Tag: Gaza - Page 203 - International Solidarity Movement

6 Years Later: Remembering Rachel Corrie

On this day six years ago, Rachel Corrie was killed by Israeli soldiers in Rafah, Gaza. By now the story is well known: Rachel, standing in front of the home of a doctor and his family in hopes of preventing a demolition, was run over by an armored bulldozer, a Caterpillar D9. After six years of promises from elected leaders, no independent investigation of her death has been conducted.

In the years since her death, Rachel’s memory has inspired countless people to take action in their own communities on behalf of the Palestinian cause. Songs have been written, plays performed, and books published about Rachel and her legacy. Her family has traveled the world talking about Rachel and about Palestinians’ rights, a cause to which she was so passionately committed.

The Corrie family returned to Gaza for this anniversary and to see the devastation created by the recent Israeli attacks. They found open arms and welcoming hearts. Rachel has become a part of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, part of it’s history of painful losses.

The anniversary, this year as in those past, is marred by fresh violence. Just days ago, an ISM volunteer was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers after a nonviolent demonstration in the West Bank village of Ni’lin. Tristan Anderson lays in the intensive care unit of a hospital with an unknown future. His brutal injury has received worldwide attention, as did Rachel’s death. What does not receive the same attention are the Palestinians who are injured or killed on a daily basis. Today, on the sixth anniversary of Rachel’s death, Ayaat al-Ja’bari, age 24, was injured as she made her way home in Hebron. Since July 2008, four unarmed demonstrators aged 10 to 22, were killed by Israeli forces in Ni’lin. Just over a month ago, the Israeli military killed over 1300 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, many of them women and children.

On this year’s anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s killing, the International Solidarity Movement wishes to express our humble gratitude to the thousands of people who have volunteered with us over the last eight years, and to those who have supported our work emotionally and financially; devoting their time and energy to Palestinian non-violent resistance.

As we all continue to work for an end to the occupation, please join us in wishing Tristan a full recovery, and for Palestine, freedom at long last.

Resources about Rachel

Statement from the family of Rachel Corrie

We thank all who continue to remember Rachel and those who, on this sixth anniversary of her stand in Gaza, renew their own commitments to human rights, justice and peace in the Middle East. The tributes and actions in her memory are a source of inspiration to us and to others.

Friday, March 13th, we learned of the tragic injury to American activist Tristan Anderson. Tristan was shot in the head with a tear-gas canister in Ni’lin Village in the West Bank when Israeli forces attacked a demonstration opposing the construction of the annexation wall through the village’s land. On the same day, a Ni’lin resident was, also, shot in the leg with live ammunition. Four residents of Ni’lin have been killed in the past eight months as villagers and their supporters have courageously demonstrated against the Apartheid Wall deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice – a wall that will ultimately absorb one-quarter of the village’s remaining land. Those who have died are a ten-year-old child Ahmed Mousa, shot in the forehead with live ammunition on July 29, 2008; Yousef Amira (17) shot with rubber-coated steel bullets on July 30, 2008; Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22) and Mohammed Khawaje (20), both shot and killed with live ammunition on December 28, 2008. On this anniversary, Rachel would want us all to hold Tristan Anderson and his family and these Palestinians and their families in our thoughts and prayers, and we ask everyone to do so.

We are writing this message from Cairo where we returned after a visit to Gaza with the Code Pink Delegation from the United States. Fifty-eight women and men successfully passed through Rafah Crossing on Saturday, March 7th to challenge the border closures and siege and to celebrate International Women’s Day with the strong and courageous women of Gaza. Rachel would be very happy that our spirited delegation made this journey. North to south throughout the Strip, we witnessed the sweeping destruction of neighborhoods, municipal buildings, police stations, mosques, and schools – casualties of the Israeli military assaults in December and January. When we asked about the personal impact of the attacks on those we met, we heard repeatedly of the loss of mothers, fathers, children, cousins, and friends. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights reports 1434 Palestinian dead and over 5000 injured, among them 288 children and 121 women.

We walked through the farming village of Khoza in the South where fifty homes were destroyed during the land invasion. A young boy scrambled through a hole in the rubble to show us the basement he and his family crouched in as a bulldozer crushed their house upon them. We heard of Rafiya who lead the frightened women and children of this neighborhood away from threatening Israeli military bulldozers, only to be struck down and killed by an Israeli soldier’s sniper fire as she walked in the street carrying her white flag.

Repeatedly, we were told by Palestinians, and by the internationals on the ground supporting them, that there is no ceasefire. Indeed, bomb blasts from the border area punctuated our conversations as we arrived and departed Gaza. On our last night, we sat by a fire in the moonlight in the remains of a friend’s farmyard and listened to him tell of how the Israeli military destroyed his home in 2004, and of how this second home was shattered on February 6th. This time, it was Israeli rockets from Apache helicopters that struck the house, a stand of wheat remained and rustled soothingly in the breeze as we talked, but our attention shifted quickly when F-16s streaked high across the night sky. and our friend explained that if the planes tipped to the side, they would strike. Everywhere, the psychological costs of the recent and ongoing attacks for all Gazans, but especially for the children, were sadly apparent. It is not only those who suffer the greatest losses that carry the scars of all that has happened. It is those, too, who witnessed from their school bodies flying in the air when police cadets were bombed across the street and those who felt and heard the terrifying blasts of missiles falling near their own homes. It is the children who each day must walk past the unexplainable and inhumane destruction that has occurred.

In Rachel’s case, though a thorough, credible and transparent investigation was promised by the Israeli Government, after six years, the position of the U.S. Government remains that such an investigation has not taken place. In March 2008, Michele Bernier-Toff, Managing Director of the Office of Overseas Citizen Services at the Department of State wrote, “We have consistently requested that the Government of Israel conduct a full and transparent investigation into Rachel’s death. Our requests have gone unanswered or ignored.” Now, the attacks on all the people of Gaza and the recent one on Tristan Anderson in Ni’lin cry out for investigation and accountability. We call on President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and members of Congress to act with fortitude and courage to ensure that the atrocities that have occurred are addressed by the Israeli Government and through relevant international and U.S. law. We ask them to act immediately and persistently to stop the impunity enjoyed by the Israeli military, not to encourage it.

Despite the pain, we have once again felt privileged to enter briefly into the lives of Rachel’s Palestinian friends in Gaza. We are moved by their resilience and heartened by their song, dance, and laughter amidst the tears. Rachel wrote in 2003, “I am nevertheless amazed at their strength in being able to defend such a large degree of their humanity – laughter, generosity, family time – against the incredible horror occurring in their lives … I am also discovering a degree of strength and of the basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances … I think the word is dignity.” On this sixth anniversary of Rachel’s killing, we echo her sentiments.

Sincerely,
Cindy and Craig Corrie on behalf of our family

The high cost of living

Sharon Lock | Tales to Tell

13 March 2009

Excerpt from ‘The high cost of living’

The price of fish…

Yesterday I went to the Kabariti family for Friday lunch, a fish barbeque. I took with me three of the “letters from the world” that were delivered by the Free Gaza boat last year. These letters were from a mother and her two daughters in California, so we decided to give them to the Kabariti girls and their mum, all of whom read English.

The girls and I sat in the sunny front window and they excitedly began to read their letters and compose messages to email in reply (no postal service is possible under siege.) A few minutes later I realised I could hear shooting. Their dad M always keeps binoculars beside the sea window, but I didn’t need them. Looking out, I could see two Israeli gunboats well on this side of the horizon, looping about and firing on Palestinian fishing boats. No more than three miles from the shore

Some of the little boats began to head back to the port, so I stomped off down the street to meet them, as the shooting continued, to see what I could find out. I spoke to Ahmed Abel Aziiz, who had just tied up his boat. He said the shooting had been going on half an hour and he was giving up for the day, but he thought that more than ten boats, some medium and some small like his, were still out there. Nobody was arrested or wounded yet. I stomped back to eat my lunch, pleased to see the Kabariti kids out in the garden after their weeks of hiding inside, but eyeing the parsley in the salad and the fish on my plate with part respect and part despair.

Later on I rang M and he said that fishermen Zaki Tarouch and Talal Tarouch, and Dahr Zayad and his son, had been arrested by the Israeli gunboats. He also said we are entering the three best months for fishing, the time the fishermen depend on to get them through the rest of the year.

We went to Al Wafa Rehabilitation hospital also yesterday, said hi to Abd, delivered the chess set your donations bought him, and announced we would be practising both chess and insertion of cannulas on him next visit. He looked perturbed. E introduced me to Abd’s fellow patient, Maher, who you can assist via our Donate page (shot fisherman Rafiq is there too) who is carrying on the Palestinian tradition of being determinedly cheerful after surviving his own war nightmare. Which in his case involved not only losing those close to him, but ten minutes in the morgue refrigerator…

The fishermen were released in the night, but their boats – their method of earning a living – have been kept by Israel. As we enter the three months Gaza fishermen depend on the most.

Painting on the walls in Gaza

Asmaa

It is nothing new in Gaza seeing lots of words in great lines on any wall you pass it in Gaza. Some of them talk about the political situation, another is talking about the social events. Many of them are talking about whom left their families and died during the last war or previous Israeli military operations in Gaza, with their names and their painting faces.

It is the fast, cheap, easy way to express your opinion and to reach what you want the other Gazans to know freely. Even if it stays for a short time, because anyone else who will do the same on the same wall for another reason and subject, in the next week.

After 2006 many things changed in Gaza. The political situation affected many aspects of Gaza’s life. There is a government in West Bank and another one in Gaza. Most of the people in Gaza became don’t believe in these or those. Nothing is important except how they can get work and have enough money to cover their families needs.

Life became more difficult. You see the sadness and poorness all over Gaza. It is not just because the horrible war, but because of many reasons. The long and the unfair blockade from all sides (sea, air, and all the crossing points).

It is too hard sometimes to realize this strange ability for the Gazans to get over all that has happened to them and their families and continue the life with this fast. What happened in Gaza is hard to forget. And we still feel it In spite of our daily concerns.

But it seems that it inspires a lot of artists to get their feelings out in many ways in Gaza. If you walk in Gaza’s streets you will see every week a new painting wall by group of artists.

Many of them talked about the war. I was impressive of a long one made by 13 artists, girls and boys, all of them students in the Fine Art College in El Aqsa University. They made it on a particular type of white cloth because they couldn’t paint on the damaged wall opposite to the ruins of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

I asked one of the girls called Miysa, an art student at level 2 in the University, “What does this work mean to you?”

She said, “It means that even if they destroy our life in Gaza we will servive and stand up again to get all our rights back.“

I asked another artist who painted a big key and a complete map of all Palestine why she painted these and others that talk about the war.

She said, “I meant it to tell the world that dying in Gaza doesn’t mean we forgot our land and our rights to live freely in our home on our own land.”

Another of the artists is named Mohammed El Haj and he is an art teacher and a specialist in painting walls. I asked him why most of artists in Gaza go to use the walls to paint. He simply said, “It is the cheapest way during this long siege in Gaza. There are no good colors, no material that we use to draw like the cloth and brushes. And if we find them, they are very expensive because they enter Gaza by the tunnels.”

So I found the walls the cheapest and fastest way to expresses my thoughts and feelings and share them with all people around. I will not let the siege or war effect on what I live to do, so I continue to draw my life.

Many of the artists I met come from from different backgrounds and studied English, public policy, economics, engineering, and other fields.

When I asked Ismaiel El Hefni, an architect, why he painted on the wall and not on a smaller canvas to put on exhibition, he said: “Painting on the wall is different, I found it more interesting for me to put it on the wall instead of an exhibition, even if the painting will only stay on the wall for one day. I like to paint on a big space with all this movement around me. You can share it with all the people around. You can share with them what you believe. And if the painting was good and interesting for others it will stay on the wall for a long time. I’m happy to share with another artist from a different field. We exchange ideas and create new techniques to produce good art collectively.”

After the war a lot of local and international organizations supported artists to provide a fun and enjoyable way to deal with the trauma Gazans lived, especially the children. We saw some paintings made by hands and feet of children in beautiful colors.

We can see the beauty in Gaza, even if a large part of it has been destroyed. We will see life next to the rubble.

When a second home isn’t due to wealth

Sharon Lock | Tales To Tell

Excerpts from Sharon Lock’s blog

J and L's kids - still alive because they've abandoned their house

We were visiting hospital dietitian S’s family in Al Fukhary. They all fled their home during the attacks, except for S’s dad who stayed behind to confront the tanks. And literally did – S shows us where the tanks got to: the back garden. At this point, his dad went to the back door and looked the solider in the tank in the eye. The soldier in the tank looked back. And then he turned the tank around and left. I guess Abu S has one great stern look.

As we are leaving we pass several houses totally destroyed, in amongst houses still standing. Why these houses? Nobody knows. A kindergarten is also destroyed, and there is no logic in that either. We notice that all the road ways are planted with dense cactus, and speculate if they are deliberately planted to obstruct border-originating bullets. They look fierce enough to do it. At S’s family land, near the border, Israeli tanks have destroyed the roadside cactuses, so maybe the soldiers have the same theory about them as us.

Earlier in the afternoon we were with J and L and their six kids (the youngest is 3) in Al Faraheen. You’ll remember before I referred to the fact that they stay in a house in the middle of the village now, because their regular home at the edge, about 500m from the border, feels too dangerous. Before the attacks, J and his oldest son at least were sleeping at their farmhouse, now, no-one does.

Before the war when ISMers were visiting, the Israeli army seemed to be trying to enforce (by shooting) a 300m no-go zone on the Palestinian side of the border. At the time, J was saying he was afraid it would shortly turn into a 500m no-go zone. After the Dec/Jan attacks, when E rang the Canadian embassy to tell them she was with Palestinians being fired on while picking parsley, the Canadian officials said something along the lines of “well Israel says you are in the 1km no-go zone.” The what? And who made them the boss of the world? as we used to say as kids. And does this remind anyone of how the government in the novel 1984 rewrites “facts” regularly and then everyone colludes to say those were always the facts?

What I didn’t realize til today, is that J and L are paying $100 a month rent for the village house, out of their small farming income. In the hope some compensation money might be available from UNWRA, J asks us to take photos of the damage to their house and help them make contact with the appropriate authorities.

A few minutes later, at the farmhouse, J points out the “donkey radar” – consisting of a donkey in the field on the border side, nose pointing towards Israel – insisting that the donkey’s ears will go up if jeeps arrive. It is easy to tell J’s heart and soul are in farming and he loves his land. He practices crop rotation on the remaining 4 denems, close to the house, that it seems worth risking his life to access. In the past he shared 300 denems with his brothers and neighbours – 3 denems were olives, 6 were fruit trees, 50 were wheat, 50 were peas… Israel totally destroyed the fruit trees in previous incursions and since the rest of the land goes all the way up to the border, he has given up on it.

...but then even the remaining chickens were poisoned by phosphorous.

Before the army incursion in May 2008, he also had 3000 chickens, but the army killed 2,500 of them then, also destroying 30 pieces (each 1m X 2.5m) of shed roofing, breaking his tractor and his wheat picker (worth about $12,000), breaking the pump for his well, and shooting up his kitchen fridge, water tank, solar water heater, self-designed solar dryer, as well as the walls of the house.

The remaining 500 chickens died in January 09 after eating plants poisoned by phosphorous bombs, and another 30 pieces of shed roofing went the way of the first lot. J had to destroy a crop of radishes still in the field when he realised they’d been similarly poisoned. What this will do long term to his land, no-one knows. The family’s TV and computer were destroyed in the Dec/Jan attacks as well when shelling caused part of the roof to fall in on top of them.