Dora McPhee (VIC) on “Ship seized near Gaza” The Age 2 July 09 July 2, 2009
The Age: “Ship seized near Gaza”
http://www.theage.com.au/world/ship-seized-near-gaza-20090701-d55u.html
The courageous Free Gaza activists who come from all over the world to help
draw attention to the suffering people of Gaza through challenging Israel’s
imposed blockade and siege by sailing token boats with token supplies into
Gaza are trying to show the world the evil of a human-made crisis that all
our governments are tolerating. The fact that Israel is preventing even this
small gesture of human solidarity on the fallacious grounds of security with
little or no outcry from the rest of world shows our indifference and
tolerance to an outrageous collective punishment of a people who have just
been though what for them was an outright massacre.
We continually hear how Israel is no longer occupying the Gaza Strip and how
by removing its illegal settlers and redeploying its military outside of
Gaza all Israel got was a hostile entity on its borders. This narrative
leaves out the facts that Israel never gave up control of the people of Gaza
and in fact tightened its control in every way, albeit remotely. It also set
up the perfectly imprisoned population that could be collectively punished
by a crippling siege and blockade, terrorised by sonic booms, as well as be
targeted for bombings by the infamous drones. One of the reasons why the
Egyptian brokered truce between Israel and Hamas broke down was because
Israel did not lift the embargo on food, fuel and medicines that was driving
the whole population into abject poverty and misery not to speak of over 300
medically preventable deaths. This was one of the conditions of the truce
which Israel did not honour and its repeated targeted assassinations of
Hamas leaders and the killing of 6 Gazans in the first military offensive to
seriously break the truce on Nov 4, 2008 were all designed to provoke the
rocket fire Israel was telling the world it was at pains to prevent. If you
are going to cage a people like animals, continually starve and poke at them
to cower them into submission there will be those who see the cruelty and
wrongness of what is being done. It is these peace activists that are
desperately trying by whatever peaceful means possible to,if not release the
Palestinians from their torment and lack of freedom, then at least draw the
world’s attention to this crime against humanity.
Subscribe to our RSS feed.
Follow Us on Twitter