Gaza

When I was in the West Bank in 2007 I met a guy who had just come from Gaza. He described the situation and said it was a time bomb waiting to explode (here). Now it has.
In the past couple of years I've checked the news everyday from Gaza and written a few times about the brutal occupation and collective punishment that Israel were enforcing on the civilian population there (eg here, here, here, here, here).


(Picture: Me with some palestinian kids in a refugee camp much like those that are currently being bombed in Gaza)







In the last 8 days Israel has killed over 460 Palestinians and the UN estimates that at least a third are civilians or regular street policemen. We don't know the full extent of the carnage because Israel (again defying international law) won't allow any journalists into Gaza to report on what they are doing.

The disproportionate scale of Israel's assault and the reaction of the US and EU would be laughable where it not for the fact that women and children are being blown to pieces everyday.

George Bush says the Israelis are defending themselves against rocket fire. The facts are that Israel haven't just started killing people this week. During the last seven years, 18 Israelis have been killed by homemade rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, while more than 5,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel with some of the most advanced US-supplied armaments in the world. And while no rockets are fired from the West Bank, 45 Palestinians have died there at Israel's hands this year alone.

This occurs against the backdrop of Israel slowly suffocating both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with more than 50% of Gazans living below the poverty line and all imports (including UN and Red Cross humanitarian aid) being restricted and controlled by Israel. There have been no exports from Gaza allowed for 2 years.

The western governments are 'monitoring' the situation. I wonder what their response would be to an assault on Israel, or the US or Britain which left nearly 500 people dead in a couple of days.

The reason it sickens and angers me so much is that the traumatised, grieving faces I see aren't just random arabs but they remind me of the most hospitable, friendly people I've ever met. People who are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, mates just like we have here.

The fact of the matter is that an Arab life isn't worth as much as a Jewish, American or European life. But I believe in the Palestinian people. They have a strength and a hope that I pray will sustain them in these dark days.

"The Israelis have the power, the Palestinian people have dignity and despite all odds, still have hope. The Israelis have the airplanes from which they drop bombs in Gaza, they have bulldozers made here in the United States, not far from my home, they can do all those things, but despite this imbalance of power, the Israelis will never be able to destroy Palestinians' hope and dignity."

Holocaust survivor, Hedy Epstein

(Picture: A great night's craic we had with some Palestinian families. The human face to the statistics)

Mon the Biff!

What a gig in Dublin last night (pictures from my phone). Definitely straight into the top 5. See Zico's blog for review and 'Glitter and Trauma'. The other highlight for me was 'Justboy'. See below for the hairless original.

Brutal, compelling, beautiful.

Waltz with Bashir

On a similar theme I saw one of the most amazing, intense, harrowing movies I've ever seen in QFT at the weekend.

It's the story of the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon when Lebanese 'christian' militia were allowed (and indirectly assisted) by the Israeli army to rape, pillage and slaughter around 3000 defenceless civilians over 3 days in September 1982.

Read about the massacre here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre
and the movie here- http://waltzwithbashir.com/

The maker of the film was a soldier in the Israeli army at the time of the massacre and the film shows his attempts to recover his memories of the incident. His own attempts seem to ask the question of whether Israel itself has made made a mass, semi-conscious decision to forget.



The movie is shot as an animated documentary except for some real footage at the end. When it finished nobody moved. Everyone just sat rooted to the spot staring at a black screen for what seemed like an age, reminding me of when I first watched 'Schindler's List'.

So many questions fly round your mind after. Issues of war, mankind's potential for evil, the brutal oppression of the palestinians, the repression of unwanted memories, our world view, the world's view of christians etc etc.

Highly recommended.

Might makes Right

Everyday I check for news from Palestine and everyday it saddens me more.

Here's part of an email I just got from Mazin Qumsiyeh who is a Christian peace-maker and a professor in Bethlehem. He describes the situation better than I could...

It is only in an Orwellian "might makes right" world that 1.5 million people are kept in a concentration camp literally being starved to death while much of the world governments stand idly watching or occasionally issuing a useless statement or collaborating with the collective punishment (as in the case of Governments of Egypt and the US). 1.5 million are not numbers, they are people like you and me and 60% are children!! Terrorism is defined as punishing civilians to force a change in politics. As such this is the biggest act of terrorism since the end of WWII. It is also a war crime and a crime against humanity (as defined by International Law).

With Gazans already impoverished and struggling to survive, on November 5, Israel completely sealed Gaza's border crossings. This followed an unprovoked Israeli attack on Gaza that killed six Palestinians, despite a ceasefire, and Palestinian rocket fire in response. As a result of Israel's closure, the United Nations has been forced to stop food distribution to 750,000 needy people, and 70% of Gaza is now without powerdue to a lack of fuel. According to reports, even candles are now in short supply. "Let's see this for what it is." said UN spokesman Chris Gunness. "Fifty-six percent of the Gaza Strip are children. Let us not cause suffering of innocent children." Blocking witnesses, on November 13, Israel denied the entry to Gaza of 20 senior EU diplomats. Israel also has refused to allow foreign journalists to enter Gaza. Foreign Press Association chairman Steven Gutnik called the ban "a serious violation of freedom of the press" and said "it is essential that journalists be allowed to enter the Gaza Strip since it is the foreign media that serves as the world's window into Gaza.


http://www.endtheoccupation.org/

O'Bama?

He's so good he had to be Irish......

Rememberance Sunday

My only A-star at GCSE was in English Literature. This was mainly due to the war poetry we studied. The imagery, anger and pain in the words captured me. My thoughts slowly went through a change from my glamorised boyhood view of war from all the old movies to an understanding of what war really is ...hell ....lions fighting for lambs.

One of the most powerful war poems is by a soldier from WW1, Wilfred Owen. He takes a line from an old latin poem that was popular at the time to get people to join the army:
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori ("It is sweet and noble to die for one's country")

Owen, in the end, is saying that if readers could see what he has seen they would no longer instill visions of glorious warfare in young men's heads. No longer would they tell their children the "Old Lie," that it is sweet and noble to die for one's country.

Of course on Remembrance Sunday we need to remember the heroes that gave their lives for our freedom.... but the old war poems are also a reminder of the reality and futility of war.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST₁

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares² we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest³ began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots⁴
Of tired, outstripped⁵ Five-Nines⁶ that dropped behind.

Gas!⁷ Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets⁸ just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime⁹ . . .
Dim, through the misty panes¹⁰ and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,¹¹ choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud¹²
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest¹³
To children ardent¹⁴ for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.

Change

Another thing I discovered in the middle-east is the incredible effect that one country can have over the world... the effect that one man leading that country can have over the world.

It's crazy to think that decisions made by one human being over coffee with his advisers will decide the gap between the rich and poor in his own country, between war and peace in the middle-east, and the poverty of millions in the third world.

That's why I'm praying that all those folk whose forefathers left the shores of Ulster when our potatoes went bad will make Barack Obama the new US president tomorrow.

They'll be led in song by The Boss...



one of my all-time favourite tunes...

Hope part 2

I check the BBC website everyday for news from Palestine. This is the first good news story I have read since my time there. It's amazing what football can achieve!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7691924.stm

Hope

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvellous victory."

Howard Zinn

check it out...

Here is our video from Jandira 2008 (edited by Nick 'the greek' Williamson).

Check out our website if you haven't already done so... 'Emmanuel Africa'

Also more pics on our flickr


If you still have some web-browsing time you should visit my brother's blog by clicking here. He's writing some amazing stuff about his year living the american dream.