Tag: Naval Blockade

Gaza fishermen demonstrate at UN in protest of Israeli attacks on their livelihoods

PNN | Fishing Under Fire

14 August 2009

Fishermen in the Gaza Strip are the frequent targets of Israeli forces. Israeli naval ships sometimes open fire, or board boats, arrest the fishermen, even confiscate nets and the boats themselves.

Today in Gaza, Palestinian fishermen are demonstrating against the Israeli policies that are destroying their livelihood. The Palestinian fishing industry has lost millions in revenue since the siege began three years ago, that has led to a ban on exports of fish, imports of equipment, and an increase in attacks by the Israelis.

During the three-weeks of major Israeli attacks in late December and January the losses to the agriculture and fishing sector, for which statistics are combined, were 311,000 USD in those three weeks alone. The head of the Fishermen’s Association, Nizar Ayash, reported as long ago as March of 2007 that losses incurred in the fishing sector due to Israeli practices amounted to 16 million dollars. There are approximately 3,000 Palestinians engaged in the fishing trade, which translates into 40,000 people living on that income.

Palestinian Legislative Council member and Chairman of the People’s Committee against the Blockade, Jamal Al Khudari, said today that Palestinian fishermen are maintaining their profession and their right to fish in the Sea of Gaza, despite the intense Israeli attacks. Under Article 11 of the Israeli-Palestinian Protocol, it is stipulated that Palestinian fishing boats have the right to go out 20 nautical miles from the coast in a specific region. The number has been reduced by the Israelis several times and is now down to three miles, yet still some fishermen on the shores face fire.

During a march on the United Nations headquarters in Gaza City, Al Khudari reiterated what a serious threat the fishermen and their families are under.

He said that by reducing the area allowed for Palestinian fishing in Gaza territorial waters from 15 to just three nautical miles, the occupying forces are contradicting signed agreements.

A call was issued to the international community to pressure the Israelis to abide international law and agreements, and to stop the harassment of the Palestinian fishing trade.

Threatened and beaten on the way to Gaza

Adam Shapiro | Huffington Post

17 July 2009

I departed Cyprus with 20 others on June 29 in a converted ferry carrying humanitarian provisions intended for Palestinians in Gaza cut off from the world by the Israeli military siege. Our intent was to bring Palestinians toys, medicines, toolkits, olive tree saplings, and one 50-kilo bag of cement while breaking the sea barrier Israel maintains to imprison Palestinians in their coastal territory.

An independent filmmaker, and human rights advocate, I planned to document the trip and life in Gaza.

Approximately half of Gaza’s population is under age 18. These children suffer the consequences of an Israeli imposed economic collapse ostensibly intended to undermine Hamas rule. As with Iraq, the sanctions serve only to devastate a population and decimate civil society.

At 2:00 am on June 30, somewhere off our starboard side, an Israeli warship shone its searchlights at our boat. A voice called on the radio, “You are navigating towards a blockaded area. You are hereby ordered to change your course. If you do not, we will be forced to use all necessary force to stop you.”

These waters are patrolled unchallenged by the Israeli navy. Our call for help – one previous boat of ours was intentionally rammed by the Israeli navy – to a UN ship we knew to be in radio range went unanswered.

We counted eight Israeli warships and four zodiac boats with boarding parties and divers in hot pursuit. About an hour earlier an F-16 executed fly-overs. This was US-supplied and American taxpayer-subsidized-force all to stop one bag of cement from reaching a ghetto and human-made disaster area.

In a flurry of activity, we were boarded. Those of us with video cameras bore the brunt of the over-zealous navy forces. We were beaten to break our grasp on the video cameras. I have documented events from Afghanistan to Darfur to various locations around the Middle East, but until then I had never been physically attacked on account of my work. Israel’s military censor continues to hold the evidence and I expect never to retrieve it. With the evidence gone, much of the media have treated the event as though it never occurred.

Instead of sailing into Gaza’s bombed and broken port, we were kidnapped at gunpoint, taken to a foreign country, and imprisoned. Instead of delivering toys to children in Azbet Abed Rabbo, where in February I met families living in tents (again) because their homes were left in rubble by Israel’s December-January invasion, we stood at attention for a prison guard to check our cell.
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As other governments spoke up publicly for their citizens, the US government was notably silent.

In his Cairo speech, President Obama asserted, “Palestinians must abandon violence…For centuries,” he continued, “black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights.” He then noted it was peaceful action that had won rights in the United States, South Africa, and elsewhere. Yet how seriously can Palestinians take his exhortation to nonviolence when he allows an ally to kidnap and beat American citizens attempting nonviolently to assist Palestinians in war-ravaged Gaza?

Even President Obama, who seemed so sincere in his Cairo speech, is imprisoned by the status quo of American-Israeli relations that bend American values and interest to the will of a state that is increasingly being labeled internationally with the brand of apartheid. One set of laws for Jews and one set of laws for Palestinians is unacceptable in the 21st century. Washington can only ignore the facts for so long when Israel’s housing minister states, “We can all be bleeding hearts, but I think it is unsuitable [for Jews and Palestinians] to live together [in Israel].”

As for Gaza, Palestinians there are worlds away from hoping for equal rights. Day to day survival is the priority. The International Committee of the Red Cross recently issued a report, “Gaza: 1.5 million people trapped in despair,” in which it details that nothing has been rebuilt that was destroyed during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, over 70% of Gazans live in poverty, and malnutrition is on the rise among the most vulnerable – the children of Gaza. Trauma is a foregone conclusion.

The World Health Organization has reported that one-third of children under five and women of childbearing age are anemic.

In his Cairo speech, President Obama called the present situation facing Palestinians “intolerable,” adding that “just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel’s security.” More recently, President Obama called on Israel to allow in the reconstruction and humanitarian aid that Gaza desperately needs, though he fell far short of calling for the fundamental human rights to movement, education, health and security that all Palestinians deserve.

It is in this context of despair and a complete lack of governmental will to challenge Israel in which a generation of Palestinians is growing up in Gaza worse off than their great grandparents who fled there in 1948. Our small boat tried to break the apathy that permits blockade and siege. We were ordinary civilians, taking a risk on the high seas, confronting the region’s most powerful navy, because despite all the words describing the situation in Gaza, nothing is improving. In fact, after the immediate outcry following Israel’s winter invasion, Israel again started reducing the number of trucks allowed to enter Gaza.

The Berlin Wall did not fall in a day. Consequently, our next ship sails for Palestinian freedom in a month

Adam Shapiro is a human rights advocate and documentary filmmaker. His latest film is “Chronicles of a Refugee.”

Free Gaza–and Palestine

Huwaida Arraf | The Nation

17 July 2009

Last month I led a group of twenty-one human rights workers on a boat from Cyprus to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. We carried toys, medicine, olive tree saplings, toolkits, a fifty-kilo bag of cement and school supplies on our small converted ferry boat.

At 2 AM on June 30, almost eighteen hours into the 230-mile journey, a colleague awakened me. The Israeli Navy was calling our boat on the VHF radio. “You are navigating towards a blockaded area. You are hereby ordered to change your course. If you do not, we will be forced to use all necessary force to stop you.”

Nervous after a previous boat of ours was dangerously rammed at sea in December by the Israeli military, I replied, “Israeli Navy, this is Arion (the registered name of our ship). We are twenty-one unarmed civilians carrying aid for the Palestinian people of Gaza. Any blockade on Gaza is unlawful as you are the occupying force in the territory and are therefore responsible for the well-being of the civilian population there. As our boat, its cargo, and the twenty-one civilians on board do not constitute any kind of threat to Israel or its armed forces, you are obliged to allow us entry. We are proceeding to Gaza. Do not use force against us.”

Shortly thereafter our navigational systems were disabled for nearly four hours as the warnings continued. In their “final” warning to us, the Israeli Navy threatened to open fire. “Israeli Navy, we are unarmed civilians; do not use force against us. Do not shoot.” We did not stop.

We were boarded by force. Before we were separated, I saw Navy forces grabbing my husband, Adam, a filmmaker who has made documentaries from Palestine to Darfur, about the neck. Later, I learned that outside of my view, these government-sanctioned pirates pummeled Adam in order to wrest his videocamera from his grasp.

Though I know it could not have been easy for him, Adam did not fight back. He was a multi-sport athlete in high school, threw out Manny Ramirez stealing second and is one of those rare individuals who bring a football player’s intensity to peace work. But like the rest of us, Adam insists on using nonviolent means to resist Israel’s military occupation. And though in his widely hailed Cairo speech President Obama made an implicit call for nonviolence as the means to challenge the Israeli occupation, the Obama administration made no public statement on our behalf — nor did it do so three months ago, when my dear friend Bassem Abu Rahme was killed while nonviolently protesting Israeli expansionism in the West Bank that threatens to destroy his village of Bil’in.

Perhaps we were politically inept. Had we sailed toward Iran to offer assistance to civilian protesters there, we would have been a cause celebre if the Iranian government had arrested us. Iran, however, for all its troubles, is not now under foreign occupation as Palestine is. Yet as I watched the demonstrations in Iran, I could not miss the similarities to Palestine’s nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation. I cannot count the times I have marched peacefully, waving a flag and demanding freedom for my people — with only my voice and my presence as my weapons. And sadly, the number of friends I have lost — killed by Israeli forces as, like Neda Agha-Soltan in Iran, they nonviolently demonstrated for freedom — is becoming too great a pain in my heart.

My colleagues and I invested time and energy in this difficult journey and put our lives at risk because for too long the international community has been complicit in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. For too long, diplomats and world leaders have paid lip service to Palestinian human rights. For too long, the Palestinian people have been told to wait — wait in the checkpoint line, wait on the peace process, wait to have your rights recognized, wait for freedom.

Students I met on a recent successful voyage to Gaza certainly did not want to wait to be slowly suffocated and drained of their dreams. So desperate were they to escape their confinement in Gaza to obtain higher education abroad that they asked us to drop them in international waters and they would swim the rest of the way to Cyprus. This was youthful madness, but indicative of how trapped people in Gaza are today.

I was born in the blanket of freedom of the United States. My parents immigrated here, knowing that I could not be free in my homeland. But today I use my freedom to struggle as a Palestinian for my friends and relatives who endure the yokes of occupation, oppression, discrimination, exile, internment and apartheid.

Most Palestinians in the occupied territories have not lived a day free of Israel’s occupation, and Palestinian citizens of Israel continue to live as a discriminated-against minority. Just the other day, Israel’s housing minister, Ariel Atias, declared, “We can all be bleeding hearts, but I think it is unsuitable [for Jews and Palestinians] to live together [in Israel].

This is the Israel the United States funds with billions each year. Under the leadership of President Obama–or any American president, for that matter–support for this sort of raw bigotry makes no sense and is antithetical to our most cherished principles. Yet when Israeli leaders utter such contemptible language it is ignored. When Israeli soldiers fire lethal weapons at unarmed, peaceful protesters it is too often ignored. When Israeli naval boats become pirate ships — boarding a vessel that poses them no threat, arresting and beating American citizens–it is ignored.

It is ignored and Israel continues to enjoy the patronage of the United States and to present itself as a moral beacon for the world. But my generation finds racist language like that of Atias’–and the actions that result from such outdated thinking–abhorrent.

We find it unacceptable that Palestinians continue to be asked to wait, to improve our self-government and to be patient as we build ourselves toward the same rights that people elsewhere take for granted. With the fourth Palestinian generation born into refugee camps, with a new generation in Gaza being raised poorer and more desperate than the last, with my land being carved and sliced and walled for the exclusive benefit of one ethno-religious group, I say we cannot wait.

The question facing the world now must no longer be about where to squeeze a Palestinian state. The only relevant question is how to advance the immediate freedom of ten million Palestinians. There can be no more waiting, no more prevaricating, no more negotiations on that simple, beautiful human concept–freedom.

We will be free. President Obama can expedite the process by putting pressure on Israel, or he can sideline himself and the process for the next eight years. Sooner or later, however, Israel’s subjugation of us will be overturned. The current situation is untenable. Whether we live in two states or one state with equal rights for all–as in South Africa and, indeed, the United States–we will achieve our freedom. What South Africa was to students in the 1980s, Palestine is fast becoming to younger generations increasingly repulsed by the entrenchment of Israel’s dual system of law, domination of another people and ongoing confinement of 1.5 million Palestinians to a tiny parcel of land in Gaza.

So, yes, this was only one tiny humanitarian boat to Gaza. But Israel’s heavy-handed action shows how much is at stake and how shaky Israel’s grip over another people becomes when the world’s citizens speak out and take action–even as governments fall short.

Fmr. Congressmember Cynthia McKinney back in U.S. after being detained and deported from Israel

Democracy Now

8 July 2009

Guests:

Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Congresswoman and the 2008 Green Party presidential candidate.

Adam Shapiro, documentary filmmaker, human rights activist and Palestinian rights activist. Adam was a co-founder of the ISM in Palestine. He was filming the voyage of the Arion for the Free Gaza Movement last week.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Congress member Cynthia McKinney arrived back in the United States Tuesday following her deportation from Israel. McKinney was one of 21 activists seized by the Israeli military in international waters last week as they tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. Also aboard the Free Gaza boat was Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire. Last week’s trip was the Free Gaza movement’s first since it aborted an attempt in January after the Israeli navy threatened to shoot the civilian passengers on board. That sailing had come just weeks after an Israeli Navy vessel deliberately rammed another of its boats, almost forcing it to sink. Cynthia McKinney joins us now in Washington D.C. We are joined here at the Firehouse by Adam Shapiro. He was filming the Free Gaza trip last week. He is a Palestinian human rights activist and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement. Both former Congress member McKinney and Adam were detained for the past week and just deported back to the United States.

Cynthia McKinney why did you go? What happened to you in the Israeli jail?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: I went because there’s a gross injustice being carried out everyday. This is my second attempt to get into Gaza with the Free Gaza organization. And for the two times I attempted to get in, two times I have been thwarted by the Israeli military. The cause is the human rights of the Palestinian people. The world saw the operation Cast Lead where the United States supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, cluster bombs, DIME weapons, were rained down on the defenseless people of Gaza. Of course, we desperately wanted to get in to take humanitarian relief supplies. And both times I have tried to go with Free Gaza, they’ve been thwarted—we have been supported thwarted by the Israeli military.

AMY GOODMAN: Now were you on one of the boats that was rammed?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: I was on the Dignity. And yes it was rammed in international waters…

AMY GOODMAN: When was this?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: ..This was in December, just a day or so after the outbreak of Operation Cast Lead. I was contacted by Free Gaza and asked to go within 24 hours and I said, yes, I would go.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a comment made last week by Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev who dismissed the humanitarian mission of the Free Gaza Movement.

MARK REGEV: Israel every day is allowing humanitarian support to reach the people of Gaza. Food stuffs, medicines, energy and so forth. This boat was not about that. This boat was about political activists who have been apologists for the Hamas regime who have nothing whatsoever to say about Hamas’s brutal treatment of the people of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Congress member McKinney, your response?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: Well, clearly, we just had a visit to Gaza by President Carter, Former President Carter. Basically, he acknowledged that with the complete and utter devastation that the people of Gaza experienced at the hands of weapons that were supplied to Israel by the United States, he said that unfortunately the Palestinians are treated worse than human beings. I challenge the Israelis to respond to what President Carter had to say.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Congress member McKinney, tell us about the jail. Were you able to reach the Obama administration while you were there?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: Well, the jail was very interesting. In fact, the first most interesting thing I witnessed was the seemingly endless stream of people of color who are being processed as we were being processed. And on my cell block, there were women from Africa and Asia who thought they were going to Israel because Israel was the Holy Land. And many of them, not all of them, but many of them had United Nations refugee status. They have been certified by UNHCR as refugees, but what they were told as they faced the threats and intimidation from the police is that the United Nations is not in Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Adam Shapiro, you are Palestinian rights activist long known for this. You were on the boat. You were roughed up, you were filming when the Israeli military came on board. Describe what happened.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Well, they boarded us, four zodiac ships as well as eight naval warships, they surrounded our boat and can immediately towards the wheel house where I was along with the captain and one other crew member. I was documenting the whole trip and filming as they boarded the ship. Two soldiers came after me immediately, recognizing I think that they don’t want any footage of what was happening and they don’t want the world to know how they behave. I tried to keep the camera as long as I could. But I was pummeled repeatedly in the back and arms and choked and eventually they got the camera out of my hands. They have since taken all of our tapes, all of our flashcards and all of that, so we don’t have a record to show the world of what happened on board. The rest of the time we were detained in one room of the ship as we spent the better part of six hours navigating back to an Israeli port where we were processed and ultimately jailed.

AMY GOODMAN: There was another Al-Jazeera reporter on board as well ?

ADAM SHAPIRO: There was an Al-Jazeera reporter and cameramen. They lost all of their footage and camera as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Their computer was taken?

ADAM SHAPIRO: Yes, it was taken, completely reformatted and erased. And so again, we don’t seem to have a record to show the world what happened.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response to Israeli Spokesperson Regev?

ADAM SHAPIRO: Well Mark Regev is known for his colorful descriptions of how great life is in Gaza as far as Israel is concerned. However, all of the reporting, including the most recent International Committee for the Red Cross, shows the number of trucks Israel is allowing into Gaza is completely insufficient for what is needed. And so yes, it is true, he can say Israel allows foodstuffs and medicines to get in, but two trucks a day or 20 trucks a day is far inferior to what is needed. And we have seen, since the international outcry following January’s attack has subsided the number of trucks Israel has allowed in has decreased. And so, what we are saying, Free Gaza is a humanitarian effort to bring in the kinds of medicines and foods that are needed. But the Free Gaza movement is also a political organization in the sense we are human rights organization, And human rights for Palestinians is inherently political. And we are challenging Israel politically too, and this week I think has been a success for those of us who are fighting for Palestinian rights. We were not able to get into Gaza but we have shown the world the true colors of the Israeli occupation, and the double standard by which the United States and other countries are dealing with Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Congress member McKinney, we only have ten seconds. But, you’ve just been deported. What are your plans right now?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: Well, I would like to see the children of Gaza have the coloring books and crayons that we had on board with us. I would like to see the houses that have been destroyed rebuilt. I would like to see the lives rebuilt for the people of Gaza and I would like to see the people of Palestine have, and enjoy their human rights.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think president Obama is headed in that direction?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: I think you can probably answer that as well as we can, because while we were in detention, the Foreign Ministry of Ireland made protests and asked the government of Israel to release its nationals, several Members of Parliament

AMY GOODMAN: …We have 5 seconds….

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: from the United Kingdom…

AMY GOODMAN: … 5 seconds….

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: …also wanted to censure Israel. Nothing from the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Cynthia McKinney, Adam Shapiro, Thank you so much. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.

Interview from a kidnapped passenger, Adie Mormech

Free Gaza Movement

4 July 2009

Adie Mormech, one of over 21 human rights workers and crew taken prisoner on Tuesday 30th June when their boat was forcibly boarded by the Israeli navy, has spoken by mobile phone from his prison cell at Givon jail, Ramle, near Tel Aviv.

Amongst the other prisoners from the Free Gaza Movement boat, Spirit of Humanity, are Nobel Peace prize winner, Mairead Maguire, and former US Congresswoman, Cythnia McKinney. A message from McKinney on 2nd July condemned Israel for its “illegal” action in “dismantl[ing] our navigation equipment” and confiscating both the ship and its cargo of medical aid, childrens’ toys and olive trees.

McKinney went on to say that “State Department and White House officials have not effected our release or taken a strong public stance to condemn the illegal actions of the Israeli Navy of enforcing a blockade of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians of Gaza, a blockade that has been condemned by President Obama.”

The Free Gaza campaign succeeded in entering Gaza by sea on several occasions in 2008, carrying humanitarian aid, medical personnel, journalists and human rights workers. However, later attempts have been met with aggression by the Israeli navy, with one boat, the Dignity, having to seek refuge and repairs in Lebanon after being rammed three times by an Israeli warship.

In a brief interview with Andy Bowman of Manchester’s Mule newspaper (http//www.themule.info), Mr Mormech gave the following account:

How are you being treated?

It’s bad, but the conditions are OK for me, I’ve not been beaten up, they’re a bit nasty sometimes and when they boarded the boat we had our faces slammed against the floor. It was bad for the older women like Mairead.

The four other UK nationals are in the cell with me. There’s 14 of us in the 7 by 7 meter cell which includes the toilet and shower, so very crowded. It’s very hot and there’s only a tiny window. We get awakened at 6 in the morning for an inspection and have to stand to attention, and then they repeat that at 9 am, and we are only allowed out of the cells for a few hours each day. They keep giving us forms to sign but they are in Hebrew so we don’t. Although I’m able to cope here, other people are less comfortable than me in the situation. If we’re here for a long time – like some of the other people in here have been – then it will be tough.

Have you had access to a lawyer yet?

We have, and at the moment we’re discussing what to do about our deportation. They’ve taken our personal items – laptops, cameras, phones and many other valuables, and we want to find out where these are. They obviously want to deport us as quickly as possible, but some of us are thinking about fighting the deportation. Firstly on the basis that if we get deported we won’t be allowed into the occupied West Bank or Israel for another 10 years, but also, because we didn’t intend to come here to Israel – we intended to go to Gaza, and went directly from international waters into Palestinian waters. There is nothing legal about what Israel has done to us grabbing us like this. We’re considering fighting the deportation on the grounds that we shouldn’t accept and legitimize this barbaric military blockade of Gaza.

If you challenge the deportation could you remain in prison for a while longer?

Yes we could – there’s some people that need to get home, but some will challenge. And for those it will be a few more weeks in prison at least, we expect.

And you?

I’m veering towards challenging it on the basis that it’s a scar on my name to accept that I shouldn’t have been here, but in fact I have every right to go to Gaza just as everyone else does. That’s the whole point of these voyages and that’s the principle we want to stick to.

Have they told you what has happened to the cargo of the boat?

No, we don’t know what they’re doing with it. We’ve been told a lot of lies so far about where we’re going and what’s happening to us, so we just don’t know. They’re already prepared to deprive the people of Gaza of a lot of aid anyway.

What is your message to people back in the UK?

This is not about us here in the cells, it’s about the denial of human rights to the people of Palestine, and in particular the inhumane blockade of Gaza. People must not forget about what is happening to Gaza. At the moment they are even being denied food and medical supplies. After the carnage of the 1500 people killed in January, we won’t forget and we’ll keep on going and keep fighting for the human rights of the people of Palestine.