Tag Archives: gaza

where the cynicism is born

Posted on February 3, 2011 by | Leave a comment

In the past week, the Palestinian Authority has violently suppressed two separate rallies in support of the Egyptian people and their rights to revolt against an unjust government (not reported in Ma’an news). At the same time, the Palestinian Authority set up a fake protest in support of the Mubarak regime (also not reported). Today, we see the Palestinian Authority calling for the people of Gaza to emulate their brothers in Egypt (!) and rally to overthrow Hamas.

1. This page is not affiliated to any party or religion but it is working for Palestinians
2. Friday 11 February will be the day the Palestinian people say no to division and yes to national unity, they will stand in the face of the challenges facing the Palestinian cause
3. We call on Hamas to stop its coup and go back seriously and immediately to reconciliation to unite again with our people
4. Overthrow the unjust government in Gaza by coordination with the rest of the national parties in the Palestinian arena
5. Initiate an intifada against the current situation in Gaza. A peaceful intifada to say yes to unity and enough to the emirate of darkness.

At the same time, the Palestinian Authority is currently amending their election law to dis-include the Gaza Strip from elections supposedly to be held in May – over a year since they were previously scheduled to be held.

Palestine is the canary in the mineshaft. I have serious doubts about Egypt’s prospects for success when Palestine – the heart of the anticolonial movement in the Middle East – is this infested with thuggery and juvenile propaganda tactics and no one here responds.

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Posted in america, gaza, globalization, imperialism, Islam, israel, neo-colonialism, occupation, orientalism, palestine, persona non grata, public relations, Ramallah, the future

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one family in gaza

Posted on January 19, 2011 by | Leave a comment

One Family in Gaza (2010, Jen Marlowe, 22 minutes) is a short film that documents the personal tragedy of one family in Gaza. What makes this film so powerful is that it is told entirely by the family themselves. There are a million or more stories like this in Palestine. Nearly everyone you meet has been affected in some way by decades of war and suffering, but it is worthwhile to hear it yourself from those who experienced it instead of reading it in a report or seeing it on television. The humanity conveyed in the tears of a mother or the anguished prayers of a father is hard to miss. You may contact the film maker here.

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Posted in death toll, gaza, imperialism, israel, neo-colonialism, occupation, palestine, persona non grata, terrorism, war, warfare, Western perspective

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Blood – Suja Sawafta

Posted on August 26, 2010 by | Leave a comment

I.
Plasma, fluid full of cells,
Red, white, medical anatomy
Of iron that carries oxygen,
Drumlike, through the body,
In a wave of beats,
Flaps like a hummingbird,
Continuous, life is oxygen that moves through phases in a being,
Red, maroon, purple, blue.
Iron, salt, preservation is necessary
For life, circulation of platelets,
Or broken pain, which after all
Is nothing more than a blow to the nerves,
Bruising until it becomes a plush plum
Cloud under the skin,
Marble disfiguration, pollution.
Blood is rushing pleasure or
Settling fear, a feeling,
A metaphor for something that
Spills and spreads too easily, but
Nonetheless can stop dancing through your
Nerves in a beat, one moment,
Final, that defines a conclusion.

II.
Blood is a line,
A genetic history, belonging,
Love between two people,
A child, a muse, or traces
Of a caravan that traveled
From Baghdad to Jerusalem,
The descendants of which might now
Live in the Jordan Valley, a link.
Legacy, a story told and retold
From one generation to another,
A call in the wind, an echo,
The reincarnation of a soul,
Ethnic relevance, like the
Boshnak who once came from
Bosnia and now call themselves Palestinian.
Blood is sumac that flavors
A national dish, tomatoes
Grown in Jenin, Gaza
Star gazing, sleeping on a rooftop,
A shower of bullets, glittering,
That puncture people trying to live.
Blood is a walk in the grove, or
A tradition, it colors skin,
A bride blushing pink, or
A young man from Yaffa
Who is gold, his mother
Brown, withered like leather,
Lasting and authentic.
Here blood is loyalty,
It is brotherhood, it
Is steadfastness.

III.
Blood is a Palestinian child running,
For fear of spilling, of slipping
For loosing an irreplaceable amount
Of platelets, because she took
A walk in the grove or because
She refused to show the soldier
By the wadi her breasts.
Blood is humiliation
That she cannot be human,
Unpleasant like a scar from
A stray bullet.
Blood is inhumane, unpure,
A differing translation due to context,
Blood is the flow of resistance,
The sound of footsteps, a whisper,
it is the coping method of a mother
Who insists that her sons
Blood smells of lavender
Laced with the pure sweetness
Of being a martyr.
Blood is the reason for too much salt
In this earth rich with minerals
Because of the abundance of death.

Blood is a release from
the binding of life.

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Posted in gaza, Great Thinkers, human rights, imperialism, neo-colonialism, occupation, palestine, persona non grata, Ramallah, warfare, women

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More on Remote Warfare: Spot & Shoot

Posted on July 15, 2010 by | 1 comment

Israel continues to lead the way arm in arm with the United States when it comes to state of the art remote warfare tactics.

It is called Spot and Shoot. Operators sit in front of a TV monitor from which they can control the action with a PlayStation-style joystick.

The aim: to kill.

Played by: young women serving in the Israeli army.

Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people – Palestinians in Gaza – who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick.
The female soldiers, located far away in an operations room, are responsible for aiming and firing remote-controlled machine-guns mounted on watch-towers every few hundred metres along an electronic fence that surrounds Gaza…..

The Spot and Shoot system – officially known as Sentry Tech – has mostly attracted attention because it is operated by 19- and 20-year-old female soldiers, making it the Israeli army’s only weapons system operated exclusively by women.

Female soldiers are preferred to operate remote killing devices because of a shortage of male recruits to Israel’s combat units. Young women can carry out missions without breaking the social taboo of risking their lives, said Mr Brom.

The women are supposed to identify anyone suspicious approaching the fence around Gaza and, if authorised by an officer, execute them using their joysticks…..

The Haaretz newspaper, which was given rare access to a Sentry Tech control room, quoted one soldier, Bar Keren, 20, last week saying: “It’s very alluring to be the one to do this. But not everyone wants this job. It’s no simple matter to take up a joystick like that of a Sony PlayStation and kill, but ultimately it’s for defence.”

Audio sensors on the towers mean that the women hear the shot as it kills the target. No woman, Haaretz reported, had failed the task of shooting what the army calls an “incriminated” Palestinian.

from The National

Perhaps an under examined aspect of remote warfare is its possible feminist “benefits”, allowing women to serve on the front lines of battle as pilots and infantry. However, since they themselves are not at immediate risk of death (unlike the Palestinian wandering into an unmarked “no-go zone”) can we really call it feminist, if even defense as Ms. Keren mentions? More interesting would be the mentality behind the idea that sitting in a room in Nazareth and killing Palestinians hundreds of kilometers away can be considered and internalized by the participants as “defense”.

Regardless, by allowing women to participate in killing without being subject to the horrors of war, we further eliminate possibilities of international female solidarity while also implicating first world women as equal-opportunity participants in extrajudicial remote warfare.

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Posted in death toll, gaza, human rights, israel, occupation, palestine, the future, war, warfare, women

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contradictory stances

Posted on June 2, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Israel keeps changing their story.

First the flotilla victims were IHH (which was suddenly a radical Islamic terrorist organization) and then they were just simply Hamas/Terrorists. First the international protesters were simply uninformed, now they’re Islamic extremists/sympathizers. First the Israelis were going to “deliver” humanitarian aid (see Amira Hass’s views on this one here) and now the Israelis claim  up to 50 on the ship “could have terrorist connections with global jihad-affiliated groups”. I guess if the flotilla was such a publicity stunt, like Israel keeps claiming, they would have taken care to not pack night vision goggles and bulletproof vests (which today you can’t find a source for) and admit terrorists to their ranks, right?

If you can’t see through this I don’t know what to tell you. Israel boarded a ship in international waters (piracy) and killed unarmed civilians with head shots (murder/warcrime) because they are so desperate to keep their Gazan prison tight and secure and starving and hopelesss.

Even though Turkey is talking tough, my guess is that next Israel will be blaming Lebanon. I honestly don’t know at this point. They’re going to keep sending ships and Israel says next time they’ll use “more force”, as if killing up to 20 unarmed civilians  isn’t enough. Turkey threatens to escort the next flotilla with their navy, but we’ll see how NATO responds. Meanwhile, the United States couldn’t be bothered to respond with any kind of indignation past “deep condolences” for the families affected. Business as usual.

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Posted in gaza, human rights, imperialism, occupation, palestine, terrorism, war, warfare

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Lights Out for Gaza

Posted on April 10, 2010 by | Leave a comment


Gaza’s single power plant ran out of fuel today, blanketing the Gaza Strip in darkness for at least the weekend. Crossings into Gaza may open in Israel and fuel may be allowed through on Sunday at the earliest. This is in spite of the best efforts of the Palestinian engineers who have kept the plant running despite all number of obstacles in the past.

Occasionally, one has to step back and review the situation completely. So let’s start at the beginning: What sins did Gaza commit to deserve this kind of genocide?

I say genocide because there no longer is a viable future for the people of Gaza. All hopes for that have been dashed by the laboratory conditions of their existence. Gaza is being wiped out. What’s shocking to me is that despite this laboratory being open to public view and participation, Israel continues to wreck fire and brimstone down on the heads of nearly 800,000 children without the slightest concern of anyone stepping in to stop this.


Consider the number of children whose lives have been completely ruined by the effects of constant warfare, poverty, and imprisonment. This is a generation that has only known this kind of existence. A surprising amount of children  require hearing aids because of excessive, constant sonic booms over Gaza. To this, Rannan Gissim said, “The inconvenience that it causes the Palestinian population cannot be measured against the question of life or death for Israelis on the other side.” Do deaf Gazan children really present a life or death situation to Israel? Many are malnourished and losing access to decent health care and even clean water. Excessive salination is causing a breakdown in Gaza’s well-based water supply. Food is only allowed into the Gaza Strip through checkpoints that too often close arbitrarily. Over 30% of Gaza’s airable land is a Shoot-on-Sight No Man’s Land. Just this past week, new clothes and shoes were allowed through the checkpoints.

Gaza has over 800,000 children who are underfed, malnourished, poorly-clothed, deaf, sick, and without any kind of prospects for the future. In addition, now they are also living without electrical power.

I wonder how much longer this will last. I’m appealing to your emotions, but I have to. These are children. I get emotional about children. When I see a few hundred thousand suffering like this, I have to hope you feel the same way I do. Palestinian children are worth just as much as any child on Earth. Why is nothing being done to help them?

Gaza has rockets and tunnels of course. Supplies are smuggled in at fear of immediate death for the workers. These tunnels are routinely bombed and collapse often. While they bring through ingredients to go into a rocket (sugar, for instance), they also bring through supplies and food. They are a necessity for survival. Rockets, on the other hand, are a sick cry of pride. It’s obvious by their construction they are both the proudest and the saddest attempt at resistance. With so little, Gazans can only fashion together rockets that certainly pale in comparison to the lethal power of Israel’s arsenal. They try, though, to do something – anything – to save their children and strike back at their hopeless situation.

If it were you in such a situation, what wouldn’t you do? Can we even comprehend behind our television and computer screens what it might be like to live in Gaza?

The existence of this kind of genocide means that it can happen anywhere. Like smallpox, we have to eradicate genocide completely in order to be rid of it. For the rest of the world, it’s Lights Out for Gaza. Unless we can wake up and truly understand what’s happening, we will end up like frogs in the pan. We will wake up one day and say to each other, wow, remember when there were Gazans?

Links:

Donate to UNRWA

Gaza Health WTO Health Sheet January 2010

The Gaza Strip as Laboratory: Note in the Wake of Disengagement (PDF)

Gaza Power Strip (IEEE report)

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Posted in gaza, human rights, israel, palestine, warfare

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