Just One Reason

وَمَا خَلَقْتُ الْجِنَّ وَالإِنسَ إِلاَّ لِيَعْبُدُونِ [Qur'an, 51:56]

Palestine

An Open Letter to Pres. Obama from the Gaza Freedom March delegates

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January 14, 2009


Dear Mr. President Barak H. Obama,

We, citizens of 43 countries, gathered in Cairo in December 2009, to travel to the occupied Gaza Strip to show solidarity with Palestinians who endured a massive and inhuman Israeli assault one year ago. We wanted to show them that we, citizens of the world, remember what our governments want us to forget: we remember that human beings live in the Gaza Strip. Men, women and children: mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, grandmothers and grandfathers: people like you and I.

We, citizens of democratic countries from 6 continents, who were forcibly stopped by the puppet Egyptian state from travelling to the Gaza Strip want to tell you that we remember the horror that was unleashed on the Gaza Strip a year ago. This week marks one year since US-ally Israel ended its lethal attack on the Gaza Strip: a year since phosphorus bombs, DIME bombs and other weapons of death and destruction deliberately targeted the defenseless civilian population of Gaza.

In your much quoted Cairo speech, you said,

“Israel must also live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society. And just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel’s security; neither does the continuing lack of opportunity in the West Bank. Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people must be part of a road to peace, and Israel must take concrete steps to enable such progress.”

And yet, Palestinians have seen nothing but more death and destruction since then. Your fine words in Cairo did not even result in Palestinians getting cement to rebuild their homes, mosques and schools.

The siege of occupied Gaza is collective punishment of the entire population, in violation of the 4th Geneva Convention. As a lawyer, you must know this Convention is binding on all its signatories, including the United States, who are required to ensure the Convention is upheld. Yet, over the last few weeks, the infamy of the Israeli siege has been compounded by the construction of a new wall which will inevitably tighten still further the siege of Gaza and the humanitarian crisis which the siege was always designed to inflict. This new wall is being constructed by the Egyptian government with technical assistance from the US Army Corps of Engineers. Last month, the US authorised $1,040,000,000 in Foreign Military Assistance to Egypt including “border security programs and activities in the Sinai”.

Mr. President,

The collective punishment of occupied Gaza in the name of “border security” – in direct violation of the 4th Geneva Convention – is the policy of your government.

You must also be aware that in Israel’s war of aggression on the occupied Gaza Strip, many civilians were massacred by Israel’s indiscriminate bombing – an act condemned by UN experts, including the respected South African, Judge Richard Goldstone – and leading human rights organizations, as war crimes and crimes against humanity. And yet you, a lawyer, ignore this incontrovertible evidence and continue to prop up the apartheid Israeli state. The assault in December 2008-January 2009 left over 1,440 Palestinians dead, predominantly civilians, of whom 431 were children. Another 5380 Palestinians were injured. These are not facts that we will forget, as we have not forgotten Deir Yassin, Sabra and Shatila, Jenin, Nablus, Beit Hanoun and over 60 years of Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people.

In your Cairo speech, you acknowledge the Palestinians’ right to nonviolent resistance. You even gave them advice to pursue it like African Americans, Indians, and South Africans:

For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia.

And that is precisely what we wanted to do in the Gaza Strip, Mr. President: We wanted to walk together with the people of Gaza to register our abhorrence of the collective punishment that has been imposed on them; We wanted to demand an end to the hermetic siege that has been imposed on them since the democratic elections of 2006. And yes, we were also citizens from South Asia, from Eastern Europe and from South Africa, all gathered together in Cairo, so we do know both the humiliation of segregation and the power of collective action. And we intend to use that power to support our Palestinian brothers and sisters as they fight to regain their stolen homeland.

We, the undersigned, call upon you to end the siege, Mr. President. It is an ethical and moral responsibility that you cannot avoid. We, 1400 international activists from 43 countries planned to be in Gaza on December 31 to march with the Palestinians of Gaza and demand that Israel lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip immediately and permanently. We could not do so because the Government of Egypt, an ally of the US, refused to allow us to cross into the Gaza Strip even as they began construction of a new wall to tighten the siege. We were denied the right to show Palestinians that we support their right to their homeland as guaranteed under international law. We were denied the right to show Palestinians that we remember their pain and suffering.

We were denied our right to show Israel and the United States that we will not watch what it does to the Palestinians and remain silent. But we refused to be denied the right to walk in solidarity with the oppressed, even if from afar: and we did. We chose to walk and protest in solidarity with the people of Gaza in Cairo.

You, President Barak Obama, choose to walk in solidarity with the oppressor. You choose to ignore the pain and dispossession of the Palestinian people. Like your predecessors, Reagan and Thatcher, who said in 1987 that Nelson Mandela would never be the President of a democratic South Africa, you too, choose to ignore the will of the people.

You are on the wrong side of history, President Obama, because we, citizens of the world, will not accept a Palestine that is occupied.

You are on the wrong side of history, President Obama, because our collective action, together with the action of Palestinians inside and outside Palestine and millions of people who recognise their just cause, will ensure a free Palestine in our lifetime. Of this we are certain.


Signed

1,361 international citizens from 43 countries

“Eyes In Gaza”: A presentation by Dr. Mads Gilbert in Toronto

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On Wednesday, SPHR-Ryerson hosted Dr. Mads Gilbert, MD, PhD for his presentation, “Eye in Gaza”.  Dr. Mads Gilbert is an internationally-acclaimed doctor, professor, local politician, and Head of the Dept. of Emergency at the University of North Norway. During the 3-week brutal assault on Gaza last year, Dr. Mads Gilbert and his colleague Dr. Erik Fosse were the only two foreign doctors allowed into the region. They spent their entire time there embedded in the overcrowded and understaffed Al-Shifaa hospital. Dr. Mads Gilbert became the world’s window into the prison known as Gaza, providing regular updates on the atrocities taking place there. He has been seen on Al-Jazeera, BBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and more.

Dr. Mads Gilbert has described his time in the region as the most horrific and terrible thing he had ever witnessed. He co-authored the book “Eyes in Gaza” with his colleague, Dr. Erik Fosse, and embarked on a 16-campus North American tour in January and February of 2010.  Here in Toronto, he spoke at Ryerson University to a packed room of eagerly attentive eyes and ears.

He began by introducing himself and giving us some background on his history, qualifications, and professional life. He’s a very interesting man; having spent over 30 years doing solidarity work with Palestinians, he has served as a doctor during numerous periods in Occupied Palestine and Lebanon. He is also quite a controversial figure in the medical profession due to his strong position on merging medical and political issues. On being a doctor as well as a politician, Gilbert has said the two roles are indistinguishable, and that “there is little in medicine that isn’t politics”.

Gilbert’s presentation was unlike any I’ve ever seen either on the Gaza assault in particular, or on Palestine in general. He warned us beforehand of the graphic images he would be displaying; but unlike other presentations where graphic images are used purely for shock value, Dr. Gilbert uses them to tell a story, making sure to provide us with background on the victims’ lives, “introducing” us to them, giving them a name and human value. This took away the shock value; all eyes were glued on the screen, no matter how horrific or appalling the scenes. These were people, young and old, with lives, families, futures, aspirations…All taken away in an instant, most times at the simple press of a button.

However, this presentation was not just another “horrible scenes of war” lecture. Gilbert’s political activism was clearly woven into his entire talk; never dismissing an opportunity to clarify his stance on the Palestine/Israel issue. At times, his words were shocking; not because of what he said, but because I’ve never heard a medical professional speak his mind so freely about anything political, let alone a topic as controversial (and for some, career-ending) as that of Palestine. It was quite refreshing to say the least.

He ended his presentation with a message to all of us to get involved with Palestine, and particularly to drive the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement to the forefront of the struggle for Palestinian liberation. This was exciting to hear because that is exactly the direction we are moving with regards to the newly-drafted Cairo Declaration which came out of our time in Cairo with the Gaza Freedom March. We will be contacting him with information on this, and asking for his endorsement in the near future.

Of course, no discussion on Palestine or Gaza is complete without some good old-fashioned debate (if you can call it that) in the audience. During the Q&A session, which was still surprisingly civil, an Israeli IDF medical professional who was deployed to the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead stood up and voiced his dissatisfaction and frustration with many of the statements Dr. Gilbert expressed during his lecture, especially in regards to Israeli doctors during the assault. Gilbert was shedding light on the discrimination that takes place in Israeli hospitals when doctors give preference to Israeli patients over Palestinians, but the IDF doctor took it personally and insisted that he always did his duty on the ground and treated all casualties as is morally required of any medical professional.

When someone brought up the fact that those “casualties” need not exist in the first place and raised the issue of the blatantly disproportionate figures, including civilian casualties, this IDF doctor’s response was that, “there’s always a large difference between Israeli and Palestinian deaths” during wars and the numbers are usually at least 100 to 1. I don’t need to tell you what happened after that, but let’s just say that after the talk was over, our little IDF friend was bombarded with questions, arguments, and debates for probably another 30-40 minutes. I didn’t stay and watch…

All in all, it was the best lecture/presentation I’ve seen in a very long time and I can’t stop telling people to go see it if he’s coming to a city near you. Most locations are across Canada, but Chicago, New York, and New Jersey are also hosting him in the coming weeks. For more information on dates and locations, visit: SPHR’s Event Page.

“How to protest” from Al-Ahram Weekly

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The Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram Weekly has a remarkable editorial titled “How to Protest” about the effects of the Gaza Freedom March and the events that unfolded in Cairo after the Egyptian government refused to allow 1362 international delegates to go to Gaza. Please substitute “internationals” for “Europeans” as our delegates represented 44 countries.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2010/980/op4.htm

How to Protest
By Salama A Salama

European protesters took over our streets last week. In a show of solidarity with Gaza’s inhabitants and to protest against all sorts of injustices and blockades, European demonstrators marched through our streets, picketed our public squares and told us what they thought of the wall we’re building on Gaza’s borders.

Several hundred protesters came from 42 European countries to take part in pro-Gaza protests. So what did we do? We sent our security forces to contain them. We also prevented them from going to Gaza. Interestingly, the protesters refused to be intimidated. Instead, they picketed the French Embassy, they marched around the Giza Zoo, and they even stood guard at the famous steps of the Press Syndicate.

Curiously enough, the police did not prevent them from demonstrating in front of the Israeli Embassy. But clashes took place, and in some instances the Europeans had a taste of what Egyptians regularly experience at the hands of the police and their karate- trained auxiliaries.

During the past few days, Egyptians had proof that our police can act humanely, but only with foreigners. In front of the French Embassy, I saw a foreign man standing alone, surrounded by three circles of policemen. He was carrying a picket sign, but the police refrained from harming him in any way.

The Europeans came all the way to express their views, peacefully and orderly. In doing so, they gave us a rare glimpse into the working of peaceful resistance. And they stood for what they believe in. They vented their anger at a policy of blockade into which some Arab countries have become actively involved, either out of fear or desire to placate the Israelis.

The demonstrators slept in the streets and the squares. They occasionally obstructed traffic. And they sent to the Egyptians, Arabs, and the world a clear message, one which television stations relayed without delay across the world.

In this country, we don’t have a culture of protest. In this country, protest is treated as an act of sabotage, as a challenge to law and order. This is why we missed a rare opportunity to expose Israel’s crimes. How hard would it have been to let the European demonstrators walk into Gaza? Why did we fail to give them the chance to come face to face with an Arab nation living under occupation?

In Egypt, we don’t know how to encourage protest marches against Israel. But we know how to come up with lame excuses for building a controversial wall on our borders with Israel. Are we really worried about our own security, or are we protecting Israel?

In this country, it is wrong to protest. It is even wrong to be different. This is why our government gets so angry when opposition parliamentarians demand an explanation for the wall. Even in a parliament that prides itself on being a leader of all Arab parliaments, the opposition is demonised and abused for asking the right questions.

Worse still, our Islamic Research Council found itself pressured into issuing a statement in support of the wall. You would think that Sharia has nothing to do with security walls, but no. Our leading clergymen have decided to call anyone who opposes the wall an apostate. Don’t ask me why.

Many may ask what’s the point of it all. Did the Europeans achieve anything by marching in our streets? If you ask me, they achieved a lot. For starters, they sounded the alarm bells for the entire world, which is more than what our governments and nations have done so far. The protesters not only put Israeli actions on the line, but also underlined our own failings.

Democracy Now! covers the Gaza Freedom March (VIDEO)

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Check out Democracy Now!‘s  amazing coverage of the Gaza Freedom March in Cairo!

In Egypt, hundreds of solidarity activists from around the world are being prevented by the Egyptian government from entering Gaza. Dubbed the Gaza Freedom March, organizers were planning to cross the border last Sunday to commemorate the first anniversary of Israel’s assault on Gaza that killed 1,400 Palestinians and thirteen Israelis. We get a report.


Denied Entry into Jerusalem

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Our last day in Cairo was the 3rd of January. Our original plan was to fly to Amman then cross over into Jerusalem and spend a couple days there before heading back to Amman on the 6th to fly back to Canada. Our main goal was to visit and pray in Masjid Al-Aqsa. After everything that happened in Cairo, we left Cairo with the intention to just find the earliest flight out of Amman and get home as quickly as possible, completely bypassing our plans for Jerusalem.

Once we arrived in Amman and realized that all flights were overbooked, we decided on a whim to just go ahead and try to get to Jerusalem anyways. We took a taxi to the King Hussein bridge (about $30 JD). Once at the bridge entrance, we gave our passports to the departures clerk who then told us to get on the charter bus. We got our passports back on the bus with a white stamped paper tucked inside. We paid for our luggage/bus fare ($8 JD) and were on our way. The bus went through a couple checkpoints, one of which someone came on the bus and collected those white stamped papers. The bus then finally made it to the Allenby Terminal where we and our luggage were unloaded from the bus. The baggage clerk took our luggage and put a white sticker on our passports. Then a window clerk looked at our passports and put a red sticker on the back.

After all this, we were finally inside the terminal and went through the security check. The clerk held onto our passports and motioned us off to the side and told us to wait a few minutes for questioning. There were a few other people waiting as well and they said this was normal if you had recently been to other areas in the middle east. After about 2 minutes, we were taken into individual questioning: who we are, where we just came from, why we were there, how come we came through Amman (and not another crossing), how long we were staying, if we planned to visit any other areas, etc. After about 10 minutes of questioning, they gave us back our passports and told us to wait in line to get our entry visas. Five minutes later, we were at the visa window and were asked some more redundant questions. The clerk asked if she could stamp our passport and we asked her to stamp a separate paper instead.

She then gave us a tourism information sheet to fill out. It had basic questions which mirrored those that were asked of us earlier. When they asked where we were coming from, we wrote “Egypt” and when asked what we were there for, we wrote “tourism”. We didn’t disclose the fact that we were there for GFM because that whole plan ended up not happening. After we turned in the form, we were told to wait in the waiting area for further questioning.

It was probably about an hour and a half before we heard anything. First Basem was called in for questioning. The agent seemed really hung up on the fact that we looked completely different from our passport pictures; I now wear the hijab and Basem now wears his beard long and a kufi on his head. Basem was asked about our religiosity and what happened that changed our level of spirituality. After this, Basem came back and said that I did not have to go in.

We waited for another two hours before we heard anything. Finally, they asked us to come into the next waiting area with our bags. We brought our bags into the baggage check area and were told to leave them there for further security checks. We waited just outside this area and had a clear view of what they were doing inside. We saw them completely emptying our bags and checking EVERYTHING inside. Anything that could have been opened and dumped was opened and dumped. They didn’t just search our bags, they ransacked all of our belongings…it was quite the sight!

We again waited for another hour before they asked me to come in for some questioning. By this time they had found our Gaza Freedom March t-shirts and were aware of our activities in Egypt. The agent, Shabak, asked me again why were in Egypt and I told him matter-of-factly that we were there for one reason, which didn’t happen, and were forced to stay in Cairo for 5 days for tourism purposes. He said that we lied by saying we were just there for tourism and should have disclosed the GFM information. I clarified again that GFM didn’t happen and we stated tourism because that is what we put on our Egypt visas as well. I also explained to him that our Jerusalem plans were completely unrelated to the Cairo visit and that we were here on our own personal spiritual journey which we’d been planning for a long time. He said ok, and that now this process would take “an awful long time”, which I accepted and went back to the waiting area.

During all this time, I must say the agents were all very kind and polite to us; they offered us an area to pray when we asked them, they offered us water, they constantly checked on us to make sure we were alright, and one younger person came up to us to ask why we were ther for so long and expressed his condolences for the fact that we were still there after nearly 7 hours.

After about 7 hours of being at the entrance terminal, Shabak asked us to come back into the baggage check area and repack all of our stuff into our bags. After that, they told us that we could have all our stuff back, that there would be no problems, but that that we would be transferred over to the border police who would then make the decision of whether or not to let us into Israel. Just 10 minutes later, we were told to go back to the previous waiting area, where the border police would cooridinate a bus to take us back to the Amman-side of the King Hussein bridge. This was obviously embarrassing since we were the only ones going backwards in the through the terminal. Our passports, which had already been stamped with a visa, were then marked up in a red ink stamp “ENTRY DENIED from Allenby Crossing” — fairly large and obvious. We waited outside for the bus that would take us back to Amman. We asked if this meant we would never be allowed back into Israel; we didn’t get a conclusive answer, but the general idea was most likely NO.

Waiting for the bus, then on the ride back to Amman, it all started to hit me that I may very well never get the chance to enter Jerusalem or pray in Masjid Al-Aqsa. It was very depressing and saddening. I felt personally deprived of Jerusalem and the holy land. Not only were we not allowed to enter Gaza through Rafah, but we were now being denied entry into Jerusalem through Israel. All I could think about was how stupid we were for not disclosing the GFM information on our information form. Why we didn’t completely rid our bags of GFM paraphernelia. Why we didn’t just tell the truth! But then after my head cleared a little, I realized something. In retrospect, remembering everything that happened and the way that it happened made me realize that we were probably never going to be allowed in anyways.

From the second they saw our passports at the first indoor security check, they immediately held onto our passports. I think this was not only because we were just in Cairo, but also the dates we were in Cairo were the exact dates of the GFM trip, which they are obviously well aware of. Also, looking back at all the questions they asked us, it became very clear that not only did they know that we were part of GFM, but they were trying to fish that information out of us. They knew exactly who we were, why we were in Cairo, and that we didn’t get into Gaza as we’d hoped. So now we were trying to enter into Jerusalem, looking completely different from our passport pictures; they thought we had disguised ourselves to look like we were religious so they would let us into Jerusalem. I think they thought we wanted to attempt to get to Gaza through Jerusalem or the West Bank, which is completely ludicrous but I understand where they were coming from. After all we did in Cairo, they obviously didn’t want any trouble in Jerusalem or anywhere in Israel. The troubles and challanges GFM caused the Egyptian government was all over the news by then!

After my initial depression, then completely understanding exactly what happened and why, now we’re at a place where we both feel personally and spiritually deprived of Jerusalem, Palestine, and the Holy Land as a whole. Before this, we both were very passionate about the Palestinian cause, but after being denied entry into both Gaza and the West Bank, we have a much more personal passion for all of this. We now feel like the numerous Palestinians all over the world who cannot even enter back into their own homes! It’s definitely a personal struggle now. It’s a positive thing though because it gives us that real fire in our hearts to motivate us and push us even harder to fight for this issue of liberating the Holy Land, insha’Allah.

The many things we did in Cairo and the many more that will come out of our meetings in Cairo will have much more purpose and substance for us personally, and we can’t wait to get started on all of those initiatives. It would be an understatement if we said that this trip didn’t go as planned! Not one thing went as planned and our trip took on a whole new direction, meaning, and purpose! We found out that Gaza is not only under siege by Israel, but also Egypt! We learned that before we liberate Gaza from the Israelis, we must raise a revolution in Egypt to allow us to break the siege from that side first.

We learned so much about the Egyptian mind-set and just how much work there is to be done in Egypt, but we also come away from this trip with a heightened sense of accomplishment. We really riled up emotions and opened up hearts and minds in Egypt. We planted little seeds in everyone’s consciousness about the Palesinian cause and the fact that so many internationals were willing to converge on a foreign country and rally and protest against that country’s government and policies. So many locals voiced their support of what we were doing and were so happy to see that foreigners could now see the plight of the Egyptian people as well.

El horriya li Ghaza, el horriya li Masr! El shab el masry ma’ana!

(Freedom for Gaza, freedom for Egypt! The Egyptian people are with us!)