MadisonRafah.org

The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project

MadisonRafah.org

May 22, 2024
Music for Gaza Relief at the Bur Oak

The Bur Oak [Map]
2262 Winnebago St, Madison
Doors open at 7 pm, music at 8

Grassroots to Gaza presents a night of music for humanitarian aid to Gaza, featuring: Moonboot, The Takeaways, and 20 Minute Mission.

Suggested $10 donation. All proceeds go to Middle East Children’s Alliance for immediate humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

Sponsored by Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Palestine Partners, and WORT 89.9FM

Learn more about Middle East Children’s Alliance or make a donation.

The Only Barrier to Delivering Gaza Aid Is Israel

Aid Worker in Gaza: The U.S. Must Pressure Its Ally

MARCH 12, 2024

GUESTS
  • Yousef Hammash
    advocacy officer in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council
  • Francesca Albanese
    United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.

Palestinians in Gaza marked the first day of Ramadan on Monday amid rising hunger and desperation, with Israel continuing to restrict aid shipments into the besieged territory. United Nations officials have complained that even basic items like medical scissors have resulted in trucks being stopped by Israeli forces at the border. This comes as countries such as the United States conduct dangerous airdrops of essential supplies and have announced plans to build a pier off the coast of Gaza to deliver aid. “It’s going to be more simple, more realistic and more efficient if the United States has pushed the Israelis to allow the aid truck to go into the north of Gaza and Gaza City,” says Yousef Hammash, advocacy officer with the Norwegian Refugee Council, speaking to us from Rafah. “The only issue that we are facing on delivering the aid on the ground is the restrictions the Israelis put on it.” Hammash also describes “living day by day” amid “madness, violence [and] bombardment.”

April 14, 2024
Commemorating the Life of Rachel Corrie

Christ Presbyterian Church, 944 E. Gorham St, Madison
1:30-3:30 pm
Free & open to all, donations to Middle East Children’s Alliance welcome

Join us to remember the life of Rachel Corrie, who was killed March 16, 2003 when she was crushed by a US made bulldozer, driven by an Israeli operator as she attempted to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home.

We believe that Rachel’s wish now would be that we act to end the genocide in Palestine. The event will include readings of Rachel’s letters home, a message from her parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie, and time to write and call congress and the White House to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to US funding of the Israeli military.

Music by acoustic musical trio Shamaali, featuring the oud.
Dessert and beverages will be served.

This event is a fundraiser for Middle East Children’s Alliance, for immediate emergency aid to Gaza. It is free and open to the public. Donations to Middle East Children’s Alliance will be gratefully welcomed.

Canada, Sweden resume UNRWA funding

A Palestinian looks at a damaged al-Masry Tower on Saturday after an Israeli strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. (Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post)

Sweden and Canada are resuming funding to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, weeks after the embattled agency faced explosive allegations of ties with Hamas that led to more than a dozen countries pausing payments.

Sweden said Saturday it was making an initial payment of 200 million kronor ($20 million) to UNRWA, having received additional assurances, including independent auditing, strengthened internal supervision and staff checks, from the agency.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is devastating and the needs are acute,” Johan Forssell, Sweden’s international development minster, said in a statement Saturday. “We will monitor closely to ensure UNRWA follows through on what it has promised.”

Canada also announced it would be lifting its “temporary pause on funding” to UNRWA, stating Friday that it was “deeply concerned by the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza that is worsening by the hour.”

Earlier this week, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini warned that the agency was “at a breaking point” after several countries, including the United States, suspended funding. The agency also reported Friday that 162 staff members have been killed since the war in Gaza began, calling it the highest number of U.N. team members ever killed in any conflict or natural disaster.

More

U.N. officials have warned that more than a quarter of Gaza’s population is on the brink of famine, and several countries, including the United States, have resorted to air dropping aid into the besieged enclave. The Biden administration has also announced plans to build a temporary pier off Gaza’s coastline to enable scaled-up aid deliveries by sea.

The U.S. military conducted another airdrop of aid into northern Gaza on Saturday, Central Command said in a statement, adding that C-130 aircraft delivered more than 41,000 ready-to-eat meals and 23,000 bottles of water.

The delivery came as Gaza’s Health Ministry said the death toll from malnutrition and dehydration in the territory had risen to 25. At least 30,960 people have been killed and 72,524 injured in Gaza since the war began, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Israel on Saturday said that the head of its Mossad intelligence agency, David Barnea, met with CIA Director William J. Burns the day before to discuss a potential hostage deal that would also see at least a temporary cease-fire.

In a statement, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the talks are ongoing but blamed Hamas for recent delays, saying the militant group that once controlled Gaza is “not interested” in a deal ahead of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

“It’s looking tough,” President Biden said Friday when asked by a reporter if there would be a cease-fire by Ramadan, which begins Sunday.

Israel hits landmark residential tower as truce talks stall

On International Women’s Day We Mourn the 9,000+ Palestinian Women Killed

Middle East Children's Alliance

We suffer from violence, from sadness, from injustice, from humiliation, from the hardest forms of torture at the hands of the occupation. … My wish on International Women’s Day is for this war not to get repeated.
— Aya, refugee camp, Rafah, Gaza, Palestine

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Women in Gaza living and dying under Israel’s genocidal attacks are on our minds and in our hearts today, and every day.
・・・
Palestinian liberation is a reproductive justice issue, a gender justice issue, and a human rights issue. On International Women’s Day on March 8th, we bring attention to the intersecting oppressions that Palestinian women face in Gaza. Israel has ruthlessly killed more than 9,000 Palestinian women since October, and continues to expose 1 million women and girls to unbearable life conditions. Swipe through to hear from them.

We call on feminists and human rights activists around the world to stand in solidarity with Palestinian women, and take action to stop the genocide.

TAKE ACTION FOR GAZA!

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SOUND THE ALARM!

Over 30,000 Palestinian people have been killed by the Israeli military and over 2 million Palestinian people trapped in Gaza under the heaviest bombardment yet. WE ARE WITNESSING GENOCIDE.

We are not helpless in this moment. We need everyone to TAKE ACTION.

The people of Gaza have a number one demand: KEEP UP THE PRESSURE & CALL FOR A CEASEFIRE NOW. Use your power and influence to hold our U.S. government accountable. Visit http://bit.ly/StopGazaGenocide

“What I Witnessed in Gaza Is a Holocaust,” Part 1

Palestinian Writer Susan Abulhawa



MARCH 06, 2024


GUESTS

We speak with Palestinian novelist, poet and activist Susan Abulhawa, who is in Cairo and just returned from two weeks in Gaza. “What’s happening to people isn’t just this death and dismemberment and hunger. It is a total denigration of their personhood, of their whole society,” says Abulhawa. “What I witnessed personally in Rafah and some of the middle areas is incomprehensible, and I will call it a holocaust — and I don’t use that word lightly. But it is absolutely that.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

More

A U.N. convoy of food trucks trying to bring 200 tons of food into northern Gaza was turned back by the Israeli military today. A convoy of 14 trucks waited for three hours at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint in central Gaza before it was turned away by the Israeli military and later stopped by a large crowd of desperate people who, quote, “looted the food,” according to the World Food Programme. This comes as Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on Palestinians seeking to get aid in northern Gaza, killing at least 119 people in the most deadly attack February 29th.

Hunger has reached catastrophic levels in Gaza. The Palestinian Health Ministry said today the death toll from malnutrition and dehydration has risen to 18, adding, quote, “The famine is deepening and will claim thousands of lives if the aggression is not halted and humanitarian and medical aid is not immediately brought in,” unquote. Children, pregnant women, those with chronic illnesses are most vulnerable.

Meanwhile, the Israeli bombardment continues, with shelling and airstrikes today in cities across the Gaza Strip, including in Rafah, Khan Younis, Deir al-Balah and elsewhere. At least 30,700 Palestinians have been killed, over 72,000 wounded in Gaza over the past five months. Nearly the entire population has been displaced from their homes.

For more, we go to Cairo, Egypt, where we’re joined by Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian novelist, poet and activist, author of several books, best known for her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, an international best-seller translated into 32 languages, considered a classic in Palestinian literature. She’s the founder and co-director of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization, and the executive director of Palestine Writes Literature Festival. She just returned from Gaza after spending two weeks there, is now in Cairo.

Susan, welcome to Democracy Now! If you can talk about what you saw? You have written, “Some are eating stray cats and dogs, which are themselves starving and sometimes feeding on human remains that litter streets where Israeli snipers picked off people who dared to venture within the sight of their scopes. The old and weak have already died of hunger and thirst.” Describe your trip.

SUSAN ABULHAWA: So, that part of the essay is in the northern region, where nobody really is allowed to go. Trying to venture into the north is a suicide mission. There are tanks and snipers positioned, and anyone trying to get there is basically killed. As you just mentioned, aid trucks are not getting in, either. They are intentionally stopped. And it’s an intentional starvation, basically. I was primarily in the south, in Rafah. I was able to go to Khan Younis and to Nuseirat and a few other places in the middle region, but that became increasingly more dangerous.

I want to say that the reality on the ground is infinitely worse than the worst videos and photos that we’re seeing in the West. There is a — you know, beyond people being buried alive en masse in their homes, their bodies being shredded to pieces, these kinds of videos and images that people are seeing — beyond that, there is this daily massive degradation of life. It is a total denigration of a whole society, that was once high-functioning and proud and has basically been reduced to the most primal of ambitions, you know, being able to get enough water for the day or flour to bake bread. And this is even in Rafah.

And the people in Rafah will tell you that they feel privileged because they’re not starving to death, while their families in the north, the ones that they can reach, because Israel has basically cut off 99% of communication — what remains are basically communications by people who have, you know, set up some ingenious ways to keep internet in the north. But most people in the north have no idea what’s happening. As a matter of fact, at one point — I’m sure you all know Bisan Owda, who is on Facebook. She explained to me she often goes up to the border between Khan Younis and the middle area in the north where you can’t go beyond, and she explained to me that an aid truck, that sort of pushed its way through but was eventually fired on, had — people came up and ran up, thinking that the war was over and people were returning to the north. So, most people in the north are in total darkness and hunger and really have no way of communicating, no way of figuring out where to get food.

And, you know, what we’re hearing on the ground is surreal. It’s dystopic. What I witnessed personally in Rafah and in some of the middle areas is incomprehensible. And I will call it a holocaust — and I don’t use that word lightly. But it is absolutely that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Susan Abulhawa, I want —

SUSAN ABULHAWA: The stories I heard from people are — sorry, go ahead.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, no, Susan, I wanted to ask you — you write in your article, “At some point, the indignity of filth is inescapable. At some point, you just wait for death, even as you also wait for a ceasefire. But people don’t know what they will do after a ceasefire.” Could you talk about that, even if there is a ceasefire —

SUSAN ABULHAWA: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — the level of destruction that the people face now in terms of being able to rebuild their country?

SUSAN ABULHAWA: I mean, that’s how much people have been reduced. I mean, the ceiling of their hope at this point is for the bombs to stop. And, you know, everybody wants to go back. They talk about pitching a tent on their homes and figuring things out. But a lot of people are trying to leave. There is a brain drain, basically. Those who can afford it, those who can raise the money, those who are able to get jobs elsewhere, who have professional skills, are trying to leave. They have children. All the schools have been destroyed. College students have nowhere to go.

You know, what’s happening to people isn’t just this death and dismemberment and hunger. It’s a total denigration of their personhood, of their whole society. There are no universities left. Israel intentionally bombed schools and blew them up, presumably to ensure that rebuilding could not take place, that reestablishing a society cannot take place without the infrastructure of education, of healthcare, and, basically, foundational structures for buildings.

AMY GOODMAN: Susan, I wanted to follow up on what you said about a holocaust. And you also used the term “genocide.” And you say, “Genocide isn’t just mass murder. It is intentional erasure.” Can you take that from there?

SUSAN ABULHAWA: Exactly. I mean, one of the — like I said, one of the things that Israel has been keen to do in Gaza is to erase remnants of people’s lives. So you have, on an individual level, homes, complete with memories and photos and all the things of living. And I’m sure you know Palestinians typically live in multigenerational homes. We’re not a mobile society. And so, these homes have several generations of the same family completely wiped out. On a societal level, you have — Israel has targeted places of worship — mosques, ancient churches, ancient mosques. They have targeted the museums, cultural centers, any place that — libraries. Any place that has records of people’s lives, has remnants and traces of their roots in the land, have been intentionally wiped away.

You know, it’s really frustrating for us to read Western media talk about, you know, Israel is targeting Hamas and whatnot. They’re not. This has always — and when you’re on the ground, you understand this has always been about displacing Palestinians, taking their place and wiping them off the map. That has been Israel’s stated goal, I mean, even in this instance and before, in 1948. It has always been their aim, to destroy us, remove us, kill us and take our place. And that’s what’s happening now in Gaza. It’s what happened in 1948, in 1967. And every new Nakba, every new escalation, is greater than the one before. And here we now arrive at a moment of genocide and holocaust, because the world has allowed Israel to act with such barbarity with impunity.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to ask you also — you mentioned the world reaction. More people have died in Gaza in less than five months than have — civilians — than have died in Ukraine in over two years, in the war in Ukraine, and Ukraine has 40 times the population of Gaza. I’m wondering your sense of the failure of the — especially of the Western nations, of Europe and the United States, to act?

SUSAN ABULHAWA: The Western world has lost any semblance of moral authority, if they ever had any. Or, you know, I think that maybe there was an illusion of moral authority previously, but I think — you know, what we have always known is that we are dealing with genocidal colonizers. But I think that is more apparent to the rest of the world at this hour. And I think what’s also happening is that Americans are coming to understand, increasingly, though not nearly enough, that they’re being lied to.

AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to take up that issue in Part 2 of our discussion, which we’ll post at democracynow.org. Susan Abulhawa, Palestinian novelist, thanks so much.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

“Language Is Inadequate” to Describe the Horror, Part 2

Back from Gaza, Palestinian Writer Susan Abulhawa



MARCH 06, 2024

Palestinian novelist, poet and activist Susan Abulhawa joins us for Part 2 of her interview from Cairo after two weeks in Gaza. She discusses the impact of “unlimited weaponry” supplied by the United States for Israel to bomb and starve civilians there. “Language is really inadequate and insufficient to capture the enormity of this moment,” says Abulhawa. “What I’ve seen is really a fraction of the totality of this horror.” She is the founder and co-director of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization, and the executive director of Palestine Writes Literature Festival.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we continue with our conversation about what’s happening in Gaza.

More

The World Food Programme has accused the Israeli military of blocking the agency from delivering crucial aid needed to avert a famine in northern Gaza. Health officials there say at least 18 children have died from starvation in recent days. The Biden administration is defending its decision to keep sending arms to Israel even though it’s blocking aid deliveries. National security communications adviser John Kirby was questioned at the White House on Tuesday by journalist Andrew Feinberg, a correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent.

ANDREW FEINBERG: What is preventing the president from communicating to the Israeli government that if they don’t allow aid, we will not continue supplying weapons? Why is that not a fair trade: no aid, no bombs?

JOHN KIRBY: Because the president still believes that it’s important for Israel to have what it needs to defend itself against a still viable Hamas threat. Maybe some people have forgotten what happened on the 7th of October, but President Biden has not.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Susan Abulhawa, Palestinian novelist, poet, activist, author of several books, best known for her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, an international best-seller translated into 32 languages, considered a classic in Palestinian literature. She’s founder and co-director of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization, and the executive director of Palestine Writes Literature Festival, just out of Gaza Tuesday after spending two weeks there. And she’s joining us for Part 2 of our conversation from Cairo, Egypt.

Susan, as you listen to this, you’re not in the United States right now. That’s the conversation that just took place. The question: Why is the U.S. providing Israel with weapons as it blocks food aid to a starving population? Continue to describe what you’re seeing on the ground and what you feel that people outside are not seeing, and, particularly because the U.S. is facilitating this, and you usually live here, how the American people understand what’s taking place, and should understand.

SUSAN ABULHAWA: I think the absurdity of the United States trying to airdrop — or, rather, it’s a theater, to airdropping a handful of boxes of aid to people who are starving because a key American ally, to whom we have been providing unlimited weaponry and financial aid, is actually doing the starving and doing the bombing, I hope will become, or if it’s not already, apparent to the American people.

I mean, I think, you know, hearing that clip, people still talking about Israel defending itself is — it’s difficult for any sane person to, or any person with a conscience or, you know — to understand how this language is still being spoken in public discourse. Gaza is a principally defenseless civilian population in the most densely populated place in the world. They have been imprisoned in what is tantamount to a concentration camp for over — for nearly 20 years. They have been occupied. They have been bombed repeatedly by the most powerful military in the region. And we’re still talking about this nuclear power defending itself from civilians. How do they — how is this even spoken with a straight face is beyond me.

Now, this absurdity is apparent to most people in the Global South, who have been victims of Western colonialism. But for some reason, it still seems to be an effective claim among Western societies, although less so particularly with younger generations who are more sophisticated when it comes to acquisition of information. Despite the pervasive censorship from social media platforms, people are still able to get some information from the ground, and, you know — and then we see acts, selfless acts and extreme acts, like what Aaron Bushnell did.

And, you know, I, frankly, don’t pay much attention to what I feel is political theater, when it comes to official spokespeople and electoral politics. I’m more interested in where change actually is cultivated and where it comes from, which is from the bottom up. I’m interested in the protests that still happen on college campuses despite the doxxing, despite the targeting of students and faculty alike. I’m interested in people who continue to pour into the streets all over the world into capitals by the hundreds of thousands. I’m interested in people in the movements to boycott Israel. I think this is where my focus is. This is where my interest is. Nothing is going to come from a ruling elite, that seems, frankly, hell-bent on accomplishing this genocide with — and at the same time trying to pay lip service to assuage public opinion that is increasingly oppositional.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Susan, I wanted to ask you — you’ve been co-director of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization. If you can talk about that group, why you founded it? And also, if you could talk about the — it must be incomprehensible, the level of trauma that the children in Palestine have been going through over the last five months, and the need that they will have for counseling and for repair of their psyches after this conflict is over.

SUSAN ABULHAWA: So, Playgrounds for Palestine, actually, while I was there, I facilitated a lot of children’s activities as a kind of psychological first aid for children. The trauma is immeasurable, frankly, not just for children, but for everybody.

I spoke with a lot of women, in particular, who were recovering in a hospital or were there — or, you know, being with their children who were recovering. The stories they told me are just — are out of like a Hollywood horror film. I mean, there are — I have photos of the backs of men where Israeli soldiers carved pictures, smiley faces, Stars of David, etc., in their skin. These women narrated stories to me of, you know, Israeli soldiers laying them — laying hundreds of women on the ground and then taking their guns with the laser and laughing, and then wherever the laser landed, they shoot.

I spoke with a woman whose 3-year-old daughter had both of her legs shattered, and she was in the hospital recovering. It was an intentional — she was intentionally shot by a soldier. And this happened to her daughter after they killed her son, shot him through the head, in what she described as tank fire toying with them for about 30 minutes before they finally delivered the final blow that took her son.

People being forced to walk from hospitals, severe injuries, people being forced to walk for hours to get to safety. Children and people, you know, who were fleeing their homes, trying to get to the south, having to walk with their hands up, with their IDs, and if anybody dares to look down or pick anything up, they’re picked off. They’re literally shot by snipers.

The scenes that they narrated to me — I spoke with a little girl who was about 8 years old, whose face was badly burned, but her injuries were the least in the whole family. The entire family had third-degree burns all over their bodies. And what she explained to me, again, you know, I don’t know how a child survives that.

I spent time in a hospital, in a maternity ward, where there were newborns who had either — who were unknown or who were known but whose family was just absent and no longer there, or nobody knows what happened to them. These newborns are spending 24/7, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in incubators without any human touch, really, except when they come to feed them, because the nurses and the doctors are so exhausted and so overworked. People are being discharged from hospitals with wounds and going into tents where they don’t have running water and proper hygiene, and they’re getting horrible infections and dying from sepsis.

You know, life on the beach, you know, the beach is where Palestinians used to go for fun, to love, to be with family. And it’s torture now, because a lot of tents are pitched in the sand, and the sand is in everything. People’s skin is scorched. I mean, children walk around with cracked cheeks from the sun and sand. The sand gets in every bite of food.

The food that does come in, into Rafah, is primarily canned food. And most of it — and I think you hinted at this earlier, and I’ve seen it and tasted it myself — it is stuff that has clearly been sitting on shelves for decades. And all you can taste, really, is the rancidity, metallic taste of the can.

You know, this is — people schedule their days, they plan their days around trying to get to a single shared bathroom that’s shared by hundreds of other families. They try to do their best with hygiene, but it’s impossible. And when you have — when people succumb to living in filth, people — you know, I think maybe people in the West sort of have this impulse thought that most Black and Brown people sort of live like this. So it’s a little humiliating to have to explain that we don’t actually live in filth. And it’s degrading, beyond anything you can imagine, to be forced to live like this months on end, to have no way to protect your children, no way to give them hope, no way to calm their fears.

You know, there’s no privacy in the tents, because, you know, there’s not enough tents for families. So families are actually separated, with, you know, dozens of women in one tent and dozens in another. So spouses cannot even hold each other at night when they need that care the most. It’s these details that are traumatizing en masse for children, for parents, for elderly.

People don’t have medicines. People are dying from lack of insulin, which, by the way, Israel has banned from coming into Gaza. And they’re dying from diarrhea, because they’re drinking polluted water, and Israel has also banned water treatment, water filtration systems, even handheld ones, simple personal water filtration systems that, you know, Americans use when they go camping.

The degradation is total, Amy. And on top of that, they’re bombed, day in and out, even in Rafah. When I was there, there was not a single night that we didn’t hear bombs, and at least once was close enough that the building I was in shook, and we thought our building had actually been hit. But it was the one — it was one over from where I was. And there was another moment, too, when a tent by a hospital, where we had just been, was bombed. They bombed a tent. And it actually happened to be the tent that is adjacent to the tent that Bisan Owda was in. And they were sitting, eating. They were sitting on the ground eating, and shrapnel just came above their heads.

You know, this is a daily — this is a daily life, and everybody is expecting to die, expecting to lose the people they love. And they are. And I think, you know, there is something that I’ve noticed that happens. There’s a kind of detachment when people tell you what’s happening to them or what has happened. There’s a kind of numbing, that must be, I suppose, some kind of a defense mechanism. So, when they have a chance to breathe, I think these demons, this horror, this trauma is going to be another layer of catastrophe, generations just lost.

AMY GOODMAN: Susan Abulhawa, you talk about already Rafah is being bombed. Sunday, Ramadan begins. There are supposedly ceasefire talks going on, but the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is continuing to threaten an all-out ground invasion of Rafah. What would this mean for the situation there?

SUSAN ABULHAWA: What you would expect, Amy. I mean, imagine — imagine them rolling in in a ground incursion where 1.4 million human beings are crammed into a tiny area — I think has been likened to the size of Heathrow Airport. When you walk out into the streets in Gaza, it’s crammed. I mean, it’s like being at a, you know, like — it’s the kind of crowd you would see at concerts in the United States. It’s 24/7. People have no place to walk barely. You know, to go from — if there’s a car and it’s driving a block, it will take you, I don’t know, 20 minutes to go a block, because a car has to contend with foot traffic, donkey traffic, horse traffic. It’s every — it’s just crammed. It’s completely crammed.

And another thing is that, you know, people — there are some apartments that might be available for rent, but people are terrified to rent apartments. They’d rather stay in a tent, because they don’t know — they’re worried — you know, it’s more probable that buildings are going to be bombed than tents, even though tents are being bombed, as well. But, you know, these are the choices that people are making.

Yeah, I don’t know — I don’t know how else to draw a picture for you, but it is a holocaust. It is unlike anything I have ever seen. I was in Jenin in 2002 when Israel committed a massacre there, and I thought that was the worst thing I had ever seen. This is infinitely worse than anything I’ve ever seen either personally or even in a Hollywood horror film.

Just walking, just when you — when you walk outside, you feel — like, first of all, there is one color. It’s gray. It’s just this miserable gray. And it’s painted on people’s faces, because they can’t wash themselves. They don’t have gasoline anymore, so they resort to one of two options. One is called solaar [phon.], which is, you know, a mixture of dirty gasoline. And the other is called searage [phon.], which is basically cooking oil. And searage is the cheapest of the two, and that’s what people who do have cars use. It creates this grotesque odor. It coats everything. It also — it’s being breathed in by people, and it’s a substance that sticks to the lungs. And so, there’s going to be, you know, in the future, massive lung disease from this searage. There’s this sort of constant haze of dust and rubble from the destruction that just doesn’t settle, and you breathe that in, as well. And you kind of — you walk through the street, and you feel the weight of the air is heavy. And I don’t know how else to describe it, but it’s hard to breathe. And I say that literally, and figuratively, as well. And then, you know, you go to the — you go to the ocean to get a little bit of a breeze, but the misery is also there.

AMY GOODMAN: You have said that it’s grassroots activism that most interests you, what people are doing on the ground to resist, whether around the world or here in the United States. And I wanted to ask you about the University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill, announced her resignation December following intense Republican-led backlash over questions regarding antisemitism and the contentious testimony before Congress. Major donors to UPenn had demanded Magill’s resignation since September, after she refused to cancel the Palestine Writes Literature Festival on campus. You’re the executive director of that festival. She was forced to resign. The UPenn Board of Trustees, who announced her resignation, then resigned himself. Can you talk about all of this controversy? And this had happened beginning before October 7th.

SUSAN ABULHAWA: Right. I mean, imagine that, that they were so up in arms about a literature festival. It was — frankly, it was such a beautiful moment of agency for us Palestinians. It was the first time that artists and writers from our diaspora, from every part of Palestine, from ’48, ’67, Gaza, Jerusalem, from the camps in Lebanon, from Jordan, other parts of the Arab world, from the United States — it was the first time we were able to gather in a single place since the Nakba. It was an exceedingly joyous moment for all of us. People cried. They had never seen anything like it. They had never experienced it.

There were — you know, we talked about everything, from tatreez to queer literature. We had interviews with writers and talking about their books. We had children’s programming. We had — we talked about food, culinary heritage. It was just — there was this amazing photography and art exhibit, photographs from our lives and of our ancestors in Palestine, going back to the beginnings of photography. It was just — it was a really incredible moment for all of us. And there was immense love within the walls of the building at UPenn.

But we also knew that outside there was extraordinary hate that had been directed at us for weeks prior. And during the festival, there was a billboard, a digital billboard, that was roaming campus, the campus, with photos of many of our speakers, myself included, you know, in these sort of demonic colors and calling us jihadis and Nazis and other defamatory words.

And then, after the festival, Marc Rowan, who was one of the trustees, and he was the most vocal of the trustees calling for Liz Magill’s resignation — he’s a billionaire. And from what I understand from journalists who write — who write, you know, business journalism, call him the Antichrist of the business world. But in any event, this man went on national television shows and wrote op-eds lying about the festival. I mean, at one point, he said that we called for the genocide of Jews. Now, we all knew that they had people recording inside. That’s not hard to — that’s not hard to expect. I mean, Malcolm X taught us that. And I even mentioned it in my opening speech. You know, I welcomed all the people coming to surveil us. But yet he has never produced anything resembling such a claim, because it’s a lie.

But, you know, they go on and they say this stuff, and nobody challenges them, and it becomes fact. And Marc Rowan even went so far as to try and tie the festival to October 7th. I mean, it’s disgusting. It’s disgusting, the way that — but this is Zionist propaganda. I mean, you know, we saw its continuation with the lie of the 40 beheaded babies and then, you know, this claim of mass rape, that’s thankfully getting dismantled by, you know, people who are paying attention. I mean, it’s just — it doesn’t stop, and it doesn’t get challenged, not really. I do have hope in this younger generation that’s questioning things. And they’re not buying the lies in the ways that older generations continue to do.

AMY GOODMAN: When you went into Gaza, you brought suitcases. Talk about what you brought in. And also you held a writing workshop, Susan. Can you talk about the stories that people told?

SUSAN ABULHAWA: I brought in a lot of things, ranging from medication to diapers, menstrual pads, just sanitary wipes, just body wipes, soap, shampoo, hearing aid batteries for the deaf community, that has been devastated by the lack of batteries, particularly children who are learning to communicate and who depend on a functioning hearing aid, and who are now regressing because of that. We brought in coffee. That was such a huge gift. I mean, people couldn’t — people haven’t had coffee in months. And it was like I just gave them, you know, a box of gold. You know, I brought in everything I could possibly bring, and I actually left Gaza with just the clothes on my back, because I gave everything away, because that is how deep the need is. People literally fled their homes with just what they were wearing. And even people who packed suitcases, they left them on the side of the road, because it got too heavy or because soldiers made them drop them.

You know, we talk so much about the physical needs, because it’s immense — you know, water, food, shelter. But there’s the psychological, the intellectual needs. I mean, we’re not just — you know, we’re not just, you know, these physical beings. People in Gaza want to reach their potential. I mean, you know, despite Israel’s best efforts to reduce Gaza to this point previously — I mean, they said it before. You know, the siege that’s currently in Gaza was about reducing Palestinians. And they talked about putting Palestinians on a diet, etc. But despite all of these restrictions, despite the bombings, Palestinians still figured out ways to build, to go to university, to learn, to establish businesses and jobs. And I think Israel hates that. I think they hate it. And I think that was — you know, that’s one of the things that is pushing this kind of — it’s part of this hatred. It’s part of this glee that the whole society seems to have at Palestinian suffering.

We held the writing workshop with a group of young people. All of them are creatives in one way or another. The stories they told are harrowing. And being in their presence, frankly, was humbling. And I said this in one of the articles. You know, you feel small in front of these people who have endured the unendurable, and who still managed to be generous and kind. I’m wearing this necklace and these pieces, these pieces of handmade jewelry, from people who insisted I take them, people who have nothing, who have lost everything, but who somehow keep their dignity and their generosity and their habits of hospitality. It’s extraordinarily humbling.

The writing workshop was a two-day event, was four hours each day. The first day was sort of working, doing writing exercises, talking about the craft. And the second day was when we developed the stories. And I was pleasantly surprised at the level of their writing. And I’m really looking forward to editing a collection, because I think the people of Gaza who have lived this moment should be the ones to narrate this moment. It shouldn’t be anybody else, not even other Palestinians like me. And my goal is to give them the tools that I have acquired in my life to narrate this moment for the rest of the world, and I’m looking forward to producing this book with them.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Susan, can you talk about the medical community, the health workers — I mean, you are a renowned novelist, but your background is also in medicine and science — and the effect of the bombardment of the hospitals, of the ambulances, on the medical workers, the doctors, the nurses, the medics themselves?

SUSAN ABULHAWA: They are bearing the brunt of a lot of what’s happening. Individually, I want to say also, a lot of the doctors and administrators themselves have been forced into tents. So, you know, nobody is — there are no bubbles for people to live in, except, you know, some of the NGOs who are able to secure safety and running water, etc., mostly for foreigners who come into Gaza as aid workers. But Gaza’s doctors and nurses, a lot of them haven’t been paid in months, but they still show up for work. They are exhausted. They are demoralized. Every single one of them has lost family members or friends and neighbors. The vast majority of them are displaced, and most of them have lost their homes. They are all bewildered in one way or another, trying to just function through this moment and praying for a ceasefire.

Even, you know, like I said, the ceasefire seems to be the ceiling of people’s ambitions at this moment. And it’s particularly acute now with Ramadan around the corner. The idea that Israel will still be bombing during Ramadan is — you know, I want to say “unimaginable,” but we already crossed that threshold a long time ago. Language really is inadequate and insufficient to capture the enormity of this moment. And I want to emphasize that what I’ve seen is really a fraction of the totality of this horror,

AMY GOODMAN: Susan Abulhawa, Palestinian novelist, poet, activist, author of a number of books, including her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, an international best-seller translated into 32 languages, considered a classic in Palestinian literature. She’s founder and co-director of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization, and executive director of Palestine Writes Literature Festival. She just left Gaza after spending two weeks there, was speaking to us from Cairo, Egypt. To see Part 1 of our discussion, go to democracy now.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Thanks so much for joining us.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

PCHR on the Flour Massacre

Full Statement

We will starve you or kill you


Israel is making it clear to Palestinians in Gaza: We will starve you to death or we will kill you when you try to get food.

At dawn this morning, as hundreds of desperately hungry people gathered in Gaza City in hopes of getting a sack of flour from the few aid trucks that Israel has allowed in, Israeli forces opened fire killing 112 and injuring more than 700 others.

I have been waiting since yesterday. At about 4:30 this morning, trucks started to come through. Once we approached the aid trucks, the Israeli tanks and warplanes started firing at us, as if it was a trap.

The number of dead will no doubt rise, as nearby hospitals are barely functioning because of Israeli attacks and the blockade of Gaza. While blood filled the ground where people were waiting for food, hospitals do not have blood supplies to treat the wounded.

Stop the Genocide in Gaza!

Shocking but not surprising, the Israeli military first blamed the violence on the starving people themselves, saying that people were crushed in the crowd.

Only a ceasefire will stop the slaughter and starvation. And it is up to make that happen. Take action today, tomorrow, and as often as possible. Share this message. Ask friends and family to join you.

Stop the genocide!

In outrage and solidarity,
All of us at MECA

P.S. Read more coverage of the massacre from the Palestine Chronicle.

The Biden Administration Joins Israel’s War on UNRWA

Following Washington’s lead, key US allies have cut funding for the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine—making them all complicit in genocide.

PHYLLIS BENNIS, THE NATION, FEBRUARY 28, 2024
A group of Palestinian children is pictured at a school run by UNWRA a in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on February 22, 2024. (Majdi Fathi / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

When the 17 judges of the International Court of Justice issued their near-unanimous ruling on January 26, making clear that Israel’s actions in Gaza plausibly constituted genocide, they asserted the legitimacy of the world’s most influential judicial body to hold Israel provisionally accountable for those violations.

Israel was having none of it.

Just hours after the court’s decision was announced in The Hague, Israel went public with an unsubstantiated allegation that 12 Gazan employees of the UN’s Relief Works Agency, the primary body responsible for providing humanitarian support to Palestine refugees, supposedly were tied to Hamas and may have played some role in the attack on Israel on October 7. (In fact, the names of all UNRWA employees had been provided to Israel earlier in the year for Tel Aviv’s vetting—and Israel made no complaints.) Despite the lack of evidence, UNRWA—presumably in an effort to avoid a dangerous collective punishment by Israel’s allies—immediately announced that it was firing the named employees (two were confirmed dead) and the UN launched two separate investigations.

Not wanting to wait a moment, however, Washington announced on the same day that it was cutting its entire aid allocation to UNRWA, despite the agency’s irreplaceable role in getting desperately needed aid into Gaza. A few hours later, key US allies announced that they were joining Washington in cutting aid: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and new NATO-member Finland. The United States provides by far the largest annual donation available to the UN agency (although, at just over $300 million, it’s a pittance compared to the almost $4 billion the US sends to the Israeli military every year). And combined with the at least 15 countries that eventually joined the US cuts, the impact on UNRWA’s ability to provide even the most minimal of basic services is enormous. With those services destroyed by Israel’s war, this US role in further undermining Palestinians’ access to water, food, medicine, shelter, and fuel makes Washington—again —directly complicit in Israel’s genocide.

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Then things got worse. Two weeks later, on February 9, Israel launched another PR attack on UNRWA, this time claiming that a tunnel under the agency’s headquarters in Gaza City had been used by Hamas—variously identified as a communications center, a command center or a data center. Again no evidence was made public, but, among other responses, the US Senate bill authorizing $14 billion for unconditional aid to the Israeli military stated explicitly that none of the bill’s separate humanitarian aid (for conflict zones around the world) could go to UNRWA. US officials themselves had argued earlier that UNRWA was “the only game in town” in terms of getting any significant aid into Gaza, but the bill still imposed a permanent ban on US funding. (If passed by the House, it would even prevent UNRWA from receiving a tiny $300,000 grant that had already been approved.)

The impact of the aid cuts on the already threatened lives of 2.3 million displaced Gazans, as well as millions more Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, can hardly be overstated. US officials who suggested redirection of UNRWA funds to UNICEF and the World Food Program only showed their ignorance of conditions on the ground, and the capacities of aid organizations. UNICEF and WFP together have less than 70 staff on the ground in Gaza; UNRWA has over 13,000 providing, for more than half a century, all the services that ordinarily would be provided by a government civil service. Most of Gaza’s doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, street sweepers are UNRWA employees. Without UNRWA, all the UN agencies and NGOs would be unable to carry out their crucial work. Thousands, probably tens of thousands more civilians—especially babies, children, pregnant women, and the elderly—will die.

And there is another price to be paid as well. Along with its critical role in lifesaving humanitarian assistance, UNRWA remains the only international agency in the UN system whose mandate includes protection of the rights of Palestinians as refugees. The work of UNRWA, from its creation in 1949, was designed to continue until Palestinian refugees achieved “a just and durable solution to their plight” on the basis of all the human rights and refugee rights to which they are entitled.

That means that UNRWA’s work is unfinished until the Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes, guaranteed by international law, is made real. Refugees—dispossessed in 1948 of their homes and land from what is now southern Israel—make up 70 percent of Gaza’s population. Without UNRWA, their right of return, indeed the very existence of Palestinians as a refugee community, is threatened with erasure. And that—creating conditions that make the survival of all or part of a threatened group as a group impossible—is part of the very definition of genocide.

No wonder Israel is so eager to get rid of UNRWA. And for the same reason, no wonder the defense of UNRWA remains such a critical factor in our continuing work for an immediate cease-fire and Palestinian access to unhindered humanitarian assistance in Gaza.

Phyllis Bennis

Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., and serves on the national board of Jewish Voice for Peace. She is the author of Before & After: US Foreign Policy and the War on Terrorism.

Six Days to Go!

Online Auction to Benefit Gaza Relief closes February 29

Plus, an online donation campaign update from MECA

Don’t miss your chance to bid on these great donated items. (If you have already bid, you might want to check your preferred item(s) to see where you stand.)

Among the choices are lots of great gift certificates for food, spices, services, and more donated by generous local businesses; some great original artwork, jewelry, homemade wine, magazine subscriptions, books, calendars, tutoring, a photo shoot, and even a tattoo session.

As of today, the auction has raised over $5,000 but we need to raise much more for the catastrophic situation in Rafah and all of Gaza. So bid away!

 AND… a NEW GOAL for our Emergency Direct Donation Campaign

As of today, this campaign has raised over $6,700 from all sources, surpassing our initial goal of $5000.  So our new goal will be $10,000. This money goes immediately to MECA to be put to use in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza.  A current update from MECA is below.< You can donate to this campaign here.

As the situation keeps deteriorating in Gaza including the spread of hunger, malnutrition and actual starvation, campaigns like there are critically important to undertake, even as we do everything else in our power to stop this genocidal crime against humanity.

As always, thanks for your support!

Read MECA’s update on their work in Gaza

An update about MECA’s work in Gaza

Middle East Children's Alliance
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Children in Deir El-Balah (central Gaza Strip) enjoying hot meals from one of our community kitchens

It’s been a while since we sent you an update about MECA’s work in Gaza. When you see the news getting more terrible every day you may wonder if we’re able to do very much at all.

In fact, we’re continuing some of the things we’ve been doing since October 8, like delivering food parcels and clean water.  And, as the genocide goes on, MECA’s Gaza team finds new ways to meet the needs of thousands of children and families.

Your support is what makes this work possible. If you can make another contribution now for Gaza emergency aid, it will go immediately to bring food and clean water to people who are suffering so much.

Donate for Gaza Emergency Aid


 
Even here at MECA, we are inspired by what our staff, partners, and volunteers are able to do when faced with such danger and scarcity. Also, the difficulties of communication blackouts, roads damaged, destroyed or blocked by Israeli tanks.

Food and water continue to be the most urgent needs throughout Gaza and MECA is meeting those needs several ways:

Fresh produce provides key nutrition. MECA continues to get fresh vegetables and fruit from local farmers. Right now, we are distributing boxes to 12,500 families in the three southernmost areas —Middle Area, Khan Younis, and Rafah.

Hot Meals from Community Kitchens.  With the support of the World Central Kitchen (WCK), MECA now has one large and two small solar-powered community kitchens in Rafah and one further north. Israeli tanks and bulldozers destroyed another kitchen, but we are expecting new equipment from WCK to rebuild it soon.  Together, the kitchens provide hot meals for more than 3,500 people every day.

While MECA’s team in Gaza works day and night to help people survive, I urge you to do what you can to stop this slaughter—even when it seems unstoppable.  Here’s an action toolkit and here’s MECA’s Gaza Emergency Aid donation page.

 
Food parcels with rice, lentils, beans, cheese, and more plus ready-to-eat meals are delivered to several thousand people every week, many who are recently displaced from their homes or shelters.

Water: We’ve provided 26,417 gallons of water to displaced families in Rafah, and now other large organizations are distributing water there. We had been trucking water to the tens of thousands of people sheltering in Mawasi on the edge of Khan Younis until the Israeli military presence made that impossible. However, we managed to get 2,000 water bottles of clean drinking water for families from World Central Kitchen into the area. A huge achievement was the recent installation of a water purification unit for the community in Mawasi. This water purification unit is solar powered and provides 2,600 gallons of clean drinking water every day.

Some aid for people in the north. The needs in northern Gaza are so great and the obstacles are almost insurmountable but one new and one longtime partner organization were able to find and distribute medicine, milk, drinking water and even hot meals of rice and meat.

MECA’s team in Gaza is working tirelessly and they are determined not to give up. They won’t even take a break when I want them to. This the collective spirit in Gaza and among Palestinians everywhere that has made it possible for us to survive to this day.

Many thanks for your support.

In solidarity,

Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch
MECA Director

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TAKE ACTION FOR GAZA!

 

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Egypt Building Camp in Sinai to Absorb Palestinian Refugees

Israel will likel try to push Palestinians from Rafah into the camp

February 15, 2024

Egypt is building an 8-square-mile walled enclosure in the Sinai Desert near Gaza to prepare for an influx of Palestinian refugees as Israel is vowing to launch an assault on Rafah, which borders Egypt and is packed with about 1.5 million Palestinians.

The revelation of Egypt’s construction, which was reported by The Wall Street Journal and an Egyptian rights group, signals Cairo is caving to Israeli pressure to allow Palestinians to enter its territory.

Egyptian officials told the Journal that more than 100,000 people would be able to fit into the camps they are constructing. If a mass exodus of Palestinians from Gaza does happen, the Egyptian officials said they want to limit the number of refugees they allow in to between 50,000 and 60,000.

The Sinai Foundation for Human Rights first reported on the construction on Wednesday and said the project is expected to be completed within 10 days. Egyptian officials told the Journal they expect a broad Israeli offensive on Rafah could start “within weeks.” Israel must be aware of the construction and will likely try to push as many Palestinians into the camp as it can.

Israeli government officials have not been shy about their desire to cleanse the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population and re-establish Jewish settlements. A document prepared by Israel’s Intelligence Ministry that was leaked back in October said the best-case scenario for Israel would be to send all 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza into Egypt.

But Cairo’s opposition to the plan caused Israeli officials to look elsewhere and suggest Western countries take in Palestinian refugees. According to Israeli media, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously said he was looking for countries to “absorb”Palestinians, but he’s cooled the rhetoric since the Biden administration criticized other Israeli ministers for making similar comments.