“There is more. I haven’t yet mentioned the settler roads, and settler attacks, the checkpoint abuses, the apartheid (land grab) wall,  children forced to jump across rooftops to get to school, the psychological scarring of children and youth and so much more.” L Whiting

While Gaza is in the spotlight, there is public outrage and people are moved to take action. It is important to remember that while the atrocities committed in the open air concentration camp called Gaza have called attention to the brutal, genocidal war being waged against the Palestinians, it is highly visible tip of the iceberg. To be effective, we have to wage a relentless war of exposure, whether or not the media choose to keep it in the headlines. The problem is not only the recurring blood ritual of the war on Gaza. It started with the Nakba, when the Palestininan were driven from their ancestral homes and villages or slaughtered. It is the brutal Occupation of stolen land, the inhuman blockade of Gaza,  it is the relentless collective punishment of Palestinian civilians, of students, doctors, businessmen, journalists and all the ordinary people like you and me, a state without an army.  It is about the continuous, fully documented, flagrant violations of countless International Laws including the Geneva conventions by the Rothchild chronically mind- infested “State” of Israel.

We are all Palestinian indeed. And Palestine is the stage upon which the great human drama is being played out.

From 2001, during the second Intifada, to 2004 I made a series of fact-finding trips to the West Bank, and joined the International Solidarity Movement in actions against the occupation. I would like to share with you some impressions.  .

But where should I begin? Perhaps near Nablus, where I began my journey, at the Azzan (funeral) of a father of five. We ascended the narrow stairway lined with silent mourners, there to pay respects. A top the staircase was his wife, ashen white, in her ninth month of pregnancy, her young children bewildered, tearful and clutching at her skirts. Her husband, an ordinary auto-parts dealer, had come home with birthday cake and gifts for one of his sons. During the celebration, a friend had called to say that the Israeli tank stationed in their road had withdrawn from the street. He went onto the balcony with his wife to look…… and was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper. His wife still had the shrapnel embedded in her wrist and belly – they would not operate due to her late stage of pregnancy. We payed our respects and left…… as she silently stared into a future without her beloved husband and family breadwinner, with 5 children and an aging mother to care for and another baby on the way, the baby who her husband would never see. Later that evening the wife would hear the report…..a “Palestinian gunman” was killed on a rooftop outside Nablus. Continue reading →