Category: In the Media

“I live today, but I am afraid of tomorrow”

Jody McIntyre and Sema Onbus | The Electronic Intifada

29 December 2009

Sema Onbus in her home in the Tulkarem refugee camp. (Jody McIntyre)

The following is former Palestinian political prisoner Sema Onbus’s story as told to The Electronic Intifada contributor Jody McIntyre:

My name is Sema Onbus. I am 37 years old, from Tulkarem refugee camp.

My story starts when my brother was killed, on 6 September 2001, when an Apache [attack helicopter] dropped a bomb on him and his friends. It was the same day that my sister was due to get married, and he was on his way from Ramallah to visit the wedding when he was murdered. After my brother’s death, my husband decided to join the resistance, and started working with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. He had soon joined Israel’s wanted list.

On 28 October 2002, the Israeli army invaded the camp and started shooting at random, spraying bullets through the streets at anyone who happened to be in sight. My 15-year-old cousin was killed … they shot him six times. My husband was shot three times, twice in his stomach and once in his leg, but he survived.

On 28 March 2003, the army invaded the camp again. My husband was fighting back, and they killed him. His body was left lying on the street, riddled with bullets.

Forty days later, the army came to invade our home. They smashed through the windows and started destroying everything in the house, ordering the whole family out onto the street. They arrested my brother Abdullah, telling my father that they just wanted to talk with him for an hour. He was later taken to a military court, and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Two months later, they came back to invade our house again. This time it was 2am, and again they ordered the whole family out onto the streets, including all the kids. It was extremely cold outside and pouring with rain … I pleaded with them to at least let the children sleep, but they didn’t care.

The military commander went over to my father and told him that they wanted his son Mohammed, again saying that they just wanted to speak to him for an hour. “Like the hour for Abdullah?” my father replied, “You said you wanted to speak to Abdullah for an hour, and now we don’t know where he is!” They told my father that Abdullah is a terrorist, and to go back into the house. They put a bag over Mohammed’s head, tied his hands and threw him into the back of one of the jeeps.

We thought they were finished, and were preparing to go back inside when the commander stopped my father. “We’re not finished,” he told him, “we want your daughter Sema.”

“Is it not enough that you have arrested two of my sons, and killed another?” my father asked. “Why do you want Sema?” The soldiers tied my hands behind my back, and I was taken into another jeep.

At the time I had four children — my youngest son was still breast-feeding, and my three daughters were aged two, four and five. “Now my daughter is in jail,” my father said to the soldiers, “what can I do with her children? You have killed their father, and now arrested their mother and destroyed the house they live in … who is left to look after them?”

I was taken to a military base called Qudomeem, and Mohammed was taken somewhere else … I don’t know where. They left me locked in a room for hours, until 11am, when some female and male officers came in and started beating me together. Afterwards, a commander came in and retied my hands, and I was taken to Jalemah prison, near Haifa.

I was placed in solitary confinement — a room measuring one meter by one meter, with black walls and no light, under the ground. I was to stay in that room for the next two months. The soldiers had a special system which they could use to change the conditions in the room, so in the middle of the winter they would pump in cold air to make it even more unbearable. I was so cold that my hands were swollen and I couldn’t feel my legs … it felt like I was sleeping in a freezer.

When they interrogated me, they told me that if I didn’t speak they would arrest my father and make my children homeless. Sometimes they brought in my brother and beat him in front of me, or beat me in front of him. They tried many things to make me speak, but it didn’t work. After 60 days of living like this, I was moved to a women’s prison called Timon. After six days I was taken to trial at a military court, and sentenced to two and a half years.

I saw a lot of suffering in Timon. The soldiers treated the women very badly; they would beat us, spray us with gas, and throw cold water at us. Our families weren’t allowed to visit, the prison was crawling with insects and mosquitoes, and solitary confinement was regularly used as a punishment. The food was terrible … one day it was beans, the next day macaroni, today beans, and tomorrow macaroni. If you were sick there was no properly trained doctor to help you, and the only thing you would be given was an Acamol [pain killer] and a cup of water, no matter what the problem. Almost all of the women in the jail were ill — because the prison was underground it was very damp, and this caused many health problems; some girls had their hair falling out, some had very bad teeth, and some had stomach problems. The cells had no windows, and this is where we spent all our time; we slept in the cells, ate in the cells, sat in the cells, and there was hole in the floor where we had to go to the toilet in the same room … because of this there were many diseases.

It is everyone’s dream in prison to be free, and when I heard it was time for me to be released I was so happy. When I got home, I was so excited to see my children and my brothers and sisters, but when I went to hug my son, who was now three and a half years old, he didn’t want to hug me. When I left my home he was still breast-feeding, but now I was a stranger to him. I kissed him instead, but he was too scared to sleep in the same house as me that night, so he went to stay with some relatives instead. He loved them because they had looked after him while I was in prison, so they had become like his family. After two and a half years away it was difficult for me to know how to look after my children, because it was like they had forgotten me, and of course, even more difficult for them.

It’s not easy to bring up four children without a father. I am responsible for them and everything they need — to put their food on the table, a roof over their heads, to find a school for them to go to. I have to be a mother and father to them at the same time … you really can’t imagine what this life is like.

The kids ask me about their father all the time. I tell them that he is a martyr and has gone to heaven. They ask me how they can go to visit. Once, my daughter told me to get a ladder, take a knife and climb up and cut open the sky so I could bring their father back. Another time, my son said to go to the place under the ground where my father is buried and break it open with a hammer so you can bring him back. My eldest daughter once told me to speak to God on Jawwal [the Palestinian mobile phone company] and tell him to let us see our father. All the time they ask me why they killed their father and not somebody else. They have so many questions … sometimes I don’t have an answer.

One day, my son asked me for a shekel. I said, “OK, here is a shekel,” but he said “I don’t want a shekel from you, I want one from my father.”

I live today, but I am afraid of tomorrow … afraid that one day I will not be able to provide my children with what they need.

I wish we had peace here, so I could know that my family is safe. Unfortunately, the Israelis do not want peace.

We can speak every day and every night about how we are suffering, but it seems that there is no one listening.

Jody McIntyre is a journalist from the United Kingdom, currently living in the occupied West Bank village of Bilin. Jody has cerebral palsy, and travels in a wheelchair. He writes a blog for Ctrl.Alt.Shift, entitled “Life on Wheels,” which can be found at www.ctrlaltshift.co.uk. He can be reached at jody.mcintyre AT gmail DOT com.

Gaza’s border must be opened NOW

Pam Rasmussen | The Electronic Intifada

29 December 2009

Tell Egypt you stand in solidarity with Gaza – use this online form to send a letter to the Palestine Division at the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cairo, and to the Egyptian Embassy in the US

Solidarity activists joined approximately a dozen hunger strikers in front of the journalists' syndicate in Cairo.
Riot police barricading protesters in Cairo.
Protesters occupying the grounds of the French embassy.

This time is clearly different.

I have traveled to Gaza twice this year, in groups ranging from 40 to 60 persons, and although there was a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved in “greasing the wheels” with the Egyptian authorities, we pretty much sailed in. CODEPINK (the group that organized both of my previous trips) developed a well-earned reputation for being able to pull just the right levers to open the doors to the isolated enclave of Gaza — even more so than George Galloway’s Viva Palestina convoy, which is typically allowed in for only 24 to 48 hours (versus our four days).

But too many months have gone by with no change in the crippling isolation of Gaza imposed by Israel and Egypt, and it was time to risk our privileged access to take our efforts to break the siege up a notch. Our numbers had to be massive enough to threaten the jailers’ growing complacence and broad enough to send the message that this is a global movement that won’t stop until the Palestinian people are given the freedom and justice they deserve. Thus, this time CODEPINK allied with a number of other organizations around the world, and the number of participants quickly ballooned to more than 1,300 from 43 countries. Likewise, while we have collected or purchased thousands of dollars’ worth of school supplies, winter clothing and electronic devices (such as computers — currently only available via the tunnels and thus too expensive for the average Palestinian in Gaza), our message is also unapologetically political: the borders must be opened, to everyone, all the time. NOW.

We have obviously accomplished our objective. The jailers have taken notice and are running scared. So scared that we not only have been denied entry into Gaza, we have been threatened with arrest and deportation if we so much as carry a sign or gather in groups of more than six. Our reservation with a facility in downtown Cairo for an orientation meeting for delegates was canceled at the government’s order, and requests to hold educational workshops instead were refused. In an even more audacious move that was aided and abetted by participants’ own governments, consulate representatives were called to a meeting and apparently instructed to warn their residents not to come. In Spain, that warning was echoed in a news release. In Canada, individuals registered for the march or who had participated in past delegations received emails from their embassies. In Portugal, one marcher was called on his personal cell phone!

As word spread of Egypt’s refusal to open Gaza’s doors — announcing its decision long after thousands of internationals had purchased expensive airline tickets and mere days before they began boarding their flights — supporters around the world inundated Egypt’s embassies with calls, emails and faxes in protest. Many came from legislators and other government officials, past and present. Egypt only backed further into its corner in response, using the aggressive tone of some of the calls and emails to ignore the overall theme: the injustice of the collective punishment imposed on Gaza’s nearly 1.5 million Palestinians and Egypt’s refusal to allow supporters to help.

As I write this, we are still being refused entry to Gaza, and even permission to travel to al-Arish and Rafah on the border. Thirty-eight of our marchers tried to get to al-Arish on their own, but 30 were then put under house arrest in their hotel and eight were detained at the bus station. Every peaceful vigil or protest we staged was met with an “iron wall” — and sometimes, by violence.

When the French contingent of about 450 persons asked for help from their embassy, and occupied the grounds of the building in protest when initial promises negotiated with the Egyptian government were reneged, they were surrounded by heavily-armed and helmeted riot police and refused permission to leave — even for food or to use a toilet. At the time of this writing, their “occupation” is going on 48 hours now.

Similar “sit-ins” have been or are being waged at the US, UK and Italian embassies (with more to come). At the US embassy, 30 Americans were detained within a circle of police for eight hours (at the direction of their own countrymen, by the way) before being released. The only small victory was an (ultimately frustrating and fruitless) meeting for three of the protesters with one of the embassy’s higher-level officials.

The same treatment was received when vigils were staged at the United Nations, the journalists’ syndicate (in support of about a dozen hunger-striking marchers) and the Kasr al-Nil Bridge over the Nile.

However, there are a few, bright silver linings to this dark cloud. Groups on the left of the sociopolitical spectrum are known for being far less cooperative and cohesive than their conservative, reactionary counterparts. It truly gladdened my heart, therefore, to see the immediate mobilization in our support by groups ranging from the War Resisters League to Jewish Voice for Peace.

Meanwhile, it’s a truism that controversy attracts media coverage. Our missions to Gaza have been ignored by the mainstream media in the past, but this time, Egypt’s defensive and angry response attracted the attention of such mainstream media pillars as the BBC, the Associated Press, Newsweek and The New York Times. I am a communications professional, and Egypt has violated a tenet of Public Relations 101: The more you protest, the guiltier you look.

All images by Pam Rasmussen.

Pam Rasmussen is a peace activist and communications professional from Maryland who recently received a Community Human Rights Award for her work on behalf of Palestinians from the UN Association of the National Capitol Area. She can be contacted at peacenut57 A T yahoo D O T com.

Hebrew University bans student conference on anniversary of Gaza invasion

Saed Bannoura | IMEMC News

29 December 2009

A student group affiliated with the socialist ‘Hadash’ party in Israel had organized a conference commemorating and condemning the Israeli invasion of Gaza one year ago, but the Hebrew University administration banned the conference, saying that it violates the University’s principles.

When students from the Hadash party handed out fliers for the event to their fellow students, some students from the right-wing Zionist Likud party took copies of the flier to the school administration, which determined that the event constituted ‘incitement against the state of Israel’ and would not be permitted. The reason given by the university was that the conference would include a commemoration of the civilians killed in Israel’s Gaza invasion one year ago.

Human rights groups have estimated that over 80% of the 1400 Palestinians killed during the 3-week long Israeli assault were civilians. 5 Israeli civilians were killed in the same time period.

The conference literature said that “one of the first physicians who entered Gaza during the war” would be a featured speaker at the conference. In addition, the literature called the invasion a “dreadful Zionist war”. The university administration considered this to be incitement against the state of Israel, and canceled the conference.

Hebrew University in Jerusalem is one of Israel’s largest universities, with 23,500 students. It was founded in 1925 as a “University of the Jewish People”, and its first Board of Directors included Albert Einstein and Martin Buber, both of whom later took public stands against the Zionist colonial project in Palestine.

This is not humane. We need our dignity

Sami Abdel-Shafi | The Guardian

29 December 2009

On my way to visit a friend in the Abed Rabbo district, north of the Gaza Strip, the taxi driver handed me a small pack of biscuits for change. There are nearly no copper coins left here so cab drivers barter a half Israeli shekel for biscuits brought in from the tunnels between the southern city of Rafah and Egypt’s northern Sinai. Some Gazans, who once earned a respectable living, resorted to melting coins and sold the copper for food supplies.

This was not the first time I was forced into arcane methods of barter. A few weeks ago I was told that oil filters for our British-made electricity generator could only be brought in through the tunnels. One alternative was to fit a refurbished car-engine filter to the generator.

We had wood-fired coffee next to the rubble of my friend’s family’s former homes – all levelled during Israel’s three-week war on Gaza that started one year ago. His only source of income, a taxi, was crushed by Israeli tanks during the assault. He agonises about how his children no longer respect him as their father. He is unable to provide them with the security of a house and an independent family life; they lost everything.

The family is spread around relatives’ homes. But the family’s old man just moved into a 60sq m house built from mud and brick, standing next to the rubble of his 400sq m three-story house for which he saved for a lifetime. It was one of the first the UN Relief and Works Agency built after having seemingly lost hope in any Israeli intention to allow construction materials into Gaza. My friend’s daughter earns the highest grades in her class and is eyeing a scholarship for one of the universities in Gaza when she leaves high school. But this young woman’s resilience and motivation will go nowhere as long as Gaza is blockaded.

Almost nothing has been more deceitful than casting Gaza as a humanitarian case. This is becoming exponentially more problematic a year after the war. Gaza urgently needs far more than merely those items judged by the Israeli military as adequate to satisfy Gaza’s humanitarian needs. This list of allowable items is tiny compared to people’s needs for a minimally respectable civil life.

Gaza is not treated humanely; the immediate concerns about the situation have clearly given way to long-term complacency, while failed politics has now become stagnant. The humanitarian classification conceals the urgent need to address this. Moreover, many in the international community have conveniently resorted to blaming Palestinians for their political divisions, as though they were unrelated to Israel’s policies – most notably Gaza’s closure after Israeli disengagement in 2005.

It seems evident that most officials in the US, UK and other powerful nations in Europe and the Middle East do not – or perhaps cannot – pressure Israel to reverse its policy of forcing Palestinians into eternal statelessness. How Palestinians are forced into degrading living standards in Gaza, and how they have no means to repel the ongoing demolition and confiscation of property and land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, is abhorrent. How Palestinians are still divided despite the increased suffering of their people is no less abhorrent. However, no one should fool themselves into believing that their reconciliation would alter Israel’s policy.

The international community must surely adopt a new approach – where it would not be seen as acquiescent to Israel’s policies. If the current policy continues then, at least, let it not be at the expense of Palestinian self-respect. Palestinians are a dignified people, as competitive and civilised as any other people in the world. It is far too humiliating for Palestinians to endure not only being occupied but to be made beggars.

For years it has been impossible not to suspect that Israel does not want peace. Of late, the US-backed state has consistently created impossible conditions for fair and equal negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and it continues to undermine moderate voices and drive people towards extremism in Gaza. The fact that Palestinians still genuinely want peace should not allow Israel to reject the simplest rules of civility. The US and the EU should come to Gaza; then they could draw their own conclusions on an Israeli policy they have backed and funded without ever witnessing its consequences on ordinary civilians’ lives. Surely then they could not fail to see that changing their policy is a moral imperative.

Gaza Freedom March: 85 year old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein begins hunger strike to open Gaza border

Gaza Freedom March

28 December 2009

Hedy Epstein, the 85 year old Holocaust survivor and peace activist, announced that she will begin a hunger strike today as a response to the Egyptian government’s refusal to allow the Gaza Freedom March participants into Gaza.

Ms. Epstein was part of a delegation with participants from 43 countries that were to join Palestinians in a non-violent march from Northern Gaza towards the Erez border with Israel calling for the end of the illegal siege. Egypt is preventing the marchers from leaving Cairo, forcing them to search for alternative ways to make their voices heard.

Ms. Epstein will remain outside the UN building at the World Trade Center (Cairo) – 1191 Cornish al-Nil, throughout today, accompanied by other hunger strikers. “It is important to let the besieged Gazan people know they are not alone. I want to tell the people I meet in Gaza that I am a representative of many people in my city and in other places in the US who are outraged at what the US, Israeli and European governments are doing to the Palestinians and that our numbers are growing,” Epstein said.

In 1939, when Epstein was just 14, her parents found a way for her to escape the persecution, sending her on the Kindertransport to England. Epstein never saw her parents again; they perished in Auschwitz in 1942. After World War II, Epstein worked as a research analyst at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi doctors who performed medical experiments on concentration camp inmates.

After moving to the US, Epstein became an activist for peace and social justice causes. Unlike most Holocaust survivors, one of the causes she has taken up is that of the Palestinian people. She has travelled to the West Bank, collected material aid and now she hopes to enter Gaza.