Viva Palestina aid convoy in Gaza

Guernica. Twinned with Gaza

I'm not normally a fan of George Galloway but he's done an amazing job getting aid to the Palestinians in Gaza while the world remains mute.

The Viva Palestina convoy of 110 vehicles carrying a million quid in aid, has borne arrest, threat, assault and humiliation, not to mention a near complete press blackout. They've finally achieved their goal and entered Gaza, a splinter of land crushed between the state of Israel and the eastern Mediterranean Sea and inhabited by 400,000 desperate human beings.

The cargo represents a fraction of the resources needed to get the Gazans anywhere near what we think of as normality. But it presents a powerful example that world leaders might follow, and let's the beleaguered population know we're thinking about them.

Well done, Viva Palestina.

Viva Palestina aid convoy in Gaza

Guernica. Twinned with Gaza

I'm not normally a fan of George Galloway but he's done an amazing job getting aid to the Palestinians in Gaza while the world remains mute.

The Viva Palestina convoy of 110 vehicles carrying a million quid in aid, has borne arrest, threat, assault and humiliation, not to mention a near complete press blackout. They've finally achieved their goal and entered Gaza, a splinter of land crushed between the state of Israel and the eastern Mediterranean Sea and inhabited by 400,000 desperate human beings.

The cargo represents a fraction of the resources needed to get the Gazans anywhere near what we think of as normality. But it presents a powerful example that world leaders might follow, and let's the beleaguered population know we're thinking about them.

Well done, Viva Palestina.

Israel massacre in Gaza: 270 dead and rising

Not content with trying to starve out an entire population with the blockade on Gaza, Israel has now used the cover of the Christmas period to attack the Gazan people directly with massive air strikes.

Since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, 9 Israelis have been killed, while 1,400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces during the same period. But casting all sense of proportion aside, Israel is the terror state that slams missiles into blocks of flats, killing civilian residents just because it believes an enemy is living there. It is now using US supplied F-16 fighter aircraft and state of the art technology to further crush civilians who voted in a way that displeased it.

The death tally is pushing 300 including 40 police cadets at a passing out parade (picture below).



Their excuse is that, since the end of the six month truce on December 19th, Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel territory. Reports vary with up to three Israelis killed. While any innocent death is one too many, there’s something pathetic and symbolic in these attacks. Yet every day Gazans are dying from lack of medicine and food denied them by the Israeli siege.

One Palestinian voice quoted at Socialist Unity website points out:

“Any response to Israeli attacks — whether peaceful protests against the apartheid wall in Bilin and Nilin in the West Bank is met with bullets and bombs. There are no rockets launched at Israel from the West Bank, and yet Israel’s attacks, killings, land theft, settler pogroms and kidnappings never ceased for one single day during the truce. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has acceded to all of Israel’s demands, even assembling “security forces” to fight the resistance on Israel’s behalf. None of that has spared a single Palestinian or her property or livelihood from Israel’s relentless violent colonization.”

Another post at SU reminds us:

"A sobering thought to consider that 60 years ago 530 Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated and destroyed, and that 750,000 men, women, and children were forcibly expelled by Zionist terrorist organisations like the Stern Gang and Irgun in the process of 78 percent of historic Palestine being expropriated."

Israel has turned from David fighting Goliath into Godzilla, mindlessly smashing through a people already weakened by a two-year blockade preventing deliveries of food, fuel, printed materials and medical supplies. There are battery chickens treated better than this.

BTW, you know who created Hamas? Israel did as a religious counterweight to the secular Al Fatah. A bit like when the US backed the Mojahadeen against the Russians in early 1980s Afghanistan and sowed the seeds of Al Qaida.

STOP PRESS
Israel broke ceasefire 5th November. Story here
Obama on holiday in Hawaii says, "No comment".
Iranian leader Khamenei tells all Muslims to defend the women and children of Gaza against Israeli raids. More here.
Times online article on Hamas
Israeli trade unions protest against the bombardment.
"We know from our members that they have to travel 200 kilometers each day, like the nine who were injured in Ashkelon , just to find a place that is willing to hire them. ..."




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