Happy New Year from Gaza, on the second anniversary of ‘Operation Cast Lead’. Still so few internationals here who aren’t in their UN armoured vehicles or ICRC cars, for some more independent voices especially with the English language and cultural understanding. There’s a lot of work to do and there’s forever talk of a new war happening, during which times people on the ground reporting out will be important. I don’t think this will happen in the next month or so but come over here if you can.
Been working a lot with the International Solidarity Movement and the regular buffer-zone demonstrations,a href=”http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1369″>letter writing with the Palestinian Students Campaign for the academic boycott of Israel (PSCABI), teaching in the camps and some general reporting. We’re looking to make more video conferences between student groups here and University and solidarity groups in the UK and beyond.

The strength of everyone here is still inspiring, things are at a low point after so many years of holding firm regardless of the isolation, occupation and continuing atrocities. The more you stay here, the more you realise how real is the yearning for people to return to their place of origin. Over two thirds of the people in Gaza are UN registered refugees, with explicit narratives of how they were forced out of their 531 villages and 10 urban neighbourhoods bulldozed or emptied by the nascent Israeli army which made way for the Israeli State in 1948. The families of each house, each village, each town contained real people, with real memories and continuing grievances, exacerbated by decades of further loss and recently the 4 year Israeli siege (cooking gas shortage at the moment, still hardly any cement), ‘Operation Cast Lead’ that killed over 1400 and over 350 of their kids, shootings from the borders, power shortages (no electricity till 7pm today) not to mention some worrying signs with the internal situation at the moment.

I urge you to join the growing boycott divestment and sanction movement in an attempt to hold the Israeli regime to account, all these past crimes so far described, detailed and documented, but with no action taken whatsoever, and so the crimes will continue. If they think there will be no consequences and the carte blanche continues, people’s fears here of another massive attack on the Gaza population will doubtless come to fruition and the collective punishment of all Palestinians will continue.

I’d love to offer a happier note at New Year, but new year here is synonymous the 2 year anniversary of the bombings of Gaza so I’m giving you a couple of stories from here about children.

Adie x

Below is a recent account of a demo we were on a few days ago during which we learned more about the Hamdan family to whom tragedy struck 2 years  and 2 days ago.

And here is the story of what hit the Samouni family 2 years ago on the 3rd of January, and some of the hopes they have, (was in Red Pepper a couple of months ago). Amal Samouni who I saw today is still struggling with the shrapnel lodged in her skull from being buried in rubble for 3 days, she continues with worrying headaches and nosebleeds – the last her mother was telling me hit 4 days ago. But here is Amal, Nour, Mona Samouni who lost 29 members of their extended family out at the beach in happier times

The Story of Lama, Ismail, Haia, as Beit Hanoun Demonstration Commemorates 2 years since the Gaza attacks

30th December, 2010

A demonstration commemorating the beginning of “Operation Cast Lead” was held Tuesday in the Gazan city of Beit Hanoun. Families of victims were in attendance, as were 5 International Solidarity Movement activists. Two years have passed since the Israeli attacks on Gaza, which killed over 1400 people in just 23 days. The vast majority of victims were civilians, including 350 children, according to the United Nations and other major human rights organizations.

The Local Initiative demonstration began at the railway street in Beit Hanoun, near some of the most horrendous attacks which occurred during the land, air and sea bombardment of Gaza. The group of around 40 continued into the ‘buffer zone’ to within 100m of the Israeli border, holding flags and photos of children killed two years ago. During the 23-day attack, none of Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants (including 800,000 children) were safe.

Beit Hanoun was not spared this horror, and stories from the attacks continue to haunt survivors. Abed Hamdan carried a banner with pictures of his youngest brother and two youngest sisters, Ismail (9), Haia (12) and Lama (4). While marching towards the border, demonstrators stopped at a crossroads with al-Seka Street. At approximately 7:45am on 30 December 2008, Haia, Ismail and Lama were taking rubbish to this intersection when they were hit by two missiles launched from an F16 fighter jet. According to the children’s uncle, their bodies were found in three different locations, each about 50 meters away from where the missiles hit. Relatives ran with Lama and Haias’ bodies to Beit Hanoun Hospital, but the girls had died at the scene. Ismail sustained shrapnel wounds to his abdomen and chest, and had several broken bones. He died the following day in Al Shifa Hospital, in Gaza City. According to witnesses, the Hamdan children had been directly targeted by the Israeli, US-made F16 jet.

The demonstration proceeded past another collapsed building, where a father there described how he was the lone survivor of his family after the building was bombed. The group continued to march into the buffer-zone[1],the area of land near to the Israeli border where attacks have continued, injuring and killing countless farm-workers and rock-collectors since and the threat depriving many of their livelihoods. They gathered under watch from the Erez crossing control towers from where Israel snipers have frequently shot at the demonstrators and Local Initiative coordinator, Saber Al Zaaneen spoke about the devastation still felt by the Israeli army’s attacks 2 years before.

The demonstration passed a collapsed building, where a father described being the lone survivor from his family after the building was bombed. The group then proceeded into the ‘buffer zone’, the strip of land along the Israeli border where attacks continue, injuring and killing countless farmers and rubble-collectors and depriving many of their livelihoods. Demonstrators gathered in the ‘zone’ for speeches, under surveillance from the Erez Crossing watchtowers where Israeli snipers frequently shoot at demonstrators.

Local Initiative coordinator Saber Al Zaaneen spoke about the devastation still felt two years after the Israeli military’s attacks. “We’re here to reject the Israeli-imposed ‘buffer-zone’ that takes away so much of our farmland, and in defiance of the 23-day Zionist aggression 2 years ago, horrors once again visited upon us the Palestinians of Gaza, told to the world by the United Nations Goldstone Report.[2] The burning and bleeding under the rubble of the killing from the air, land and sea will never beat us. Long live Palestine, our steadfastness is strengthened by the memory or our loved ones, the hundreds of children murdered while the world watched on their television screens. We emphasize our legitimate right to resist occupation, and use all methods of struggle and fight until the end of Israel’s inhuman siege and bring our eventual liberation.”

International Solidarity Movement activist Adie Mormech expressed the urgency required for the international community and solidarity movements to act.

“The world is now aware of these well-documented crimes against humanity, the massacres, occupation, ethnic cleansing and siege of the Palestinian territories – all collective punishment[3] and serious violations of the 4th Geneva Convention. We cannot stand for this. We cannot allow Lama, Ismail and Haia to die with no justice to them or their family, or the families of the 1400 others massacred in the Israeli attacks. So where is the action? Where is the compensation? Where are the peacekeepers? Where are the sanctions on Israel? How many will they kill the next time, perhaps soon, if nothing is done about the 4 year medieval siege of Gaza or the murder of hundreds of Palestinian children? It is up to international civil society to do all they can and to boycott, divest and sanction from the Israeli Apartheid regime.”

The demonstrators returned to Beit Hanoun, with talk of more violence ahead and the prospects of another impending Israeli assault on the Gaza. Israel’s blockade of Gaza continues unabated, despite being denounced by the European Union, The Red Cross and all major human rights groups as collective punishment, illegal according to article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention.

On 2nd December 2010, 22 international organizations including Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Children, Christian Aid, and Medical Aid for Palestinians produced the report Dashed Hopes, Continuation of the Gaza Blockade[4] stating that there had been no material change to the devastating effects of the siege, and calling for international pressure on Israel to unconditionally lift the blockade.

The Hamdan family remains in ruins from the loss of their 3 youngest children. When their father, Talal Hamdan, spoke of their deaths in his home, there was still a quiet disbelief in his voice at what had happened to them. The family’s sorrow is unending.

“We’re just a simple Palestinian family”, Talal said, sitting in the garden of his home which is two kilometers from the ‘buffer zone’. Before the war, he and his wife spent their evenings watching the children playing in the garden, in the spot where he sat. “There is no life anymore. The children are now usually nervous, argue a lot, my eldest son has given up work and my other son Abed has stopped bodybuilding for which he used to train for competitions.” The family finds it impossible to deal with the terrible loss. “Haja was such a smart girl,” her father remembers. “She was the first in her class, danced dabka, and was able to read the whole Qur’an.” For his remaining four daughters and two sons, a small sum of money initially came from the Palestinian government. One of his daughters received psychological help from Doctors without Borders. The help only lasted two months however, and only reached on of an entire community stricken with grief.

Talal and his wife continue to sit in front of their house in the evening, watching their garden. However their world is now very different, like many others in Palestine. When asked if he had a message for the world, Talal shook his head. “I just want people to know that they were innocent children being killed, who never did anything wrong in their lives”.

References:

[1] http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_special_focus_2010_08_19_english.pdf

[2] http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/12session/A-HRC-12-48.pdf

[3] http://gisha.org/UserFiles/File/publications/GazaClosureDefinedEng.pdf

[4] http://www.amnesty.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_21083.pdf

For more information, or further contacts based in Gaza, contact Adie Mormech 00972 (0) 597717696

On Tuesday morning a demonstration in Gaza by Palestinian activists from Local Initiative Beit Hanoun, with four International Solidarity Movement volunteers and other international activists and journalists was met with live ammunition fired by the Israeli army.

Soldiers opened fire on protestors in the buffer zone in Beit Hanoun, near to the Erez crossing but the demonstration succeeded in moving a section of the barbed wire fence dividing land on the Gazan side of the border.

Saber Al Za’anin lead the chanting against the occupation, siege and attacks on Palestinian farmers in Beit Hanoun, accompanied by about thirty Palestinians, nine international activists and a press team.  The crowd marched towards the wall around the Erez crossing and one of the watch towers was open, evidently monitoring as the group approached the wall at about 100 metres.  The barren waste land all around was a result of forced neglect – the place has rendered out-of-bounds to Palestinian farmers due to the threat of Israeli snipers and shelling.

The buffer-zone is 300 metres wide and stretches along the entire border fence on the frontier with Israel. Violent attacks by the Israeli military on anyone in the area have recurred consistently – and frequently live ammunition has been used against peaceful demonstrators and even farmers harvesting crops. According to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) the violence of the ‘buffer zone’ enforcement makes over 30% of Gaza’s agricultural land cannot be worked without severe personal risk, causing the loss of livelihoods.

“This was the first time anyone has entered this area of Palestinian land since the beginning of the siege. Farmers had long ago given up working on it because of the dangers”, Saber told us. Ssoon after an attempt was made to remove the twisted barbed wire fence positioned by the Israel army to divide two Palestinian fields.

Israeli sniper on a control tower next to Erez crossing fired live rounds near to the protest

A sniper was stood on top of one of the checkpoint towers and once protestors started to move the fence, live bullets were fired within 5 – 10 metres of the demonstrators. Two further attempts were made to move the fence and the firing increased, dust clouds rising from the ground where bullets bounced around people’s feet.  The men and women on the demonstration returned for cover, fortunately without casualties except for some minor scratches from dragging the fence.

History of Attacks

In recent years the land around the Erez border has seen frequent attacks.

Kamel Iswalim’s family and extended family have had everything taken away by Israeli incursions in the 'buffer-zone'

Kamel Iswalim’s family and brothers’ families lived just 500 metres from the border, right next to where the demonstration began. There had always been regular incursions and every six month the families were corralled by the IDF and shut into one room for hours. In 2006, his brother’s small two-room house was demolished by bulldozers. In 2007, the whole area was shot at by tanks, and Kamel was hit in the leg. On 5^th January 2009 during the bombardment and ground assault on Gaza that left over 1400 Palestinians dead, Kamel’s house was targeted.

Soldiers came to the front of the house at night, yelling in Hebrew that the family must leave the house within five minutes. They got shot at while coming out of their house, and they had no time to grab their belongings. Then they watched it being bulldozed, together with their five water wells and all of their trees. “Go to Gaza City and never come back again”, they were told by the soldiers. Kamel’s family lost everything they had and shortly after his father died from a heart attack from the ordeal.  In total, there were ten houses destroyed in that area along with Gaza’s sole agricultural college. They are unable to farm any of the 13 dunums of land they lost – they cannot even enter it anymore, let alone rebuild their house despite it being further than 300 metres from the Israeli border.

“I have five sons and five daughters”, Kamel said. “I can’t offer them anything. I have two sons in college, and don’t know where to get the money from to enable them to finish their studies.” The whole family is now living in a hut on land which is one kilometer from the border, and it doesn’t belong to them. But farming this land gives them a salary of 50 dollars per month – 50 dollars for a family of twelve. “When we were last shot at?” Kamel laughs sadly. “We are shot at pretty much every day, even here, one kilometer from the border.”  His neighbour Ab Dir Kadel Rahmed tried his luck and spent four years rebuilding his house, after it was destroyed in 2006. It lasted six months before the Israeli military demolished it again.

“I call the western governments to stand up and stop what’s going on here. It’s enough”, Kamel says. “Enough lives were destroyed, enough people were killed. It’s just enough.”

Palestinians moved the fence by themselves in the Israeli imposed buffer-zone, while the world does nothing to stop the illegal land expropriation

A derelict armoured vehicle was sent 20 metres through the air by the force of Friday night's 1.5 ton bomb

The bomb that hit the former Arafat Compound near the Gaza Beach road was said to be the biggest to hit Gaza City since the onslaught of ‘Cast Lead’: the 3 week Israeli bombing and ground attack of the Gaza Strip during the new year of 2009. In our visit to the bomb site yesterday, a graveyard for vehicles from previous bombardments, we saw the blast had blown an armoured car 20 metres from its original spot, sandwiching another car nearby.  Like most people, such as those sitting at my table at the beachside café about 800m away from the strike, I had not experienced a bomb before, least of all one that weighed about one and a half tons, leaving behind it a crater the size of a small house.

The crater left by the bomb around 4 metres deep and 5m accross

It’s important to know what it’s like beneath the bombs..  the ferocious sound of the impact, all your senses consumed by a shattering force - what had previously always been solid around you shuddering to the point of falling and crashing. The immediate reaction was that our café was under intensive attack and I think anyone within 2 km would have thought the same about the building they were inside. Under no circumstances do you expect anything of such phenomenal power to shake the entirety of your surroundings – some of the clientele near the beachside of the cafe jumped under the tables, having previously been sipping arabic coffee of smoking shisha. My instinct was to sprint out towards the exit, but then I backtracked to get my laptop! Other people were displaying similarly frantic illogical activity around the table.

It became clearer the hit was further down the beach and we looked out to see swarms of people heading in from the many tables by the sea. The electricity went out, and over the next 10 minutes most people had left the building. As the lights flickered to come on again, another round of facial panic circled our table, your body and thoughts on edge, no controlling the quickening heart beat and unsteady movement. While I could never completely empathise with 3 weeks of bombing and the effect such devastation would have on me or the Gazans who endured it in 2009, certain things I could understand a lot more:

Why children were so traumatized from the ordeal, the total lack of security to absolutely everything that had all your life been so secure, the moment of impact’s deafening noise and vibration, what bombing and bombs really mean beyond the banal warspeak headline, beyond the sober statistics, beyond words that could never convey the feeling of the impact, the feeling of the injured, the families of the dead. This is Gaza. This is Iraq. This is Afghanistan. It really isn’t about the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Insurgents, Hamas, Police Colleges, Training areas. It’s about the people under these bombs, under this military occupation, under this seige.

A woman, clearly confused comes looking for a family member at the El Shifa hospital on Friday night

Some things I don’t fully understand. How can such a destructive force be made on mass production and as Robert Fisk recently pointed out be so readily provided to this Israeli government? How can such investment around the world be made in devices so dedicated to the kind of mass murder that is incomprehensible until you feel one hitting the ground around you? Why Gaza, where people already live under a hermetic and suffocating siege, with no movement, very little hope for an independent livelihood, arable farmland made useless or unreachable by the regular Israeli shootings at the buffer-zone all along the Israel border, a population of mostly refugees, in refugee camp ghettos for 40 or 60 years yearning for a return to the land from where they were violently ejected by the nascent Israeli army, all those years passing and still no justice. They get these bombs too?

At least 17 injured by Friday night’s bomb, one ‘Hamas commander’ killed in Deir el Balah, like his wife and five children were killed during the ‘Cast Lead’ bombings over the new year of 2009. Those children like over 400 other children who perished under the bombs during those 3 weeks, and 3 more injured by last week’s bombing. The next day we saw a youth on a life support machine in the intensive care unit of Al Shifa hospital, shot with two others collecting scrap metals by Israeli occupation force snipers near the border early Saturday morning. Justice has no meaning for anyone near to what the Israeli judge, jury and executioner has in store.

We’re expecting more, noises of an escalation, Israeli F-16s are currently flying overhead.

Above – Flashback: Norwegian Doctor Mads Gilbert describing civilian casualties from Al Shifa hospital during Israel’s operation ‘Cast Lead’

One of the victims of the huge bomb dropped on Gaza City

30^th July 2010, 11:30pm

Major bomb attack in central Gaza City

At around 11:30pm Friday night, ‘The Arafat Compound’ Police College was bombed by Israeli F-16s, in the area of ‘Al Montada’ injuring 17 people, 3 seriously. 3 children were also among the injured. We felt the enormous impact of the bomb in a nearby café, the massive explosion shaking buildings and smashing windows.

The edge of the scene later in the night from where the bomb had struck

 The power of the bomb was described by a Gazan resident as a rocket of over a ton in weight, the likes of which had not been seen frequently since the horrific three week bombing over the new year of 2009. As well as reports of other bombings near the Gaza City port there were also rocket attacks on Deir el Belah and Rafah.

Those first at the scene described building debris and burned out cars, one man had been severely injured to the eyes and head by shrapnel from the bomb.  

Another injured man is brought from an arriving ambulance at Al-Shifa Hospital

When we arrived at Shifa hospital there were scenes of chaos as loved ones were not allowed inside to visit while the patients were being treated, intermittently more of the injured arrived amidst a flood of waiting media. Others had arrived at the hospital with psychological trauma caused by the enormous impact of the bomb, some were confused such that they couldn’t describe whether they had an injury or not. Many had been reminded of the attacks during operation Cast Lead when 300 F-16 bomb attacks took place during the first 2 minutes of the campaign, the operations sent terror through the Gaza Strip and killed over 1400 people, including over 400 children.

Israel’s  attack late Friday night followed a rocket that landed in Askelon, Southern Israel that caused no injuries, suspected of being fired by small militant factions in Gaza.

Internationals who have worked with farmers around the world, find themselves meeting some of the most dignified, hard working and family oriented people. This holds even more true from our experience working with Palestinian farmers, especially for those whose land happens to be near the Israeli border, where a third of Gaza’s most arable land is located. For those unaware of the environment, the additional challenges put before Gaza farmers and their families and workers have to be seen to be believed, and include:

• Getting shot at each day while planting or harvesting your crops with live ammunition by armed men behind a fence with F16 machine guns
• Having your crops and land overturned and destroyed by enormous bulldozers protected by jeeps, tanks and snipers of the Israeli army
• Having your farmhouse crushed or demolished losing your possessions, farming equipment, livestock and water-wells.
• Having huge areas of farmland bombed, with crop growth stunted by contamination from banned chemical weapons such as white phosphorous
• Replacement of equipment, rebuilding of houses, restocking of crops made impossible by a blockade preventing materials and equipment from reaching the population, such as saplings, pesticides and fertilizers, plastic sheets for greenhouses and hoses for irrigation

The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) report that the fertile farmland located around the buffer zone was in recent times the source of half of the food needs of Gaza’s population, the industry has since been devastated. Purely due to Israel’s siege of Gaza’s borders and their continuous attacks, farming has now become a very unproductive industry. Oxfam report that the combination of the Israeli war on Gaza and the attacks on the buffer zone make approximately 46 percent of Gazan agricultural land useless or unreachable.
The level of destruction from the last Israeli war on Gaza alone accounted for the destruction of 35 to 60 percent of the agricultural industry, according to the UN and World Health Organization.

As Israel has kept increasing the size of the buffer zone from 50m to 300m the threat has left many farmers only growing wheat near the border that does not require so much attention. Other areas have been abandoned. This is why the efforts to keep a presence in this land are so courageous and important, as well as to show the world the brutal face of Israel against one of the most noble, peaceful and important livelihoods. For that we thank the courage of the farmers and farm workers for exercising their right to their land in the face of live ammunition. Despite the bullets, it has been a pleasure to accompany farmers into the buffer zone and we are happy to be contacted by any farmers who would prefer to work there with internationals present. We also thank groups like Local Initiative who continue to make demonstrations into the buffer-zone refusing to accept the deprivation of human rights and justice.

As one such farmer Abu Thaima we work with told us, whose ethos we share: “It is not possible to leave our land. This land was full of orange and olive trees, and greenhouses – my house was here. This is our land, even if I’m killed, we will stay here forever.”

In the same way, you can rest assured that the growing international support for justice for Palestine will never leave Gaza, and will always be ready to help out with any action concerned with what is rightfully Palestinian.

Abu Walid Mahmoud Al-Zaq of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF), the group organising the event – on their 43^rd anniversary – presented awards in memory of ten journalists.

One of those was James Miller, a British documentary-maker killed in Gaza in May 2003, whose award was accepted on his behalf by current members of the International Solidarity Movement working in Gaza.

One Palestinian journalist honoured was Fadel Shana’a, killed along with eight other noncombatants, by a flechette shell fired by an Israeli tank, clearly seen by Fadel’s own footage of the shell being fired before he was killed a few seconds later.

After the first missile that killed Fadel, the clearly marked Reuters vehicle in which he had been travelling took a direct hit from a second tank, killing two children and another civilian close by, and injuring twelve others, including five children. Wafa Abu Mezyed, 25, a Reuters sound technician, was also injured.

On 13 August 2009 the IDF closed an investigation into Fadel Shana’a’s death, without taking disciplinary action against the tank crew that his own video clearly showed killing him.

Collecting the award on his behalf was cameraman and friend Sameer Al-Boje of Palmedia.. He expressed happiness that there were organisations showing appreciation for – and raising the profile of – the invaluable and often perilous work of journalists and cameramen in the occupied territories.

cameraman Sameer Al-Boje of Palmedia receiving the award in honour of Fadel Shana'a

When asked of the dangers he continues to face in Gaza he told us, “They don’t outweigh the importance of getting the real story out as to what is happening to the Palestinians.”

“When I entered this job, I knew that Israel doesn’t care about Palestinian journalists and that they would be happy to shoot them – there is no protection for the media here in Gaza because Israel does not want us to get this kind of news out.”

Sameer called on international organisations to do more to ensure safety for journalists in the course of their important work: “I feel its dangerous every time I go out there. We are not provided with any freedom of the press and media rights taken for granted in other countries. This is what we need if we are to continue sending out the real news of what’s happening in Gaza.”

Like the Palestinian Red Crescent, Palestinian journalists continue to be the first at the scene in the most dangerous times in Gaza, and so much of the footage the world sees is recorded by people well aware that they could become the next news story or grim statistic following the next Israeli attack in the continuous barrage.

A poster of Ihab Al-Wehadi killed 9th January during Operation Cast Lead

• Basel Faraj, a cameraman, died January 6th 2009 from injuries sustained in an air strike on Gaza Decmeber 27th 2008. His killing was condemned by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).
• Ala’a Mortaja, died during Operation Cast Lead.
• Hamza Shaheen, photojournalist for the Shihab News Agency, died December 2008.
• Fadel Shana’a, a Reuters camerman, killed April 16th 2008.
• Hassa Shaqora, killed March 2008.
• James Miller, killed in Rafah on 2nd May 2003. Watch a video about his death here.
• Ihab Al-Wehadi, (pictured right) cameraman for Palestine TV, killed with his wife and mother on 9th January 2009 during Operation Cast Lead when Israel shelled their apartment in the Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City.
• Mahamed Herzallah, details unknown.
• Bilal Deeba, details unknown.
• Omar As-Silawa, details unknown.

9 year old Samah in a 'semi critical' condition after being severely injured by a nail bomb blast on Wednesdey

“She came in through the front door and it wasn’t clear she was injured. Suddenly a lot of blood came from her nose and she vomited, all of the family saw this — her little brothers were very scared. She had just been playing in the front of the house.”

That is how Nihed el Massry describes what happened to her daughter, nine-year-old Samah Eid al-Massry, after the Israeli army reportedly shelled and fired four bombs into and around a residential area in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip on 21 July. Samah is now being hospitalized in serious condition, suffering from extensive blood loss and very low haemoglobin. She was hit by shrapnel and flechettes from a nail bomb that landed 100 meters away, causing internal bleeding to the chest and severe head trauma. Nails are now embedded throughout her body. Shells containing flechettes are illegal under international law if fired into densely populated civilian areas. Three other children were wounded in the attack. and Samah is one of four children injured in the attack.

Two young men were killed; Muhammad al-Kafarneh, 23, suffered severe shrapnel injuries to the back and chest and Kasim al-Shinbary, 19, was wounded by nails embedded in his skull and shrapnel his back. It was unclear earlier whether they were resistance fighters or if they were civilians — the Israeli military called them “militants,” certainly not applicable the four children aged four to 11 injured in hospital whose parents were found weeping over their loved ones in al-Shifa hospital last night in Gaza City.

Four-year-old Haitham Thaer Qasem, injured by an Israeli nail bomb

Haitham Thaer Qasem, a four-year-old boy and an only child, was sleeping on the hospital bed, occasionally gasping for breath through the apparatus around his nose. He had suffered deep nasal trauma, and flechette darts from the bomb were still embedded in his tiny body, through his back, right elbow and right leg. He was 200 meters from the impact of the bomb. In his hospital ward his mother was standing off to the side, quietly crying while one of Haitham’s aunts at his bedside explained what had happened:

“We had asked Haitham to get shopping for her from the market, then we heard the bombings and somebody came to our home and told our family that he was in the hospital and was injured in the bombing. We came quickly to the hospital.”

Meanwhile, Samah’s doctor explained that the girl’s blood loss was a major concern. Her injuries are exacerbated by the fact that she, like three of her brothers, already suffers from the blood condition Thalassemia and the drug to treat the condition, Exjade, is scarce because of the Israeli blockade. She was clearly in pain and confused, trying to remove the nasal tubes. Her mother showed us the bandages on her chest. Her Doctor, Mohamed Abu Hassan described her situation as ‘semi-critical’:

“She was in very bad condition when she arrived — it’s difficult for children and very traumatic to insert a chest tube for small children — very painful. Blood was mainly coming from the chest. We will have to perform surgery and we will further explore her abdominal pain.”

The al-Massry family has been affected by Israeli attacks before. Samah’s four-year-old brother Ryad was injured during Israel’s three weeks of attacks on the Gaza Strip during winter 2008-09 when more than 400 Palestinian children were killed.

“Our house was hit during the war, a neighbor was killed inside and our son suffered severe head injuries. He wasn’t cared for and because of this his sight is now permanently damaged.”

As we left Samah, she had begun to cry, moaning in serious discomfort and confusion. There were two more injured children in the hospital from the attack, also from the Al Massry family in Beit Hanoun: Azzam Mohammed al-Massry, 11, who a severely fractured left elbow and Ebrahim Wasseem El-Massry, 4, with light injuries to his abdomen.

The Abu Said family house, scarred after a nail bomb attack

The previous week in Gaza, we visited the Abu Said family, who were mourning Nema, a 33-year-old mother of five who was killed by a second round of Israeli shelling as she went outside frantically looking for her youngest son after the first round. Three more family members were injured by the flechette shells, many of the darts remaining permanently embedded in their bodies.

The notion of justice for Palestinians is a distant one so long as these crimes are allowed to be dismissed as footnotes by those supporting, or blindly ignoring them. But those who meet the families and the victims of these atrocities will never forget, just as people around the world are opening their eyes to the root cause of these tragedies.

John Lydon, Public Image Ltd, previously opposed the South African Apartheid Regime

Besieged Gaza,
Occupied Palestine,
July.18.2010

Dear John Lydon,

We are academics and students from Gaza representing more than 10 academic institutions therein. Our parents and grandparents are refugees who were expelled from their homes by the nascent Israeli army in the 1948 Nakba. We have since lived in the ghetto of the Gaza Strip refugee camps, like the more than 6 million Palestinian refugees all round the world. They still have their keys locked up in their closets and will pass them on to their children. UN resolution 194 guarantees our right to return our villages. Many of us have lost our fathers, some of us have lost our mothers, and some of us lost both in the last Israeli aggression against civilians in Gaza.

In recent times we have been living in what has come to be a festering sore on humanity’s conscience—the brutal, hermetic, medieval siege that Israel is perpetrating against us, the 1.5 million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. We urge you to respond to the call of an unprecedented coalition of Palestinian grassroots groups, trade unions and NGOs who in 2005 asked the world to boycott apartheid Israel until it complies with international law. We call up on you to join the other artists of conscience who have said enough is enough, by refusing to perform on the main stage of the Heineken Music Conference Festival in Tel-Aviv in Israel on August 31st 2010.

In the 1980s, you like many other artists responded to the call from the anti-apartheid campaign to reject South African Apartheid and with Public Image Limited you recorded the song, ‘Rise’ against the ugly racism and torture faced by the blacks of South Africa.  Israel, the other Western affiliated regime which exercises the same racism, land dispossession and murderous atrocities, is still going strong today, receiving more support from Western Governments than that was enjoyed by the South African Regime in the 50s and 60s. Israel’s policy of occupation, colonization and apartheid has been condemned by Anti-Apartheid heroes such as Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Ronnie Kasrils—amongst others—who have described Israel’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians as ‘worse than Apartheid.’

You have said on a BBC interview, ‘You cannot separate yourself from the audience because of political powers that be’. But like other bands you drew the line on Apartheid South Africa. We are now asking you to do the same with Israel, to respond where governments have failed to a country that has been rewarded even more than the South African Apartheid regime despite its continuing oppression based on racism and the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people.

Even Apartheid South Africa did not bombard civilian areas with white phosphorous and dime bombs killing more than 1400 people in 3 weeks over the new year of 2009, including 434 children, leaving 17000 houses, schools and hospitals severely damaged or destroyed. Judge Richard Goldstone, a name you must be familiar with, called this “a war crime and crime against humanity.”

As anti-apartheid activists used to say, supported by conscientious people all over the world, there was no negotiation with the brutal racist regime of South Africa. As with Israel, it has become apparent that the normal avenues to seek justice and human rights have failed and, therefore, we are left with one option: BOYCOTT. You must also be familiar with wise words of Archbishop Desmund Tutu: “if you choose to be neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

We hope that once again you will choose to stand on the right side of history and maintain the pressure already set by an increasing number of musicians refusing to perform in Israel until Palestinians get the same human rights and dignity as anybody else would expect.

You are a great man of words, of that we have no doubt. But we think you would agree, too, that actions speak louder than words. Please do not perform in the Sun City of the Middle East.

Besieged Gaza,

The Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI)
University Teachers’ Association in Palestine (UTAP)

Yesterday (July 14^th 2010) many people amassed at the Gazan port to urge on the latest attempt by activists to enter the strip, this time by a Libyan chartered aid ship. It was the first serious attempt to enter Gaza by sea since the horrifying attack by the Israeli navy on the Free Gaza Flotilla and the Mavi Marmara which saw 9 Turkish activists killed.

Mahfouz Kabariti, President of Palestine Sailing Federation and Palestinian Association for Fishing and Maritime Sports, was communicating with the Amalthea as it neared Gazan waters: “The last contact we had with them was at midnight and since then communication was cut by the Israeli navy. They told us the boat was surrounded by Israeli gunships, but that they were determined to attempt to dock in Gaza and not take the option offered by the Egyptian government to dock in El Arish.”

According to Mahfouz the roll of the Freedom Flotilla missions are two-fold: “First is the arrival with aid, and materials such as construction supplies still banned by the blockade. The second is to put a spotlight on the suffering of the people here. Even if they are attacked, the second message highlights even more the extent to which Israel will go to keep us in Gaza isolated from the rest of the world with this illegal blockade of our people.”

As well as government representatives and the Popular Committee to Break the Siege, Amjad Shawa, Gaza Coordinator for  Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations (PNGO) was present. He emphasised the importance of international civil society persisting in trying to break the siege.

The need is especially acute because so far Israel’s response has only been to reduce the blockade on Gaza by a tiny fraction. The European Union, the United Nations, countless human rights groups and the International Committee for the Red Cross have all expressed the need for a return to the free flow of goods and people in and out of the Gaza Strip. This must include construction materials which are sorely needed to help rebuild the 17,000 houses severely damaged in the 3 week attack over the New Year period of 2009 that left over 1500 dead including over 400 children.

“Nothing has changed here,” says Amjad. “Just some more consumer products…but 80% of the people here still depend on humanitarian aid. It is not enough to demand some kind of minor reduction of this illegal siege. But we are thankful that the siege on Gaza has not been forgotten, and that our people are still in the minds of the world. These kinds of solidarity actions are very important for Gazans, we see that others share with us the values of justice and the principals of human rights.”

Amjad Shawa, Gaza Coordinator for Palestinian NGOs: "It is not enough to demand some kind of minor reduction of this illegal siege."

When asked about the role of the international community to pressure Israel, Amjad is more critical: “We are so sorry that the international community until now has made no real intervention, put no real pressure on Israel to lift the siege totally or exerted pressure on Israel to have a transparent and accountable international inquiry into the Israeli crimes on the freedom flotillas.

“Still today we’re waiting for real international pressure from the international community.  We hope that Israel will not use this silence as a chance to commit more crimes against the Palestinian people and international solidarity workers.”

Mahfouz Kabariti, affirming the hope the flotillas bring

The Libyan chartered boat was eventually forced to dock in El Arish, Egypt, after a wall of Israeli gunboats blocked its passage through to Gaza.  But the Palestinians remain heartened by these attempts and the further missions planned this September. Says Mahfouz: “Peopl e here feel grateful to those internationals who try to arrive at the Gaza beach, it’s so important to us

that other people worry and support us.”