In Gaza, a firing squad put Hippocrates up against a wall, aimed and fired. The absurd declarations of an Israeli secret services’ spokesman, according to which the army was given the green light in firing at ambulances because they allegedly carried terrorists, is an illustration of the value that Israel assigns to human life these days – the lives of their enemies, that is. It’s worth revisiting what’s stated in the Hippocratic Oath, which every doctor swears upon before starting to practice the profession.
The following passages are especially worthy of note: “I solemnly pledge myself to consecrate my life to the service of humanity. I will practice my profession with conscience and dignity. The health and life of my patient will be my first consideration. I will cure all patients with the same diligence and commitment. I will not permit considerations of religion, nationality, race, party politics, or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient.”
Seven doctors and voluntary nurses have been killed from the start of the bombing campaign, and about ten ambulances were shot at by the Israeli artillery. The survivors are shaking with fear, but refuse to take a step back. The crimson flashes of the ambulances are the only bursts of light in the dark streets of Gaza, bar the flashes that precede an explosion. Regarding these crimes, the last report comes from Pierre Wettach, chief of the Red Cross in Gaza. His ambulances had access to the spot of a massacre, in Zaiton, East of Gaza City, only 24 hours after the Israeli attack.
The rescue-workers state they found themselves faced by a blood-curdling scenario. “In one of the houses four small children were found near the body of their dead mother. They were too weak to stand on their feet. We also found an adult survivor, and he too was also too weak to stand up. About 12 corpses were found lying on the mattresses.”
The witnesses to this umpteenth massacre describe how the Israeli soldiers, after getting into the neighbourhood, gathered the numerous members of the Al Samouni family in one building and then proceeded to repeatedly bomb it.
My ISM partners and I have been driving around in the Half Red Moon ambulances for days, suffering many attacks and losing a dear friend, Arafa, struck by a howitzer shot from a cannon. A further three paramedics, all friends, are presently inpatients at the hospitals they worked in until a few days ago.
Our duty on the ambulances is to pick up the injured, not carry guerrilla fighters. When we find a man lying in the street in a pool of his own blood, we don’t have the time to check his papers or ask him whether he roots for Hamas or Fatah. Most seriously injured can’t talk, much like the dead.
A few days ago, while picking up a badly wounded patient, another man with light injuries tried to hop onto the ambulance. We pushed him out, just to make it clear to whoever’s watching from up above that we don’t serve as a taxi to usher members of the resistance around. We only take on the most fatally wounded – of which there’s always a plentiful supply, thanks to Israel.
Last night at Al Qudas hospital in Gaza City, 17-year-old Miriam was carried in, with full-blown labour pains. Her father and sister-in-law, both dead, had passed through the hospital in the morning, both victims of indiscriminate bombing. Miriam gave birth to a gorgeous baby during the night, not aware of the fact that while she lay in the delivery room, her young husband had arrived in the morgue one floor below her.
In the end, even the United Nations realised that here in Gaza, we’re all in the same boat, all moving targets for the snipers. The death toll is now at 789 dead, 3,300 wounded (410 in critical conditions), 230 children killed and countless missing. The death toll on the Israeli side has thankfully stopped at 4.
John Ging, chief of UNRWA (UN agency for the rights of Palestinian Refugees) has stated that the UN announced they shall suspend their humanitarian activities in the Gaza Strip. I bumped into Ging in the Ramattan press office and saw him shake his finger with disdain at Israel before the cameras. The UN stopped its work in Gaza after two of its operators were killed yesterday, ironically during the three-hour truce that Israel had announced and as usual, had failed to comply with. “The civilians in Gaza have three hours a day at their disposal in which to survive, the Israeli soldiers have the remaining 21 in which to try and exterminate them”, I heard Ging state two steps away from me.
Yasmine, the wife of one of the many journalists waiting in line at the Erez pass, wrote to me from Jerusalem. Israel won’t grant these journalists a pass to let them in and film or describe the immense unnatural catastrophe that has befallen us in the last thirteen days. These were her words: ”
The day before yesterday I went to have a look at Gaza from the outside. The world’s journalists are all huddled on a small sandy hill a few km from the border. Innumerable cameras are pointed towards us. Planes circle us overhead – you can hear them but you can’t see them. They seem like illusions, like something in your head until you see the black smoke rising from the horizon, in Gaza. The hill has also become a tourist site for the Israelis in the area. With their large binoculars and cameras, they come and watch the bombings live.”
While I write this piece of correspondence in a mad rush, a bomb is dropped onto the building next to the one I’m in now. The windowpanes shake, my ears ache, I look out the window and see that the building gathering the major Arabic media agencies has been struck. It’s one of Gaza City’s tallest buildings, the Al Jaawhara building. A camera crew is permanently stationed on the roof, I can now see them all bending around on the ground, waving their arms and asking for help as they’re covered by a black cloud of smoke.
Paramedics and journalists, the most heroic occupations in this corner of the world. At the Al Shifa hospital yesterday I paid Tamim a visit – he’s a journalist who survived an air raid. He explained how he thinks that Israel is adopting the same identical terrorist techniques as Al-Qaeda, bombing a building, waiting for the journalists and ambulances to arrive and then dropping another bomb to finish the latter two off as well. In his view that’s why there’ve been so many casualties among the journalists and paramedics.
As he said this, the nurses around his bed all nodded in agreement. Tamim smilingly showed me his two stubs for legs. He was happy he was still around to tell the story, while his colleague, Mohammed, had died with a camera in his hand when the second explosion had proved fatal. In the meantime I asked about the bomb that was just dropped on the building next door, where two journalists, both Palestinian, one from Libyan TV and the other from Dubai TV, were injured. This is a harsh new reminder that this massacre must in no way be described or recorded. All that’s left for me to hope is that among the Israeli military summit no one reads Il Manifesto, or habitually visits my blog.
Stay human
Vittorio Arrigoni
Says Angry Arab : Remember this picture, forever. Israelis dancing in the streets in celebration of the destruction of Gaza. Never forget, and never forgive EVER.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FREE GAZA TO ISRAEL: “WE ARE COMING IN ON TUESDAY”
For More Information, Please Contact:
(Cyprus) Huwaida Arraf, +357 96 723 999 or +357 99 081 767
huwaida.arraf@gmail.com
(Gaza) Ewa Jasiewicz, +972 598 700 497 freelance@mailworks.org
(Egypt) Caoimhe Butterly, +20 121 027 072 sahara78@hotmail.co.uk
(U.S.) Ramzi Kysia, +1 703 994 5422 rrkysia@yahoo.com
(Cyprus, 11 January 2009) – The Free Gaza Movement ship, “SPIRIT OF
HUMANITY,” will leave Larnaca Port at 12:00 noon, Monday, 12 January,
on an emergency mission to besieged Gaza. The ship will carry
desperately needed doctors, journalists, human rights workers, and
members of several European parliaments as well as medical supplies.
This voyage marks Free Gaza’s second attempt to break through the
blockade since Israel began attacking the Gaza Strip on 27 December.
Between August and December 2008, the Free Gaza Movement successfully
challenged the Israeli blockade five times, landing the first
international ships in the port of Gaza since 1967.
The Israeli military violently attacked an earlier attempt by the Free
Gaza Movement to send an emergency boat filled with doctors and
medical supplies to Gaza. In the early hours of Tuesday, 30 December,
the Israeli navy deliberately, repeatedly, and without warning rammed
the unarmed ship, the DIGNITY, causing significant structural damage
and endangering the lives of its passengers and crew. The ship found
safe harbor in Lebanon, and is currently awaiting repairs.
Fouad Ahidar, a member of the Belgian Parliament sailing to Gaza
aboard the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, responded to concerns that Israel may
attack the unarmed mercy ship by saying, “I have five children that
are very worried about me, but I told them, you can sit on your couch
and watch these atrocities on the television, or you can choose to
take action to make them stop.”
Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have injured thousands of civilians
and killed over 800 people, including scores of women and children.
This ongoing Israeli massacre severely and massively violates
international humanitarian law defined by the Geneva Conventions,
especially the obligations of an Occupying Power and the requirements
of the laws of war.
The United Nations has failed to protect the Palestinian civilian
population from Israel’s massive violations of international
humanitarian law. Israel has closed off Gaza from the international
community and demanded that all foreigners leave. But Huwaida Arraf,
an organizer with the Free Gaza Movements, stated that, “We cannot
just sit by and wait for Israel to decide to stop the killing and open
the borders for relief workers to pick up the pieces. We are coming
in. There is an urgent need for this mission as Palestinian civilians
in Gaza are being terrorized and slaughtered by Israel, and access to
humanitarian relief denied to them. When states and the international
bodies responsible for taking action to stop such atrocities chose to
be impotent, then we–the citizens of the world–must act. Our common
humanity demands nothing less.”
Israel has been notified that we are coming. A copy of the
notification to the Israeli Authorities is attached.
The media is invited to the Larnaca Port at 10:00am to for final
preparations and a press conference before departure.
###
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Take Action! CALL the Israeli Government and let them know that the
SPIRIT OF HUMANITY is coming to Gaza. DEMAND that Israel immediately
STOP slaughtering civilians in Gaza and STOP using violence to prevent
human rights and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people.
CALL
Mark Regev in the Prime Minister’s office:
+972 2670 5354 or +972 5 0620 3264
Shlomo Dror in the Ministry of Defence:
+972 3697 5339 or +972 50629 8148
Major Liebovitz from the Israeli Navy:
+ 972 5 781 86248
Official Notification of Intent to Enter
January 11, 2009
To: The Israeli Ministry of Defense, Fax: 972-3-697-6717
To: The Israeli Navy
To: The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Fax 972-2-5303367
From: The Free Gaza Movement
This letter serves as a formal notification to you as the Occupying
Power and belligerent force in the Gaza Strip that on Monday, January
12 we are navigating the motor vessel, Spirit of Humanity, from the
Port of Larnaca to the port of Gaza City. Our vessel will be flying
the Greek flag, and, as such, falls under the jurisdiction Greece.
We will be sailing from Cypriot waters into international waters, then
directly into the territorial waters of the Gaza Strip without
entering or nearing Israeli territorial waters. We expect to arrive
at the Gaza Port on Tuesday, January 13, 2009.
We will be carrying urgently needed medical supplies in sealed boxes,
cleared by customs at the Larnaca International Airport and the Port
of Larnaca. There will be a total of 30 passengers and crew on board,
among them members of various European Parliaments and several
physicians. Our boat and cargo will also have received security
clearance from the Port Authorities in Cyprus before we depart.
As it will be confirmed that neither we, the cargo, any of the boat’s
contents, nor the boat itself constitute any threat to the security of
Israel or its armed forces, we do not expect any interference with
our voyage by Israel’s authorities.
On Tuesday, December 30, an Israeli Navy vessel violently, and without
warning, attacked our motor vessel Dignity, disabling the vessel and
endangering the lives of the 16 civilians on board. This notice
serves as clear notification to you of our approach. Any attack on the
motor vessel, Spirit of Humanity, will be premeditated and any harm
inflicted on the 30 civilians on board will be considered the result
of a deliberate attack on unarmed civilians.
The Steering Committee of the Free Gaza Movement
Contact: Huwaida Arraf, Free Gaza Movement, 357 96 723 999
Vittorio Arrigoni on the ground in Gaza, January 9, 2009
——–
Israelis watching the devastation from afar, even laughing.
My toothpaste, toothbrush, shavers and shaving foam. The clothes I’m wearing, the cough medicine I’m using to get rid of a persistent cough, the cigarettes I bought for Ahmed, and some tobacco for my arghile. My cell phone, the laptop onto which I compulsively type my eye-witness accounts from the hell surrounding me. All that’s needed for a modest, yet dignified existence in Gaza comes from Egypt, and arrives on the shops’ shelves through the tunnels. These are the very same tunnels that the Israeli F16s hasn’t stopped heavily bombing in the last 12 hours, destroying along with them thousands of Rafah houses near the border.
A few months ago I had three teeth dodgy fixed, and at the end of the operation I asked my Palestinian dentist where he’d gotten all of his dental equipment from – the anesthetic, the syringes, ceramic inlays and all the other tools. With a sly look on his face, he’d made a certain gesture with his hands: from under ground. There’s no doubt that through the tunnels underneath Rafah, explosives and weapons were also smuggled, the very same that the resistance is using today to try and contain the terrifying advance of the armour-plated Israeli death-machines. But it’s next to nothing compared with the tons of consumer goods flowing into famished Gaza under this criminal siege.
It’s easy enough on the internet to find photos documenting how even livestock comes in from Egypt through the tunnels. Sedated, strapped-up goats and cows are lowered into an Egyptian well, re-emerging on this side to provide milk, cheese and meat. Even the main hospitals in the Strip stocked up surreptitiously at the border. The tunnels were the only resource allowing the Palestinians to survive the siege, a siege which long before the current bombings, was the cause of a 60% unemployment rate and forced 80% of families to live off humanitarian handouts.
Our colleagues at the ISM in Rafah describe the umpteenth siege that they witnessed. Caravans of desperate refugees leaving their homes facing Egypt, on mule-drawn carts or hodgepodge vehicles. A déjà-vu scenario – in previous days, leaflets were raining down from the planes intimidating the Palestinians into evacuating. Since Israel always keeps its threatened promises, bombs are raining down from the planes now. Today’s new homeless will spend the night with their relatives, friends and acquaintances in Gaza. No one dares crowd the United Nations schools anymore, after yesterday’s massacre in Jabalia. But a considerable number haven’t gone anywhere, as they have nowhere safe to go. They shall be spending the night praying to God that they’ll be spared, since no one on earth seems to take any interest in their existence.
The death toll at present is at 768 Palestinians, with 3,129 wounded, and 219 children killed. The count of civilian victims on the Israeli side is thankfully still only at 4. At Zaytoun, an Eastern neighbourhood of Gaza City, the Red Cross ambulances could only rush to the scene of a massacre after several hours, under the coordination of the Israeli military summit. When they finally got there, they picked up 17 corpses and 10 injured, all belonging to the Al Samouni family. A perfect execution: in the tiny bodies of the children it was possible to notice bullet holes rather than wounds caused by shrapnel.
The last two nights in the Gaza City hospitals were quieter than usual, as we assisted a number of injured in the tens rather than the hundreds. Obviously after the massacre at the Al Fakhura school, the Israeli Army surpassed the daily budget of civilian casualties as an offering to its blood-thirsty government in view of the imminent elections. We have an inkling that tonight the morgues will once again be filled to bursting point.
With our sirens screaming, we continue to rush pregnant women into hospital as they give birth prematurely. It’s as if nature and the conservation instinct were inducing these brave mothers to predate the arrival of these new lives to make up for the growing number of dead. These newborns’ first cry, when they survive, can for a moment cover the rumbling of the bombs.
Leila, a colleague at the ISM, asked our neighbours’ children to write some of their impressions on the atrocious tragedy we’re enduring. Here are some extracts of their words, the horrors of war seen through the pure and innocent gaze of Gaza’s children:
Suzanne, aged 15: “The life in Gaza is very difficult. Actually we can’t describe everything. We can’t sleep, we can’t go to school and study. We feel a lot of feelings, sometimes we feel afraid and worry because the planes and the ships, they hit 24 hours. Sometimes we feel bored because there is no electricity during the day, and in the night, it is coming just four hours and when it comes we are watching the news on TV. And we see kids and women who are injured and dead. So we live in the siege and war.”
From Fatma, 13: “It was the hardest week in our life. In the first day we were in school, having the final exam of the first term, then the explosions started, many students were killed and injured, and the others surely lost a relative or a neighbour. There is no electricity, no food, no bread. What can we do – it’s the Israelis! All the people in the world celebrated the new year, we also celebrate but in a different way.”
From Sara, 11: “Gaza is living in a siege, like a big jail: no water, no electric power. People feel afraid, don’t sleep at night, and every day more people are killed. Until now, more than 400 are killed and more than 2000 injured. And students had their final first term exams, so Israel hit the Ministry of Education, and a lot of ministries. Every day people are asking when will it end, and they are waiting for more ships with activist like Vittorio and Leila.”
Darween, 8: “I am a Palestinian kid, I won’t leave my country so I will have lots of advantages because I won’t leave my country and I hear a sound of rockets so I won’t leave my country.”
Meriam is four. Her siblings asked her, “what do you feel when you hear the rockets?” And she said, “I feel afraid!”, before running to take cover behind her father’s legs.
Gaza is sadly shrouded in obscurity in the last ten days. I can recharge my computer and phone only in the hospitals. We watch TV with the doctors and paramedics while waiting for an urgent call. We listen to the rumblings in the distance, and after a few minutes the Arab satellite networks refer exactly where the explosions take place. We often watch ourselves pull bodies out of the rubble, as if having seen it all in the flesh weren’t enough already. Last night I switched over to an Israeli channel with the remote. They were showing a traditional music festival, complete with scantily-clad showgirls and firework displays in the end. We went back to our horror, not on screen but in the ambulances. Israel has every right to laugh and sing even while they’re massacring their neighbours. Palestinians only ask to die a different kind of death – say, of old age.
Stay human
We stand with the majority. We will not be silent on Gaza.
We write with grief and rage as we watch the horrifying Israeli air and ground attacks on Gaza. As Jews committed to ending Zionism, the founding ideology of Israel, and all forms of colonialism, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, who continue to struggle in the face of these attacks, much as they have against more than 60 years of ethnic cleansing and racism. As Joseph Massad recently wrote, Gaza is in uprising against genocide, and is receiving today the same indifference from the capitals of the West that the rebels in the Warsaw Ghetto received in 1943.
We stand with the hundreds of thousands who have taken the streets in solidarity with Gaza’s resistance. We stand with all those who struggle against racism, dispossession and genocide.
We stand with the majority. We will not be silent on Gaza.
We reject Israel’s pretense to act in response to rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas. Israel broke the ceasefire on November 4, 2008, while world attention was focused on U.S. elections.
What the Israeli government calls “security” is fundamentally opposed to the real safety of all people living in the region. Residents of Sderot and other towns bordering Gaza have begged the government of Israel to maintain the cease-fire and accused it of “wasting that period of calm, instead of using it to advance understanding and begin negotiations.” With United States, European Union, and Egyptian collusion, Israel imposed a siege and blockade on Gaza for over two years, intentionally preventing its economic recovery, degrading its civilian infrastructure, attempting to dismantle self-governance, and preventing travel and obstructing humanitarian aid. That siege, which was and continues to be a gross violation of human rights and a crime against humanity, led directly to the present escalation. As of today, Israeli forces have killed over 700 people and injured thousands. Israel has bombed mosques, universities, police headquarters, roads, office buildings, and residential neighborhoods, and schools, causing indescribable and horrible destruction. This isn’t defense. This isn’t a war between two sides. This is terrorism. This is genocide.
We stand with the majority. We will not be silent on Gaza.
As Jews, we have an additional responsibility to speak and to act against these despicable acts, because we are heirs to the victims of a genocide, because Israel is claiming to “defend” us through the ethnic cleansing of Palestine with the ultimate goal of erasing the Palestinian people, and also because of the role played by the Jewish organizations in the United States and the West in justifying, perpetrating, and escalating Israeli state terrorism against Palestinians.
We recall that the violence in Gaza today is the inevitable outcome—the latest link in a chain of terror—that results from an ideology based on the dispossession of the indigenous people of Palestine in favor of European Jews. Just as the ideology of White racism was the backbone of Apartheid in South Africa, so the ideology of Zionism explains the history of violence in Palestine, the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the occupation of the West bank and Gaza in 1967, and the many massacres that Israel perpetrated periodically since 1948 to the present one in Gaza. The maintenance of the Israeli state as a state founded on and perpetuating Jewish privilege requires the denial and attempted annihilation of the Palestinian people.
We recall that unless this ideology is delegitimized and defeated, the violence in the Middle East will continue to escalate until either Palestinian or Jewish existence in the area ends, and possibly both. Racism and colonial domination will never be the basis for peace.
We stand with the majority. We will not be silent on Gaza.
We insist on an immediate end to Israel’s assault, a complete withdrawal of all Israeli forces, a complete and unconditional end to the siege, and the restoration and extension of the ceasefire. We insist on the establishment of a special international tribunal for investigating the crimes of the Israeli leadership of this siege.
We affirm the urgent need for Jewish resistance to Zionism and stand committed to the extrication of Jewish history, politics, community, and culture from the grip of Zionism.
We situate our work in a long legacy of Jewish people throughout history who have stood in solidarity with others in common struggles against all forms of racism, empire building, and repression. As a growing sector of the Palestine solidarity movement, we call upon all Jews of conscience to take a strong stand against the current escalation of violence, as well as the murderous ground upon which Zionist ideology and the Israeli state has been constructed. We call on Jews to put an end to complicity, to break the silence, and to confront the fallacy of a Zionist consensus. We call on anti-Zionist Jews around the world to organize in escalation against the massacres on Gaza, and to continue to support Palestinian resistance through campaigns of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, and through actions that target their own governments’ financial and political support for Israel.
We stand with the majority. We will not be silent on Gaza.
JOIN US in continued ACTION !
>> Mobilize creative actions to disrupt and confront pro-Israel events, propaganda and businesses. Zionists and their supporters should not have their events, propaganda or business contributions in support of Israel go without confrontation. Creative actions are those which use creative tactics, visuals and art to convey a message about the reason for the disruption such as die-ins, projections of images on the outside of Zionist organizations, public art displays, street theater, etc. Targets may include Zionist organizations that have been mobilizing a lot of support for this attack, events to fundraise for the siege on Gaza, or billboards or poster campaigns to justify Israeli violence.
Other ways to take action…
>> Join or organize emergency protests and direct actions in partnership with Palestine solidarity and social justice organizations in your area.
>> Donate money for Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) cargo of medical supplies and their delivery. IJAN is partnering with MECA in collecting funds and organizing pressure to allow over 5 tons of medical supplies into Gaza through the Rafah border with Egypt. The current conditions in Gaza medical facilities are dire. Please DONATE to MECA now! In the next week IJAN will send an update out about the shipment, please be prepared to organize any necessary pressure in response to this update.
>> Contact government officials and call on them to act by denouncing the attacks and demanding an immediate cease-fire.
>> Flood Israeli embassies and consulates with letters and calls decrying the attacks. Find contact info for Israeli embassies around the world.
>> Continue circulating the petition in support of UN General Assembly President Father Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann who has spoken out to condemn Israeli “Apartheid” and call for boycott, divestment and sanctions. He has received death threats for his statement.
>> Call to Jewish Students: Efforts are underway to make visible and support the activism of Jewish students who condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza and who support the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions. Join the “Jewish Students Condemn Israel, Support BDS Campus Campaigns!” Facebook cause. Email students@ijsn.net to be added to the contact list for when IJAN student campaigns are launched and send reports for the website about Jewish student participation in Gaza solidarity actions.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) is a growing international network of Jews whose Jewish identities are not based on Zionism but on a plurality of histories and experiences. We share a commitment to participation in the legacy of struggles against colonization and imperialism. As such, we struggle against Zionism and its manifestation in the State of Israel’s historic and ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and the confiscation of their land.
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