Diary about peace and freedom

Freediary Diary about situation in Palestine from 2 very different view. One of us lives in secure and peacefull Finland and the other in occupied Palestine. Our goal is to spread this blog to all over the world for people to see and understand the real situation and the warcrimes and crimes against humanity by Israel. If you agree with us, please help us and forward our blog. Thank you for your support!

Facebook Badge

Free Diary

Promote Your Page Too

Holding On To The Vision


It's been three hours since I decided to go to bed, and until now I can't sleep. It's very strange how thoughts can stop us from doing something and at the same time how other thoughts can motivate us to do a lot. When I decided to leave Palestine I made a pledge, mostly as what Martin Luther King said in his famous speech (I have a dream); "As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back." And somethings are easier said than done! Holding on to the vision and sticking to the pledge is the character of very few in this time. those of Palestinians with a vision and a pledge have always lived strangers even among other Palestinians, if you stop thinking of the whole thing for just one minute, or if you decide that you are tired and you want to look back only for a moment; you would slip away from the circle of those who can make a change, here; there is no time to make a mistake and those who can't sleep at night should wake up and do something. Even if news sites are blocked and even if some people see you as the alien from Mars you can always find a way to do something. Struggling every day to hold on to the vision is walking with your head high because this vision is what will light your way to success and achievement and therefore a better future and a better change if made for the sake of helping. Even if you are one, be the example to follow and others shall follow. We are the change that we've been waiting for, if we keep wishing that one day "someone" would come and save us, then we create fog around our vision and around our abilities of being the ones who save others along with ourselves.
Writing the above makes me think of what I should do next, I hope that reading it makes you at least think that you can make a difference, that you can help not only spread the word about Palestine but also be part of the word, living it and changing it to a better one!

3 comments

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ahhhhh!!! Welcome back my dearest friend!!!! So nice to finally see you and get to read your news and thoughts!!!

Yes, Palestine from the inside and outside is very very different, I know this, because I have always been on the outside and got the real news only from the people in the inside!

I got this email:

Israeli Military Shoot Gaza Farmer - 18th February 2009 - Jenny


On Tuesday 27th January 2009, in Al Faraheen, Israeli forces shot at several farmers, killing 27 year old farm worker, Anwar al-Breem, Mohammed's cousin.


Video by ISM Gaza Strip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSECq3kxT4I


On Wednesday, February 18, Israeli forces shot a twenty year-old Palestinian farmer as he worked his land in the village of Al-Faraheen, east of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip.

International Human Rights Activists were accompanying the group of farmers at the time as they worked approximately 500m from the Green Line.

Mohammad al-Breem, 20, was shot in the right leg as the farmers, together with the international Human Rights Activists, attempted to leave the area having worked on their land for 2 hours in full view of the Israeli forces situated along the Green Line.

As the farmers were loading up the parsley and spinach from the agricultural lands shots were fired from Israeli forces on the border. Mohammad was shot in the right leg and evacuated, while still under fire, to hospital.

International Human Rights Activists have repeatedly witnessed Palestinian farmers being shot at by Israeli forces as they attempt to work on agricultural land situated within 700m of the Green Line.


I'ts a video where Israelis shoot and kill a farmer in Palestine.

Very very sad :(

My friend, I hope you are feeling good and your life is good there too.
Palestine misses you too and I miss you too so much!
I hope you get to write more here again with me and I hope the world responses to the news and videos which has been dripping out of the seals of Israel.
Thanks God for video cameras and camera cellphones and the internet!
The truth will not be hidden anymore!

Peace to all, specially to you my friend, I love you <3

0 comments

I Hope I'm Back


It's been such a very long time since I last posted anything here, life has changed and days have passed and now I'm far, far away from the only place that I would ever call home, I'm far away from the air that breaths in my spirit, and the blood that runs in my veins. I miss you Palestine, I miss everything that is you, I miss the sun and the sky, I miss being the person that I can be on you.
Here I don’t get to hear news about Palestine, here everyone seems too blind to ask what is really happening, the media is so filtered that you only get that Abbas is meeting with someone somewhere! You don’t get that in one day 60 Palestinians were captured by Israelis, you don’t get that there's a new accusation called "smuggling nutrition to Gaza" !!!! you don’t get that a Zionist drove over a kid in Hebron yesterday, you don’t get that the war is not over in Gaza, you don’t get that more than 1700 acres of Jenin are taken by Israelis. Palestine is a different world to those who are in it and to those who are out of it, a world that if you knew it you'll know nothing like it. So don’t blame me when I say I do not trust anyone, don’t blame when I say I do not believe in our Arab governments and Arab rulers. Don’t blame me when I say I would rather die in Palestine than anywhere else in this ignorant world. Maybe we; the Palestinians who lived the hard days of Palestine, can't tell you all that we know, but we can try to tell you something to at least wake up so you can start your journey in witnessing the unspoken truth!

1 comments

The real story about what happened

From my email:

The real story about what happened to the people on board the ship and not Israel's spin on the story. What an outrage. One of Free Gaza's volunteers, Theresa McDermott, was on board, and we are still not sure where she is but believe she may be deported from and Israeli prison sometime today or tomorrow.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?article_ID=99193&categ_ID=1&edition_id=1

--
Greta Berlin
Media Team
Free Gaza Movement
www.freegaza.org
www.flickr.com/photos/29205195@N02/

0 comments

Another war coming?

Again I have been very busy to write, or maybe lazy, hard to say, I have my study, family, photos show coming etc.. Many irons in a fire at the same as we here in Finland usually say..
One of my friends from Gaza mentioned that there might be a new war coming.. Maybe so, Israel sure havent again been true for the truce, they have been shooting alot of fishermans, farmers etc.. And the borders still remain closed mostly..

Anyway-> to my morning works.. salam :)

0 comments

Dear friends of Gaza

This was in my email this morning:

Dear friends of Gaza,

this is to inform you that the weekly newsletter cannot be provided every week at the moment. You can see the last newsletter in six languages here: http://www.freegaza.org/en/home/newsletter/715-the-newsletter-of-the-free-gaza-movement-42009
Of course Free Gaza will still keep you informed.

Below you find a new essay on the Gaza pogrom.

Yours,
Anis


German follows English. Sent to 1360 people in 48 countries.

http://www.anis-online.de/1/essays/23.htm

The Second Case
Anis Hamadeh, February 5, 2009

Summary: This essay is about Gaza and the German silence between 1945 and 1968, about Israel's myths and the situation of the Palestinians who are labeled with negative stereotypes, while Jews are labeled with positive stereotypes. The Gaza pogrom was carried out with the participation of German desk-perpetrators and this would be the pure form of racism, emerging from the middle of society, something untenable in Germany. This second case of a participation in a pogrom has awoken many citizens, while others demand that the perpetrators be brought to justice. The question is asked: is it really possible after the Gaza murder to say that this is not even comparable to Germany in 1938? Do we have to say it only is no holocaust YET? What does Israel want to do with the people of Gaza? The Hitler genocide, according to the essay at hand, became mystified and covered with dogmas which would belittle all other violence, even a pogrom. It also would lead to violence when the reproach of anti-Semitism is used to oppress Palestinians. Would this be a shift of anti-Semitic racism to one against Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs? And why is there no Palestinian representation in our public life? The first issue would not be a "peace" with Palestinian suspects, but the rights of the Palestinians that they have been deprived of for many decades, because peace would mean trust. After the paradigm shift there shall finally be a unified standard for all people and no more humiliation of the victims. The German responsibility today would be to examine in how far the post-WWII silence can have caused the former victim group to understand the traumatic primal experience from out of the complementary role.

It took the German public more than twenty years to start discussing the Nazi era in 1968. During this time, the official relations between Israel and Germany had been spookily good - apart from an assasination attempt against Adenauer that was played down. In this crucial phase of silence Israel has ethnically cleansed a large part of Palestine and occupied the remaining parts in 1967. Today - especially since the publication of "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" (Ilan Pappe 2006) und "Myths of Zionism" (John Rose 2004) - the major myths of the foundation of the State of Israel and of Zionism are refuted by facts. The Palestinians, who have lived in the land of Canaan for centuries and millennia, today are the biggest group of refugees in the world, numbering over five million.

The Palestinians have had to put up with a lot: the loss of a major part of their homeland, because Europeans and Americans would have it so; partitions of the land, occupation, discrimination, and most of all: they are systematically demonized. The Palestinian, that is the Arab, the Muslim (even though 20% of the Palestinians are Christians), the terrorist. Palestinian? Suicide bomber! With ease you get one predominant image of "the Palestinian" from movies, books, plays and news, and this image helps structure our minds. Like in Eliam Kraiem's play "Sixteen Wounded", the Palestinian is the one, who - although human like "us" in many respects - ends up as a murderer and a criminal, while the Jew is the good guy. He is not the armed illegal settler, who terrorizes indigenous farmers during the olive harvest. Neither is he the navy soldier shooting at the fishermen in Gaza in their own waters, and neither is he the journalist, who calls for hate against Arabs and Muslims in the news magazine. No, he is the good guy who stands as the victim of Hitler's genocide and who has suffered. The roles are set. And now Gaza.

Professor Rolf Verleger, a Jew himself, writes in the new edition of his book "Israel's Irrweg" (in German, review on Anis Online): "People puzzled a lot over Israel's strategic aims in this war against Gaza. All that did not seem to be rational. And that's right. A pogrom is irrational. The motif of a pogrom is pure hate. A pogrom has a clear message for the surviving victims: 'We do not want you here. Get lost!!' This is how it was in Kishinev in 1903 and 1905, in Berlin 1938, in Kielce 1946, and now Gaza, in 2009. The degree of hate with which Palestinians are talked about in Israel is underestimated in Germany."

Gaza was a pogrom and Germany took part. The chancellor, the foreign minister, important representatives of the political parties from left to right, editors-in-chief of all major newspapers, the silent professors, the silent churches, NGO's like Attac; they have all more or less strongly participated in this atrocity by supporting, justifying, belittling and ignoring the murder of 1360 people, mostly civilians, among them more than 430 children, despite knowing better. But this time something new has happened.

Citizens, who had never really been interested in politics, started to ask questions. And others, who already had been interested, are becoming more convinced. They are no longer satisfied being fobbed off with the dogma of the eternally menaced Jew, when they see what is happening in Palestine in the name of the Jews. Anyone with any awareness of the situation knows that such behavior promotes hatred against Jews in the whole world. They will no longer be befogged by abstract academic constructions of a "secondary" and "latent anti-Semitism", realizing that it is the originally uninvolved Palestinians who have to pay with their blood for this ideology of historical contortion by being made revenants and successors of the Nazis.

So let us stop pretending that a German chief editor does not know the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism! Or that he could mix up attack and defense by accident. Let's not talk ourselves into the belief that our politicians do not know what racism and what ethnic cleansing is. Every teacher in every school knows what mass murder is, and when they get Zionist propaganda from the "media service" MEMRI, then they can assess the information, because it is part of their job. When someone denies or belittles a mass murder in Germany, where the worst pogroms against Jews, Sinti and Roma, artists and communists, free thinkers, homosexuals, Serbs, Poles and other groups were committed, even a mass murder that can be understood as a result of World War II, then he or she, as a German perpetrator, must be prepared to be taken to account personally. This is how it was last time. They were sent to Nuremberg.

The current second case may be secondary, because Germans did not start it - they supported and justified it -, but it is just as real as the first case, when Jews were victims. It is revealing that the pogrom in its relevance went unnoticed by our public. The liberation struggle of the Palestinians, legitimate by all standards of international law, here is largely perceived as being anti-Jewish. Biased intellectuals call it "secondary anti-Semitism" and the like when anti-Jewishness would hide behind criticism of Israel. It is obvious how the responsibility for violence and terror is being projected here onto the Palestinian victims and their supporters, while the freedom of the Zionist state to use any kind of violence remains virtually unchallenged.

It is important to talk about the reproach of anti-Semitism, for it ALWAYS appears when it comes to the nitty-gritty of Palestinian rights. This is what I call a narcistic projection, serving the ego only, not the situation. This is also where I see the nucleus of the problem and thus an involvement of Germany.

It is easy to trace who said and did what between December 27 and January 18, 2009. And who said nothing. The names and quotations of the respective individuals can without difficulties be put into a context and can be evaluated. An internet publication already is a success. At the same time, some networkers in Germany and elsewhere are seeking to expedite legal consequences. They are no longer willing to accept the situation. There are clearly responsible people who have made the public believe that it was Hamas who broke the truce. The refugees, the occupation of Palestine and the merciless siege of Gaza have not been pointed out to be causes of the conflict. A glimpse on www.theheadlines.org already suffices to unmask the audacious manipulators in our mainstream media, especially when substancial news is left out, news that are needed to understand the situation. This happens bona fide, certainly, for it is meant to protect Jews. Just like the stab-in-the-back legend after World War I allegedly was meant to protect the state. We remember how this ended. But did we draw the consequence and no longer lie to the public? No. We hang the Nazi genocide so high that nothing can reach it and everything else becomes relatively small and basically unimportant. When we make clear that there must never be a "schluss-strich" (final stroke, i.e. forgetting the past) and simultaneously prohibit every comparison, then we cannot have a meaningful discussion. When the genocide gets mystified and cemented with dogmas, then the memory of what happened will get lost and this is a schluss-strich. There is no place more revealing of this than Palestine, especially Gaza now.

Something is different now. There is, for example, a Palestinian Holocaust Memorial Museum (PHMM), see www.islamonline.net/English/In_Depth/GazaHolocaustMuseum/index.shtml . There it reads: "The museum will feature the photos, names and stories of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces in the context of a new Holocaust. PHMM will highlight the elements of the new Holocaust; the locations, weapons and impacts. Testimonies of the survivors will also be published." - Maybe our public says: this comparison must not be. Of course, there is no Auschwitz in Palestine. Looking at it in a sober way it is no holocaust. But where do we stand now in Palestine? Have we not already surpassed the stage of 1933, the stage of simple discrimination? Is it really possible after the Gaza murder to say that this is not even comparable to Germany in 1938? Where are we now? 1939? 1940? 1941? So, when looking at it in a sober way, do we have to say it only is no holocaust YET? What does Israel want to do with the people of Gaza?

What is behind the ban of comparisons and the philo-Semitic dogmas of the good Jew? Can it be that our society just wants to continue being racist, and now, that it is no longer allowed to hate Jews, people turn to Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims instead? It also seems to be very practical to shift the Nazi guilt on to the Palestinians psychologically. An extreme case of this is www.antifa-saar.de.vu, who distributed stickers in the city of Mainz on which the "Palestinian anti-Semites of Hamas" are put on a level with German Neo-Nazis. Obviously, this has little to do with anti-fascism, for Hamas in the first place does not care for Jews so much as for a life with self-determination and dignity. Before Hamas, the PLO was "the evil" and before Iran it was Iraq. There is no end to this. Therefore we, who have a conscience, collect the names of the Palestinian victims of this butchery and the names of the perpetrators, also the desk-perpetrators in Germany. Enough! We demand that the perpetrators be brought to justice and that their high tech mass murders and their humiliation of the victims stop forever!

It is easy to find them. They always say "radical Islamic", before they say "Hamas", and they always portray Jews as victims, even when they are mass murderers. They have a clear-cut measure for Jews and a nother clear-cut measure for Arabs and Muslims. It needs to be sharply formulated that this is racism and it needs to be fought. It is not a maybe or a little racism, but it is the pure form and it emerges from out of the middle of society. We all know how our public would have reacted if it were 1360 Jews that had died - this is the most plausible indicator.

Not a single Palestinian of the 200.000, who live in Germany, is known to the public. Especially none of those who demand equal rights for the Palestinians in the world. Our TV stations even manage to discuss Gaza in talkshows without the voice of Palestinians. This is not a coincidence, but the only way to keep up the stereotypes and to dismiss facts. Had the Palestinians voices and faces, everybody would see that they are normal human beings like all the others. The audience is led to believe that the deal is about "peace" with some basically suspicious Palestinians. But, first of all, it certainly is about the liberation of the Palestinian people from the deadly danger that blatantly contradicts all Human Rights and all international laws and that has persistently been covered with dogmas for decades. Only afterwards can there be peace, for peace means trust. Nobody trusts a brutal and unjust occupier.

There are villains, heroes and disinterested people on all sides, this is the message that needs to be conveyed in Germany today. There certainly are Jewish heroes and Palestinian villains. There also are Palestinian good guys and Jewish bad guys. The stereotypes of our media and culture are always harmful when they are based on a double standard. Therefore it is important to make sure that after the paradigm shift the Palestinians are not conceptualized as the good guys in turn, or the Jews as the bad guys again. This time we have to learn to dispense with double standards completely. Palestinians and descendants from Palestinians in Germany and elsewehere are in no way different from other people. They laugh when they are happy and cry when they are sad. They have all the qualities nature has bestowed on man and they do not like it when their brothers and sisters are killed and when their cemeteries are defiled. As human beings they have - we have - rights. Those rights we demand after an aggressive army, under the enthusiastic support of the majority of the Israeli population and with the collaboration of the western world, committed a pogrom in Gaza. Nothing more and nothing less.

To conclude, let us come back to the German silence between 1945 and 1968 that was mentioned in the beginning. It is necessary to examine how far this silence has made the former Jewish victim group a perpetrator group in Palestine. For when the Nazi perpetrators and their surroundings had not been able to at least openly talk about everything with the surviving victims, as an expression of repentance, then this increases the probability that the victims - and be it unconsciously - seek to understand the traumatic primal experience from out of the complementary role. This is what the German responsibility is about today, no matter what the papers write. We don't need any more German arrogance. Humility before life is the call, after this horror.




Der zweite Fall
Anis Hamadeh, 05.02.2009

Zusammenfassung: Es geht in diesem Essay um Gaza und das deutsche Schweigen zwischen 1945 und 1968, um die Mythen Israels und die Situation der Palästinenser, die negativ stereotypisiert werden, während Juden positiv stereotypisiert werden. Am Gaza-Pogrom, so die These, haben sich auch deutsche Schreibtischtäter beteiligt. Dies sei die Reinform von Rassismus aus der Mitte der Gesellschaft und in Deutschland nicht hinnehmbar. Dieser zweite Fall einer Beteilung an Pogromen hat viele Bürger aufgerüttelt, während andere fordern, dass die Täter zur Rechenschaft gezogen werden. Es wird gefragt: Kann man nach dem Gaza-Mord wirklich noch sagen, dass dies nicht einmal mit dem Deutschland von 1938 vergleichbar ist? Ist es nur NOCH kein Holocaust? Was will Israel mit den Menschen in Gaza machen? Der Hitler-Genozid, so die These, werde mystifiziert und mit Dogmen belegt, wodurch alle sonstige Gewalt bis hin zum Pogrom relativiert werde. Auch führe es zu Gewalt, wenn der Antisemitismusvorwurf verwendet wird, Palästinenser zu unterdrücken. Ob so antisemitischer Rassismus auf Palästinenser, Muslime und Araber verschoben werde, wird gefragt, und warum kein Palästinenser in der Öffentlichkeit bekannt ist. Nicht um einen "Frieden" mit Verdächtigen gehe es in erster Linie, sondern um die Rechte der Palästinenser, derer sie seit vielen Jahrzehnten beraubt sind, denn Frieden sei Vertrauen. Nach dem Paradigmenwechsel soll es endlich einheitliche Maßstäbe geben und keine Verhöhnungen der Opfer mehr. Die deutsche Verantwortung liege heute darin zu untersuchen, inwieweit das Nachkriegsschweigen dazu geführt haben kann, dass die frühere Opfergruppe die traumatische Ur-Erfahrung aus der komplementären Rolle heraus zu verstehen sucht.

Mehr als zwanzig Jahre hat die deutsche Öffentlichkeit gebraucht, um damit zu beginnen, die Nazizeit zu diskutieren. Die offiziellen Beziehungen zwischen Israel und Deutschland waren in dieser Zeit bedrückend gut - abgesehen von einem Attentatsversuch auf Adenauer, der heruntergespielt wurde. In dieser entscheidenden Phase des Schweigens hat Israel Palästina zu einem großen Teil ethnisch gesäubert und die restlichen Teile 1967 unter Besatzung gebracht. Heute - insbesondere seit Erscheinen von "Die ethnische Säuberung Palästinas" (Ilan Pappe 2008) und "Mythen des Zionismus" (John Rose 2006) - sind die wesentlichen Mythen der Staatsgründung Israels und des Zionismus durch Fakten widerlegt. Die Palästinenser, die seit Jahrhunderten und Jahrtausenden im Land Kanaan gelebt haben, bilden heute mit über fünf Millionen Flüchtlingen die größte Flüchtlingsgruppe der Welt.

Man hat den Palästinensern vieles zugemutet: den Verlust eines großen Teils der Heimat, weil Europäer und Amerikaner das so wollten; Teilungen des Landes, Besatzung, Diskriminierung und vor allem: systematische Verächtlichmachung. Der Palästinenser, das ist der Araber, der Muslim (obwohl 20% der Palästinenser Christen sind), der Terrorist. Palästinenser? Selbstmordattentäter! Aus Filmen, Büchern, Theaterstücken und Nachrichten lässt sich mit großer Leichtigkeit ein deutlich vorherrschendes Bild "des Palästinensers" zeichnen, das das Bewusstsein der Masse strukturieren hilft. Wie in Eliam Kraiems Theaterstück "Sechzehn Verletzte" ist der Palästinenser derjenige, der bei aller Menschlichkeit am Ende zum Mörder und Verbrecher wird, und der Jude ist der Gute. Er ist nicht der bewaffnete illegale Siedler, der die einheimischen Bauern während der Olivenernte terrorisiert. Er ist nicht der Marinesoldat, der die Fischer in Gaza in ihren eigenen Gewässern beschießt und er ist auch nicht der Journalist, der im Nachrichtenmagazin zum Hass gegen Araber und Muslime aufruft. Vielmehr ist er der in einem Kontext zum Hitler-Genozid stehende, Leid durchgemacht habende Gute. Die Rollenverteilung ist vorgegeben. Und jetzt Gaza.

Professor Rolf Verleger, selbst Jude, schreibt in der Neuauflage seines Buches "Israels Irrweg" (Rezension auf Anis Online): "Es wurde viel gerätselt über Israels strategische Ziele bei diesem Krieg gegen Gaza. Rational schien das alles nicht zu sein. Und so ist es auch. Ein Pogrom ist irrational. Das Motiv eines Pogroms ist der pure Hass. Ein Pogrom hat eine klare Aussage an die überlebenden Opfer: 'Wir wollen Euch hier nicht. Haut ab!'. So war es in Kischinjow 1903 und 1905, in Berlin 1938, in Kielce 1946, und so ist es nun in Gaza 2009. Es wird in Deutschland unterschätzt, mit welchem Hass in Israel über Palästinenser gesprochen wird."

Gaza war ein Pogrom und Deutschland hat sich beteiligt. Die Kanzlerin, der Außenminister, wichtige Vertreter der Parteien von Linkspartei bis CSU, Redakteure von FAZ bis taz, die Öffentlich-Rechtlichen, die schweigenden Professoren, die schweigenden Kirchen, NGOs wie Attac, sie alle haben mehr oder weniger stark an dieser Scheußlichkeit mitgewirkt, indem sie wider besseren Wissens den Mord an 1360 Menschen, überwiegend Zivilisten, darunter mehr als 430 Kinder, unterstützt, gerechtfertigt, verharmlost und ignoriert haben. Aber dieses Mal ist etwas Neues passiert.

Bürger, die sich nie so recht für Politik interessiert hatten, haben plötzlich Fragen. Und andere, die sich bereits interessiert hatten, werden hartnäckiger. Sie lassen sich nicht mehr mit dem Dogma vom ewig bedrohten Juden abspeisen, wenn sie sehen, was im Namen der Juden in Palästina geschieht. Jedem halbwegs klar denkenden Menschen ist bewusst, dass ein solches Verhalten Judenhass in der ganzen Welt befördert. Sie lassen sich durch geschraubte akademische Konstrukte von "sekundärem" und "latentem Antisemitismus" nicht mehr benebeln, weil sie erkennen, dass es die ursprünglich unbeteiligten Palästinenser sind, die mit ihrem Blut für diese Ideologie der Geschichtsverdrehung zahlen müssen, indem sie zu Wiedergängern und Nachfolgern der Nazis gemacht werden.

Hören wir also auf damit uns vorzumachen, dass ein deutscher Chefredakteur den Unterschied zwischen Antizionismus und Antisemitismus nicht versteht! Dass er Angriff und Verteidigung aus Versehen verwechselt. Reden wir uns nicht ein, dass unsere Politiker nicht wüssten, was Rassismus und was eine ethnische Säuberung ist. Jeder Lehrer in jeder Schule weiß, was ein Massenmord ist, und wenn er zionistisches Propagandamaterial vom "Mediendienst" MEMRI zugesandt bekommt, dann kann er das schon einschätzen, das ist Teil sein Berufes. Wer einen Massenmord verleugnet und relativiert in Deutschland, wo es die schlimmsten Pogrome gegen Juden, Sinti und Roma, Künstler und Kommunisten, Freigeister, Homosexuelle, Serben, Polen und andere Gruppen gegeben hat, einen Massenmord zudem, der als Folge des Zweiten Weltkriegs verstanden werden kann, der muss als deutscher Täter damit rechnen, persönlich zur Rechenschaft gezogen zu werden. Beim letzten Mal war es jedenfalls so. Da ging es nach Nürnberg.

Der vorliegende zweite Fall mag sekundär sein, weil er nicht von Deutschen ausging, sondern von ihnen unterstützt und gerechtfertigt wurde, aber er ist ebenso real wie der erste Fall, als Juden Opfer waren. Es ist bezeichnend, dass der Pogrom in seiner Relevanz an unserer Öffentlichkeit vorbei gegangen ist. Zu sehr wird der nach allen internationalen Gesetzen legitime Befreiungskampf der Palästinenser bei uns als anti-jüdisch wahrgenommen. Die Schwurbel-Intellektuellen nennen es unter anderem "sekundären Antisemitismus", wenn sich der Judenhass in Israelkritik verstecke. Man sieht, wie hier die eigene Verantwortlichkeit für Gewalt und Terror auf die palästinensischen Opfer und deren Unterstützer projiziert wird, während der Spielraum des zionistischen Staates praktisch unendlich wird, was die Anwendung jeglicher Art von Gewalt angeht.

Es ist wichtig, über den Antisemitismusvorwurf zu sprechen, denn er erscheint IMMER, wenn es konsequent um die Rechte der Palästinenser geht. Dies nenne ich eine narzisstische Projektion, die allein dem Ego dient, nicht der Situation. Hier sehe ich auch den Nukleus des Problems und damit eine Involviertheit Deutschlands.

Es lässt sich recht leicht nachvollziehen, wer was öffentlich gesagt und getan hat zwischen dem 27. Dezember und dem 18. Januar 2009. Auch wer nichts gesagt hat. Die Namen und Zitate der betreffenden Personen können ohne Probleme in einen Kontext gestellt und bewertet werden. Eine Veröffentlichung im Internet ist bereits ein Erfolg, gleichzeitig bemühen sich einige Networker in Deutschland und anderswo auch darum, rechtliche Konsequenzen zu erwirken. Sie sind nicht länger bereit, die Situation hinzunehmen. Es gibt klare Verantwortliche bei uns, die der Öffentlichkeit vorgegaukelt haben, dass die Hamas den Waffenstillstand gebrochen hat. Die Flüchtlinge, die Besatzung Palästinas und die gnadenlose Belagerung Gazas wurden und werden hier zu Lande nicht als Ursachen für den Konflikt herausgestellt. Überhaupt entlarvt bereits ein flüchtiger Blick auf www.theheadlines.org unsere Mainstreammedien als dreiste Manipulatoren, vor allem, weil sie wesentliche Nachrichten auslassen, die man braucht, um die Situation zu verstehen. Dies geschieht natürlich bona fide, denn es gehe ja darum, Juden zu schützen. So wie es mit der Dolchstoßlegende nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg vermeintlich darum ging, den Staat zu schützen. Wir wissen, wie das endete. Aber haben wir die Konsequenz gezogen, die Öffentlichkeit nicht mehr zu belügen? Nein. Wir hängen den Nazi-Genozid so hoch, dass nichts mehr heranreicht und alles andere relativiert und eigentlich unwichtig wird. Wenn wir davon sprechen, dass es keinen Schlussstrich geben darf und gleichzeitig jeden Vergleich verbieten, dann können wir nicht mehr sinnvoll diskutieren. Wenn der Genozid mystifiziert und mit Dogmen zementiert wird, geht die Erinnerung an das Geschehene verloren und das ist ein Schlussstrich. Nirgends wird das so deutlich wie in Palästina, speziell jetzt in Gaza.

Etwas ist anders geworden. Es gibt zum Beispiel jetzt ein Palästinensisches Holocaust Memorial Museum (PHMM), siehe www.islamonline.net/English/In_Depth/GazaHolocaustMuseum/index.shtml . Dort steht: "Das Museum wird die Fotos, Namen und Geschichten der palästinensischen Kinder zeigen, die im Zuge eines neuen Holocaust von israelischen Truppen umgebracht wurden. PHMM wird die Elemente des neuen Holocaust herausarbeiten, die Tatorte, Waffen und Auswirkungen. Zeugenaussagen der Überlebenden werden auch veröffentlicht." - Nun kann es sein, dass unsere Öffentlichkeit sagt: Das darf man nicht vergleichen. Selbstverständlich, es gibt kein Auschwitz in Palästina. Bei nüchterner Betrachtungsweise ist dies kein Holocaust. Aber wo stehen wir jetzt in Palästina? Sind wir nicht über das Stadium von 1933 - einfache Diskriminierung - schon hinaus? Kann man nach dem Gaza-Mord wirklich noch sagen, dass dies nicht einmal mit dem Deutschland von 1938 vergleichbar ist? Wo sind wir jetzt? 1939? 1940? 1941? Ist es also bei nüchterner Betrachtungsweise nur NOCH kein Holocaust? Was will Israel denn mit den Menschen in Gaza machen?

Was steckt hinter den Vergleichsverboten und den philosemitischen Dogmen vom guten Juden? Kann es sein, dass unsere Gesellschaft einfach gern weiterhin rassistisch sein möchte und sich nun gegen Palästinenser, Araber und Muslime wendet, wo sie doch keine Juden mehr hassen darf? Auch scheint es eine praktische Sache zu sein, die Schuld der Nazis psychologisch auf die Palästinenser abzuwälzen, so wie es auf die Spitze gebracht www.antifa-saar.de.vu macht, wenn sie in Mainz Aufkleber in der Stadt verteilt, auf denen die "palästinensischen Antisemiten der Hamas" mit deutschen Neonazis gleichgesetzt werden. Mit Antifaschismus hat das wohl wenig zu tun, denn der Hamas geht es nicht so sehr um Juden als zunächst einmal um ein Leben in Selbstbestimmung und Würde. Vor der Hamas war die PLO "das Böse" und vor dem Iran der Irak. Das nimmt kein Ende. Daher tragen wir, die wir ein Gewissen haben, die Namen der palästinensischen Opfer dieses Abschlachtens zusammen und die der Täter, auch der Schreibtischtäter in Deutschland. Es reicht! Wir fordern, dass die Täter zur Rechenschaft gezogen werden und dass ihre Hightech-Massenmorde und ihre Verhöhnungen der Opfer für immer aufhören!

Es ist leicht, sie zu finden. Sie sagen immer "radikal-islamisch", bevor sie "Hamas" sagen, und sie stellen Juden immer als Opfer dar, selbst wenn es Massenmörder sind. Sie haben klare Maßstäbe für Juden und klare andere Maßstäbe für Araber und Muslime. Dass dies Rassismus ist, muss heute ganz klar ausgesprochen und es muss bekämpft werden. Es ist nicht vielleicht Rassismus oder ein bisschen, sondern es ist die Reinform und es kommt aus der Mitte der Gesellschaft. Wir alle wissen, wie unsere Öffentlichkeit reagiert hätte, wenn 1360 Juden umgekommen wären - das ist der plausibelste Indikator.

Kein einziger Palästinenser von den 200.000, die in Deutschland leben, ist der Öffentlichkeit bekannt. Schon gar keiner, der die Gleichberechtigung der Palästinenser in der Welt einfordert. Unsere Fernsehsender bringen es auch fertig, Gaza in Gesprächsrunden zu behandeln, ohne dass ein Palästinenser dabei ist. Das ist kein Zufall, sondern die einzige Möglichkeit, die Stereotype aufrecht zu erhalten und Fakten fernzuhalten. Hätten die Palästinenser Stimmen und Gesichter würde jeder sehen, dass es normale Menschen sind, wie die anderen auch. Den Zuschauern wird eingeredet, es gehe um einen "Frieden" mit den im Grunde verdächtigen Palästinensern. Selbstverständlich geht es zunächst um die Befreiung des palästinensischen Volkes von der tödlichen Gefahr, die allen Menschenrechten und internationalen Gesetzen krass widerspricht und die seit Jahrzehnten beharrlich mit Dogmen verdeckt wird. Danach erst kann es Frieden geben, denn Frieden bedeutet Vertrauen. Niemand vertraut einem brutalen und ungerechten Besatzer.

Es gibt Schurken, Helden und Langweiler auf allen Seiten, dies ist die Botschaft, die im Pisa-Land der Dichter und Denker erklärt werden muss. Bestimmt gibt es jüdische Helden und palästinensische Schurken. Es gibt auch palästinensische Gute und jüdische Böse. Die Stereotypisierungen unserer Nachrichtenwelt und Kultur sind immer schädlich, wenn sie verschiedene Maßstäbe anlegen. Deshalb ist es auch wichtig, nach dem Paradigmenwechsel dafür zu sorgen, dass dann nicht plötzlich alle Palästinenser "die Guten" sind und womöglich alle Juden wieder "die Bösen". Dieses Mal müssen wir es lernen. Palästinenser und palästinensisch Stämmige in Deutschland und anderswo sind nicht anders als andere Menschen. Sie lachen, wenn sie fröhlich sind und sie weinen, wenn sie traurig sind. Sie haben alle Qualitäten, die die Natur dem Menschen gegeben hat und sie mögen es nicht, wenn ihre Brüder und Schwestern getötet und ihre Friedhöfe geschändet werden. Als Menschen haben sie, haben wir Rechte. Diese fordern wir ein, nachdem in Gaza eine aggressive Armee unter Jubel eines Großteils der israelischen Bevölkerung und unter Mitwirkung der westlichen Welt einen Pogrom verübt hat. Nicht mehr und nicht weniger.

Kommen wir am Schluss zurück auf das eingangs erwähnte deutsche Schweigen zwischen 1945 und 1968. Es ist notwendig zu untersuchen, inwieweit dieses Schweigen dazu geführt hat, dass die damalige Opfergruppe der Juden in Palästina zu einer Tätergruppe geworden ist. Wenn nämlich die Nazitäter und deren Umfeld nicht in der Lage gewesen sind, als Buße zumindest offen mit den überlebenden Opfern über alles zu reden, dann steigt die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass die Opfer - und sei es unbewusst - die traumatische Ur-Erfahrung aus der komplementären Rolle heraus zu verstehen suchen. Hier liegt heute die deutsche Verantwortung, ganz egal, was die Zeitungen schreiben. Wir brauchen keine deutsche Überheblichkeit mehr. Demut vor dem Leben ist angesagt nach diesem Horror.

###

Anis Hamadeh
Moselstr. 1-3
D-55118 Mainz
Tel.: +49-(0)6131-4809263
Email: anis@anis-online.de

Web: www.anis-online.de
English: www.anis-online.de/index_engl.htm
Français: www.anis-online.de/index_fr.htm
Arabic: www.anis-online.de/index_arab.htm
-----------------------------
Anis Online is a journalistic art website in German, English, French and
Arabic with 1001 pages. It contains music, poetry and prose,
essays, children's stories, satires, interviews, media reviews,
Palestiniana, Orient Online, drawings, an Elvis page and a lot more.

0 comments

Israel shoots Lebanese boat

From my email:

One of the Free Gaza volunteers was on this boat, and Free Gaza organizers helped in Cyprus to get the boat inspected, then sent on to Gaza. Please make your outrage heard as, once again, Israel, the bully of the Eastern Mediterranean, gets away with piracy. On board was an elderly patriarch from Jerusalem as well as several Lebanese human rights watchers. According to eye witnesses, the passengers were beaten and much of the boat destroyed. We are checking the status of the units of plasma loaded on board, because, if the stories are accurate that the Israeli Navy thugs turned off the generators, this badly-needed plasma will be destroyed very quickly.

You can follow the story in Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic.


http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/02/20092592757311355.html

--
Greta Berlin
Media Team
Free Gaza Movement
310 422 7242
www.freegaza.org
www.flickr.com/photos/29205195@N02/

0 comments

Israel shooting farmers..

I just recieved this to my email:

Shooting at farmers, what gives Israel the right?
Tuesday 3rd February, 2009
Eva Bartlett

This morning, farmers from Abassan Jadiida (New Abassan), to the east of Khan Younis , the southern region, returned to land they'd been forced off of during and following the war on Gaza. The continual shooting at them by Israeli soldiers while they work the land intensified post-war on Gaza. The Israeli soldiers' shooting was not a new thing, but a resumption of the policy of harassment that Palestinians in the border areas have been enduring for years, a harassment extending to invasions in which agricultural land, chicken farms, and the houses in the region have been targeted, destroyed in many cases.

Today's Abassan farmers wanted to harvest their parsley.

Ismail Abu Taima, whose land was being harvested, explained that over the course of the year he invests about $54,000 in planting, watering and maintenance of the monthly crops. From that investment, if all goes well and crops are harvested throughout the year, he can bring in about $10,000/month, meaning that he can pay off the investment and support the 15 families dependent on the harvest.

The work began shortly after 11 am, with the handful of farmers working swiftly, cutting swathes of tall parsley and bundling it as rapidly as it was cut. These bundles were then loaded onto a waiting donkey cart. The speed of the farmers was impressive, and one realized that were they able to work 'normally' as any farmer in unoccupied areas, they would be very productive. A lone donkey grazed in an area a little closer to the border fence. When asked if this was not dangerous for the donkey, the farmers replied that they had no other choice: with the borders closed, animal feed is starkly absent. The tragedy of having to worry about being shot once again struck me, as it did when harvesting olives or herding sheep with West Bank Palestinians who are routinely attacked by Israeli settlers and by the Israeli army as they try to work and live on their land.

After approximately 2 hours of harvesting, during which the sound of an F-16 overhead was accompanied by Israeli jeeps seen driving along the border area, with at least one stationed directly across from the area in question, Israeli soldiers began firing. At first the shots seemed like warning shots: sharp and intrusive cracks of gunfire. The men kept working, gathering parsley, bunching it, loading it, while the international human rights observers present spread out in a line, to ensure our visibility.

It would have been hard to miss or mistake us, with fluorescent yellow vests and visibly unarmed–our hands were in the air.

Via bullhorn, we re-iterated our presence to the soldiers, informing them we were all unarmed civilians, the farmers were rightfully working their land, the soldiers were being filmed by an Italian film crew. We also informed some of our embassies of the situation: "we are on Palestinian farmland and are being shot at by Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border fence."

For a brief period the shots ceased. Then began anew, again seemingly warning shots, although this time visibly hitting dirt 15 and 20 m from us. Furthest to the south, I heard the whiz of bullets past my ear, though to estimate the proximity would be impossible.

As the cracks of gunfire rang more frequently and louder, the shots closer, those of the farmers who hadn't already hit the ground did so, sprawling flat for cover. The international observers continued to stand, brightly visible, hands in the air, bullhorn repeating our message of unarmed presence. The shots continued, from the direction of 3 or 4 visible soldiers on a mound hundreds of metres from us. With my eyeglasses I could make out their shapes, uniforms, the jeep… Certainly with their military equipment they could make out our faces, empty hands, parsley-loaded cart…

There was no mistaking the situation or their intent: pure harassment.

As the farmers tried to leave with their donkey carts, the shots continued. The two carts were eventually able to make it away, down the ruddy lane, a lane eaten by tank and bulldozer tracks from the land invasion weeks before. Some of us accompanied the carts away, out of firing range, then returned. There were still farmers on the land and they needed to evacuate.

As we stood, again arms still raised, still empty-handed, still proclaiming thus, the Israeli soldiers' shooting drew much nearer. Those whizzing rushes were more frequent and undeniably close to my head, our heads. The Italian film crew accompanying us did not stop filming, nor did some of us with video cameras.

We announced our intention to move away, the soldiers shot. We stood still, the soldiers shot. At one point I was certain one of the farmers would be killed, as he had hit the ground again but in his panic seemed to want to jump up and run. I urged him to stay flat, stay down, and with our urging he did. The idea was to move as a group, a mixture of the targeted Palestinian farmers and the brightly-noticeable international accompaniers. And so we did, but the shots continued, rapidly, hitting within metres of our feet, flying within metres of our heads.

I'm amazed no one was killed today, nor that limbs were not lost, maimed.

While we'd been on the land, Ismail Abu Taima had gone to one end, to collect valves from the broken irrigation piping. The pipes themselves had been destroyed by a pre-war on Gaza invasion. "The plants have not been watered since one week before the war," he'd told us. He collected the parts, each valve valuable in a region whose borders are sealed and where replacement parts for everything one could need to replace are unattainable or grossly expensive.

He'd also told us of the chicks in the chicken farm who'd first been dying for want of chicken feed, and then been bulldozed when Israeli soldiers attacked the house and building they were in.

My embassy rang me up, after we'd managed to get away from the firing: "We're told you are being shot at. Can you give us the precise location, and maybe a landmark, some notable building nearby."

I told Heather about the half-demolished house to the south of where we had been, and that we were on Palestinian farmland. After some further questioning, it dawned on her that the shooting was coming from the Israeli side. "How do you know it is Israeli soldiers shooting at you?" she'd asked. I mentioned the 4 jeeps, the soldiers on the mound, the shots from the soldiers on the mound (I didn't have time to go into past experiences with Israeli soldiers in this very area and a little further south, similar experience of farmers being fired upon while we accompanied them.).

Heather asked if the soldiers had stopped firing, to which I told her, 'no, they kept firing when we attempted to move away, hands in the air. They fired as we stood still, hands in the air. " She suggested these were 'warning shots' at which I pointed out that warning shots would generally be in the air or 10s of metres away. These were hitting and whizzing past within metres.

She had no further thoughts at time, but did call back minutes later with Jordie Elms, the Canadian attache in the Tel Aviv office, who informed us that "Israel has declared the 1 km area along the border to be a 'closed military zone'."

When I pointed out that Israel had no legal ability to do such, that this closure is arbitrary and illegal, and that the farmers being kept off of their land or the Palestinians whose homes have been demolished in tandem with this closure had no other options: they needed to work the land, live on it… Jordie had no thoughts. He did, however, add that humanitarian and aid workers need to "know the risk of being in a closed area".

Meaning, apparently, that it is OK with Jordie that Israeli soldiers were firing on unarmed civilians, because Israeli authorities have arbitrarily declared an area out of their jurisdiction (because Israel is "not occupying Gaza" right?!) as a 'closed area'.

Israel's latest massacre of 1,400 Palestinians –most of whom were civilians –aside, Israel's destruction of over 4,000 houses and 17,000 buildings aside, Israel's cutting off and shutting down of the Gaza Strip since Hamas' election aside, life is pretty wretched for the farmers and civilians in the areas flanking the border with Israel. Last week, the young man from Khan Younis who was shot while working on farmland in the "buffer zone" was actually on land near where we accompanied farmers today. Why do Israeli authorities think they have an uncontested right to allow/instruct their soldiers to shoot at Palestinian farmers trying to work their land?

If Israeli authorities recognized Palestinian farmers' need to work the land, Palestinian civilians' right to live in their homes, then they would not have arbitrarily imposed a 1 km ban on existence along the border, from north to south. What gives Israel the right to say that now the previously-imposed 300 m ban on valuable agricultural land next to the order extends to 1 full kilometre, and that this inherently gives Israel the right to have bulldozed 10s of houses in this "buffer zone" and ravaged the farmland with military bulldozers and tanks.

Furthermore, what gives Israel the right to assume these impositions are justifiable, and the right to shoot at farmers continuing to live in and work on their land (as if they had a choice. Recall the size of Gaza, the poverty levels)?

Nothing does.


Photos taken on 3rd February in Abassan:
https://rcpt.yousendit.com/649432150/5a2f56e8e0393fa3fd0dc7f47df33271

0 comments

Too lazy ??

I have been too lazy to read much news, or I have read the news alright, but havent got the inspiration to write here. Ofcourse I have been out of this world because I have a husband now, so my mind is with him all the time!
Situtation in Gaza is not too bad but not too good either.
Israel has not yet opened the borders and lifted the siege, electiricity situation is still not good too.. In Gaza, there is a lack of everything and becuase of the tunnels have been bombed, there is very little things they can get inside Gaza now :(

0 comments

The gases of the Israeli bombs in Gaza have spared no one

The gases of the Israeli bombs in Gaza have spared no one


Saturday, 31 January 2009 19:01 Last Updated on Saturday, 31 January 2009 19:06 Written by Vittorio Arrigoni

I crossed the threshold of my house in Almina, facing Gaza City port, after several days of absence. Everything was exactly as I had left it - the gas cylinder still anorexic (feeding it is too expensive) and the electric current cut off by foreign shears. The once pleasant panorama outside my window has changed and no longer gladdens my spirits from the misery of living under siege. On the contrary, it now rubs salt in the wound, a trauma that won't heal with its reminder of a massacre. Twenty metres from my front door, where the fire station once stood, a huge crater now gapes wide enough for children to mess around in, as if to expel their parents' demon.
The afternoon call to prayer no longer has the same comforting quality of the muezzin's chant that I had grown accustomed to. I wonder where he's gone, if he managed to survive at the top of one of the few minarets that were left intact. The last time I listened to him, this anonymous muezzin had to interrupt his solemnly chanted liturgy because of a chesty cough. It's an affliction I'm familiar with myself, as the gases of the bombs in Gaza have spared no one. I found a note at the foot of the French window looking onto a small balcony, as if it had been put there by a friendly hand. The street and garden were littered with these same leaflets. They had been dropped from Israeli airplanes warning the Palestinians to stay alert, and be aware that the walls had ears and eyes.

"At the slightest threatening action against Israel we'll be back to invade the Gaza Strip. What you've seen these days is nothing compared to what awaits you." Some kids in the streets had picked up the leaflets and folded them into paper airplanes, seemingly sending the message back to its destination.

Ahmed told me on the phone about a new kids' game - until a few days ago, they amused themselves by relighting the fires, simply by kicking the fragments of white phosphorous bombs found scattered all over the Strip. The debris left by these devices with high chemical potential has very long-lasting inflammable properties. Even when picked up several days after their detonation, it still catches fire if shaken about. The Al Quds hospital paramedics speak of how they gave up trying to put out the fires provoked by these illegal bombs - their flames seemed to feed off the water being thrown at them.

"The consequences of all the shit that's been thrown at us in these last three weeks will surface in the near future, with new cancer cases and deformed babies", Munir, a doctor at Al Shifa hospital told me. Even Gaza's neighbours seem to be worried by this massive use of weapons forbidden by all international conventions. In Sderot, and likewise in Ashkelon, Israeli citizens have formally asked their government for clarifications regarding the weapons that have been used to torment us. It's obvious that impoverished uranium and white phosphorous scattered in such a criminal manner all over the tiny patch of land that is Gaza won't discriminate between Jews and Muslims when it comes to provoking generic illnesses.

The truce ought to have started by now, but today I was woken in my bed by the deafening rumble of cannon shots from the war ships, exactly like a few days ago. Some brave Palestinian fishermen had ventured from the port on their tiny boats equipped with fishing nets. The Israeli Navy pushed them back. Nowadays, the only edible fish found in Gaza are the Egyptian cans of tuna that came through the tunnels months ago. Yesterday, yet two more casualties of "collateral damage" were caused by Israeli bombs. East of Gaza City two children were blown up when playing with an unexploded device. The witnesses we heard spoke of active mines in front of the Tal el Hawa houses' ruins. Some bomb disposal experts sent over by Hamas defused them and, judging by the care with which they loaded them onto an off-road vehicle, I think the al qassam brigades will soon return that message of death directly to its lawful owner.

Looking from Naema's roof, the Israeli-Palestinian border has never seemed so easy to pick out. On one side lie the green hills which are constantly watered by the Israeli kibbutzim, on the other you see the parching thirst of a land robbed of its water springs and herds. Naema wished to tell me all about her last few days - a tactile, aural and olfactory account of the massacre, considering that Naema is blind. The soldiers threateningly ordered her fellow villagers to evacuate their homes only a few minutes before storming the place. The men loaded smaller children onto their shoulders and ran away, along with their women. Naema chose to stay so as not to slow down their escape. She took refuge in her own house, believing herself to be safe, and welcomed her neighbours, who had nowhere to go: three women, an elderly lady and a paralyzed old man. The tanks and bulldozers then trespassed and started spreading death and destruction, devouring acre by acre, until they stopped in front of Naema's house. Standing on a small hill, the building she inhabits is the tallest in the village, and the soldiers of Tsahal, who found it was strategically positioned, let themselves in and occupied it for two weeks.

"They came in and pointed their weapons at us, pushing us into a small room, where they locked us up for eleven days." Naema continues her story: "During that entire time they brought us water to drink only twice, and food came in the form of the soldiers' rations' left-overs. They never let us go to the bathroom, so we had to go to the toilet in one corner of the room.

They wouldn't let us talk amongst ourselves, and they would come in and beat us when at night, huddled in a circle, we tried to gather some strength in prayer. Sometimes they'd come over and, intimidating us by touching our bodies with the cold metal of their weapons, they threatened us with death to confess our support for Hamas. I gave them my cell phone, so they could check my phone book and the calls I'd made. Even this gesture didn't mellow their spite."

At the end of the eleventh day of imprisonment, the international Red Cross finally arrived and released the six prisoners from their jailers. "They didn't allow us to pick up anything, not even my sunglasses", Naema brings her story to a close, adding that when they came back to her house, they found out about the thefts that had been carried out by the soldiers. They had taken all their gold trinkets and hidden savings, after having destroyed their few possessions, two TV sets, a radio, a fridge, and the solar panels on the roof. I saw tears in this woman's eyes, hidden behind her new dark glasses. They seemed the most vivid I had ever seen. In fact, what Naema "saw" is a lot more that any young woman her age will ever get a chance to see, if she had the bad luck of being born in this tormented land.


Stay human

Vittorio Arrigoni

(Translated from italian by Daniela Filippin)

link: http://www.ilmanifesto.it/il-manifesto/ricerca-nel-manifesto/vedi/nocache/1/numero/20090123/pagina/11/pezzo/240267/?tx_manigiornale_pi1%5BshowStringa%5D=varcato%2Bsoglia&cHash=22912118b6
permalink: http://guerrillaradio.iobloggo.com/archive.php?eid=1778

0 comments

Were chickens firing rockets?

Were chickens firing rockets?


Thursday, 29 January 2009 10:36 Last Updated on Friday, 30 January 2009 10:56 Written by Sameh Habeeb

SUFFERING LIKE GAZANS: www.gazatoday.blogspot.com

PUBLISHED IN THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10258.shtml

Photos ov ISRAELI MASSACRE AGAINST 30 THOUSANDS CHIKENS IN GAZA
http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb/ISRAELIMASSACREAGAINST30THOUSANDSCHIKENSINGAZA#

Israel's devastating war on Gaza claimed the lives of more than 1,335 persons and left at least 5,500 other wounded. In addition tens of thousands of utilities, houses, businesses, and factories were partially or totally destroyed. The war caused psychological damage for thousands of people especially children. I reported on the war daily and my focus was on the human toll. However, I recently came across a story that changed my focus completely a revealed to me the true nature of Israel's soldiers and their intent in invading Gaza.


Since the ceasefire was enacted, I have toured throughout Gaza to document some stories and accounts. Although I wrote many articles, I decided to focus on the untold stories of the war: the brutal massacre of thousands of chickens.

On 5 January, many Israeli tanks, troops and bulldozers advanced into the al-Zeitoun neighborhood south east of Gaza City. In this area, called al-Samouni, Israel killed 49 members of the Samouni family, after soldiers ordered them to gather into a single home, which was shelled several hours later.

A number of chicken farms are located only a few meters away from the Samouni house. These farms came under fire by Israeli forces and were totally bulldozed. Thousands of chickens were caught in their sheds, as the bulldozing destroyed their cages. Some died immediately, others slowly without food or water for four days.

Abu Ahmed al-Sawafari, an owner of a chicken farms owners, was sitting amidst the rubble of his destroyed farm. He explained that "I have been working on that profession for long years. I have been growing my business by all efforts. Israelis came then left causing an earthquake in the area. They have killed these chickens, they are equal to human souls. They were suffocated and died due to hunger. I wonder why the Israelis killed these chickens? Were they firing rockets into Israel?"

I continued touring farms in the area where the smell of death filled the air. Surviving chickens roamed around surrounded by thousands of their dead kin. It was an overwhelming scene leaving one to ask only: why?

If this question was directed to the Israeli army their response would be swift and predictable. They would likely contend that "rockets" were being fired from the farms, or that there were Palestinian resistance fighters in the area. However, unless the Israeli army is prepared to claim that these chickens were resistance fighters or were firing rockets nothing can explain why the self-proclaimed "world's most moral army" would engage in the wholesale slaughter of civilians and chickens alike.

Sameh A. Habeeb is a photojournalist, humanitarian and peace
activist based in Gaza, Palestine. He writes for several news websites on a freelance basis.

--
Sameh A. Habeeb, B.A.
Photojournalist & Peace Activist
Humanitarian, Child Relief Worker
Gaza Strip, Palestine
Mob: 00972599306096
Tel: 0097282802825
E-mail: Sam_hab@hotmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Sameh.habeeb@gmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Skype: Gazatoday, Facebook: Sameh A. habeeb
Web: www.gazatoday.blogspot.com
Daily Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb

0 comments

In Gaza, only the dead have seen the end of war

In Gaza, only the dead have seen the end of war


Tuesday, 27 January 2009 14:26 Written by Vittorio Arrigoni

For the living, no truce can make up for the daily battle for survival. They have no running water, gas, electrical power, and no bread and milk to feed their children. Thousands of people have lost their homes. Humanitarian aid seeps through the passes in drips and drabs, and you get the feeling that the benevolence of the killers' accomplices is only temporary. Tomorrow, Ban Ki-Moon, the UN's Secretary General will travel to Gaza, and we're pretty sure that John Ging, Chief of the Palestinian Refugees' Agency, will have many stories to tell him after Israel bombed two UN schools, assassinated 4 of their workers, bombed and destroyed the UNRWA centre in Gaza City (which reduced tons of medicine and food supplies destined for the civilian population to ashes).

Gaza's mountains of rubble continue to spit corpses back up to the surface. Yesterday, between Jabalia, Tal el Hawa in Gaza City and Zaitun, the Red Crescent paramedics, with some help from the ISM volunteers, have pulled out 95 corpses from the ruins, many of which are in an advanced state of decay. Walking through the streets of the city and no longer feeling constantly terrified by the thought of a bomb surgically aimed to decapitate me, I still tremble at the sight of stray dogs gathering in a circle, imagining what could reveal itself before my eyes as their meal. The relieved men go back to hang out in their mosques and cafés, but their attitude of feigned normalcy is easy to detect. Many of them have lost a relative or have nowhere to live.

They pretend to go back to their everyday routine to boost their wives and children's spirits - somehow, even this catastrophe must be dealt with. This morning we drove with some ambulances to the most devastated neighbourhoods in the city, Tal el Hawa and Zaitun. Questionnaire in hand, we went door to door and compiled a list of the damage suffered by the buildings , and wrote down the families' most urgent requirements: medicine for the elderly and sick, rice, oil and flour, basically the essentials to feed themselves. All that we've been able to give them so far are metres of nylon, to be used in lieu of their shattered windowpanes to block out the cold.

ISM colleagues in Rafah informed me that the municipality has handed out a few thousand dollars - mere pennies - to the families who've had their houses completely razed to the ground by the bombs, the very same that according to Israel, had been dropped to destroy the tunnels. After the end of the conflict with Lebanon, Hezbollah donated millions of dollars in cheques, to refund the homeless Lebanese citizens. In Gaza, under siege and embargo, Hamas is barely able to refund its people with what "will scarcely be enough to rebuild a barn for livestock", says Khaled, a Rafah farmer.

The truce is unilateral, hence Israel unilaterally decides not to respect it. Khan Yunos, a Palestinian boy, was killed yesterday, and another was injured. East of Gaza helicopters have showered a residential area with white phosphorous. The same happened in Jabalia. In Khann Younis today, the war ships fired their cannons at an open plain, thankfully without harming anyone. But while I write, the news of storming tanks has just reached me. We're not aware of any Palestinian rockets having been fired in the last 24 hours...

International journalists are clamouring for news all along the Strip, as they only managed to get in today. Israel granted them a pass only now that the massacre is winding down. Those who got here in the thick of the battle have seriously risked being killed, as I was told by Lorenzo Cremonesi, a correspondent for Corriere della Sera. Israeli soldiers shot potholes into the car that he was traveling in . Standing by the blackened skeleton of what remains of Al Quds hospital in Gaza City, an astonished BBC reporter asked me how the army could possibly have swapped the building for a terrorists' den.


I said: "For the very same reason that children running away from a burning building were put in sight of the snipers on the roofs, who don't hesitate to kill them, spreading their grey matter all over the road", to which the journalist furrowed his brow further. The enormous difference between us eye-witnesses and first-hand victims of the massacre, and those who hear about it through our stories, is now further highlighted. From Rome I'm told that the EU intends to freeze the funds assigned for the reconstruction of Gaza as long as it's governed by Hamas. The European Commissioner for External Relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, has made her point clear on this score. "The aid for the reconstruction of the Strip", stated the European diplomat, "will only arrive if Palestinian President Abu Mazen will once again re-establish his authority over the territory."


For Gaza's Palestinians this is an explicit invitation from the outside to engage in civil war, or in a coup d'état. It's equivalent to legitimising the massacre of 410 children, who died because their parents chose democracy and freely elected Hamas. "The EU is diligently echoing the criminal policy of collective punishment imposed by Israel. Why not entrust the funds to the UN? Or some governmental organisation?" "The Unites States are free to elect a war-monger like Bush, Israel can choose leaders with bloodied hands like Sharon or Netanyahu, but we, the people of Gaza, aren't free to chose Hamas...", suggested Mohamed, a human rights activist who never voted for the Islamic movement himself. I have no arguments to contradict him.

The surviving Palestinians learn from their dead; they learn to live while dying, right from the tenderest age. Truce after truce, the general perception here is that of a macabre pause between one massacre and another during which to count the dead, and peace has never felt so elusive. Scouring Gaza City on board an ambulance with the siren switched off for once, the war is still everywhere, among the ruins of a city robbed of its smiles and now populated only by frightened gazes, eyes that insist upon scanning the sky for planes still endlessly flying overhead. Inside a home we visited with some paramedics, I noticed some pastel drawings on the floor. It was clearly a child's hand that had abandoned them after evacuating the house in a mad rush. I picked one of them up - tanks, helicopters and a body in pieces. In the middle of the drawing a child with a stone had succeeded in reaching the sun's height and was damaging one of the flying death machines. It's been said that in a child's drawing, the sun represents his desire to be, to appear. The sun I saw was crying tears of blood in red pastel. Is a unilateral truce enough to heal such traumas?

Stay human
Vittorio Arrigoni

link: http://www.ilmanifesto.it/il-manifesto/ricerca-nel-manifesto/vedi/nocache/1/numero/20090120/pagina/01/pezzo/239905/?tx_manigiornale_pi1%5BshowStringa%5D=solo%2Bmorti&cHash=afda453893
permalink: http://guerrillaradio.iobloggo.com/archive.php?eid=1777

1 comments

Going Back To Work

Going Back To Work


Sunday, 25 January 2009 23:26 Written by Najwa Sheikh

The road was dreary, it was the second day after the cease fire was announced, and people started to leave their houses to see what has happened to the other places, I was on the taxi going to my work in Gaza, and all the way I was trying to prepare myself of what I am going to see, the destruction in the houses, the lands, the roads and every thing, but it seems that I was so humble on my expectations, every thing was different starting from Natzarim junction a long to Gaza city, to the destroyed houses, offices, streets, buildings, play grounds, even worship places, the mosques where we found peace and security.


I was shocked, though I saw many reports on the news about the destruction on Gaza after the war, but on reality by your own eyes, it is different, more painful, and more frustrating to witness this destruction.

All the way to the office I was trying to recognize what exactly was on this place, a house, a farm, a school, maybe, nothing for sure, every thing is upside down as if the earth took out its anger, and erased every thing, however this time it is not the earth to blame, but the human controlled by the power of hatred, and a big appetite to kill.

With each meter of the road there is a story, a story that can be told by the faces of the inhabitants of this place, which was their home, their shelter, and their life. On each pile of rubble stand children, women without any feelings, any reactions but silence, trying to grab what is left from their lives, from their memories, from their hard work during the years, but they come only with some ragged cloths, nothing else.

Today I hade the chance to meet with families who lost their houses, the stories told by the women in general, and the children in particular tell more about the war, it's cruelty, with one question on their minds, why us? It was not our war, and it was not against armed people, it was us who were targeted, civilians on their houses, between their kids. It was us who have to leave under the fire, and the shelling, with the screams of our terrified children, hoping for one thing to stay alive or to die together.

The tears shed by the mothers who went through this experience, the experience of losing the safe shelter make them unable to give more for their children as if they were drained from any feelings, from any love, any security, but kept with their painful memories that will take ages to be healed and forgotten as one mother told me.

The children's simple wishes of bringing back their toys, their books, their favorite things, were very hard to me to listen to. Their innocent eyes and their shaky hands when recalling the horrible events make it difficult to believe in peace, the peace that we pay its cost from our lives and the lives of our children.

A question is left there in their small heads, and small tiny hearts, what is the benefit from teaching us the human rights while we can not experience any of these rights, why I am as a child can not live in a safe house, and treated as a human being while many others who are not different from me, in other places on the world practice these rights.

Why the Israelis seek a better life for their children, and at the same time destroyed our simple houses, our lives, our dreams, leave us nothing but a toll of painful memories, and a bitterness that will be for ever burning us from the inside until I take revenge.

Why they are asking us to be normal, logical, and life loving persons, while they are teaching us how to hate?

0 comments

Free Gaza Boats and Nonkilling Transformation: A Perspective




Free Gaza Boats and Nonkilling Transformation: A Perspective


Saturday, 31 January 2009 21:14 Last Updated on Saturday, 31 January 2009 21:19 Written by Anis Hamadeh
Is it possible to prevent a catastrophe like Gaza so that it cannot happen again, or is such brutal killing an inevitable part of our human heritage? In the age of the internet public this question bears a new quality. The public is the strongest weapon against violence, today more than ever. A recent example is the Free Gaza Movement who landed the first free boats in Gaza in forty-one years. It was the media attention and the mental accompaniment of thousands of supporters worldwide that led to the pioneering success of this determined group. Thus, the Free Gaza boats mark a precedent for similar liberating action. Only, is the world prepared for peace, at all?
Are We Prepared for Peace?

Let's be clear about this: if the world was prepared for peace, Gaza could not have happened. Too extreme have been the effects on the people of Gaza and Palestine. On the other hand, many people in the world woke up now, realizing the current condition of world politics, shocked, willing to learn. If there is anything we can do for the victims of Gaza then it is to take this chance and to revisit some stations of our recent history.

Crucial today is the axiom "Nazi Germany could only be stopped with deadly violence", because it structures our minds and affirms to us that enemies must be killed. We are not really aware of our supporting death as can be derived from our favorite movies where the heros usually are killers. The analysis of the axiom above fills volumes, some are written, some are not. Now after Gaza we can write another volume.

Our thinking revolves so much around fears that we tend to marginalize clues to a nonkilling society. Did you know, for example, that it took the German public more than twenty years to discuss the Nazi era in public? Twenty years. During this time the official relations between Israel and Germany had been spookily good (apart from an assasination attempt on Adenauer which was played down). Israel had in large parts ethnically cleansed Palestine in that crucial time of silence. Why did the Nazis do all that? How can a human being be able to justify millions of dead? The questions were there, but without adequate consequences, which raises the following question: is it possible that a traumatized person (or society), who cannot understand why his or her perpetrator did what they did, in his agony tries out the role of the perpetrator himself, just to understand more about the original situation of his trauma?

The Americans also had these questions, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and many still believe that killing more than 200.000 innocent people was worth it. Stopping the war. But did the war really stop? Are not the wars and state raids of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries manifestations of the fact that the war did not really stop in 1945 but only transformed? Gaza showed again that the leading West tolerates mass killings. Or does it not?

So let's conclude that one of the main reasons that Gaza could happen is that in our cultural environments we tend to accept killing, as long as it is for the good cause. This is quite equal in the East and in the militarily powerful West.

Top-Down Info Gone Wrong

The second main reason why this high-tech attack on the Gaza population was possible lies in top-down info gone wrong. Media and western politicians have fantasized about a war between two parties where in reality there was a one-sided slaughtering going on. Israel against Hamas - that's a fantasy. Before Hamas, exactly the same arguments were used for the PLO and after Hamas it will be someone else. Let us not forget Israel's zeal to bomb Iraq, the "ultimate evil". And as soon as Saddam was gone Iran became the ultimate evil. And who would dare to suggest that after Iran this will stop?

Obviously, the Gaza massacre had little to do with Hamas, and much more with the eternal enemy in his changing suits. The eternal enemy that you can only deal with in the form of an ultimate fight. In this delusion there is no room for peace. The world knows that Israel can never be secure and pacified under these conditions, and Palestine, neither. But still the world does not tell the whole truth. Most western media sell the massacre as a defensive act which is ridiculous, because Israel is in bigger problems now than ever. A great deal of media and government officials do not say that it was clearly Israel who broke the truce. They know better, but from their understanding of responsibility they choose to manipulate the facts.

Background is that negative publicity of Israel in countries like Germany raises fears of anti-Jewish resentments. But while every child can see that lying cannot be the solution, "responsible" people still do it, because firstly, they don't understand that it is wrong, and secondly, it has always been like that.

When after World War I. Germany was a loser state, officials and media did not want to tell their people that they failed. So they invented a stab-in-the-back legend accusing the reds of oppositional action that served as a stab in the back of the nation. This lie helped the Nazis to take control, because people believed it and they were incited instead of realizing the true horror of World War I. In the Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964, the USA claimed to have been attacked by North Vietnam and launched a large-scale war. But there was no attack, just as Poland did not attack Germany in 1939. Lies. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. A lie. We do not know about September 11, because there has been no proper investigation.

As a public we tolerate these lies and do not expect that the responsible people are brought to justice. No impeachment trial against George W. then and impunity later, this is what the world did with liar and killer George. It cannot be security reasons that make us tolerate state lying and state killing, because these things do not secure us from anything. It is group behavior.

We learn group behavior in our families and in our schools. The rate of violence against children is still enormous, despite Alice Miller's insights. We grow up with authorities around us who do in the small what the generals do in the big. This is why we have been paralyzed: we have been embedded. Time to "exbed".

Nonkilling Transformation

If we really want to prevent atrocities like Gaza, nothing less than a global cultural transformation into nonkilling societies is needed. This transformation starts with individuals like Professor Glenn Paige in Hawaii whose book "Nonkilling Global Political Science" (complete manuscript online) shows the "lethal tradition" from Aristotle to Weber and poses the intriguing question: are nonkilling societies possible and how can we realize them?

There are top-down as well as bottom-up mechanisms of nonviolence. We find inspired leaders in the world and also effective grassroot action. Now is the time for nonviolent transformation. It concurs with the values of both secular and religious trends. We have a new global public and new evidence. We have a popular slogan going around in the world, "Yes We Can". And we all agree that we do not want another Gaza.


Anis Hamadeh is a freelance artist and publicist in Germany, editor of Anis Online, and in the FreeGaza.org Web & Media Team. Also search for his "Deutschland Essay".

0 comments

Newer Posts Older Posts Home

About

This is a diary born out of concerns of a never ending misery of Palestinian people trying to survive in conditions where they have no human dignity, no oppertunity to ordinary life, no daily life supplies, things that some of us don't think about much...A diary of 2 friends bonded with freedom, and looking for spreading the truth. [As my friend from Palestine is unavailable to write att the moment, I will try to cover the Palestinian view by copying news and interviewing my other Palestinian friends and asking them to write stories too] A gate to the land of Palestine, where freedom is a dream, and truth is hard to be seen. Help us to spread the truth by spreading this blog. Thank you for your support.

Welcome


Blog lists where we are registered

Bloggers Unite


Personal


Top Blogs



Blog Catalog, Blog Directory
Bloggers Unite

Links about Palestine-Israel conflict

  • An Israeli in Palestine
  • Historiaa ja faktaa Suomeksi
  • http://alaqsaintifada.org/
  • http://alrowwad.virtualactivism.net/
  • http://gush-shalom.org/kawthar/kawth_eng.html
  • http://s188604020.websitehome.co.uk/index.php?page=home
  • http://www.aaper.org/site/c.quIXL8MPJpE/b.3794785/
  • http://www.actieplatformpalestina.be/
  • http://www.addameer.org/index_eng.html
  • http://www.almamalfoundation.org/
  • http://www.almubadara.org/new/english.php
  • http://www.alnakba.org/
  • http://www.aloufok.net/
  • http://www.alternativenews.org/
  • http://www.aqsa.org.uk/
  • http://www.balatacamp.net/
  • http://www.barghouti.com/
  • http://www.barghouti.com/poets/
  • http://www.dutchpal.com/
  • http://www.enoughoccupation.org/
  • http://www.france-palestine.org/
  • http://www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org/taxonomy/term/25
  • http://www.icahd.org/eng/
  • http://www.intifada.com/
  • http://www.mideastcouncil.org/
  • http://www.nimn.org/
  • http://www.pal-arc.org/first.html
  • http://www.palestine-family.net/
  • http://www.palestine-info.info/
  • http://www.palestinecampaign.org/index2b.asp
  • http://www.palestinefilm.org/
  • http://www.palestinehistory.com/
  • http://www.palestinelife.com/
  • http://www.palestinercs.org/
  • http://www.palestineremembered.com/
  • http://www.pcwf.org/
  • http://www.playgroundsforpalestine.org/homepage.php
  • http://www.prc.org.uk/
  • http://www.rachelcorrie.org/
  • http://www.rachelcorriefoundation.org/
  • http://www.rachelswords.org/
  • http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/
  • http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/
  • http://www.stopthewall.org/
  • http://www.thestruggle.org/index.htm
  • Jews against the occupation
  • Medical Aid for Palestinians
  • Rebuilding alliance
  • US Campaign to end the Israeli occupation

Video links

  • Checkpoint
  • Jenin Jenin
  • Look Into My Eyes - song
  • Occupation 101
  • Palestine is Still the Issue
  • Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised the land
  • Rachel Corrie
  • The Iron Wall
  • The Killing Zone
  • The Wall of Hate
  • Tradegy in Holyland, the second uprising
Mississippi Jones Act Lawyer

About Me

My photo
Peace To All
View my complete profile

Links about Islam

  • http://99islam.com/
  • http://www.whatsislam.com/

Followers

Labels

  • in Finland (221)
  • in palestine (29)

Blog Archive

  • ►  2011 (8)
    • ►  September (1)
    • ►  June (3)
    • ►  April (2)
    • ►  March (1)
    • ►  January (1)
  • ►  2010 (59)
    • ►  December (1)
    • ►  November (1)
    • ►  October (6)
    • ►  September (2)
    • ►  August (12)
    • ►  July (5)
    • ►  June (16)
    • ►  May (5)
    • ►  April (3)
    • ►  March (2)
    • ►  February (3)
    • ►  January (3)
  • ▼  2009 (123)
    • ►  October (7)
    • ►  September (10)
    • ►  August (9)
    • ►  July (6)
    • ►  June (7)
    • ►  May (7)
    • ►  April (4)
    • ►  March (2)
    • ▼  February (14)
      • Holding On To The Vision
      • !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
      • I Hope I'm Back
      • The real story about what happened
      • Another war coming?
      • Dear friends of Gaza
      • Israel shoots Lebanese boat
      • Israel shooting farmers..
      • Too lazy ??
      • The gases of the Israeli bombs in Gaza have spared...
      • Were chickens firing rockets?
      • In Gaza, only the dead have seen the end of war
      • Going Back To Work
      • Free Gaza Boats and Nonkilling Transformation: A P...
    • ►  January (57)
  • ►  2008 (151)
    • ►  December (27)
    • ►  November (11)
    • ►  October (6)
    • ►  September (13)
    • ►  August (24)
    • ►  July (24)
    • ►  June (46)
Copyright © Diary about peace and freedom. All rights reserved.
JooJy design