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The 1,000 Day Siege of Gaza
This week marked 1,000 days of an Israeli and international siege on Gaza - 1,000 days of an open air prison where "inmates," the civilian Palestinian population of 1.5 million, cannot leave or enter at will - by land, sea or air, the tiny area known as the Gaza Strip.
60 years after the World War II Nazi military siege of Leningrad that lasted for 900 days and caused the greatest destruction and largest loss of life ever known in a modern city, the Israeli military has imprisoned Gaza for 1,000 days. The blockade has caused incredible physical and emotional suffering those crowded into an incredibly small space-25 miles long and 5 miles wide-one of the most densely populated areas in the world.
The siege means that the Israeli government controls the entry of food, medicines, and gasoline and construction materials for the Palestinians. The purpose of the blockade is to force by blatantly violating international law, a change in the government represented by Hamas, the political organization the people elected. The siege began in June, 2007, following Hamas' takeover of governmental functions in Gaza.
Hamas is named by the Israeli and American governments a "terrorist" organization because its militant wing and other militant groups in Gaza, have fired homemade unguided rockets at border villages of Israel which have killed 30 Israelis over the years.
Compounding the siege, a year ago, in a disproportionate use of force that violated international law, the Israeli military, the largest and most powerful in the region, attacked the people of Gaza with U.S. provided F-16 jet fighters, Apache attack helicopters, rocket firing unmanned drones, white phosphorus and dense inert metal explosive bombs. The attack killed 1,440 persons, wounded 5,000, left 50,000 homeless and destroyed schools, hospitals, and civil infrastructure including the water facility and the sewage plant for the entire area.
As one could predict, the siege and the attack have caused the people of Gaza to suffer from long term low levels of nutrition and lack of appropriate medical treatment and care. Most children and many adults have the symptoms of post traumatic stress from the indiscriminate violence waged on them by the Israeli military.
In June, 2009, Obama called for an end to the "continuing humanitarian crisis" in Gaza
U.S. government officials acknowledge the damage the siege is doing to the people of Gaza. On June 4, 2009, U.S. President Barak Obama in Cairo said to the world that the "continuing humanitarian crisis" in Gaza must end. But, for the next nine months, no one in the United States government has done anything to end the siege or challenge the Israeli attack on Gaza. Instead, the U.S. Congress lambasted the United Nations report that documented Israeli (and Hamas) violations of international and humanitarian law during the Israeli attack on Gaza.
Finally, 54 members of the US Congress say stop the collective punishment of the people of Gaza
Finally one month ago, 54 members of Congress called for the end of the collective punishment of the people of Gaza, but this call was largely unreported in U.S. media. It took the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on January 29, 2010, to carry the story that 54 members of the U.S. Congress wrote to President Obama asking for "immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza...in the collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip." The January 21, 2010 letter also urged Obama to press Israel to allow people to move in and out of Gaza, especially students, sick and injured, aid workers and journalists, and also to allow building materials to enter Gaza to rebuild houses destroyed by the 2008-2009 Israeli military attack.
A second letter, signed by 33 members of the US Congress, called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to raise the issue of students from Gaza who are denied the opportunity to study at universities in the West Bank due to the lack of free passage between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The letter stated that "Ensuring that students from Gaza have access to higher education in the West Bank promotes U.S. foreign policy interests by investing in the future of the region."
Congressman Baird calls for the U.S. to "circumvent" the blockade of Gaza with U.S. ships
US Congressman Brian Baird (D-WA), who has announced that he will not seek re-election in the 2010 elections, has gone a step further by calling for the U.S. to "circumvent" its own the blockade of Gaza by using U.S. roll-on, roll-off ships that would bring supplies for Palestinians to rebuild housing for 50,000 whose homes were destroyed a year ago in the Israeli attack.
Baird is one of only 10 U.S. members of Congress who have gone to Gaza since the attack, while hundreds of members of the U.S. Congress and their staffers have gone to Israel during the same year. He went to Gaza three times in 2009 and observed from his visits, "The Palestinian people have little hope for the future. This lack of hope will eventually foment into radicalization. Radicalization will breed terrorists which will threaten the security of not only Israel but also the United States. We need to reverse this spiral of despair."
Israeli government continues siege and illegal settlement building-thumbs nose at Obama Administration and US Congress-the hands that feed it
The Israeli government continues to strangle Gaza with its siege and has increased building its illegal settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. This week, nine months after President Obama's Cairo speech that also called for an end to the expansion of illegal settlements, Vice-President Joe Biden was given a nose-thumbing during his visit to Israel when the Israeli government announced it would build 1,600 new homes in the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Ramat Shlomo. Israeli government plans have now been made public that call for a total of 8,253 new homes in settlements in East Jerusalem, according to the March 11 issue of the UK Guardian.
The Israeli government's dismissal of U.S. "concerns" about its siege and settlement policies included not only swipes taken at Obama and Biden, but also at members of the U.S. Congress. In mid-February, Israel refused to allow a 5 person congressional delegation lead by Representative William Delahunt (D-MA) to enter Gaza on a fact-finding mission. Additionally, Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel Danny Ayalon refused to meet with the delegation.
U.S. military says that U.S. weakness in influencing change in Israeli policies is jeopardizing safety of U.S. troops
In January, 2010, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) military officers told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that there "was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises and that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region."
The Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Vice President Biden told Prime Minister Nethanyahu last week that "what you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan...since many people in the Muslim world perceive a connection between Israel's actions and U.S. policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism."
But citizens take action
While the U.S. government remains impotent in the face of Israeli actions, this past week also marked an unprecedented challenge by U.S. citizens to Israeli politicians and government officials who travel with impunity to the United States.
Although the commercial media refused to cover it, on March 10, 2010, 600 citizen activists formed a human chain encircling the four sides around the prestigious Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City to protest the $1,000 a plate fundraiser for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and its chief Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi. Carrying signs that read War Crimes, End the Siege of Gaza and Palestinians Hunger for Justice, the marchers, representing 20 organizations, walked in solemn, silent, non-violent protest of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. The silent marchers were met by approximately 100 aggressive, in-your-face, illegal settler-type confrontations by supporters of the IDF and Israeli policies.
This week also marked a milestone in the seven year search for justice in the murder of Rachel Corrie, an American activist who was run over on March 16, 2003 by an American made D-9 Caterpillar bulldozer driven by an Israeli military soldier who was destroying homes of Palestinians in the southern Gaza town of Rafah. This week Rachel's parents and sister travelled to Haifa, Israel to attend the first Israeli legal proceeding in Rachel's death-a civil suit, as the Israeli courts has refused to accept a criminal suit. An Israeli court allowed four members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) who saw the IDF bulldozer run over Rachel to enter Israel to testify during the court proceedings.
Also this week, hundreds of American activists were in the US Congress with the Interfaith Peace Builders and the US Campaign to End the Occupation to lobby members of Congress to take a stand to the end of the siege of Gaza and illegal settlements.
Additionally, in the first two weeks of March, activists around the world focused attention on Israeli apartheid policies through worldwide actions during Apartheid Week by encouraging boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israeli products. Actions continue against Israeli products made illegally from resources from the occupied territories, such as AHAVA Dead Sea salts cosmetics. The merchandise giant COSTCO now deleted AHAVA products from its inventory although it sells other Israeli products. Actions continue in grocery stores in Europe against the import of Israeli food products.
Ending the Siege with Patience and Persistence and Appeal for Citizens to Keep up the Pressure
At a vigil in Gaza City on March 11, Jamal Al-Khudari, the President of the Popular Committee Against the Siege, lit the first candle of many that became the number "1000" and spoke to those attending the vigil: "On this day we have reached a thousand days of the siege and we have endured a thousand days of patience and persistence; we light a candle to remember the darkness of each of those one thousand days." He pleaded for citizens of the world to keep pressure on their governments to end the siege.
And we will!
- Posted in
34 Comments so far
Show AllUnspeakable. The idea that the international community is doing nothing for the Palestinian people is horrific and wrong. Inaction to human suffering makes all of us complicit. Compassion should be a human trait in people of all color and religions. Clearly, as far as religions go, Islam has become the way Christianity was during the Roman empire, when they were being thrown into the arenas with lions etc. for entertainment. Except in this case the lions are Israelis and anyone in the world who hates Islam, Arabs or Muslims. Very, very sad.
The world doesn't have a lot of sympathy for people who elect terrorists. They chose their path and didn't leave Israel any room to maneuver. Don't expect anyone -- Us, Israel, Egypt, anybody -- to back those who chose terrorism.
[The world doesn't have a lot of sympathy for people who elect terrorists]
Horseshit! What do you think Reagan was doing when he funded the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 80s? Or the Contras in Nicaragua? Do you really believe that Bush and Obama aren't funding 'terrorist' groups that are at work in Iran today?
We had lots of sympathy for the terrorists who blew up the Brits and others in Israel in the 1940s, even recognized their government after they declared a UDI.
The world does have a great deal of contempt for those terrorists who launched 'Operation Cast Lead' otherwise known as the shooting of fish in a barrel.
Thank you for your historic insight, Saturnalia!
m.beigin? i shamir?, a.sharon?..all three terrorists and murderers, all three prime ministers of that monstrous thing, the blood nationalist state that calls itself "israel"...
The U.S. Navy should be directed to station two carrier groups in the eastern Mediterranean as a deterrent and then the U.S. Navy should begin delivery of humanitarian supplies to the besieged citizens of Gaza.
Such an action would greatly reduce tensions throughout the world. Israel has no allies in its apartheid crimes against the Palestinians. This is in stark contrast to the Palestinians, who are supported and seen as victims of Israeli aggression all around the world.
Maybe another USS Liberty would serve to arouse the American people to the fact that Israel is not your friend and is one of the few nations to commit an unprovoked attack on the US killing 34 servicemen.
Thank you Col. Wright for have the courage and patriotism to speak publicly about US complicity in collective punishment, assassinations, use of illegal weapons, against civilians and civilian infrastructure, ethnic cleansing, and other war crimes. Israeli actions do not conform to international law, nor to US values, nor to historic Jewish values. It is one of the greatest shames of US history that we have decided by our actions that we believe that Palestinians are not humans deserving of life, liberty, human rights, justice, and the right to live on their own land, governing themselves by their own democracy. No good will come of our actions helping Israel destroy another people.
The US needs to withdraw the $3 billion in annual aid that finances Israel's military;
AND must inform Israel that we will not support it in any attack on its neighbors;
AND we must recognize Hamas as the legally and democratically elected government of Gaza and change its status from "terrorists" to "resistance fighters."
Hamas is such a horrific bunch of terrorists that half the time they are killing their own people (PA/PLO). Recognize them? Never.
Is there a listing of Israeli products that I can boycott?
Here is a place to start looking http://bdsmovement.net/
Join the Second Global BDS Day of Action 30 March 2010
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
You might try googling "bar code" numbers that identify where products come from.
Ray Berthiaume
I am grateful to CD for giving this kind of information. Of course the MSM will not tell us. If the US send ships to Gaza it will be a miracle!
Ray Berthiaume
I am grateful to CD for giving this kind of information. Of course the MSM will not tell us. If the US send ships to Gaza it will be a miracle!
Ray Berthiaume
I am grateful to CD for giving this kind of information. Of course the MSM will not tell us. If the US send ships to Gaza it will be a miracle!
Ray Berthiaume
I am grateful to CD for giving this kind of information. Of course the MSM will not tell us. If the US send ships to Gaza it will be a miracle!
My God, if the US Government will not even listen to it's own Military leaders, Mullen and Petraeus, when they say that Israel is costing American soldiers lives, how do you get through to this 'liberal' President?
There is something in the cool aid in DC:
- First Bin Laden flies a bunch of planes into US buildings and says - US support for Israel was a main reason;
- Then, Israel attacks and kills over 1400 Palestinians in retaliation for a Hamas Qassam rocket attack in December of 2008 that hurt no one. In addition, the Goldstone Report, a UN sanctioned and approved report identifies Israeli war crimes;
- Next, Mitchell, Clinton and Biden spend an innordinate amount of time setting up middle east peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and the damn Israelis say there going to build 1400 more condos in the Palestinian West Bank, flying in the face of Obama's directive, and screwing up the negotiations;
- Now, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mullen and the Head of CENTCOM for the US, Petraeus, says Israeli actions are harming American troops.
WHAT THE HELL DOES IT TAKE!!!!!!
There is no need for demonstrations or civil unrest. The damn White House needs to get off its idiotic ass and read the papers. Jesus, just do it.
the US doesn't have to risk sending ships. without US support, there would be no siege of Gaza. Everything else is just talk. including the indirect talks with America's favourite puppet Palestinian, Abbas. The Israeli tanks destroyed his office, the US is paying for his security force, if he was any more a powerless figurehead, he would be the president of Afghanistan.
The bunker busting bombs are on the way to Diego Garcia, to be pointed at Iran very soon. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/world-news/final-destination-iran-1.1013151
This is one more bow to Israel, our lord and master!!
This gets sparse coverage in U.S. media which has a very strong connection to the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), esp. the New York Times.
http://www.politicaltheatrics.net/2010/03/us-media-and-israel-military-all-in-the-family/
Also, Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff, was in the IDF in the early 1990s.
This is more than just ethnic cleansing, this is the genocidal extermination of the Palestineans and theft of their homeland. This has been fully aided and abeted by both our political parties. I cannot in good conscience vote for either one of them ever again.
GOOD. What we need is an honest and ethical 3rd party, if there is such a thing.
Homeland? Funny, it was homeland for Jewish people before it was homeland for Palestinians. How far do we get to roll back history?
Let's roll it back to when the Jewish people arrived on the scene after wandering inm the desert for forty years. Whose homeland was it then, before they pushed out the folks who were there before them? Afte a while, they created something some people, some of the time, refer to as a Jewish state. It didn't last very long, and for two thousand years, there was no such thing.In two hundred years, there will be no such thing once again.Too bad, they might have been able to work something out with the ocean of Arab hunanity that surrounds them, but they will have blown that opportunity, sooner rather than later.Let the Turks and the Persians sort them out.
So you support ethnically cleansing the Jewish people from an area their race and their ancestors never entirely left? I guess you like that idea of a "final solution."
I admire Ann Wright and the brave, stubborn band of faithful protesters, and wish them well.
But I also believe that something very big must be done, and soon, to stop Israel.
What we are witnessing here is nothing less than Israel's final solution to the Palestinian problem. It is intolerable. It must be stopped.
Final solution? Is that why the Palestinian population keeps increasing?
The nutty, anti-Semitic slop that gets tossed around here at Israel is appalling. I've been there. Try living with suicide bombers visiting or a bunch of neighbors that have gone to war with you for decades. It isn't easy.
Israel exists. If the Arabs want to be friendly neighbors, we'll have peace. If not, we won't.
Just read the Yahoo item on congressional reaction to the administration's criticism of Israel. they quote in detail each of the 8 - eight - senators who object to the administration position, while presenting Obama's position on the defense.
Interesting that they talk about it threatening the peace process. Confronting Israeli aggression might lead to actual peace. But without a process to manage, how can congress continue the illusion of progress without actually doing anything?
Apologists' tactics in regards to the US/Israel policy of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians:
1 – Attack the messenger (CD poster or whoever criticizes the US/Israel's ethnic cleansing)
2 – If the critic is a Jew, call the Jew anti-semetic or a self-hating Jew
3 – Make it sound like Israel is the victim although Israel is the aggressor and occupier
4 – Point to other injustices in the world to deflect attention of Israel's illegal acts.
5 – State that Jews and Palestinians have a long history of conflict therefore the situation is unresolvable (ignoring Israel's illegal occupation) in order to maintain status quo and further Israel's expansion of illegal settlements
6 – Claim Israel has biblical rights to Palestinian land (thus God supports the ethnic cleansing)
7 – Claim the occupied territory was either no man's land or another countries land to justify Israel's illegal confiscation of the land and the people on it.
8 – Defend the occupation and ethnic cleansing without mentioning the illegal acts: land confiscation, house demolitions and evictions, burning and razing of Palestinian farmland, illegal land annexations, specific apartheid policies in the West Bank, shooting and arrests of non-violent demonstrators on occupied land, restriction of movement, land and sea blockade, restrictions of imports of medicine, food, school supplies and building materials, illegal shooting of Gazan farmers and fishermen...
9 – Make so illegitimate arguments or use inaccurate/misleading facts to justify Israel's illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing policy that it is impossible to respond to them all because every time you try, another illegitimate argument is made. (The Bush administration was a master of this in the buildup to the Iraq war. It seemed every week, another piece of unsupported evidence was made to support attacking Iraq. And every time you challenged one illegitimate argument, the arguer (usually a Fox News viewer) would abandon that argument and jump to the next illegitimate argument and this would continue to the point of exhaustion.)
10 – Switch between tactics 1-9 above in your non-stop argument whenever one of the tactics runs out of steam.
11 – In regards to blogging, create discussion fights and go off topic.
12 – In regards to blogging, apologist is either ignorant or feigns ignorance and attempts to attack the credibility of the comment by asking for a link to the source (effort to waste time of blogger when information is readily available on the internet and the apologist doesn't provide support for his own misinformation). If you don't respond, e.g., because you don't monitor the site all day, apologist discounts your argument, and if you respond, the apologist changes the subject, makes a new attack, or ignores the response.
Apologists use tools such as Megaphone Desktop (www.giyus.org) to alert themselves when articles about Israel's destructive policies appear on the internet so they can use tactics like the above to try and win public opinion.
Ironically, if Ben -Gurion hadn't made deals with Germany,after the war, then there probably wouldn't have been an Israel. ( same problem as with America. If it hadn't been for Adams, getting money from the Netherlands, then we might not be here either.) Money, of course was the issue.
America, after WW II, wouldn't sell munitions to Israel, but Germany did. Building a nation does keep one blind to the needs of " the people." That would be people as in "all of humanity."
Read " The Seventh Million" by Tom Segev. It gives an overview of all that went on in the building of Israel and provides illuminating documentation.
America has the same problem. though. A lot of old time war hawks seem to see War as Peace...it's just that the fighting never stops, so no one knows if this would work, although, I do doubt it.
However, I am one of those who looks at what is happening to the Palestinians and sees no difference between what is happening in Palestine and the Nazi treatment of the Jews.
I wonder, if the U.S. sent Marshall Plan relief planes into the starving Palestianian peoples' camps, would the Israelis shoot the planes down?
As to the poster's comments re" terrorists... which leave Israel no choice..."
Terrorists... I imagine that's how much of Afghanistan thinks of us. All countries have terrorists, although most of the time they are walking around in military uniforms, and are legally ( or not) sanctioned to kill.
There is always a "choice," but we humans never seem to think that far. Really, I think that the "people" just want to to be left alone. Maybe each country would have its one "Conan the barbarian," and war becomes a one on one match and winner take all! This would certainly allow the "people of the world," to live a life and be left alone.
You tweak the "terror" word a little which is a plus, but still leave it associated with some sort of inherent evil force loose in the world. As the commentary here shows the terror word and it's derivatives are used as juvenile, if not toddler, psyche cuss words: which in part means derived from a myopic human view. Thus we get a listing of the atrocities committed by this person and that, and "nuh huh" and "because, because why, because because" debates instead of a deeper and broader human exploration and experience. Juvenile delinquency may be good enough for those like Bush(see all press conferences) and Obama(see Nobel speech), but it doesn't satisfy a Gandhi or a King. By keeping the conversation away from fantastical "final solution" evil imagery, and focused on the human actions and human motivations, we can get to the human remedies for modifying atrocious human behavior; also, doing this one taps into the human aesthetic even in a time of torturous chaos.
at a time that the world is awakening to...
Gaza And The Warsaw Ghetto
same place
different time
while the world stood by
genocide
live...
a crime for which those responsible can look forward to being put on trial at the International Court of Criminal Justice...
"Members of the jury, on the charge of committing genocide, what is your verdict?"
"Guilty, your honor."