ZGram - 5/25/2002 - "Another atrocity report about Israeli
cruelty against the Palestinians"
irimland@zundelsite.org
irimland@zundelsite.org
Sat, 25 May 2002 13:08:50 -0700
ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny
May 25, 2002
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
The so-called democracies of the world ought to be more than ashamed
- they ought to be held to account! I am now speaking of their media!
Words fail me that such atrocities are not only permitted but
financed through tax payers' money!
[START]
I Want to Say Something
Sunday, May 19 2002 @ 02:28 AM GMT
By Jeff Kingham
After nearly two weeks in this so-called Holy Land, senses and skill
of analysis begin to fail me, confounded as they are by disbelief and
indignation.
The conditions under which the Palestinians have been forced and are
continuing to endure are nothing short of barbaric; I know this from
personal observation ... from continuing evictions across the street
from my hotel in East Jerusalem to persistent, arbitrary harassment
in every Israeli-controlled zone, from the shocking brutality of
Ramallah and Jenin to, worst of all, the institutionalized outrage
against humanity known as the Gaza Strip. Despite the unreality of
their condition, the Palestinian people remain without exception the
warmest, most unselfish, friendly people I have ever met, never
knowing who I am or why I am here. Their resilience and generosity
opens channels within me and others who came here with me through
which unfamiliar emotions rise like vapors from a bottle of ether
broken deep within heart and mind.
Last week I returned from Jenin, where I had been with a few other
internationals. It was a site of unconscionable, inconceivable
barbarism. Thousands upon thousands of homes destroyed, housing for
at least 15,000 reduced to nothing more than concrete powder -- a
bitter, painful dust replete with unexploded bombs and missiles and
shreds of personal belongings and corpses. Between 1 and 5 people,
mostly children in Jenin had been losing limbs or worse daily. Were
it anywhere else in the Western world, this monstrous scene of
devastation and human misery would have long ago drawn official
political and rescue responses from world governments; but it seems
clear that the international community already made the shameful
decision to cast off the Palestinians. While I helped in Jenin to
distribute food and identify and mark unexploded bombs, the sole
official international efforts in Jenin consisted of a small slowly
assembling United Nations team and another small group of Norwegian
and British search and rescue experts.
Hardly any Western media, the bastion of democracy and the free press
were evident, save for BBC and a handful of others. What an outrage!
There were no international dignitaries touring the site of this war
crime (save one Scottish parliamentarian, come to Palestine of his
own accord) and absolutely no other international expert teams made
available to direct search and relief efforts. Where in the world
could these sorts of teams, routinely mobilized by Western nations as
good will and humanitarian gestures, have been more useful than in
Jenin? Where were they? Where are they? Where will they be after the
next Israeli outrage? Many dozens, and maybe more Palestinians remain
buried beneath dust and rubble, bombs and belongings.
While these neglected victims of unconscionable aggression were all
certainly dead bodies by then, after more than a week beneath the
rubble, expert international teams were disturbingly obvious in their
absence. Were they in Jenin, search and rescue experts would have
saved the lives and limbs of desperate family members clawing through
what remained to be exhumed of former lives, looking for answers
about missing family members, or trying to retrieve some important
possession in the great Palestinian tomb that is now Jenin.
Now, however, weeks after the carnage, the great work in Jenin is not
saving, but remembering making sure the world never forgets what
happened there.
Gaza, in most ways, is even more shocking, for the outrages here are
status quo. The Gaza strip is an Israeli-constructed prison for 1.3
million Palestinians which the world community ignores by
international convention. It is a concentration camp divided up into
three cell blocks and several isolation cells where the men, women,
and children of this bitter slice of Palestine wile away lives, cut
off from trade, opportunity, freedom, and the world; it is a prison,
nothing more. Israel controls the economy within and without the
Strip Gazans are literally forced by the barrel of American-made
guns, the turret of American-made tanks, the missile launchers of
American-made Apache helicopters and F16s to be the unwilling
consumers of Israeli trade and commercial products.
The innocent prisoners of this Israeli-built, Israeli-guarded
penitentiary breathe every breath, eat every meal, sleep every night,
and wake up every day hemmed in by electric fences and security
walls, houses, buildings and infrastructure destroyed in Israeli
raids, refugee camps that are the most densely populated places on
earth, a small strip of Israeli-patrolled shoreline, checkpoints that
are really arbitrarily deadly harassment centers, Israeli settlements
that are really thinly disguised fronts for heavy concentrations of
IDF forces, etc, etc., etc. Gazans, however, somehow manage to
struggle on.
To me, as a foreigner in Gaza, hope would seem a state of mind with
no bearing here. Many Gazans, nevertheless, continue to draw their
meager portions from a closely guarded well of hope.
Though no one I have met in the cities and camps of Gaza has actually
read the works of Franz Kafka, a new word has gained currency in the
lexicon of Palestinian Arabic. Palestinians of the Strip in
particular have come to refer to their plight and condition as
Kafkaesque; nowhere perhaps has this label ever more appropriate. On
my return I think I will look into Arabic translations of The Castle
and The Trial for shipment to Gaza. I think perchance that with the
works of Kafka in hand, Gaza will soon produce the world's most
renowned Kafka scholars, living as they do the unreality and
absurdity of institutionalized alienation and dispossession.
Jeff Kingham, is one member of the International Solidarity Movement
who stormed the Church of the Nativity with food, he was arrested and
has been deported back to the United States.
-Please consider supporting the Palestine Chronicle with a one-time
donation, or through ongoing support. You can Donate Online using an
easy and secure payment method, or kindly mail your donation to (The
Palestine Chronicle; PO Box 196, Mountlake Terrace, WA 98043-0196,
USA)
[END]
(SOURCE: http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20020519022827543
=====
Thought for the Day:
"American support for Israel, has reached the point where the
Palestinians are being told it is up to them to guarantee the peace
and security of the occupiers."
(Sent to the Zundelsite)