To read about what Americans can do about human rights abuses in Palestine, check out "Can We Hold Israel Accountable," by Stephen Zunes.  

This post originally appeared at TomDispatch.  

“There is no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” President Barack Obama said at a press conference last week. He drew on this general observation in order to justify Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel’s most recent military campaign in the Gaza Strip. In describing the situation this way, he assumes, like many others, that Gaza is a political entity external and independent of Israel. This is not so. It is true that Israel officially disengaged from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, withdrawing its ground troops and evacuating the Israeli settlements there. But despite the absence of a permanent ground presence, Israel has maintained a crushing control over Gaza from that moment until today.

The testimonies of Israeli army veterans expose the truth of that “disengagement.” Before Operation Pillar of Defense, after all, Israel launched Operations Summer Rains and Autumn Clouds in 2006, and Hot Winter and Cast Lead in 2008 -- all involving ground invasions. In one testimony, a veteran speaks of “a battalion operation” in Gaza that lasted for five months, where the soldiers were ordered to shoot “to draw out terrorists” so they “could kill a few.”

Israeli naval blockades stop Gazans from fishing, a main source of food in the Strip. Air blockades prevent freedom of movement. Israel does not allow building materials into the area, forbids exports to the West Bank and Israel, and (other than emergency humanitarian cases) prohibits movement between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It controls the Palestinian economy by periodically withholding import taxes. Its restrictions have impeded the expansion and upgrading of the Strip’s woeful sewage infrastructure, which could render life in Gaza untenable within a decade. The blocking of seawater desalination has turned the water supply into a health hazard. Israel has repeatedly demolished small power plants in Gaza, ensuring that the Strip would have to continue to rely on the Israeli electricity supply. Daily power shortages have been the norm for several years now. Israel’s presence is felt everywhere, militarily and otherwise.

By relying on factual misconceptions, political leaders, deliberately or not, conceal information that is critical to our understanding of events. Among the people best qualified to correct those misconceptions are the individuals who have been charged with executing a state’s policies -- in this case, Israeli soldiers themselves, an authoritative source of information about their government’s actions. I am a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and I know that our first-hand experiences refute the assumption, accepted by many, including President Obama, that Gaza is an independent political entity that exists wholly outside Israel. If Gaza is outside Israel, how come we were stationed there? If Gaza is outside Israel, how come we control it? Oded Na’aman 

[The testimonies by Israeli veterans that follow are taken from 145 collected by the nongovernmental organization Breaking the Silence and published in Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies From the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010. Those in the book represent every division in the IDF and all locations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.]

1. House Demolition 

Unit: Kfir Brigade

Location: Nablus district

Year: 2009

During your service in the territories, what shook you up the most? 

The searches we did in Hares. They said there are sixty houses that have to be searched. I thought there must have been some information from intelligence. I tried to justify it to myself.

You went out as a patrol? 

It was a battalion operation. They spread out over the whole village, took over the school, smashed the locks, the classrooms. One was used as the investigation room for the Shin Bet, one room for detainees, one for the soldiers to rest. We went in house by house, banging on the door at two in the morning. The family’s dying of fear, the girls are peeing in their pants with fear. We go into the house and turn everything upside down.

What’s the procedure? 

Gather the family in a certain room, put a guard there, tell the guard to aim his gun at them, and then search the rest of the house. We got another order that everyone born after 1980... everyone between sixteen and twenty-nine, doesn’t matter who, bring them in cuffed and blindfolded. They yelled at old people, one of them had an epileptic seizure but they carried on yelling at him. Every house we went into, we brought everyone between sixteen and twenty-nine to the school. They sat tied up in the schoolyard.

Did they tell you the purpose of all this?  

To locate weapons. But we didn’t find any weapons. They confiscated kitchen knives. There was also stealing. One guy took twenty shekels. Guys went into the houses and looked for things to steal. This was a very poor village. The guys were saying, “What a bummer, there’s nothing to steal.”

That was said in a conversation among the soldiers? 

Yeah. They enjoyed seeing the misery, the guys were happy talking about it. There was a moment someone yelled at the soldiers. They knew he was mentally ill, but one of the soldiers decided that he’d beat him up anyway, so they smashed him. They hit him in the head with the butt of the gun, he was bleeding, then they brought him to the school along with everyone else. There were a pile of arrest orders signed by the battalion commander, ready, with one area left blank. They’d fill in that the person was detained on suspicion of disturbing the peace. They just filled in the name and the reason for arrest. There were people with plastic handcuffs that had been put on really tight. I got to speak with the people there. One of them had been brought into Israel to work for a settler and after two months the guy didn’t pay him and handed him over to the police.

All these people came from that one village? 

Yes.

Anything else you remember from that night? 

A small thing, but it bothered me -- one house that they just destroyed. They have a dog for weapons searches, but they didn’t bring him; they just wrecked the house. The mother watched from the side and cried. Her kids sat with her and stroked her.

What do you mean, they just destroyed the house? 

They smashed the floors, turned over sofas, threw plants and pictures, turned over beds, smashed the closets, the tiles. There were other things -- the look on the people’s faces when you go into their house. And after all that, they were left tied up and blindfolded in the school for hours. The order came to free them at four in the afternoon. So that was more than twelve hours. There were investigators from the security services there who interrogated them one by one.

Had there been a terrorist attack in the area? 

No. We didn’t even find any weapons. The brigade commander claimed that the Shin Bet did find some intelligence, that there were a lot of guys there who throw stones.

2. Naval Blockade 

Unit: Navy

Location: Gaza Strip

Year: 2008

It’s mostly punishment. I hate that: “They did this to us, so we’ll do that to them.” Do you know what a naval blockade means for the people in Gaza? There’s no food for a few days. For example, suppose there’s an attack in Netanya, so they impose a naval blockade for four days on the entire Strip. No seagoing vessel can leave. A Dabur patrol boat is stationed at the entrance to the port, if they try to go out, within seconds the soldiers shoot at the bow and even deploy attack helicopters to scare them. We did a lot of operations with attack helicopters -- they don’t shoot much because they prefer to let us deal with that, but they’re there to scare people, they circle over their heads. All of a sudden there’s a Cobra right over your head, stirring up the wind and throwing everything around.

And how frequent were the blockades?  

Very. It could be three times one month, and then three months of nothing. It depends.

The blockade goes on for a day, two days, three days, four, or more than that? 

I can’t remember anything longer than four days. If it was longer than that, they’d die there, and I think the IDF knows that. Seventy percent of Gaza lives on fishing -- they have no other choice. For them it means not eating. There are whole families who don’t eat for a few days because of the blockade. They eat bread and water.

3. Shoot to Kill 

Unit: Engineering Corps

Location: Rafah

Year: 2006

During the operations in Gaza, anyone walking around in the street, you shoot at the torso. In one operation in the Philadelphi corridor, anyone walking around at night, you shoot at the torso.

How often were the operations? 

Daily. In the Philadelphi corridor, every day.

When you’re searching for tunnels, how do people manage to get around -- I mean, they live in the area.  

It’s like this: You bring one force up to the third or fourth floor of a building. Another group does the search below. They know that while they’re doing the search there’ll be people trying to attack them. So they put the force up high, so they can shoot at anyone down in the street. 

How much shooting was there? 

Endless.

Say I’m there, I’m up on the third floor. I shoot at anyone I see? 

Yes.

But it’s in Gaza, it’s a street, it’s the most crowded place in the world. 

No, no, I’m talking about the Philadelphi corridor.

So that’s a rural area? 

Not exactly, there’s a road, it’s like the suburbs, not the center. During operations in the other Gaza neighborhoods it’s the same thing. Shooting, during night operations -- shooting.

It there any kind of announcement telling people to stay indoors? 

No.

They actually shot people? 

They shot anyone walking around in the street. It always ended with, “We killed six terrorists today.” Whoever you shot in the street is “a terrorist.”

That’s what they say at the briefings? 

The goal is to kill terrorists.

What are the rules of engagement? 

Whoever’s walking around at night, shoot to kill.

During the day, too? 

They talked about that in the briefings: whoever’s walking around during the day, look for something suspicious. But something suspicious could be a cane.

4. Elimination Operation 

Unit: Special Forces

Location: Gaza Strip

Year: 2000

There was a period at the beginning of the Intifada where they assassinated people using helicopter missiles.

This was at the beginning of the Second Intifada? 

Yes. But it was a huge mess because there were mistakes and other people were killed, so they told us we were now going to be doing a ground elimination operation.

Is that the terminology they used? “Ground elimination operation”? 

I don’t remember. But we knew it was going to be the first one of the Intifada. That was very important for the commanders and we started to train for it. The plan was to catch a terrorist on his way to Rafah, trap him in the middle of the road, and eliminate him.

Not to arrest him? 

No, direct elimination. Targeted. But that operation was canceled, and then a few days later they told us that we’re going on an arrest operation. I remember the disappointment. We were going to arrest the guy instead of doing something groundbreaking, changing the terms. So the operation was planned...

Anyway, we’re waiting inside the APC [armored personnel carrier], there are Shin Bet agents with us, and we can hear the updates from intelligence. It was amazing, like, “He’s sitting in his house drinking coffee, he’s going downstairs, saying hi to the neighbor” -- stuff like that. “He’s going back up, coming down again, saying this and that, opening the trunk now, picking up a friend” -- really detailed stuff. He didn’t drive, someone else drove, and they told us his weapon was in the trunk. So we knew he didn’t have the weapon with him in the car, which would make the arrest easier. At least it relieved my stress, because I knew that if he ran to get the weapon, they’d shoot at him.

Where did the Shin Bet agent sit? 

With me. In the APC. We were in contact with command and they told us he’d arrive in another five minutes, four minutes, one minute. And then there was a change in the orders, apparently from the brigade commander: elimination operation. A minute ahead of time. They hadn’t prepared us for that. A minute to go and it’s an elimination operation.

Why do you say “apparently from the brigade commander”? 

I think it was the brigade commander. Looking back, the whole thing seems like a political ploy by the commander, trying to get bonus points for doing the first elimination operation, and the brigade commander trying, too. . . everyone wanted it, everyone was hot for it. The car arrives, and it’s not according to plan: their car stops here, and there’s another car in front of it, here. From what I remember, we had to shoot, he was three meters away. We had to shoot. After they stopped the cars, I fired through the scope and the gunfire made an insane amount of noise, just crazy. And then the car, the moment we started shooting, started speeding in this direction.

The car in front? 

No, the terrorist’s car -- apparently when they shot the driver his leg was stuck on the gas, and they started flying. The gunfire increased, and the commander next to me is yelling “Stop, stop, hold your fire,” but they don’t stop shooting. Our guys get out and start running, away from the jeep and the armored truck, shoot a few rounds, and then go back. Insane bullets flying around for a few minutes. “Stop, stop, hold your fire,” and then they stop. They fired dozens if not hundreds of bullets into the car in front.

Are you saying this because you checked afterward? 

Because we carried out the bodies. There were three people in that car. Nothing happened to the person in the back. He got out, looked around like this, put his hands in the air. But the two bodies in the front were hacked to pieces...

Afterward, I counted how many bullets I had left -- I’d shot ten bullets. The whole thing was terrifying -- more and more and more noise. It all took about a second and a half. And then they took out the bodies, carried the bodies. We went to a debriefing. I’ll never forget when they brought the bodies out at the base. We were standing two meters away in a semicircle, the bodies were covered in flies, and we had the debriefing. It was, “Great job, a success. Someone shot the wrong car, and we’ll talk about the rest back on the base.” I was in total shock from all the bullets, from the crazy noise. We saw it on the video, it was all documented on video for the debriefing. I saw all the things that I told you, the people running, the minute of gunfire, I don’t know if it’s twenty seconds or a minute, but it was hundreds of bullets and it was clear that the people had been killed, but the gunfire went on and the soldiers were running from the armored truck. What I saw was a bunch of bloodthirsty guys firing an insane amount of bullets, and at the wrong car, too. The video was just awful, and then the unit commander got up. I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot from him.

What do you mean? 

That he’ll be a regional commanding officer or the chief of staff one day. He said, “The operation wasn’t carried out perfectly, but the mission was accomplished, and we got calls from the chief of staff, the defense minister, the prime minister” -- everyone was happy, it’s good for the unit, and the operation was like, you know, just: “Great job.” The debriefing was just a cover-up.

Meaning? 

Meaning no one stopped to say, “Three innocent people died.” Maybe with the driver there was no other way, but who were the others?

Who were they, in fact? 

At that time I had a friend training with the Shin Bet, he told me about the jokes going around that the terrorist was a nobody. He’d probably taken part in some shooting and the other two had nothing to do with anything. What shocked me was that the day after the operation, the newspapers said that “a secret unit killed four terrorists,” and there was a whole story on each one, where he came from, who he’d been involved with, the operations he’d done. But I know that on the Shin Bet base they’re joking about how we killed a nobody and the other two weren’t even connected, and at the debriefing itself they didn’t even mention it.

Who did the debriefing? 

The unit commander. The first thing I expected to hear was that something bad happened, that we did the operation to eliminate one person and ended up eliminating four. I expected that he’d say, “I want to know who shot at the first car. I want to know why A-B-C ran to join in the big bullet-fest.” But that didn’t happen, and I understood that they just didn’t care. These people do what they do. They don’t care.

Did the guys talk about it?  

Yes. There were two I could talk to. One of them was really shocked but it didn’t stop him. It didn’t stop me, either. It was only after I came out of the army that I understood. No, even when I was in the army I understood that something really bad had happened. But the Shin Bet agents were as happy as kids at a summer camp.

What does that mean? 

They were high-fiving and hugging. Really pleased with themselves. They didn’t join in the debriefing, it was of no interest to them. But what was the politics of the operation? How come my commanders, not one of them, admitted that the operation had failed? And failed so badly with the shooting all over the place that the guys sitting in the truck got hit with shrapnel from the bullets. It’s a miracle we didn’t kill each other.

5. Her limbs were smeared on the wall 

Unit: Givati Brigade

Location: Gaza Strip

Year: 2008

One company told me they did an operation where a woman was blown up and smeared all over the wall. They kept knocking on her door and there was no answer, so they decided to open it with explosives. They placed them at the door and right at that moment the woman came to open it. Then her kids came down and saw her. I heard about it after the operation at dinner. Someone said it was funny that the kids saw their mother smeared on the wall and everyone cracked up. Another time I got screamed at by my platoon when I went to give the detainees some water from our field kit canteen. They said, “What, are you crazy?” I couldn’t see what their problem was, so they said, “Come on, germs.” In Nahal Oz, there was an incident with kids who’d been sent by their parents to try to get into Israel to find food, because their families were hungry. They were fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boys, I think. I remember one of them sitting blindfolded and then someone came and hit him, here.

On the legs. 

And poured oil on him, the stuff we use to clean weapons.

6. We shot at fishermen 

Unit: Navy

Location: Gaza Strip

Year: 2007

There’s an area bordering Gaza that’s under the navy’s control. Even after Israel disengaged from the Strip, nothing changed in the sea sector. I remember that near Area K, which divided Israel and Gaza, there were kids as young as four or six, who’d get up early in the morning to fish, in the areas that were off-limits. They’d go there because the other areas were crowded with fishermen. The kids always tried to cross, and every morning we’d shoot in their direction to scare them off. It got to the point of shooting at the kids’ feet where they were standing on the beach or at the ones on surfboards. We had Druze police officers on board who’d scream at them in Arabic. We’d see the poor kids crying.

What do you mean, “shoot in their direction”? 

It starts with shooting in the air, then it shifts to shooting close by, and in extreme cases it becomes shooting toward their legs.

At what distance? 

Five or six hundred meters, with a Rafael heavy machine gun, it’s all automatic.

Where do you aim? 

It’s about perspective. On the screen, there’s a measure for height and a one for width, and you mark where you want the bullet to go with the cursor. It cancels out the effect of the waves and hits where it’s supposed to, it’s precise.

You aim a meter away from the surfboard? 

More like five or six meters. I heard about cases where they actually hit the surfboards, but I didn’t see it. There were other things that bothered me, this thing with Palestinian fishing nets. The nets cost around four thousand shekels, which is like a million dollars for them. When they wouldn’t do what we said too many times, we’d sink their nets. They leave their nets in the water for something like six hours. The Dabur patrol boat comes along and cuts their nets.

Why? 

As a punishment.

For what? 

Because they didn’t do what we said. Let’s say a boat drifts over to an area that’s off-limits, so a Dabur comes, circles, shoots in the air, and goes back. Then an hour later, the boat comes back and so does the Dabur. The third time around, the Dabur starts shooting at the nets, at the boat, and then shoots to sink them.

Is the off-limits area close to Israel? 

There’s one area close to Israel and another along the Israeli-Egyptian border… Israel’s sea border is twelve miles out, and Gaza’s is only three. They’ve only got those three miles, and that’s because of one reason, which is that Israel wants its gas, and there’s an offshore drilling rig something like three and a half miles out facing the Gaza Strip, which should be Palestinian, except that it’s ours… the Navy Special Forces unit provides security for the rig. A bird comes near the area, they shoot it. There’s an insane amount of security for that thing. One time there were Egyptian fishing nets over the three-mile limit, and we dealt with them. A total disaster.

Meaning? 

They were in international waters, we don’t have jurisdiction there, but we’d shoot at them.

At Egyptian fishing nets? 

Yes. Although we’re at peace with Egypt.

Oded Na’aman is co-editor of Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000–2010 (Metropolitan Books, 2012). He is also a founder of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organization dedicated to collecting the testimonies of Israel Defense Force soldiers, and a member of the Israeli Opposition Network. He served in the IDF as a first sergeant and crew commander in the artillery corps between 2000 and 2003 and is now working on his PhD in philosophy at Harvard University. The testimonies in this piece from Our Harsh Logic have been adapted and shortened. 

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch book, Nick Turse’s The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare. 

Copyright 2012 Breaking the Silence

Image by David Masters, licensed under Creative Commons.  

To read Breaking the Silence testimonies by Israeli soldiers on the ongoing occupation and blockade of Palestine, check out "It's Mostly Punishment," by Oded Na'aman.

A version of this article appeared at YesMagazine.org.  

The great wish of the early Zionist leader Theodor Herzl was that Israel would be treated like “any other state.” Were that the case, there might be more rational and productive discourse regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is particularly critical in light of Israel launching yet another devastating attack against civilian-populated areas of nearby Arab lands.

There are certainly those who do unfairly single out Israel, the world’s only predominantly Jewish state, for criticism. There is a tendency by some to minimize Israel’s legitimate security concerns and place inordinate attention on the Israeli government’s transgressions, relative to other governments that abuse human rights. There are also those who, in light of the five-year siege of the Gaza Strip and the enormous suffering of the Palestinian people, try to rationalize terrorism and other crimes by Hamas, the reactionary Islamist group currently in control there.

What we recently witnessed from the Obama administration, however—as Hamas rainedrockets into Israel and Israel rained bombs, missiles, and mortars into the crowded and besieged Gaza Strip—was the similarly unfair phenomenon of exempting Israel from criticism. While most of the international community has criticized both Hamas and Israel for their attacks on areas populated by civilians, the Obama administration has restricted its condemnation to the Palestinian side.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice—widely considered to be the president’s first choice to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State—correctly noted that there is “no justification for the violence that Hamas and other terrorist organizations are employing against the people of Israel.” However, she had absolutely no criticism of Israel’s far more devastating attacks against the people of the Gaza Strip, simply saying that "Israel, like any nation, has the right to defend itself against such vicious attacks.”

The real issue, however, is not Israel’s right to self-defense but its attacks on crowded residential neighborhoods, which killed 103 Palestinian civilians (as compared with four Israeli civilians killed by Hamas rockets). The Obama administration’s position is ironic given that, while both sides share the blame for the tragedy, it appears that it is Israel which has been primarily responsible for breaking the recent fragile ceasefires, through acts such as its assassination of a leading Hamas official and attacks that killed a number of boys playing soccer.

In the face of growing calls from throughout the world for both sides to de-escalate the violence, the White House said on November 17 that it would leave it to Israel to decide whether it is appropriate to launch a ground invasion. Similarly, in response to the outcry at the growing number of civilian casualties from the Israeli bombardment of civilian areas of the Gaza Strip, Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes insisted, “The Israelis are going to make decisions about their own military tactics and operations.”

On November 15, both the U.S. Senate and House passed, by unanimous voice votes, resolutions defending Israel's ongoing war on the Gaza Strip. Unlike some of the statements from the Obama administration supporting the Israel's attacks, these resolutions failed to call on both sides to exercise restraint or to express any regret at the resulting casualties.

History repeats

This position is not a new one among U.S. elected officials. Back in February 2009, following the devastating three-week war between Israeli and Hamas forces—named “Operation Cast Lead” by the Israelis—in which three Israeli civilians and more than 800 Palestinian civilians were killed, Amnesty International called for an international arms embargo on both Israel and Hamas to prevent the kind of tragic attacks on civilians in which both sides are currently engaging. President Barack Obama, who had just taken office, categorically rejected Amnesty's proposal, and instead increased U.S. military aid to Israel to record levels.

Israel was no doubt emboldened in launching its 2012offensive as a result of the strong support it received from the United States in 2009. For example, the U.S. House of Representatives—in a direct challenge to the credibility of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Red Cross, and other reputable humanitarian organizations—passed a resolution in January of 2009 declaring that the Israeli armed forces bore no responsibility for the large numbers of civilian casualties from their assault on the Gaza Strip.

The resolution put forward a disturbing interpretation of international humanitarian law: that, by allegedly breaking the cease-fire, Hamas was responsible for all subsequent deaths, and that the presence of Hamas officials or militia members in mosques, hospitals, or residential areas made those locations legitimate targets.

Human rights reports comdemned

Unusual interpretations of international law have long played a role in the special treatment Israel receives from the United States. In the fall of 2009, when a blue-ribbon panel of prominent international jurists—veterans of human rights investigations in Sudan, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia—led a meticulously detailed U.N.-sponsored investigation that confirmed previous human rights reports by documenting possible war crimes on both sides, Congress passed another lopsided bipartisan resolution condemning the investigation for failing to absolve Israel of any responsibility. The Obama administration succeeded in blocking the United Nations from acting on the report’s recommendations that both sides be investigated for possible war crimes.

The human rights investigations from 2009 and earlier examined Israeli claims that Hamas’ alleged use of “human shields” was responsible for the large number of civilian casualties. While these probes criticized Hamas for at times having men and materiel too close to civilian-populated areas, they were unable to find even one incident of Hamas deliberately holding civilians against their will in an effort to deter Israeli attacks.

The Obama administration and Congressional leaders, however, insisted that they knew more about what happened inside the Gaza Strip than these on-the-ground investigations by expert human rights monitors and respected international jurists. As a renewed round of attacks is unleashed upon this small and heavily populated Palestinian enclave, they are now making similar claims to justify the ongoing Israeli attacks on civilian population centers.

As Amnesty and other human rights groups have observed, however, even if Hamas were using human shields, it would still not justify Israel killing Palestinian civilians.

The United States has not been hesitant to criticize Russia in its attacks on Chechnya and Georgia, or Syria in its more recent attacks against its own people. Yet both Congress and the administration seem willing to bend over backwards to rationalize for Israel when it attacks civilians.

The administration’s criticism of Hamas rocket attacks would also have more credibility if they didn’t also oppose nonviolent means of challenging the siege of Gaza and the occupation and colonization of West Bank lands, such as boycotts and divestment against companies supporting the occupation, UN recognition of Palestinian statehood, humanitarian aid flotillas to Gaza, and targeted sanctions against Israeli violations of international humanitarian law

Fair application of universal principles

While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict certainly has unique aspects, it is critical for those supportive of peace and human rights to underscore universal principles, such as those enshrined in international humanitarian law.

The fact that Israel is perceived as an important strategic ally of the United States does not mean we should ignore its violations of well-established legal norms any more than those committed by a perceived adversary like Hamas. Those of us in the peace movement should challenge elected officials who currently support unconditional U.S. military aid to the Israeli government and rationalize its attacks on civilians just as vigorously as we did those who in earlier years supported unconditional U.S. military aid to El Salvador, Indonesia, and other repressive Cold War allies of the United States.

And while it is important to recognize the special sensitivity some people have regarding the subject of Israel, this should not deter those who care about human rights from speaking out. Indeed, even putting aside the important moral and legal critiques of Israel’s recent offensive against the Gaza Strip and the ongoing siege of the crowded enclave, such policies ultimately harm Israel by encouraging extremism among Palestinians struggling for the right of national self-determination.

It is also important to recognize that, while both sides have committed great wrongs against the other’s people, there exists a gross asymmetry in power. Israel—the occupying power, which possesses by far the strongest military in the region, one of the world’s higher standards of living, and the backing of the world’s one remaining superpower—has a huge advantage over the impoverished Gaza Strip, with its weak and isolated Hamas government struggling under a five-year air, land, and sea blockade, and without an air force, navy, or standing army.

Fortunately, thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets in protest of their government’s attacks on the Gaza Strip. Israeli peace and human rights activists have called on the Obama administration to end its support for Netanyahu’s militarism. As citizens of the country that has provided Israel with the military, financial, and diplomatic support that has made the renewed killing possible, those of us in the United States have a special obligation to challenge the administration and Congress to end its unconscionable support for the ongoing destruction.

As we would such policies toward any other state.

Stephen Zunes wrote this article for YES! Magazine , a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Stephen is a professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco and chairs the academic advisory committee of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. 

Image by Jewish Voice for Peace, licensed under Creative Commons.  

 

The humanitarian crisis in Palestine is not something you hear much about these days. It didn’t come up in the presidential foreign policy debate on Monday, though of course Obama and Romney spent a long time talking about Netanyahu’s “red line” with Iran. G8 nations were similarly silent on Palestine during the group’s conference back in May, although Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza was a major G8 talking point just two years ago, as was the peace process a year later.

When we do see Palestine in the news, it’s mostly about why and how the two-state solution is dead—a theme that’s been driven home repeatedly over the last year by the likes of Jimmy Carter, Atlantic senior editor Robert Wright, and Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy. Not that there’s much reason to believe otherwise. In fact, the crisis there only seems to be getting worse.

For one thing, Jews are now a minority in Israel and the Occupied Territories, raising serious questions about minority rule and apartheid. Last week, Israel officially declared that of the 12 million people living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, Israeli Jews represent about 5.9 million (a fact Israeli demography expert Sergio Della Pergola had already pointed out in 2010). “Apartheid is here,” says Haaretz columnist Akiva Eldar. “The Jewish majority is history.”

And apartheid is not a subjective term, says UC Irvine professor Mark LeVine at Al-Jazeera. Since its formal implementation in 1948 in South Africa, a series of international treaties like International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1966 and the 2002 Rome Statute have defined apartheid in no uncertain terms. Despite cosmetic differences in how it’s implemented, Israel’s policies toward Palestine fit the international definition—as Rome calls it, an “institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination”—to a bill, says LeVine. Arabs in Israel may have some basic political rights like voting and holding office, he says, but it's hard to ignore the widespread economic discrimination they face, "as well as in access to land and most components of social citizenship (education, healthcare, language and access to upper echelons of political life)." Not to mention the entangling maze of checkpoints, settlements, and walls dotting and dominating Palestinian territory.

Of course, the charge has been raised before, most famously by Jimmy Carter in 2006. A year later, John Dugard, a South African international law professor and UN human rights envoy to the Occupied Territories, echoed the same concern. “It is difficult to resist the conclusion that many of Israel's laws and practices violate the 1966 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination,” he wrote at the time. And late last year, Dugard reiterated his point, writing in Al-Jazeera that, “Most South Africans who visit the West Bank are struck by the similarities between apartheid and Israel's practices there.”

But whatever we choose to call it, human rights abuses in Palestine are only escalating, whether our political leaders discuss it or not. Last week, Israel released its “red lines” document, which spells out some of the tactical specifics of the Gaza blockade, and their intended impact on Palestinians living there. (The revelation was almost totally ignored in the U.S. media.) The idea, reports Amira Hass in Haaretz, was to allow Gazans access to only the minimum number of calories each day to avoid outright starvation. Despite the fact that the blockaded Gaza is almost entirely dependent on outside resources, Israeli government attorneys defended such “economic warfare” as entirely within Israel’s rights, while also attempting to prevent the document’s disclosure.

So what’s the minimum number? 2,279 calories each day for each person, or 131 truckloads entering Gaza, says Hass. (To put that in perspective, the average American has access to about 3,800 calories each day.) But, says Hass, UN data show the actual number entering the territory has been far less. And Israeli prohibitions on seeds and agricultural technology served to make food insecurity even more of a serious problem for Gaza’s 1.7 million residents.

Though the specific policies outlined in the “red lines” document officially ended in 2010, the blockade continues to enforce a real and growing hunger crisis in Gaza. A report by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, released in August of this year, finds that in a territory where a majority are under 18, three out of five families face, or are at risk of facing, food insecurity. The report went on: With unemployment now nearing 30 percent, and Palestinians there already facing a severe shortage of schools and medical care, Gaza’s future looks grim unless serious changes can be made. By 2020, it concluded, by which time Gaza will grow by half a million residents, the territory may be completely uninhabitable, unless serious steps are taken to reverse the humanitarian crisis.

This is a bleak portrait, but a more humane future for Palestine is certainly possible. The work the Middle East Children’s Alliance has been doing for 25 years gives us an inspiring vision of what that humane future could look like, as do the flotilla movement's ongoing efforts to break the Gaza siege. If a two-state solution is indeed finished, writes Gideon Levy, the real fight is for human rights. And that fight has much to do with us: because crimes like the blockade are so dependent on U.S. aid and support, Americans have enormous influence on the future of the crisis. Human rights in Palestine may not be a campaign issue this year, but neither was South African apartheid in 1984. It was only through popular struggle—here and in South Africa—that more humane alternatives became politically possible.

 

Image by Paolo Cuttitta, licensed under Creative Commons.  

Barbara Lubin is a lifelong activist who has fought for human rights and civil liberties on a number of diverse fronts. From antiwar work in the Vietnam War era to disability rights and human rights campaigns in the U.S. and abroad, Lubin has struggled on behalf of the oppressed from more than 40 years. In 1988, she cofounded the Middle East Children’s Alliance with journalist Howard Levine, and since then has shipped millions of dollars worth of food, medical supplies, and art supplies to children in war-torn Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. MECA is a 2012 Utne Visionary; below is our interview with Lubin from August 2012.   

 

Sam Ross-Brown: What was it about your experience in Palestine that prompted you to get involved? 

Barbara Lubin: I grew up in a very right wing Zionist home. We supported the policies of the State of Israel blindly. And it was only after I had been elected by the board of education in Berkeley, California, that a group of young Palestinian students from San Francisco State came to see me and said to me, “you go to El Salvador, you’re involved in Nicaragua, and in the anti-Apartheid movement in Berkeley around South Africa, and you say nothing about Palestine and Israel.”

I said I was Jewish, and they said, “What does that have to do with it?” And for me it had everything to do with it, but little by little, these guys from San Francisco State educated me and made me realize what was really happening and what the founding of Israel and Zionism really meant. And when the first intifada began I decided to take a delegation of locally elected officials from around the United States. One of us was a Catholic priest, two of us were Jewish, and were the first internationalists to be in Palestine after the intifada began a week later. And it was that trip and really those young students who really made me understand what was happening and changed the whole way I look at this issue.

When I came back we had a press conference at the San Francisco Press Club. Howard Levine—a friend of mine and the East Bay stringer for the San Francisco Examiner—covered it and we went out to lunch. He said, “What are you going to do now?” And I said, “I’m definitely going to do something on this issue. I’m just revolted by what I saw in Palestine and Israel.” And he said, “I’ll do it with you.” And two months later we opened our office, and since then, we’ve delivered over $13 million in food and medicine to the children in Palestine and Lebanon and Iraq. We’ve built playgrounds and preschools. We’ve been doing this work around the clock for 25 years.

SR: Where have you seen the most success? You mentioned the playgrounds and medical equipment.  

BL: Yes, actually I’m trying to get information about a playground we completed this year in Syria, but I’m not having much luck with that. And in fact, I’m getting ready to visit the camps on the border in Jordan and Lebanon and all over to talk with the Palestinians who are fleeing from Syria. It’s like a second Nakba—catastrophe—for the Palestinians. In 1948 they fled their homes inside of Palestine when the State of Israel was founded, and many of them ended up in Syria. Now, once again after all these years, they thought they had found a safe home, but are now on the run again and being forced into camps in these other countries. So I’m going to see what’s going on.

I don’t know if I can say what has been most successful. I’d like to think that the project we’ve been working on for the past three years continues to be an important and successful project. We’ve been building water purification and desalinization systems at the UN schools in Gaza. The water table has been lowered to such an extent because Israel over the years has been stealing the water from the West Bank and Gaza. And it lowered the water table to such an extent that the water is undrinkable and many babies get blue baby syndrome, children have died from this water, and the salt content is so high that it’s undrinkable.

And when our project director in Gaza went to a boy’s school in Bureij refugee camp, she asked what MECA could do for them. And they said what they wanted more than anything else was to be able to come to school and have a clean glass of water to drink. And that’s really what our main focus has been for the last three years.

SR: That’s the Maia Project, right? 

BL: Yeah, that’s the Maia Project. Maia means water in Arabic.

SR: One of the most public campaigns that MECA has been involved with has been Let the Children Play and Heal, which focuses on traumatized children expressing themselves through art. What is it about art that has a healing potential? 

BL: It does have a healing potential. That program came about because I was in Egypt throughout Operation Cast Lead in 2009, when close to 1,500 Palestinians were murdered within four weeks. Close to 400 of them were children. And the last two days of the bombing, after all of our aid went in—we sent in five tons of baby food and milk, wheelchairs, beds, all kinds of things that kids needed, truckloads of supplies. After that went in from Egypt, I went across the border and went into Palestine and Gaza and was there the last two days of that bombing. In some communities—in one neighborhood there’s a family called the Sammoni family and over 40 people were murdered in that one family.

After I came home, they contacted Dr. Mona El-Farra, our project director in Gaza, and said that they wanted MECA to set up some sort of summer camp or program for the kids to help them deal with the emotional problems that they were dealing with. They were wetting their beds, they were unable to sleep, they were acting out, all over Gaza after that bombing.

So Dr. Mona El-Farra, along with some psychiatrists, set up Let the Children Play and Heal. It was training 400 mothers and women, most of them uneducated, ordinary women, and they trained them to go work in the schools and work in homes to help kids deal with their emotions around that horrendous attack. And part of that project was an art project that took place. And the kids were encouraged to draw pictures of what they saw and what they felt. As a matter of fact, a woman from Philadelphia several years after that was in Gaza and she saw the pictures and brought them back to the United States.

When the art exhibit came to Berkeley, we had made arrangements and had worked with the Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland (MOCHA). And we worked for them for six months on showing the exhibit. And it was a very graphic exhibit. A lot of tanks, drawings of people dying. But we had worked with people at the Museum, and we worked with teachers and a lot of public and private schools who were going to go visit the exhibit. And two weeks before the exhibit was to open, the head of the Museum came to see me at MECA and said that they had changed their minds. That they were not going to show the exhibit.

I just couldn’t believe it. I sent out an email to our list saying that MOCHA had refused to show the exhibit, but we were committed to showing this exhibit. We said that we had sent out all of these emails, we worked with the press, and we sent out another email saying that we’d be out in front of that museum, with the art, holding the art on September 24 of last year. During those two weeks, I went around and tried to find space for this show.

And outside the Museum, I found an open storefront and it was right around the corner from the Museum. We spent all night hanging the exhibit. And the next day, over 500 people showed up to see the exhibit that we were holding. We held a copy of the exhibit outside the Children’s Museum, and we marched around the corner. Over 1,000 people came that day to see the show, and over the two months that we had that exhibit up, thousands of people came to see the exhibit. School buses were showing up everyday, kids were coming in. They would look at the exhibit and then we’d have them sit down on the floor, and we would talk about the exhibit and what they felt about it and what was happening. And it was an incredible thing.

People from all over the world wrote to me. They were outraged that children’s art would be censored. They were furious. Right before we took the exhibit down, I said to Howard Levine, my partner and MECA cofounder, “You know, we should do a book about what just happened.” And 28 days later, the book was done. It was published. It’s really amazing: within four weeks, we had the idea, our artist Josh Sampson put the book together, and it was published. Twenty-eight days. The proceeds from this book all go to the children who did the drawings and art centers in Gaza.

SR: The exhibit also traveled around the country. Did you get a similar response in other places? 

BL: No other place had the response that we had here in Berkeley. Nobody. I gave a talk in Vancouver about the exhibit and people were very open to it. Only in Berkeley, the home of free speech, was it shut down. That’s a pretty remarkable thing.

SR: The idea that an exhibit of children’s art could be controversial is amazing. 

BL: Oh no, it’s not amazing. It’s sad. I remember in 1991 I had just come back from the Middle East during the Gulf War, and Noam Chomsky was going to give a talk at the Berkeley Community Theater. And the Zionists here in the Bay Area sent out letters telling them to boycott bookstores that sold Chomsky’s books and sold tickets to this event. And 17 professors from University of California, Berkeley published a letter saying that Noam Chomsky and Barbara Lubin were self-hating Jews, that we supported terrorism, and people should boycott the stores and boycott the talk. And 3,200 people showed up to hear Noam speak that night. Most of the people here were furious about it. But the art exhibit is not the first time that MECA has had this kind of thing happen to us.

The same thing happened with another art exhibit we did with 12 artists about 10 year ago. It was called Justice Matters, and we did it at the Berkeley Art Center. It was beautiful. It was a portfolio we did about Palestine. And 12 rabbis went to see Tom Bates, the mayor of Berkeley, and demanded that the city stop funding the Berkeley Art Center, and they demanded to have the exhibit taken down. Fortunately, the mayor said, “No, we won’t do that,” and the exhibit stayed up. It’s a funny town. They’re for free speech, but when it comes to Palestine, there’s a very strong Zionist community here in the Bay Area and they have been very vocal, and it’s very difficult doing the work here.

SR: It’s such a strange mix there. At the same time, you have people like Rabbi Michael Lerner and Tikkun magazine doing very different work.  

BL: Well, Michael Lerner has had many death threats. This is the place where Mario Savio stood on top of an automobile at the University of California and kick-started the Free Speech Movement. And yet his wife, and all those people from the Free Speech Movement wrote a letter condemning me and MECA when we did a demonstrated against having Netanyahu speak at the Berkeley Community Theater. They said we were shutting down free speech. It was unbelievable. So it’s hard to do the work, but it just makes us work that much harder.

SR: Are you hopeful about a changing atmosphere around Palestinian issues? Are you hopeful about the Freedom Flotillas or the BDS movement? 

BL: I feel mixed about it. So many of the people doing this work now—so many of them I went over these 25 years and begged them to speak out about Zionism and speak out about what was happening to Palestinians. And they refused. And they’ve been doing it now for the last six or seven years, which is great—better late than never. But the BDS movement is very important, and it is growing.

I’m actually just reading as I’m talking to you that the Israeli courts have ruled—just this minute—that the State of Israel is not responsible for the murder of Rachel Corrie. So on one hand, the movement is growing, but on the other hand, the State of Israel continues to support murderous activities. It’s shameful.

SR: Yesterday, the UN released a report called Gaza in 2020: A liveable place? According to the report, by 2020, Gaza will need double the electricity provision and hundreds of new schools and housing units.  

BL: Yeah, I just came back from Gaza. I’ve been working with the UN in Gaza on our schools and it was just impossible. I was just there in February for three weeks and then I was just there for three weeks. It was impossible to do the work. The electricity was only on for eight hours—and in the night usually when you’re asleep. And then it’s off. So you can’t use your computer, you can’t use email. And when I was there in February it was one of the coldest winters they’ve ever had. We couldn’t have any heat in any of the homes. It was freezing and it was raining and it was windy. It was just impossible.

I don’t know how Palestinians continue to struggle in the way that they do. I have a lot of respect for them. Life is very tough. People talk about how, “now we’re going to have a nonviolent struggle.” Well 99 percent of the Palestinian population has been struggling nonviolently forever. The fact that you would go to a checkpoint—one of the hundreds and hundreds of checkpoints—and stand there in the hot sun or the freezing cold winter with your children and have to wait for hours and hours and hours until some 17-year-old Israeli soldier says you can go to your home. And you do that. And you do it quietly. And you just stand there. That is nonviolent struggle. They have been doing nonviolent struggle forever.

I just hope it’s not too late. I’m not real optimistic. I’m very worried about Israel and all of this talk about Iran and working it up for God-knows-what they’re going to do, and that’s very frightening. You know that whole region is changing. It’s very interesting to me that the new president of Egypt was meeting today with all the nonaligned countries, including Iran. It’s all changing over there. The treaties Egypt has had with Israel—who knows what’s going to come of those? It’s a very, very tricky time. I think we should all be worried, and we should pressure our congresspeople.

You know, almost every congressperson has been taken—U.S. congressperson—to Israel by the Zionists. And they’re shown all of the Jewish sites, and they’re told one side of this story. They never get to see Palestine; they never get to hear what the impact of the founding of the State of Israel has been on the Palestinian community. We need to do the same work. We need to get them there to go to Gaza, to go to the West Bank to see what life is like living under the longest occupation in history. But I don’t know how much time is left. I really don’t.

And on the other hand, the dynamics are changing. Just looking at how many Palestinian children are born, and how many Israeli children are born—it’s all changing. The demographics are going to be such that in five years, there will be more Palestinians living inside the 1948 borders—what’s called Israel—than outside. And who knows what that’s going to mean? I think time is running out. I think Israel has to come to some just resolution soon or all is lost.

SR: What keeps you going in the face of all that? 

BL: Oh, I don’t now. I’m 71 years old now, and I dropped out of high school in 11^th grade, and I’ve never gone back. Everything I learned has been on the street. I was president of the board of education in Berkeley. I ran as a high school dropout in 1981. But I grew up in a home where you took care of people. Where you helped people. If someone was ill in the neighborhood, my mother went and made sure there was food and helped take care of people. I think what carries me on is my anger at injustice. I know a lot of people say it’s not good to be angry, but in reality, it’s the anger at the unfairness in this world that just spurs me on.

I have four children and seven grandchildren, and one of my children has just turned 43, my son Charlie. And Charlie has Down syndrome, and lives with me. When he was born, there were no programs, there were no laws for people with disabilities. I was in the first generation of parents who got involved and helped write the laws that forced the school systems to close the special education schools and put our kids on the regular school site and integrate them into the classroom. And I think it’s that kind of fighting for Charlie and fighting the system and making sure he has the right to go to school and be in the regular classroom. And even before, I was very involved in fighting against the Vietnam War, and going to jail all the time. Being involved in demonstrations.

I remember the first flotilla, when Sloan Kaufman and myself and a few other people, we organized a peaceful pillage to go out and try to stop the USS New Jersey from going back to Vietnam to kill innocent Vietnamese people. And it was a six-story warship and we were in these little catamarans and canoes. And they overturned our boats and we were taken into the Philadelphia police station in leg-irons. It’s just been a long history for me of being outraged by all of these things. So it’s that anger that spurs me on.

Sometimes I get really tired. I don’t know. I’ve lost a lot of friends. I used to be the sweetheart of the left in Berkeley. I helped save our soda fountain, and I helped write the first commercial rent control law that was for two blocks in Berkeley to save the fountain. This was many years ago. The US had never had commercial rent control ever outside New York City during World War II. But Berkeley had it for three years before it was overturned.

When I think something is really wrong, I’m not going to be quiet. I get up and I fight and I try and change it. And I’ve been really lucky to meet the people that I’ve met. I’ve met kings and queens. But most of all, I’ve met the real royalty, Allen Ginsberg (who did events for us), Gore Vidal. A lot of them are gone now, and it’s very sad for me. Every week somebody else that I love and adore and that has helped us has died. I remember being the youngest person in the movement, so many years ago, and now I’m one of the oldest people. I just don’t know how it happened so quickly.

SR: Do hold out hope for movements like Occupy to put some of these issues back on the table? 

BL: Well I think there are a lot of young people who are now getting involved, but you know this is a tough time for young people. We were just talking about this last night—my niece and nephew were here from the East Coast. There isn’t the movement anymore. It’s too hard. This country has become so sick and so right-wing. I just don’t see it. I don’t see new leadership coming up. I think there are some wonderful, terrific young people doing things, but it’s much harder for them today than it was for us. It was so much easier back then for us to struggle; it’s much harder today. There’s so much out there that’s against kids speaking out and making change—things like anti-terrorism laws. For a minute I thought maybe the Occupy was going to happen and that was encouraging, but even that faded out. So I don’t know where it’s going to go. Of course there’s going to be young people who are just as angry as I was and make change.

But it’s not as easy today. Look at these people—these Republicans and Democrats. It’s really frightening, the kinds of things that they’re saying. It’s like 1950 all over again. To talk about a woman’s right to an abortion. To talk about the right to speak and say what you think. All of these rights are being taken away from us. I really think young people have got to wake up and realize that if they don’t get out there fight this, we’re finished. I’m worried for my grandchildren. I look at them and think, “My God. What is going to happen to them? What is it going to be like for them?”

SR: In terms of MECA’s future, do you plan to continue Let the Children Play and Heal? 

BL: Yes we do. In fact, we have a new project. We also have 150 young people that we send to college in Gaza and in the West Bank. And many of the women who had graduated from the university there have started a new project. They are working with battered women who are having problems with their husbands. And they’re working with children—this is so fascinating to me—they’re working with children whose parents were collaborators with the Israelis. These children have been isolated and other children don’t want to play with them, and don’t want to be around them, and life is very difficult for them. And about eight young women who have come through the Play and Heal program and college are now working with the children and working with the women who need help. So it’s continuing the next generation.

When I was there in Gaza last time I had a meeting with 75 of the women who came through that program and they all begged us to start the program over and do it for the men, for their husbands. They say the men need to be trained in the way the women were trained. So we’re trying to figure out how to do that.

SR: That kind of resilience is so inspiring. In her introduction to A Child’s View From Gaza, the book of children’s drawings from Let the Children Play and Heal that appeared last year, Susan Johnson told a story of children creating their art even through rolling blackouts, sometimes working by candlelight. It’s inspiring, but you have to wonder, where does that come from?  

BL: They’ve never known anything else. I look at children all over the world who are suffering and I wonder, how can they do that? I can’t believe this is happening. These children have never known anything else. These generations of kids in Gaza, this is all they’ve ever known. All they’ve known is occupation, oppression, lack of electricity, being beaten, their parents, their fathers in prison, children in prison. So this is all they’ve known. We look at it and say, “Well how do they do it?” They look at it and say, “Well it’s all we’ve ever known.” And it’s very sad.

But there is a resilience. Palestinian people amaze me all the time, because they have not given up. They’re angry, sometimes they feel furious and their hope isn’t there, but they don’t give up. And they will not give up. And there is not a Palestinian alive in the West Bank or Gaza or inside 1948 that doesn’t say, “This is our land, and we are not leaving, and we are not dying.” And they use this one word—I’ve heard it for 25 years from the mouths of thousands of Palestinian people—the word is steadfast. Sumud. They use it and they mean it. “We are steadfast. We will not be moved.” They’re incredible people.

Image by Middle East Children's Alliance. Used with permission.  

 

Middle East Children's Alliance: Where to Learn More  

20 Years of Caring for the Children from Middle East Children's Alliance on Vimeo.

 

Video: Drawings from Let the Children Play and Heal, along with some background on Operation Cast Lead.

Video: PressTV covers MECA’s Maia Project and the Water Writes mural campaign.

“Middle East Children’s Alliance Launches Campaign to Provide Clean Water for Children in Gaza to Honor the Legacy of Howard Zinn,” Common Dreams, January 27, 2011.

“Oakland Museum Cancels Palestinian Kids’ War Art,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 9, 2011.

“‘You Never Know What’s Next’: An Interview with Barbara Lubin,” Electronic Intifada, October 7, 2006.

“No Justice for Rachel Corrie,” The Nation, August 31, 2012.

“Gaza in 2020: A liveable place?”UN Country Team, August 27, 2012.

A Child's View from Gaza: Palestinian Children's Art and the Fight Against Censorship. Edited by Howard Levine. Pacific View Press, 2012.

Main site: MECAforpeace.org 

Either Israel's blockade of Gaza is a blunt and vile form of collective punishment or Amnesty International, Oxfam, and the World Health Organization are staffed by pathological liars. Writing for Foreign Policy, Yousef Munayyer has assembled a vital fact sheet called What exactly is the blockade of Gaza? In it, Munayyer shares data from human rights organizations and aid agencies to present a crisp and chilling picture of Gaza under under siege.

Source: Foreign Policy

In November of 2008, the backup batteries unexpectedly failed at a power plant in the Gaza Strip. Almost anywhere else, the incident would have been a blip, forgotten a week later. But this is Gaza—blockaded by Israel and Egypt and cut off from the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank. It’s a place where more than a million and a half people inhabit a strip of land not even one-third the size of the city of Los Angeles… and where there is only one power plant.

That is what any self-respecting professor of the journalism would call an airtight lead. Perhaps it would surprise you to learn that a tightly-written, historically astute, and compassionate piece about the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip found a home in the official magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. If so, you don’t know IEEE Spectrum. It’s an Utne Reader favorite and stories like Sharon Weinberger’s Powerless in Gaza are the reason.

At Gaza’s only power station, which has been bombed and blockaded by the Israelis, engineers are in permanent MacGyver mode. When the plant’s turbines suddenly cease to function, workers kick start them with 170 twelve-volt car batteries patched together. Damaged steel poles are replaced with wooden ones. Even if they were to convince Israel to allow the steel replacements in, Weinberger explains, the concrete they would need to secure the poles in the ground is banned under the Israeli blockade.

The piece has everything an electrical engineer needs to stay hooked, and there is the chilling humanitarian angle, too. We are, after all, talking about electricity. Without it, hospitals go dark and food rots in retail and home refrigerators. And there has been an awful lot of darkness for Gaza residents:

If anything, it’s remarkable that Gaza’s grid isn’t in worse shape… Israel bombed the power plant in late 2006, destroying six transformers and halting operations… the Israeli military described the strike as a military blow aimed at Hamas. The bombing left thousands of Gazans in the dark and pushed the sewage and water systems, which rely on electricity, to the brink of collapse.

The power plant sputtered back to life in 2007… But the plant had barely been resuscitated when another setback hit. Israel, declaring Hamas a “hostile entity,” sharply curtailed electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza, setting off the first of what would be periodic energy crises that continue to this day.

The most recent war, which began on 27 December 2008, brought yet another catastrophe to Gaza. Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, a three-week military offensive retaliating against Hamas for a series of rocket attacks that fell on civilian areas in southern Israel. The military operations, which combined strikes from the air and sea with a ground assault, damaged transformers and several of the transmission lines that brought power from Israel. Gaza also lost a line from Egypt during the offensive. Lacking fuel, the power plant shut down completely. Vast swaths of Gaza were left once again to fend for themselves in massive blackouts.

The timeline of the power plants existence is like a metaphor for the situation in Gaza generally, something cartoonist and reporter Joe Sacco describes succinctly in his book about Gaza: “Palestinians never seem to have the luxury of digesting one tragedy before the next one is upon them.”

Source: IEEE Spectrum

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Image by Rami Almeghari.

When the BBC published its series of interviews with Gaza residents talking about Hamas, they pushed the most compelling conversation (and the only comments by a woman) to the bottom of the page. It’s a conversation with Tihani Abed Rabbu. Her teenage son Mustafa, her brother and her closest friend were killed during Israel's January assault, codenamed "Operation Cast Lead."

Journalist and Middle East analyst Helena Cobban took issue with the placement of Abed Rabbu’s story. On her blog, Just World News, she protests the placement of this woman’s story:

Too frequently decision makers in the [mainstream media] simply marginalize women's experiences. But women's work in holding families together in very tough times lies at the heart of the social resiliency that can either save or break a community that's in conflict. So it is not only a compelling 'human interest' story—it is also at the heart of the big 'political' story regarding whether, for example, the people of Gaza or South Lebanon end up bowing to Israel's very lethally pursued political demands, or not. Maybe the BBC could, at the very least, elevate Ms. Abed-Rabbu's story to the top of that page?

Here’s a profoundly unsettling excerpt from the interview with Abed-Rabbu:

"I'm afraid that after I have lost Mostafa, that I will lose somebody else as well. When my children go to sleep, and I look at them, I start to think 'who is next—is it Ahmad's turn, or his brother?'

"What worries me is the safety of my family, my sons and my husband. My husband is going through a difficult time, a crazy time. He wants to affiliate with Hamas, he wants to get revenge after what they have done to us.

"How do you expect us to be peaceful after they have killed my son and turned my family into angry people—as they refer to us, "terrorists". I cannot calm my family down.

Sources: BBC, Just World News 

Image by  Amir Farshad Ebrahimi , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

While rocket attacks in Gaza have subsided since a ceasefire was brokered in late January, the devastation for those living in the war zone has hardly ebbed.

Writing for the New Statesman, Sami Abdel-Shafi describes post-ceasefire Gaza as “almost exactly as it was before the war.” Abdel-Shafi continues that, “[d]esperation and hopelessness are now soaring to new levels,” and despite the death and destruction incurred by the fighting, “[t]here seems to be no victor in this war.”

Blogging for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s Untold Stories, Elliott Woods, an American reporter, describes a state of persistent fear that continues to shroud Gaza:

When I first arrived, my Gazan hosts practically wet their pants laughing when they saw how I shuddered at the sound of nearby explosions. But one of them—middle-aged, thick-necked Mahdi—later admitted to me, "We're all scared, all the time."

Now that I have been here for almost a month—mostly during the so-called cease-fire—I can feel the continual threat in my bones. It's an ever present unease, like a headache or a hangover that doesn't keep you in bed, but keeps you conscious of the fact that something isn't quite right.

Israeli attacks aren’t the only source of that “ever present unease.” According to the Guardian, Hamas has been conducting a “new and violent crackdown” on “all perceived internal opponents,” supposedly out of concern that the war weakened its grip on power in the Gaza Strip. Amnesty International alleges dozens have been murdered, beaten, or shot, though not killed.

“People are afraid to live normal lives, to express their opinions freely,” one activist told the Guardian. “There is no freedom of speech, of movement, of travelling or having real healthcare. Hamas is raising George Bush's policy: those not with us are against us.”

The United Nations reports that, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Israeli attacks killed 1,440 (pdf), injured 5,380, and displaced hundreds of thousands in Gaza. Additionally, some one million Israelis had their lives “disrupted” in some way by Hamas attacks. But post-ceasefire, getting aid to Gaza—where it’s desperately needed—has been particularly difficult (pdf) due to restrictive and inconsistent access.

Image by Al Jazeera, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Sources: New Statesman, Untold Stories, Guardian, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

 

In a fog of photographs and video footage showing Palestinians bloodied and bandaged in Gaza, the arts community of Gaza has effectively been disappeared with countless other indicators of a thriving human community interrupted by unthinkable violence. Maymanah Farhat specializes in modern and contemporary Arab art and has written a compelling piece about Gaza's artists which we've reprinted here with the permission of Electronic Intifada.

 

"I am working under the voices of fire, Israeli warplanes ... I still breathe, take some pictures everyday"
- Shareef Sarhan, Palestinian artist, 12 January 2009

Israel's vicious attack on Gaza has already claimed more than 1,200 lives and has injured thousands while destroying the infrastructure of the tiny coastal territory, including the handful of nonprofit venues that make cultural life possible. Even before the invasion, the combination of 41 years of Israeli occupation, frequent military incursions and attacks, infighting among Palestinian factions, and a dwindling economy created a difficult, if not impossible, environment to sustain an art scene. Yet, with the determination that has defined Palestinian art for decades, artists in Gaza have continued to create and organize, including establishing artistic associations and collectives and organizing frequent exhibitions both at home and abroad. A look at some of Gaza's seminal artists reveals an artistic tradition that has survived years of conflict while contributing greatly to Arab culture.

Born in Lydda in 1930 and forced to live in a refugee camp in Khan Younis in 1948, Ismail Shammout was one of Palestine's leading modernist painters. He organized his first exhibition in Khan Younis in 1953 and lived in exile throughout most of his career, residing in Kuwait, Jordan, and Lebanon with his wife and colleague, Palestinian painter Tamam al-Akhal. Often incorporating local folklore and history in portraits of women and children amidst scenes of expulsion and conflict, his monumental compositions and expressionist style became an important part of Palestinian visual culture, influencing generations of artists seeking to articulate their collective narrative. In addition to creating an impressive body of work and exhibiting across the region, Shammout produced Art in Palestine (1989), one of the first English-language texts on Palestinian art.

Returning to Lydda after a 50 year absence, Shammout found his ancestral home occupied by Israeli settlers. The experience launched him into creating a large-scale series of paintings with the hope of having it on permanent display in Palestine. "Palestine: the Exodus and the Odyssey" (1997-2000) contains some of his most memorable work -- several mural-size canvases chronicling the Palestinian existence from the Nakba, or expulsion in 1948, to the first and second Palestinian intifadas with the visual prowess and historical magnitude found in the work of those he admired such as the Mexican Muralists. In "Life Prevails" (1999), a woman stands as an anthropomorphic representation of the Palestinian spirit -- defiant and stoic above dozens of children while the mosques and churches of Jerusalem and shores of Gaza are shown in the background. In an inscription accompanying the work Shammout stated that "The Israeli occupation was oppressive and ruthless. But we struggled to survive, to assert our presence, to preserve our traditions, and sustain our dreams." He died in 2006, just days before Israel's assault on Gaza and Lebanon, which devastated the neighborhoods near his Beirut home.

The pen and ink drawings of Abdel Rahmen al-Mozayen have become synonymous with Palestinian liberation struggles. Born in Kubyba in 1943, al-Mozayen's mother was an expert in the art of embroidery and while serving as a resistance fighter with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) he produced a number of political posters in the 1970s and 1980s, iconic works that incorporate a unique combination of embroidery, ancient history, and stylized figures. Using the complex symbolism found in Palestinian embroidery to communicate steadfastness, his references to Canaanite heritage testify to the ancestral roots and longevity of Palestinian art, an element that is paramount to combating the co-option of local culture by Israelis and the near erasure of historical evidence by the occupation. Simultaneously, his employment of embroidery is significant -- with occupational forces often clamping down on the displaying of flags or material related to the resistance, the art form evolved into an intricate coded language of signifiers used as an act of defiance.

In "Children of the Intifada" (1988), al-Moyzen depicts two young children dressed in traditional Palestinian garb sitting atop a horse. The horse is adorned with an embroidered tapestry that reads "December" in Arabic and "1987" in English -- the month during which the first Palestinian intifada erupted. From the horse's bridle hangs a key, a familiar symbol for Palestinians, as many took the keys to their homes when forced out by Zionist militias in 1948, expecting their expulsion to be temporary. The children have slingshots in their hands and a supply of stones nearby, a reference to the rock-throwing youth that were essential to the protests of the uprising. In mid-journey, the horse takes the children over a bed of rocks, perhaps suggesting the Jordan River as they enter to liberate Palestine or a metaphorical road that is paved with the very tools needed for their resistance.

In contrast, the pensive and morose paintings of Fayez Sersawi underscore the psychological and physical effects of the Israeli occupation. Working to document the brutal tactics used by Israeli forces, he paints images capturing the daily experiences of Palestinians under widespread violence. Concurrently, he has created such works as "Two Men" (2001), an introspective portrait of two figures, presumably a father and son. The positioning of the men, as they lean against each other, occupies the foreground and center of the composition, leaving little room for an identifiable setting. Instead, the same expressionist brushstrokes that detail the age and wear of their faces appear in the background, unifying the figures with their surroundings. Rendered with aggressive markings that suggest chaos, the violence of the background continues on the bodies of the figures as though consuming their entire beings. The intimate posturing of Sersawi's subjects is also of interest, as it resembles that of Christian icon painting. Tracing its roots to early examples of icon painting near pilgrimage sites such as Jerusalem -- an observation brought to light by painter and scholar Kamal Boullata -- much of contemporary Palestinian art can be viewed within this artistic practice. Resembling compositions of the holy mother and child, the artist's iconification of Palestinian men under siege is a bold take on the tradition with weighty political inferences.

Sersawi has also greatly contributed to art education in Gaza. Using a YMCA facility equipped with the workings of a university-level classroom, he taught dozens of artists, many of who are now actively taking the reigns of the cultural scene. Today this new generation continues the movement formed by these visionaries. Unlike the Western model, in which commercial venues and public and private institutions shape artistic output or at least determine what is shown, the Palestinian art scene, which transcends Israeli checkpoints, Israel's wall in the West Bank and the continuous annexation of land, has relied on a dynamic community-based system of nonprofit galleries and art spaces that remains in line with the everyday political realities of its surroundings.

Artist organizations play an important role in providing a much-needed environment for creation and the furthering of art through public events and education. Two leading Gaza organizations comprised of young and emerging artists are Eltiqa Group and Windows From Gaza. Boasting a variety of artists working in photography, sculpture, new media and painting, these groups regularly produce exhibitions and workshops open to the public.

Among its eleven members, Eltiqa Group includes painters Rima al-Muzayen and Mohamed Dabous. Al-Muzayen's colorful compositions explore the experiences of Palestinian women. Dabous teaches visual arts at Gaza's al-Aqsa University and creates striking abstract ink and pastel works on paper. In 2008, Eltiqa hosted a number of noteworthy events for its members including the solo exhibitions of al-Muzayen and Dina Matar at the French Cultural Centre and a group show of Palestinian art featuring Abdel Nasser Amer, at the Rashad Shawwa Cultural Center. Outside of Gaza, Eltiqa was part of an impressive lineup of events such as Without Preparing -- From Gaza, a joint exhibition with artists from Windows From Gaza at Makkan House gallery in Amman, Jordan and Morceaux Choisis Gaza, a group show at the Universite Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France.

A number of Windows From Gaza members concurrently work in video, installation, photography and painting such as Basel al-Maqousy, an art instructor at the Jabalia Rehabilitation Centre who was recently featured in the AM Qattan Foundation's inaugural London exhibition Occupied Spaces, and Shareef Sarhan, whose art comments on the destruction of Palestine under the Israeli occupation. Sarhan has been photographing the damage, turmoil and civilian toll of Israel's current assault on Gaza.

The impact of Israel's latest act of barbarity on Gaza's cultural infrastructure has yet to be fully assessed. Reports have circulated that the Rashad Shawwa Cultural Centre has been bombed and the Institute for Palestine Studies has confirmed the destruction of the newly founded Gaza Music School, which taught children aged seven to 11, the majority of whom were girls. Located in a building owned by the Palestine Red Crescent Society, the Music School was hit in the first wave of shelling on 27 December. The fate of such important venues as the French Cultural Centre, the Municipality of Gaza's Arts and Crafts Village, al-Karam Center for Cultural Arts or the YMCA in Gaza City is unknown. Even if these centers were to sustain little or no structural damage, their futures are still uncertain as the cultural workers whose dedication they depend on are sure to be facing dire circumstances.

Images: Ismail Shammout, "Life Prevails" (1999). (Image courtesy of Al Jisser Group); Abdel Rahman al Mozayen, "Children of the Intifada" (1988). (Collection of Souha Xochitl Shayota, New York)

The Israeli-Palestinian war has spread to the Internet, where hackers loyal to both sides are “defacing” websites to spread information and photos from the battlefield, Jon Gordon reports for Future Tense.

Jart Armin, who Gordon describes as a “cyber warfare researcher,” says the hackers have been fighting since 2001, but recently stepped up their efforts by attacking websites in Europe. Palestinian hackers have been particularly active, says Armin, breaking into websites to post photos of dead or injured people. Turkish hackers have enlisted too, which could spell trouble, according to Armin, because they’re among the best in the world. One Turk claims the world record for bringing down 20,000 websites in a single hour.

Indeed, the famed Turkish hackers are already living up to their reputation. According to the Sofia News Agency, “Two websites maintained by NATO and the US Army have been defaced by the Turkish group Agd_Scorp/Peace Crew as a protest against the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.”

Photo by gutter, licensed under Creative Commons.

Coverage of the conflict in Israel and Gaza rarely has a nuanced human face. But citizens from both sides of the border are working to change that.

Peace Man and Hope Man, for instance, are friends who maintain a blog about the violence and their daily lives. Peace Man is a Palestinian, living in a refugee camp in Gaza, and Hope Man is an Israeli living in Sderot. Though the two live only about 10 miles from each other, Hope Man, whose real name is Eric Yellin, told NPR’s Melissa Block that they both knew virtually no one across the border before the blog.

“But as soon as I started meeting people,” Yellin said, “it created a real connection and understanding that on the other side of the border, there are people exactly like us who are suffering. We are suffering, too, through this conflict. But the only way to end this was through some kind of connection and dialogue.”

“Gaza Sderot: Life in Spite of Everything” is an online video project similarly aimed at fostering dialogue and understanding between Israelis and Palestinians. For two months, two two-minute videos—one following a resident of Gaza, the other an Israeli from Sderot—were posted to the site every day. The videos depict scenes of everyday life as its lived by normal people.

“When you realize that people have the same issues about work or about love, about raising your kids, in places where you don’t first think in these terms, well then I get the feeling that we’re doing good work. And that happened quite a few times,” the project’s executive producer, Serge Gordey, told The World’s Carol Zall.

These alternative lenses not only initiate dialogue, they effectively communicate the weight of the situation for both sides, a particularly important function given the lack of on-the-ground reporting from Gaza. In a recent post, Hope Man writes, "Many people of our region have left it for good over the years. Bringing up children in such a reality seems almost abusive and certainly irresponsible." Just above that, Peace Man's latest post from Gaza ends with this reflection: "I hope I will have the chance to write you again."

Image by Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, licensed under Creative Commons.

Accompanied by only a computer-generated backing track run through a 12-track amplifier, Hosam Abu Abdu leads his band through its regular practice at a police station in Gaza City. Protectors of the Homeland, as they call themselves, aren’t the typical boy band. Abu Abdu is 40 years old, and his five bandmates don’t appear to be regular heartthrobs either. But Protectors of the Homeland do carry on the long tradition of singers providing inspiration in a time of need.

According to Britain’s Telegraph, the group pays homage to the party and its leaders with songs such as “Change” and “Reform”—and with lines like “By the shrouds of the dead we are inspired.” Abu Abdu and five others formed the group last summer as part of an arts initiative of Hamas’ domestic security service, the Executive Force. “It is our job to inspire the foot soldiers,” Abu Abdu told the Telegraph. “We want to urge the soldiers and officers to push on, to make the effort needed in the struggle to end the occupation.”

The group hopes to release an album, as well as build a theater and support public dancing. Successful or not, the band members said making music beats what they were doing in June: fighting rival faction Fatah in the streets.

Thanks, the Kicker! —Eric Kelsey