “End the siege of Gaza now”, and “Your siege will not break our will”.
One of the organisers, an independent MP, Jamal al-Khoudary, said the protesters did not plan violent action. “This is a peaceful event aimed to send a message to the world that the people of Gaza want to live in freedom,” he said.
Organisers had hoped to form a chain running the length of the 25-mile Gaza strip, but turnout was well below expectations.
After the protest some 2,000 Hamas loyalists marched to a checkpoint several kilometres away from Erez. However, Hamas police blocked the main road leading to the Erez checkpoint and called on loyalists to obey the law.
Hamas organised the event to protest at chronic shortages of vital supplies in Gaza because of Israeli restrictions. The group said the event would be peaceful and marchers would not reach the border.
Israel took no chances and deployed troops and police to prevent any repeat of scenes that occurred recently at the Gaza-Egypt border.
“I hope that, ultimately, they understand that we are deployed and ready, that this will not be a repeat of what happened in the Philadelphi Corridor (Egypt border) a few weeks back,” the deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, told Israel Radio.
Hamas blew open Gaza’s border wall with Egypt last month, allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to cross into Egypt and stock up with food, petrol and other basic necessities. But Israel voiced fears the flood of people included Islamist militants intent on carrying out attacks, and Egyptian security forces rounded up hundreds of suspects.
“We don’t plan to fool around in this regard,” Vilnai said. “We will use measures in the way we deem necessary to prevent people breaking into the state of Israel’s territory.”
Israeli radio and TV stations devoted their morning news coverage to the event, warning of a mass exodus of Gazans.
“It’s absolutely clear that among them will be people with explosive charges, there will be those among them who will be ready at any moment to blow up the border fence,” an ultra-nationalist MP, Effie Eitam, told Israel Radio, reflecting a widespread sense of alarm.
“Suddenly there will be a big hole in the fence somewhere, there will be explosions, injured soldiers and the mob will stream into our territory. If that happens it will be the end of the state of Israel.”
Last month, Israel tightened the blockade on Gaza, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, limiting supplies of fuel and other goods in response to cross-border rocket fire by militants.
Militants say the attacks are in response to Israeli raids and would stop if Israel lifted Gaza’s blockade. Hamas is treated as a political pariah by Israel and the west for not recognising Israel. It has, however, offered Israel a conditional, long-term ceasefire.
Some Palestinians have advocated a strategy of non-violent resistance to Israel similar to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and the worldwide impact of Gazans rushing into Egypt appears to have prompted Hamas to try and replicate such tactics on Gaza’s border with Israel.
© 2008 The Guardian
And the Egyptian border? If Hamas wants the blockade lifted maybe its fighters should stop shooting at Israel. Rocket fire won’t break the blockade.
Oh poor poor Israel - the world must take action against these viscious immoral killers.
“Gazans Form Human Chain Along Israeli Border In Protest at Blockade”
That should please IDF machine-gunners to no-end…
Good-luck with that!
Turn-out was as I’D ‘expect’…most Palestinians know-better, by now.
Someone should also inform those children by that Wall exactly what they ‘look like’ (or at least offer them blindfolds and an American-cigarette — they already like Joe, the Camel).
And Yes…crap like this DOES result in many “reflecting a widespread sense of alarm” — as Palestinians SHOULD know by now.
Wonder where, exactly, all those stupid, ineffective, and perpetually mis-aimed/non-deadly “bottle-rockets” actually ‘come from’, originally — and who paid-for/imports them? Hamas, or so they say…?
How many have they killed outside of Gaza in the last several-years? And, how many killed-within Gaza, to purportedly “stop their rain of death”?
[Or, is that “Alarmist” to ask?]
Hamas has offered to end all hostilities…. Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel either but they still get along….
Neither side wants to give in or surrender to any thing …but Israel expects the problems to go away before they are ready to negotiate…
give in and then well talk…
Well this ain’t gonna change over night….
This is big now but it has vibrations happening just like the 60’s all over again…Well kinda
The masters of War have exposed themselves on the news nightly.
I believe everything but the fear it is supposed to instill in me.
Why did they let Egypt reseal the border?
That makes no sense if they are starving.
They had their opening.
If they had bombed the whole border then Egypt would have bene forced to open relations with Hamas.
They didnt want to look like the bad guys instead of Israel(who are the main bad guys).
You got a point….I think everyone is thinking “Who got us into this mess anyway?”….. Oh yes that Bush guy… Maybe it would be best to save our breath and ammo until he leaves.
I would just wait and see kinda like a Christmas dinner Truce in world War One.
The last thing Hamas needs is a fight with Egypt… Not a winner!
Interesting that Effie Eitam is afraid but the women and children lined up at the border under Israeli guns are not afraid. Usually you can tell who the villains are by the way they sweat.
“Suddenly there will be a big hole in the fence somewhere, there will be explosions, injured soldiers and the mob will stream into our territory. If that happens it will be the end of the state of Israel.”
So how exactly would it be the end of the Israel if Palestinians came across the border? Talk about Paranoid. Israel could have peace with the Palestinians if they wanted it, but obviously they don’t want peace.
Jim Glover Said “Neither side wants to give in or surrender to any thing ”
Are you saying the Palestinians haven’t given up anything in the peace process??? That’s hardly true. How can they negotiate with an Israel that holds all the cards and is not willing to bend enough to allow the Palestinians a viable, contiguous state?
militantliberal,
and if israel really wanted peace then it would end its raids inside Gaza, recognize that Hamas was democratically elected and ACCEPT THE CEASEFIRE.
Mammon rules.
If Harry Truman were still alive I’d kick him in the nuts 5 times…
Once for each atomic bomb, once for Korea, once for Vietnam, and once for this. Should have given them part of Germany, maybe if Israel were in the middle of Europe, in part of the country that persecuted them in the first place, they would think twice before they started fucking around.
Blockading the Gaza strip is collective punishment and a disgrace to Israel. There is no excuse for collective punishment. As for the home made rockets: The brutality is far skewed toward Israel’s doing but this argument is useless.
One-state eventuality is the only democratic way. Perhaps first we need two states but you can’t kick people off their land of a certain ethnicity and then claim to have a democracy. It’s BS and the carnage will continue until we Jews face this fact.
We Jews have proven, through the blind support of Israel, that we are no better or worse than the Nazis, not one iota. We have completely lost any sense of fairness and empathy for a displaced people who were brutally removed from their land to pave the way for a Jewish state, based on what? A book, Oil and political interests of the US, the fact we were persecuted by someone else? Wake up Jewry, because we are all one and thus, the more we persecute, the more the persecution falls against ourselves.
This sounds like a Bible story already…. But who is gonna believe it?
It is the story that counts really and you folks keep jammerin and hammerin.
You are special.
Love……..
“Suddenly there will be a big hole in the fence somewhere, there will be explosions, injured soldiers and the mob will stream into our territory. If that happens it will be the end of the state of Israel.”
Talk about pathetic and paranoid. “Oh NO! An influx of poor, oppressed refugees would simply destroy our state! How would we go to the nightclubs or shop safely? Surely the US would stop sending so much military aid if we fail to keep oppressing impoverished people. HELP!”
Israel has turned the ‘victim’ role into an art form. Even when they are the the aggressors, even when they have the world’s forth strongest army, even when they have atomic weapons and a large navy, air force and the one-sided backing of America, even when they have been occupying Palestinians land for more than forty years and carrying out systemic genocide and land stealing and calculated humiliation they are still, according to them, the victims.
What a terrible travesty of justice! What an indictment of the ‘civilized’ nations of the world which continue to allow this farce to continue.
Old Testament. Definitely, Jim.
The US corporate media are guilty as usual in keeping Americans in the dark about the Palestinian territories. The degree of the brutality of the occupation and human suffering is not conveyed.
The Palestinian population is divided into 2 parts; those who quietly submit and fanatical suicide bombers and rocket launchers. The large numbers of nonviolent protestors (including Israelis) are too inconvenient to fit into the propaganda mould.
Israeli soldiers like to use Palestinian children for target practice. It’s a miracle that the protesters weren’t gunned down.
The people in Israel we have been in support of is the nut-job equivelents of Rush Limbaugh, Bush 41-42 etc etc. Like our own country, they have a LOT of liberal minded people….the problem is the right wing has control. Just like here, the result is misery, death and more hate. When people are not given a chance at a life, what other course of action do they have but to try to take it best they can.
“This is a fight among children over who has the best imaginary friend.”
This brings to my mind the non-violent resistance led by Ghandi that ultimately led to the British giving up rule of India.
On the “victim” mentality mentioned above—clearly the “projection” mechanism by which people avoid real awareness of what they’re doing to outsiders. Maybe The Old Testament can throw some light (for once). Whenever the ancient Hebrews were in “danger” of mixing and intermarrying with outsiders—and, through those social forms, likely to begin to adjust their beliefs by way of others’ perspectives—whether in Egypt or the Near East, The Old Testament’s ideologues (NOT the “common” majority of people) cried out that “the nation was being devoured,” as if eaten up by the “foreigners” who mostly welcomed and tolerated Hebrews as they did everybody else, from Canaanites and Phoenicians to Philistines and Apiru (the desert bedouins). The Old Testament’s main problem is that IF YOU DON’T LISTEN TO ‘GOD,’ YOU’LL FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR NEIGHBORS. I exaggerate not: read it through. So how many of ALL sides’ children are these “ideals” worth? Will they all “circumcise their hearts” as The Bible tells them against their neighbors—”make no treaties or agreements with them, do not marry their sons and daughters, do not take food inside their houses…”—and so condemn more generations to this obscene self-righteous farce?
I can’t figure out these rockets.
Firecrackers in my town do more damage than these rockets seem to do.
(Although, I suppose I could argue that the real damage they do is that they excite the Israeli military into slaying their daily quota of hte indigenes of Palestine.)
It is about time the Palestinians began fighting back effectively.
Extremists delude themselves with anger. This non violence is the true weapon against collective punishment and it scares the extremists on the other side.
The trick is to make the world see only extremism and therefore it won’t have sympathy or empathy with all the innocent people who just want peace and a decent life.
Nonviolence isn’t an emotional anger… it is the claim to JUSTICE. There is the truth. If you have truth on your side, the other side seeks to define you by what excuses their unjust behavior. Cutting electricity in winter, cutting food shipments and medicines to a captive population is never going to excusable unless they are ALL defined as being violent.That is the lie.
If the Palestinians want the world’s support then they must redefine themselves as being different than the way they are being defined by their occupiers.
When Mandela sought reconciliation rather than vengence… he won. The world said nonviolence was right and supported him. If they had been constantly using terrorism or violence apartheid would have been defined as a necessary response to violence etc.
Most Israelis also want peace as do most Palestinians but the voices of good people on both sides are drowned out by the rationalizations for violence… on both sides.
When nonviolence is used …good people worldwide embrace the seeking for justice that inspired it. When violence is used they have no choice but to reject it. That is what good people do.
Hurrah for these courageous good people who want an end to their imprisonment by extremists and their violent responses(pick a side…they both excuse all this) .
The Palestinians fought back this time. No one condemns them for doing so. How could they? Their plight is headlines around the world.
Effective ain’t it? Ask Mandela. Would anyone have believed he would win back when? Justice is like that… truth is like that… the peace that Palestinians and Isrealis (the good people in the majority on BOTH sides) is being held hostage by their guns.
Today a line was drawn… and the world did not ignore it. A headline was drawn… in the sand.
Peace is sanity. Lest we forget. Nonviolence brings support against injustice. Good people do not support violence against innocents. Such is just the truth.
Ask Mandela.
Although the Israelis are arguably the best propagandaists in the world,they are losing
their bid to be perceived as long-suffering
victims, surrounded by a sea of irrational, racist Arabs.
People here in my city of Pittsburgh PA. are starting to ask the usual “antisemetic” questions, beginning with, Why have the Jews been expelled from just about everywhere in the world they have settled?
Why are these people so universally hated?
What is a Jew? Is it a religion, a culture or a blood clan?
Why do the Jews need a country as a safe haven when they are not being seriously threatened by anyone?
How can a people claim to be ethical while living in stolen homes? How can people who
claim to be religious (the settlers) attack
little children walking to school with stones and beatings?
I would definately prefer to live among the Palestinians than the Israelis. Although both are human the zionists & Israelis are brutal, racist, atheistic money worshippers that kill and torture on whims and as a matter of state policy.
It is time to dismantle the gross error that calls itself Israel. This nation has contributed nothing but murder, terror, misery and insane rationalizations for their atrocious behavior.
They don’t want to live in the HOly Land, they want convert it to a euroopean outpost always ready for war and destruction and are environmentally ruining the land with their bulldozers, cities and paving over the earth, not to mention the monstrosity of the apartheid wall.
Yes the holocaust was horrible, why are the catholic, gypsy, homosexual, communist and other victims glossed over & ignored? Plus
the holocaust is no excuse to condemn the Palestinians to ghettoes, starvation, 2nd class status, checkpoints, beatings, kidnappings, torture, detentions, targeted assassinations, exile,
etc etc etc.
And how can any reasonable person equate
one of the world’s best equipped military
organizations with a civilian population armed with stones and homemade rockets?
Do you know that Holocaust means “holy sacrifice”? Why exactly is genocide any type of holy sacrifice. I think people are asking questions like bellthecat says, and want to know why we are still supporting Israel. What does Israel have to do with me, blow Joe American.
Jack37 has it right in regards to the Old Testament. Why do we still follow this stuff from 3000 years ago. It wasn’t even good advice back then.
I also agree that if the Palestinians take the path of peace like Arun Gandhi told them to that they will begin to make progress even if people begin to see them as people, it will help.
“…if that happens it will be the end of the state of Israel.”
I can hardly wait, and will celebrate end of Israel with a bottle of champaign. Israel is the evil nation of our time, the illegal occupier, a country of racists and apartheid.
“… Hamas is treated as a political pariah by Israel and the west..” . Oh yeah? Israel and the west are pariahs for not recognizing results of a free election in Palstine.
The likelihood of Israel disappearing,
is directly proportional to the Rothschild’s {global central banking} empire collapsing and disappearing.
They are integrally connected. Although most Jews may be oblivious to it - and in denial of the political “Russian Roulette” of intrigue - I believe that much of the last 200-yr history of the Jews may boil down chess game strategizing for the banking/petro industries gain. Some people go so far as to believe that the Holocaust was a Reichstag fire like pretext, for the creation of Israel, which was worked out over 100+ years of subtrafuge, orchestrated wars, pogroms, and behinds the scenes chicanery (i.e. the devil’s works). The details of history clearly show ten of millions of Jews dead, throughout Russian (Stalin) and Germany (Hitler) - but then much of the US banking industry was behind financing Hilter’s military machine built-up, and financing both sides of both WWI & WWII conflicts were quite effective in producing exceeding high profits for the Rothschild’s extended family (and central banking colleagues in crime). We may never know the real truth.
What the behind the scenes rulers do, is practically bend around whatever obstacles thwart their unmitigated profiteering - regardless of the creation of human misery. This is no different than what the US “leaders” do, although our own rethuglicans have nothing close to the cover that is provided for Jews, with something as useful as a cloak of antisemitism.
Of course the despotic ultra-rich’s greed and corruption, have long hidden behind the cloistered walls of religion — AS IF — their efforts could be explained as something other than outright criminal enterprise.
The real most terrific WMD are the policies and strategies of the TLC, Bildenburgers, etc …
Well, Rothchild’s central banking empire could very well collapse and disappear according to predictions of a total, global, economic collapse. Then the real estate developers will be out of business and perhaps some family owned farm land will still be available for growing food.
Chicanery during the build-up to WWII (and well into and past the war) can be gleaned from Charles Higham’s book “Trading With the Enemy: The Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949″ (unfortunately out-of-print but possibly available through Inter Library Loan.)
There’s also an excellent Web Site devoted to distancing Judaism from Zionism:
http://www.jewsnotzionists.org
Not reported on internet CNN.
If the intention is to steal land, peace is hardly convenient.
One of the great tragedies in the world today is the plight of Palestine and the Palestinians. I am shocked to my core by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Israel has occupied Palestinian’s lane, has built whole communities in the West Bank that belongs Palestine. Israel just STOLE the land, built homes on it and let the Israelis move in lock stock and barrel. And the rest of he world just looks on. I am especially outraged that the United States is so complicate in the actions of Israel against Palestine.
Someone please explain why the People of “Israeli” Palestine tolerate this cruelty?
These are good people? People that I should respect? These people that would not only ALLOW this but PARTICIPATE in it through their required military service?
Palestine should have been shared by Jews and Christians with the Muslims that were already there.
Justice now requires returning to the situation BEFORE ‘48 and the “State of Israel”.
When I meet an Israeli that advocates the dismantling of “Israel” I will meet a good Israeli, until that time, I support the People of Palestine regardless of Religion or Ethnicity, and I wish them Peace.
-matti
I take the liberty of cutting/posting something that I wrote a short while ago..
********************* Begins *****************
Chatting about Palestine/Israel
I believe that there are 4 (addendum from before) ways that this could pan out.
In it’s simplest essence The Zionists are between a rock and hard place of their own making. They created and therefore they “own” the catastrophe.
They can…
1) Maintain the situation as is, pushing the Palestinians further and further into their tight corner. This will surely lead to more violent events, rivers of blood and will finally bury the Zionist/Jewish supremacist mythology.
This is the preferred option for the US/Israeli axis.
The Zionists have such absolute control over the lives of the Palestinians that if they Declared Independence, this could well be a first step on the way to this scenario.
2) There are 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 4.5 million Palestinians in West Bank. The Zionists could produce their own “final solution” to “the problem” presented by these 6 million Palestinian untermensch. I suspect this number may invoke some terrible resonance amongst most Jews.
They can not really slaughter them (see 1 above and above) so they can only “push them out”. This loss of hostages and externalisation of enemies by the Zionists means that all bets would be off.
3) A confederation of 2 states, with their own adequate land areas and a clearly defined border.
This is one of only two options that hold any real promise of a long term future, with real security and prosperity for all.
This is very unlikely to happen unless and until, as Finkelstein says, Israel suffers a significant defeat. This could happen. There si no reason why some of the Israelis living in areas that could become Palestine, can not move out.. After all, whether or not they were born there, the Palestinians were forcibly evicted after living in Palestine for over 2000 YEARS..
60 years for the Zionists is not problem at all..
4) Work towards one person:one vote in (a Federation of) one Palestine and Israel. This is the other option for a real chance of a long term future.
The details will be long and hard. It will require honesty, sacrifice and contrition, particularly on the Zionist side and recognition of some harsh realities, particularly on the Palestinian side.
Palestinian refugees must have a right of return, to identifiable family homes and probably to many of the illegal West Bank settlements, vacated by the relocated “new Israelis”.
It will make many lawyers very rich.
The outcome will be worth it.
The alternatives are more and more of the same, only worse and worse.
1) and 2) above have the very real potential to destroy Israel from within.
I think one way to really wriggle into the Psych and under the skin, of the Zionists, is to use the situation of “6 Million Palestinian Untermensch held in a 21st Century Israeli Apartheid” and ask them what they, the Zionists, intend to do about it..
Lets all use this approach and stick it to the bastards..
However, I am beginning to believe that the Israelis are being used as “fall guys” by the US. The apparent power of the Zionist lobby may be something of a sham, one big con trick to make it seem as if the US is being coerced by them to produce all this suffering, death and destruction.. whilst actually doing as it pleases.
That not withstanding, they are both responsible.
The US supplies the means and a clear path, the IOF commits the crimes.. again and again and again..
nonviolence is the only way.
http://www.ryanhartman.wordpress.com
Israel is now to “celebrate” it’s 60 years as a state. A state which stole land and put people in “concentration camps.” And they want peace with the people they have abused and killed for 60 years. How about trying to make reparations? How about treating the indigenous Arab people as “humans?”
Permanence has nothing to do with size. The Soviet Union disappeared. The World Trade Center disappeared. The Fascists and the Nazis and the dodos and the Carolina Parakeets and the polar ozone disppeared. Why not the Rothchild’s central banking empire? Why not Israel?
voxclamantis Your point is well taken.
¿ WHAT FORCES MIGHT SPEED THE DECLINE ?
If some disenfranchised former member(s) of Rothschild central banking empire, were to go public - with solid criminal evidence and long list of culpable people - things would accelerate. Of course they would have the best justice that could be afforded them.
A ground swell of widespread public outrage along with undercutting competition from say Iran-style no interest (Muslim OK) loans, would also accelerate the downfall (and also would significantly empower the Southern hemisphere’s growth and freedom).
And w/o central banking and USA support, Israel would have become extremely vulnerable, which then leads to a global concern of nuclear stability and deterrence.
I don’t really know when, but both ultra-banks & Israel certainly are deserving of the ultimate renewal. This would also depend on when humankind evolves further in awareness, and is up to the greater level of overall societal responsibility required - to maintain the change.
Until this organized sickness, religion, is done away with, and people hold their faith as a personal journey, that needs no confirmation in a material doctrine, we will continue to spin our wheels in blood.
bellthecat; thoughtful post, this Wednesday morning more air-strikes again in Gaza…bombing women, children and men…
The child-killers who call themselves the “Jewish” state. The Kristol, Perle, Wolfowitz cabal directing American Military Assaults & Operations abroad,
They murder and murder for their “JEWISH” state, they torture children with cattle prods (KHIAM) It would help me personally if they would start calling themselves the ZIONIST state, not the Jewish State, because I hate the Child Killers. But I should split hairs, the torturers are Zionists, not nice Jews???? hhhmmmm -then why do they torture, bomb civilians for the “Jewish State?”
THEYDON’T WANT TO BE HATED FROM PITTSBURG TO PEKING THEY CAN QUIT BOMBING BABIES, WOMEN AND CHILDREN, THE ELDERLY AND MEN TOO! **** bombing civilians **** concentration camps.
LONG LIVE PALESTINE!!!
And p.s.; I just respect so much any Jew w/ the courage to stand aginst this killing, but where are you?
Your silence is deafening.
As is the shrill invective and support of the Israeli Death Forces I hear from almost all Jews.