Gaza Freedom March--urgent action needed

From New York, December 19, 2009: Letter from Laurie.

"Tonight was a great community event with so much spirit. Thank you all who particpated to make it happen.

With only short notice about 50+ New Yorkers gathered joined by a group of Palestinians visiting from out of town who were just passing by and so surprised and pleased to see us there. We began by ringing bells and holding sings with the messages LET FREEDOM RING and FREE GAZA...The police kept insisting that we could not stage a protest without a permit. But I reassured them that we did have a permit which gives us the right to assemble and free speech. They seemed confused when I mentioned the Constitution, as though that was not revelant or at least not there in Times Square. We held our ground though and our right to free speech and free assembly prevailed at least until the next time."

Now on December 21, another message has been sent out.

"Update from Gaza Freedom March,

We are determined to break the siege. We all will continue to do whatever we can to make it happen.

Using the pretext of escalating tension on the Gaza-Egypt border, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry informed us yesterday that the Rafah border will be closed over the coming weeks into January. We responded that there is always tension at the border because of the siege, that we do not fell threatened, and that is there are any risks, they are risks we are willing to take. We also said that it was too late for over 1,300 delegates coming from over 42 countries to change their plans now. We both agreed to continue our exchanges.

Although we consider this as a setback, it is something we've encountered and overcome before. No delegation, no matter how large or how small, that entered Gaza over the past 12 months has ever received a final OK before arriving at the Rafah border. Most delegations were discouraged from even heading out of Cairo to Rafah. Some had their buses stopped on the way. Some have been told outright that they could not go into Gaza. But afte public and political pressure, hte Egyptian government changed its position and let them pass.

Our efforts and plans will not be altered at this point. We have set out to break the seige of Gaza and march on December 31 against the Israeli blockade. We are continuing in the same direction.

Egyptian embassies and missions all over the world must hear from us and our supporters (by phone, fax and e-mail) over the coming crucial days. Let the international delegation enter Gaza and let the Gaza Freedom March proceed.

Contact your local consulate here: http://www.mfa.gov.eg/MFA_Portal/en-GB/mfa_websits/

Contact the Palestine Division in Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cairo, Ahmed Azzam, e-mail: ahmed.azzam@mfa.gov.eg/

Sample Text

I am writing to express my full support for the December 31, 2009 Gaza Freedom March. I urge the Egyptian government to allow the 1,300 international delegates to enter the Gaza Strip through Egypt.

The aim of the march is to call on Israel to lift the siege. The delegates will also take in badly needed medical aid, as well as school supplies and winter jackets for the children of Gaza.

Please let this historic March proceed.

Alex, one of the founding creators of Women in Black, Melbourne, will be one of the delegates. She will be carrying a small home made freedom banner from WIB Melbourne. Please try to do something to let others know about this freedom march and the attempts to block it.

Joan Nestle for WIB, Melbourne

"Words for Palestine," Melbourne, 2009, Joan Nestle

Words for Palestine, December 6, 2009, Joan Nestle of Women in Black, Melbourne, Australia

Students for Palestine asked me to speak at a rally held in front of the Park Hyatt Hotel here in Melbourne where the Australian Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard was hosting Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister, Silvan Shalom. They were discussing, the paper said, Israel’s request for help from Australia to rehabilitate the Jordan River. This was Shalom’s second official dinner—the first in Sydney where the Prime Minster of Australia also welcomed the Israeli government official in glowing terms and never once mentioned the crises that is facing the Palestinians under the present Israeli regime. I was asked to speak as a representative of Women in Black and thus Hellen, Marg, Sue, Geraldine—my Women in Black comrades—stood with our banners behind me as I spoke. We clearly were the oldest, the whitest heads, present. Without the support of these dedicated peace activists, I could not have accomplished what I had to do. I quote the words of two writers in the talk—I wanted something different, more complex than a typical rally speech—the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and the American writer, always prophetic in terms of what racial failures would bring to States, James Baldwin. Thank you, Daniel, for the image.

Words for Palestine
Salam Alakhim/ Shalom
I want to thank Students for Palestine for inviting the Melbourne Women in Black group to be part of this demonstration against the uncritical welcoming of Silvan Shalom to this country. I speak with two voices two day—as a member of Women in Black, and as a 70 year old American Jewish woman who lost one third of her family in the Belzec Concentration camp. Two voices but one heart—the brutalizing of populations by the use of overwhelming military force, by governmental policies of ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion from family homes, by the unquestioned believe in the right of one people to live a full life while another is condemned to hopelessness , to endless humiliations, to erased pasts, to an impossible present and a murdered future—I cannot, will not, not turn my head or heart away from the connections between my Jewish history and Palestinian history of the last 60 years.

In Haifa, after the first intifada, 5 Israeli women stood in silent vigil dressed in black to protest the Israelis occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The next week Palestinian women joined the protest and a few months later 5000 marched through the streets of Tel Aviv asking for peace. Now Women in Black stand in over 30 countries demanding an end to the brutalization of civilian populations and the planet, an end to what seems like a time of endless wars. Here in Melbourne Women in Black have been organizing for an end to the occupation since 1988 (Here I referred to Alix Nissen, a founding member of Women in Black, both here and in Haifa and Marg Jacobs who has been involved with Melbourne Women in Black since 1988).

From our flyer: “We stand in recognition of peace activists all over the world, to embrace our common humanity, as a bridge to mutual respect, to remind ourselves that seemingly small actions can lead both to change and hope. We make the following promises for the new year—we promise to expose the lies that demonize those who discuss nonviolent ways to end the Israeli occupation. We promise to uphold the judgments of the UN’s Goldstone Report and Breaking the Silence. We promise to stand in solidarity with Israeli and Palestinian activists who face jail for their anti-occupation work— with the Shminstim, a group of Israeli teenagers declaring their refusal to serve the occupation, with Mohammad Othman, a Palestinian human rights activist, with Kobi Snitz, with Ezra Nawi ,” with the women who monitor the checkpoints hoping to reduce the daily abuses of Palestinians simply trying to get to work, with the citizens of Bi’lin who take on the Israeli Defense Force every night, with the members of New Profile, an Israeli anti- militarism group, with the Palestinian and Israeli academics who think and teach critically about the occupation and as a result appear on a hate list of those who must be purged from the academy in the so-called democratic state of Israel ,with Gideon Levy of the Haaretz newspaper, with Dr Saida Atrash, the Director of the Mehwa Center, the women’s shelter on the West Bank where every day she and others try to comfort Palestinian women who have lost their homes, and with it any sense of security for their families.

We hear the voices of power easily enough, but the voices of alternate visions, of the questioners of certainties, these we must amplify and honor, these are our deepest hope—As Mahmoud Darwish wrote in his homage to Edward Said: “ Then you are prone to the affliction of longing? My dream leads my steps. And my vision seats my dream on my knees like a cat. My dream is the realistic imaginary and the son of will: We are able to alter the inevitability of the abyss!”

The voice of conscientious Objector Or Ben-David, a 19 year old Israeli young woman from Jerusalem:”To refuse means to say no! No to the military rule in the West Bank, no to the use of violence as a means of defense, no to patriarchy, no to violence against innocent people, no to war and no to a society that claims to be democratic but forces youth to carry weapons, to kill or be killed. I refuse because I want to make a difference. I want all those Palestinian youths who have lost hope to see that there are Israelis who care and who make a different choice. I want all of those of my friends who became soldiers or who are about to become soldiers to see that things do not have to be the way they are, and that doing these immoral things is not something to be taken for granted, that another way is possible.” The author of these words is now serving 20 days in an Israeli military prison.

Know that our numbers are growing , the numbers of dissenters, that cracks are running down that monstrous barbed- wire- topped gray wall that tonight’s honored guest calls a fence, know that more and more of us are not afraid of what they call us—traitors, self hating Jews, anti-Semitic Jews, renegade Jews. What we are afraid of is what comes on the horizon when a people’s daily dignity is so insulted, when others so absolutely and brutally control the possibilities of one’s life—James Baldwin, an African American writer who knew in his bones of daily dehumanization, warned of “The Fire Next Time.” What hope will there be for reconciliation if the settlers keep dancing on the hearts of the dispossessed, if leaders like Rudd and Obama and so many others sit down to feast with representative bullies of the Israeli state, pretending that Palestinian agony does not exist. We have seen in the past the results of this calculated refusal to challenge national cruelties. Read the Palestinian poet, read Darwish—“Do I ask permission, from strangers who sleep/in my own bed, to visit myself for five minutes? Do I bow respectfully to those who reside in my childhood dream? “

Mr. Silvan Shalom is the minister for regional development and control of the flow of water--one of the regions he is in charge of, is the upper Galilee, the one- time site of al-Birwah, a village razed to the ground in 1948,its people forced to flee and among them the poet I now always carry in my heart, Mahmoud Darwish, and his family—his birth place made invisible except in the words of his poems and on old maps, his very presence made an absence, a poet in exile for much of his life, but against the roaring ugliness of Israel’s dedication to the eradication of a people, I put the poet’s yearning lovely humanity, “The poem is what lies between a between. It is able to illuminate the night with the breasts of a young woman/it is able to illuminate, with an apple, two bodies/it is able to restore/ with the cry of a gardenia, a homeland!” The poet brings us back to the occupied body, the place of devastation, into the night of war he brings the perfume of longing, our rights of desire.

Long after the world forgets the name of the Vice Prime Minister of Israel, it will remember the words of Mahmoud Darwish, the poet, for he honors the wonders of life.

****************************

It had been a long day and I had been up the whole night writing the talk, I was emotionally exhausted from the whole event, my anger, my sadness, my speaking as Jew, my fumbling body, so Marg kindly let me to her car. It was only after I had arrived home, that I received the call from Daniel saying that shortly after we had left, the demonstrators had attempted to enter the hotel and were beaten and sprayed with capsicum. A young woman friend of his whom I had met earlier in the day had been punched in the face by a member of the police. This morning, our daily newspaper, “The Age,” carried a picture of the confrontation and the following caption: “Capsicum Spray Used to Quell Anti-Israeli Protestors.” I want no more violence. Civil disobedience yes, the courage to go limp in the face of armed actors, yes, civil disobedience by hundreds o f thousands, yes, but no more aggressions provoking more aggressions. Enough of this—we will struggle against the present Israeli state as we did against the apartheid South African state, in our own way, in new ways with new uses of our imagination of resistance. Blood against blood makes reconciliation impossible. Only the fire’s devastation comes this way. We must "alter the inevitability of the abyss." But I am 70.

Oh What a Week We Had...

Oh, such a hard week we had--but this afternoon La Professoressa went into that familiar mode--preparing for one of her international trips--rushes to the bank, to her office for last minuted needed papers, to La Manana for fruit to last me two weeks, and most importantly of all, one last visit with Richard, her adored chiropractor to prepare her back for the 20 hour flight. Richard with his magic fingers and kind heart who knows every one of her wandering bones. Back home, I iron her just decided on must have shirts while she packs for her transition from Australian summer to British winter. Then Cello and I sit on the edge of the bed and watch her deft manipulations, a master packer she is--as she said, many Australians learn this art at an early age--so quickly, so wisely considered, one medium seized suitcase, one carry one bag with wheels, filled with her computer, papers, books. In a few minutes all is ready for a trip half way around the world. She nods to me, the signal that it is time to call the taxi--the moment I dread, always sad at her going--as the Italians say, "Partire e morir" or each leaving is a small dying.

The taxi pulls up, I stand at the gate, Cello at my feet, his tail already hanging low, we hug, kiss good-bye--my head rests for a minute on her shoulder, her arms hold me, whispered "thank you for all you have given me," and so the hard week comes to an end with La Professoressa doing what she loves so dearly, doing what brought us together in the first place--flying off into the night, back to Europe, her head packed with ideas on women and human rights, her itinerary one of visits with old friends and classes to be taught, conferences to be attended, London, Paris her destinations, nothing annoys her now, not the long waits in Bahrain or Singapore, not the dash for connections, to buses, trains, from airport to hotel and back again--not the prospect of sleeping upright for hours after hours--her sore back longing for Richard's touch--once, ten years ago, this delight in leaving brought her to me in New York, with the sun of Cuba still fresh on her face, her arms.

Oh how we traveled together--to London, to Dorset and the English coast, to Athens and Mykkonos, Santorini and Crete, to Paris and Copenhagen, to Palestine/Israel. But now, Cello and I stand at our front gate and wave goodbye to the redhead as she pulls away from the house on Fitzgibbon Avenue, already speaking to the taxi driver from Lebanon--he too has left geographies behind--and then a final wave, as the taxi turns onto Dawson Street and she is gone. Cello looks up at me, his dark eyes even darker. Just you and me now, he looks into me. We make a promise to care for each other the best we can in the long days ahead until our exuberant traveller returns.

December Vigil and New Flyer

Remember, this Saturday we will be standing vigil from 12-1 in front of the GPO, on the corner of Burke and Elizabeth Streets. Hellen has drafted a new flyer for us:

Women in Black say, unequivocally, that we have had enough of wars and the in-securities that war and weapons create. Insecurities for the militaries themselves, for the environments that poison and disrupt, for women and children where militaries operate, and in the families and communities when military members return home.

Women in Black note that governments spend major national resources on armed security, every moment, year and decade. As a result, the planet itself becomes less secure for each of us, for everyone’s future children, every moment, year, decade.

Women in Black sees no evidence that security is produced by such wars which cause the world to be awash in weapons and unresolved grievances, awash with toxic remnants over a century of weapons and unresolved conflicts.

Women in Black advocate security by disarmament and non-violent ways of resolving conflict in human societies, and with vigils and protests refuse to be silenced or to respond to violence with violence.

Women in Black believe that Palestine and Israel, as well as countries in all other regions of the world, need to be weapons free, making armed conflict not an option. The Palestinian catastrophe since 1948 has included forced expulsions from homes and lands, continual dispossession and confiscations, denial of freedom of movement and the forced inability to build flourishing Palestinian communities. A system of reciprocal terrorism exists in defiance of the law for human rights that the world agreed to expressively to avoid a repeat of the Jewish Holocaust. We now have the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their homeland.

Women in Black believe where that where injustices flourish, there can never be peace.
Women in Black witness that governments know what is needed to achieve a just peace, for they establish islands of peace around themselves for their pleasure and comfort, but these islands are surrounded by wars and areas of unjust military occupations.

Women in Black stands to reflect to governments that the methods of war and unjust peace can never be praised, excused, erased or reasoned away.

Women in Black, an international women’s peace action, has been standing for peace since 1987. We stand to protest the violence that endangers and degrades the lives of the people of the world.
(December, 2009) The image that begins this posting is a drawing by a Palestinian child who survived the invasion of Gaza.