Holocaust Survivor to March in Defense of Gazans living under Israeli-Egyptian Economic Blockage
EconomicDemocracy Coop
scientific experiment designed to find out how much one can starve a
population and turn its life into hell before they break. This
experiment was conducted with the generous help of Europe and the US."
-Israeli Peace Activist, Uri Avnery
Gaza Freedom March Planned for One-Year Anniversary of Israeli Assault
This weekend marks that one-year anniversary of the start of Israel’s
three-week assault on the Gaza Strip that killed some 1,400
Palestinians and thirteen Israelis [Note: this is about 1 in every
1,000 Gazans being killed. Imagine 300,000 Americans being killed in a
military assault against the USA to get an idea of the devastation -
ED] To mark the occasion, a group of over nearly 1,400 individuals
from over forty countries around the world are aiming to break the
siege of Gaza and participate in a nonviolent march inside Gaza
alongside thousands of Palestinians. We speak with Hedy Epstein, an
eighty-five-year-old Holocaust survivor who is taking part in the
march, and Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK and part of the
coordinating committee of the Gaza Freedom March. [includes rush
transcript]
Guests:
Hedy Epstein, member of the Gaza Freedom March. She’s an eighty-five-
year-old Holocaust survivor who was born in Germany. She’s also a
committed anti-Zionist activist and has made five solidarity trips to
the West Bank.
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK and part of the coordinating
committee of the Gaza Freedom March
JUAN GONZALEZ: This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of the
start of Israel’s three-week assault on the Gaza Strip that killed
some 1,400 Palestinians and thirteen Israelis. One year later, little
to no rebuilding has taken place, and Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza
continues. Since the end of its assault, Israel has only allowed forty-
one truckloads of construction materials into Gaza. A new report by
leading humanitarian and human rights groups says thousands of
truckloads are required to repair the thousands of buildings destroyed
by Israel’s military assault on Gaza. The report accuses the
international community of not doing enough to end Israel’s blockade
and of betraying the nearly 1.5 million Palestinians living in the
Gaza Strip.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, next week a group of over nearly 1,400 people from
over forty countries around the world are aiming to break the siege of
Gaza and participate in a nonviolent march inside Gaza alongside
thousands of Palestinians. It’s been called the Gaza Freedom March.
We’re joined now by one of the many Americans who will be on this
march. Hedy Epstein is with us. She’s an eighty-five-year-old
Holocaust survivor who was born in Germany. She’s also a committed
anti-Zionist activist and has made five solidarity trips to the West
Bank. Hedy Epstein is joining us from St. Louis.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Why are you going on this trip, Hedy?
HEDY EPSTEIN: Good morning, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us.
HEDY EPSTEIN: There are several reasons why. Thank you. There are
several reasons why I’m going. One of them is to let the people in
Gaza know that there are people out there in the world who care about
them, who are concerned about them, who are worried about them, unlike
the governments of many countries, who seem to be asleep or at least
not paying any attention to what is going on in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Give us a little—
HEDY EPSTEIN: Another reason, I guess, is—
AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead.
HEDY EPSTEIN: Go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: I was going to say—
HEDY EPSTEIN: Another reason—
AMY GOODMAN: —tell us a little more about yourself, Hedy. Talk about
your early years in Germany and how you survived the Holocaust.
HEDY EPSTEIN: OK. I was born in Germany, and when Hitler came to
power, I was eight years old. And my parents quickly realized that
Germany was not a place to raise a family under the Nazi regime. And
so, they tried to leave Germany and increasingly were more desperate
about getting out anywhere in the world. But there was one place they
were not willing to go to, and that was Palestine.
And why was that? Because they were ardent anti-Zionists. And as a
child, I didn’t really know what or understand fully what Zionism or
anti-Zionism is about. But if my parents were anti-Zionist, so was I.
In May 1939, I was fortunate to be able to leave Germany on a
Kindertransport, or a children’s transport, to England. England took
in almost 10,000 Jewish children in the nine months preceding World
War II. My parents were not so fortunate. They perished in 1942 in the
concentration camp, or extermination camp, Auschwitz.
And I came to the US in 1948, about the same time that Israel became a
state. And I had mixed feelings at that time. One, I was glad that
there was a place for people to go to who survived the Holocaust. But
on the other hand, I remembered my parents’ anti-Zionism, and I was
afraid that somewhere down the road no good would come of this. What
that might be, I couldn’t possibly imagine then. But I was new in the
United States, and new things to learn and new impressions, and so I
paid little or no attention to that part of the world.
And then in 1982, I guess I got a wake-up call. I learned about the
massacres in the two refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, located in
Lebanon. And I needed to find out what was this all about, who was
responsible, who was adversely affected, and what happened between
1948 and 1982, when I paid little attention to this part of the world.
And as I learned more and understood more, I began to speak out and
speak out publicly. And then, as you mentioned, I have been to the
West Bank five times since 2003, and this will be my third attempt at
going to Gaza. And I hope the Egyptian government will find it in its
heart and soul, especially at this time of the year of giving, in
giving us the opportunity to get into Gaza.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And were you able, as you grew up here in the United
States, to eventually get an understanding of why your parents, so
early on, before even the founding of Israel, had become such
committed anti-Zionists?
HEDY EPSTEIN: Yes. I mean, I don’t know why my parents became anti-
Zionists. That’s a question I never asked as a child. So I can only
guess at what the reason is, and probably they did not feel they
wanted to be in a place or a country or a state that is only for Jews
and by Jews, to the exclusion of all non-Jews.
AMY GOODMAN: When you say you attempted to get into Gaza several times
before, explain what happened, Hedy Epstein.
HEDY EPSTEIN: Alright. The first time I was hoping to go with the Free
Gaza Movement, and the Free Gaza Movement is another nonviolent
organization trying to break the siege. And two boats were actually
successful, on the first trip, to go to Gaza in August of last year.
Just—and we were going to take the boat in Cyprus. Just before we were
ready to go, there was an enormous heat wave in Cyprus, 120 degrees in
the shade. And I suffered from that heat and became ill, and in
deference to my fellow travelers, I chose not to go, a decision I
shall regret the rest of my life.
The second attempt, the second time that I wanted to go, was in June
of this year. And the day before I was to leave St. Louis, I was
assaulted on my street during broad daylight. And I suffered some
physical injuries, lost a lot of blood, and was not able to go because
of that.
And so, this is my third attempt. The first two were by boat, the
second by land. And being an inveterate optimistic, I know that the
Egyptian government will make the right decision and let us go. And I
will be able to go with about 1,400 other people from forty-two
different countries to Gaza. And we’re bringing—
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s talk about Egypt’s decision. Earlier this
week, Egypt threatened to block the Gaza Freedom March from crossing
into Gaza from Egypt. We’re turning now to Egypt for the latest. We’re
joined in Cairo by Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of CODEPINK and part
of the coordinating committee of the Gaza Freedom March.
Medea, welcome to Democracy Now! What’s happening? What’s the latest?
MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, the Egyptian government is being very difficult
right now. We have been working with them since September on this,
negotiating, giving them names, all the information about every
individual who is trying to come. And they never gave us a definitive
answer, and suddenly this week they came out and said, “No, we’re not
going to let you go,” after we have 1,350 people already signed up,
already got their tickets, already ready to go, including members of
parliament from around the world, judges, people like Alice Walker—
AMY GOODMAN: Medea, I’m going to interrupt for one second. Medea, are
you speaking on an earpiece or—we’re just having a little trouble
understanding you. If you can speak as clearly as you can directly
into the phone without any kind of earpiece.
MEDEA BENJAMIN: Yes, the Egyptian government, we have worked with them
for months, since September, on this, and suddenly, this week, they
told us that we would not be allowed to go in. So we are flooding
their embassies around the world with phone calls and pleas to let the
Gaza Freedom March proceed into Gaza.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And Medea, what kind of new efforts is the Egyptian
government making to isolate Gaza from the rest of the world along the
border?
MEDEA BENJAMIN: They have been, just recently, starting to build an
underground wall that goes 100 feet into the ground to cut the tunnels
that have become the lifeline for the people of Gaza[the tunnles that,
news reports sometimes quietly admit, are necessary for food, and
economic survival -- see the Israeli Peace Block's Gush-Shalom.org
website for how much water and other economic and human basics are cut
off from Gaza residents. -ED] It’s making the situation very
desperate. It is increasing tension between Hamas and the Egyptian
government. And these tensions are one of the excuses that the
Egyptian government is giving for not allowing the Gaza Freedom March
to proceed.
AMY GOODMAN: So what are you going to do? We just have a minute now.
If the Egyptian government says no—I know there are a number of people
already in Egypt—what are your plans?
MEDEA BENJAMIN: We work [inaudible] to pressure the Egyptian
government. We’re asking your listeners to call the Egyptian embassy
at (202) 895-5400 and plead with them to be on the side of the moral
conscience of the world and the side of the people of Gaza in this one-
year anniversary, and please don’t side with the Israelis.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there. Medea Benjamin, co-
founder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace and part of the Gaza Freedom
March coordinating committee. And we want to thank Hedy Epstein for
joining us, eighty-five-year-old Holocaust survivor and activist. She
plans to be a part of the Gaza Freedom March.
========================
January 2009 Background - the "this will help me get elected" pretext
for Israel's assault on Gaza detailed report from Israeli peace group
Gush Shalom:
JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, Aljazeera’s Arabic channel was reporting on
events in Gaza. Suddenly the camera was pointing upwards towards the
dark sky. The screen was pitch black. Nothing could be seen, but there
was a sound to be heard: the noise of airplanes, a frightening, a
terrifying droning.
русский
It was impossible not to think about the tens of thousands of Gazan
children who were hearing that sound at that moment, cringing with
fright, paralyzed by fear, waiting for the bombs to fall.
“ISRAEL MUST defend itself against the rockets that are terrorizing
our Southern towns,” the Israeli spokesmen explained. “Palestinians
must respond to the killing of their fighters inside the Gaza Strip,”
the Hamas spokesmen declared.
As a matter of fact, the cease-fire did not collapse, because there
was no real cease-fire to start with. The main requirement for any
cease-fire in the Gaza Strip must be the opening of the border
crossings. There can be no life in Gaza without a steady flow of
supplies. But the crossings were not opened, except for a few hours
now and again. The blockade on land, on sea and in the air against a
million and a half human beings is an act of war, as much as any
dropping of bombs or launching of rockets. It paralyzes life in the
Gaza Strip: eliminating most sources of employment, pushing hundreds
of thousands to the brink of starvation, stopping most hospitals from
functioning, disrupting the supply of electricity and water.
Those who decided to close the crossings – under whatever pretext –
knew that there is no real cease-fire under these conditions.
That is the main thing. Then there came the small provocations which
were designed to get Hamas to react. After several months, in which
hardly any Qassam rockets were launched, an army unit was sent into
the Strip “in order to destroy a tunnel that came close to the border
fence”. From a purely military point of view, it would have made more
sense to lay an ambush on our side of the fence. But the aim was to
find a pretext for the termination of the cease-fire, in a way that
made it plausible to put the blame on the Palestinians. And indeed,
after several such small actions, in which Hamas fighters were killed,
Hamas retaliated with a massive launch of rockets, and – lo and behold
– the cease-fire was at an end. Everybody blamed Hamas.
WHAT WAS THE AIM? Tzipi Livni announced it openly: to liquidate Hamas
rule in Gaza. The Qassams served only as a pretext.
Liquidate Hamas rule? That sounds like a chapter out of “The March of
Folly”. After all, it is no secret that it was the Israeli government
which set up Hamas to start with. When I once asked a former Shin-Bet
chief, Yaakov Peri, about it, he answered enigmatically: “We did not
create it, but we did not hinder its creation.”
For years, the occupation authorities favored the Islamic movement in
the occupied territories. All other political activities were
rigorously suppressed, but their activities in the mosques were
permitted. The calculation was simple and naive: at the time, the PLO
was considered the main enemy, Yasser Arafat was the current Satan.
The Islamic movement was preaching against the PLO and Arafat, and was
therefore viewed as an ally.
With the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987, the Islamic movement
officially renamed itself Hamas (Arabic initials of “Islamic
Resistance Movement”) and joined the fight. Even then, the Shin-Bet
took no action against them for almost a year, while Fatah members
were executed or imprisoned in large numbers. Only after a year, were
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his colleagues also arrested.
Since then the wheel has turned. Hamas has now become the current
Satan, and the PLO is considered by many in Israel almost as a branch
of the Zionist organization. The logical conclusion for an Israeli
government seeking peace would have been to make wide-ranging
concessions to the Fatah leadership: ending of the occupation, signing
of a peace treaty, foundation of the State of Palestine, withdrawal to
the 1967 borders, a reasonable solution of the refugee problem,
release of all Palestinian prisoners. That would have arrested the
rise of Hamas for sure.
But logic has little influence on politics. Nothing of this sort
happened. On the contrary, after the murder of Arafat, Ariel Sharon
declared that Mahmoud Abbas, who took his place, was a “plucked
chicken”. Abbas was not allowed the slightest political achievement.
The negotiations, under American auspices, became a joke. The most
authentic Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, was sent to prison for life.
Instead of a massive prisoner release, there were petty and insulting
“gestures”.
Abbas was systematically humiliated, Fatah looked like an empty shell
and Hamas won a resounding victory in the Palestinian election – the
most democratic election ever held in the Arab world. Israel boycotted
the elected government. In the ensuing internal struggle, Hamas
assumed direct control over the Gaza Strip.
And now, after all this, the government of Israel decided to
“liquidate Hamas rule in Gaza” – with blood, fire and columns of
smoke.
THE OFFICIAL NAME of the war is “Cast Lead”, two words from a
children’s song about a Hanukkah toy.
It would be more accurate to call it “the Election War”.
In the past, too, military action has been taken during election
campaigns. Menachem Begin bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor during the
1981 campaign. When Shimon Peres claimed that this was an election
gimmick, Begin cried out at his next rally: “Jews, do you believe that
I would send our brave boys to their death or, worse, to be taken
prisoner by human animals, in order to win an election?” Begin won.
Peres is no Begin. When, during the 1996 election campaign, he ordered
the invasion of Lebanon (operation “Grapes of Wrath”), everybody was
convinced that he had done it for electoral gain. The war was a
failure and Peres lost the elections and Binyamin Netanyahu came to
power.
Barak and Tzipi Livni are now resorting to the same old trick.
According to the polls, Barak’s predicted election result rose within
48 hours by five Knesset seats. About 80 dead Palestinians for each
seat. But it is difficult to walk on a pile of dead bodies. The
success may evaporate in a minute if the war comes to be considered by
the Israeli public as a failure. For example, if the rockets continue
to hit Beersheba, or if the ground attack leads to heavy Israeli
casualties.
The timing was chosen meticulously from another angle too. The attack
started two days after Christmas, when American and European leaders
are on holiday until after New Year. The calculation: even if somebody
wanted to try and stop the war, no one would give up his holiday. That
ensured several days free from outside pressures.
Another reason for the timing: these are George Bush’s last days in
the White House. This blood-soaked moron could be expected to support
the war enthusiastically, as indeed he did. Barack Obama has not yet
entered office and had a ready made pretext for keeping silent: “there
is only one President”. The silence does not bode well for the term of
president Obama.
THE MAIN LINE was: not to repeat the mistakes of Lebanon War II. This
was endlessly repeated on all the news programs and talk shows.
This does not change the fact: the Gaza War is an almost exact replica
of the second Lebanon war.
The strategic concept is the same: to terrorize the civilian
population by unremitting attacks from the air, sowing death and
destruction. This poses no danger to the pilots, since the
Palestinians have no anti-aircraft weapons at all. The calculation: if
the entire life-supporting infrastructure in the Strip is utterly
destroyed and total anarchy ensues, the population will rise up and
overthrow the Hamas regime. Mahmoud Abbas will then ride back into
Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks.
In Lebanon, this calculation did not work out. The bombed population,
including the Christians, rallied behind Hizbullah, and Hassan
Nasrallah became the hero of the Arab world. Something similar will
probably happen this time, too. Generals are experts on using weapons
and moving troops, not on mass psychology.
Some time ago I wrote that the Gaza blockade was a scientific
experiment designed to find out how much one can starve a population
and turn its life into hell before they break. This experiment was
conducted with the generous help of Europe and the US. Up to now, it
did not succeed. Hamas became stronger and the range of the Qassams
became longer. The present war is a continuation of the experiment by
other means.
It may be that the army will “have no alternative” but to re-conquer
the Gaza Strip because there is no other way to stop the Qassams –
except coming to an agreement with Hamas, which is contrary to
government policy. When the ground invasion starts, everything will
depend on the motivation and capabilities of the Hamas fighters vis-à-
vis the Israeli soldiers. Nobody can know what will happen.
DAY AFTER DAY, night after night, Aljazeera’s Arabic channel
broadcasts the atrocious pictures: heaps of mutilated bodies, tearful
relatives looking for their dear ones among the dozens of corpses
spread out on the ground, a woman pulling her young daughter from
under the rubble, doctors without medicines trying to save the lives
of the wounded. (The English-language Aljazeera, unlike its Arab-
language sister-station, has undergone an amazing about face,
broadcasting only a sanitized picture and freely distributing Israeli
government propaganda. It would be interesting to know what happened
there.)
Millions are seeing these terrible images, picture after picture, day
after day. These images are imprinted on their minds forever: horrible
Israel, abominable Israel, inhuman Israel. A whole generation of
haters. That is a terrible price, which we will be compelled to pay
long after the other results of the war itself have been forgotten in
Israel.
But there is another thing that is being imprinted on the minds of
these millions: the picture of the miserable, corrupt, passive Arab
regimes.
As seen by Arabs, one fact stands out above all others: the wall of
shame.
For the million and a half Arabs in Gaza, who are suffering so
terribly, the only opening to the world that is not dominated by
Israel is the border with Egypt. Only from there can food arrive to
sustain life and medicaments to save the injured. This border remains
closed at the height of the horror. The Egyptian army has blocked the
only way for food and medicines to enter, while surgeons operate on
the wounded without anesthetics.
Throughout the Arab world, from end to end, there echoed the words of
Hassan Nasrallah: The leaders of Egypt are accomplices to the crime,
they are collaborating with the “Zionist enemy” in trying to break the
Palestinian people. It can be assumed that he did not mean only
Mubarak, but also all the other leaders, from the king of Saudi Arabia
to the Palestinian President. Seeing the demonstrations throughout the
Arab world and listening to the slogans, one gets the impression that
their leaders seem to many Arabs pathetic at best, and miserable
collaborators at worst.
This will have historic consequences. A whole generation of Arab
leaders, a generation imbued with the ideology of secular Arab
nationalism, the successors of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, Hafez al-Assad and
Yasser Arafat, may be swept from the stage. In the Arab space, the
only viable alternative is the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism.
This war is a writing on the wall: Israel is missing the historic
chance of making peace with secular Arab nationalism. Tomorrow, It may
be faced with a uniformly fundamentalist Arab world, Hamas multiplied
by a thousand.
MY TAXI DRIVER in Tel-Aviv the other day was thinking aloud: Why not
call up the sons of the ministers and members of the Knesset, form
them into a combat unit and send them off to head the coming ground
attack on Gaza?
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1230937462
Help support the Gaza Freedom March:
http://www.gazafreedommarch.org/article.php?list=type&type=416
Regulary read from Isreali peace gropus like Gush Shalom, Yech Gvul,
Rabbis for Human Rights, and others.. Start at http://gush-shalom.org/
Topaz
The kikes see they are getting unpopular. Now they want to take the
heat off the Jews and turn even Gaza into some pity the poor Jew
thing.
The Holocaust Cowing and Milking of Nations By Alex Linder
'Holocaust': The Means by Which the Richest Group in the World
Contrives to Cow and Milk the Rest of the Us in the Guise of Victims
who are Persecuted and Due Eternal Restitution.
Reading through a thousand blog reactions to Duke v Blitzer on CNN, a
generalization crystallizes. People confuse being told something six
million times with knowing something. They are not the same. "It ain't
what you don't know, it's what you know that just ain't so." The
average man 'knows' the Holocaust exists because:
1) everybody uses the term;
2) he has seen photos of stacked bodies;
3) he has read Anne Frank's book;
4) authorities agree that questioning any of this is 'hate.'
In other words, the average man believes in the Holocaust for no
logical reason, but out of simple mammalian conformity.
'Holocaust' is a loaded, dishonest term. You can't debate with
undefined terms without making a joke of yourself, but the average man
does not realize this. It is the part of public school, reinforced by
mass media, to disable his thinking so that he's worse positioned to
defend himself because he can't understand how he is manipulated to
accept the illogical. Debate in the mass media of a democracy is
nothing but the shuffling of loaded terms.
'Holocaust' is no ordinary noun. Rather, it is a loaded gun leveled at
the head of the West and the rest. Give them their money and their
pride of place or get your head and reputation blown off. You will
notice that never, ever does debate in the captive media condescend to
deconstruct the Zionist Privilege embodied in and sanctified by the
designer label 'Holocaust.' Worship the Zionists and submit to their
demands - that is what the term Holocaust means.
A demand for special privilege protected by a shell of pseudo-history;
that is an objective description of the term. The heart of the
'Holocaust,' taking at face value the term's pretension to historical
designation, is the claim that six million Jews were murdered by Nazi
Germany, most of them by gassing. The evidence for the gassing is
never discussed. Photos of crematories and bodies stacked like cord
wood are shown. No context or explanation of the reason for showing
them is given. The connection is to be assumed. But never is any
ordinary evidence, let alone proof, of the gassing allegation
advanced. That Jews were gassed is treated as though it were already
proved and therefore unquestionable, save by the depraved. Thus, the
practical job of the media and the well intentioned everyman is to
smear and ostracize anybody who argues against settled truth. We all
know that Jews were gassed, and that those who say otherwise are
deniers driven by hate. But it ain't so just because "everybody knows"
it is.
We are told repeatedly that the 'Holocaust' is both the worst thing
that ever happened and the best documented thing in human history. We
are to take these assertions on authority, since no genuine debate is
allowed.
There are men who can prove the 'Holocaust' is a Big Lie. You can find
them in jail. Their imprisonment is scarcely mentioned in the mass
media. Their imprisonment goes unlamented by the mass columnists. To
discuss these men and their work would endanger the Propa-sphere the
media construct. They must disappear. But we know, mass media. And
we're not going away. We're getting louder and stronger. And there's
nothing you can do to stop us.
http://www.ihr.org/ www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/
http://www.natvan.com http://www.nsm88.org
http://heretical.com/ http://immigration-globalization.blogspot.com/