NOVANEWS
Survivors of Israeli massacre vow to break the blockade
June 15, 2010
by Michael Leon
Freedom Flotilla: Massacre at Sea
President Obama has made it clear that he is taking sides in this macabre campaign carried out by Israel.
And he may soon learn that the righteousness of a human rights group carries with it political and well as moral power.
Hope, idealism and belief in change are not just campaign slogans.
As Peter Beinart writes in the New York Review of Books, “(T)o suggest that Palestinian and Arab behavior fully explains the growing authoritarian, even racist, tendencies in Israeli politics is to don a moral blindfold, a blindfold that most young American Jews, to their credit, will not wear.”
No, the world, the young, and most of American Jewry refuse to wear blindfolds for reasons that ought to be obvious to our president.
From Greta Berlin:
As survivors of Israel’s brutal attack in international waters begin their testimonies of murder and mayhem on the sea, every one of them reminds us that, although they were imprisoned and brutalized for three days, Palestinian prisoners have no voice, no public forum to tell their stories. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG91kRI7z8Q
And Israel also arrests and tortures Palestinian children, throwing them into the adult prison population, more than 350 of them at any one time, some as young as 12.
Israel imprisons Palestinian activists who have no voice, holding them in administrative detention for months or charging them with resistance to occupation.
When you listen to the stories from the six ships that were hijacked and the passengers who were kidnapped, remember that Palestinians don’t get to stand in front of a microphone and talk about the brutality of Israeli prisons.
We must continue to break the siege of Gaza and raise our voices against the occupation in the West Bank. Donate to the Free Gaza movement, join the BDS movement, support our voyages by calling your representatives and insisting that Israel abide by international law.
Greta Berlin, Co-Founder
witnessgaza.com
www.freegaza.org
http://www.flickr.com/photos/freegaza
