ZGram - 5/25/2002 - "Another atrocity report about Israeli cruelty against the Palestinians"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

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)