{"id":40,"date":"2009-02-09T14:02:45","date_gmt":"2009-02-09T21:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/?p=40"},"modified":"2009-02-09T14:02:45","modified_gmt":"2009-02-09T21:02:45","slug":"nancy-murray-on-the-destruction-of-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/uncategorized\/nancy-murray-on-the-destruction-of-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Nancy Murray on the Destruction of Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" \/><meta name=\"ProgId\" content=\"Word.Document\" \/><meta name=\"Generator\" content=\"Microsoft Word 9\" \/><meta name=\"Originator\" content=\"Microsoft Word 9\" \/>\n<link href=\"file:\/\/\/C:\/DOCUME%7E1\/ccb\/LOCALS%7E1\/Temp\/msoclip1\/01\/clip_filelist.xml\" rel=\"File-List\" \/><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>  <w:WordDocument>   <w:View>Normal<\/w:View>   <w:Zoom>0<\/w:Zoom>   <w:DoNotOptimizeForBrowser\/>  <\/w:WordDocument> <\/xml><![endif]--><\/p>\n<style> <!--  \/* Font Definitions *\/ @font-face \t{font-family:Times; \tpanose-1:2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3 4; \tmso-font-charset:0; \tmso-generic-font-family:roman; \tmso-font-pitch:variable; \tmso-font-signature:536902279 -2147483648 8 0 511 0;} @font-face \t{font-family:\"Lucida Grande\"; \tmso-font-alt:\"Courier New\"; \tmso-font-charset:0; \tmso-generic-font-family:auto; \tmso-font-pitch:variable; \tmso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;}  \/* Style Definitions *\/ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal \t{mso-style-parent:\"\"; \tmargin:0in; \tmargin-bottom:.0001pt; \tmso-pagination:widow-orphan; \tfont-size:12.0pt; \tfont-family:\"Times New Roman\"; \tmso-fareast-font-family:\"Times New Roman\";} p.MsoFooter, li.MsoFooter, div.MsoFooter \t{margin:0in; \tmargin-bottom:.0001pt; \tmso-pagination:widow-orphan; \ttab-stops:center 3.0in right 6.0in; \tfont-size:12.0pt; \tfont-family:\"Times New Roman\"; \tmso-fareast-font-family:\"Times New Roman\";} p.MsoBlockText, li.MsoBlockText, div.MsoBlockText \t{margin-right:.5in; \tmso-margin-top-alt:auto; \tmso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; \tmargin-left:4.3pt; \tline-height:150%; \tmso-pagination:widow-orphan; \ttab-stops:.25in; \tfont-size:12.0pt; \tmso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; \tfont-family:\"Times New Roman\"; \tmso-fareast-font-family:\"Times New Roman\";} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink \t{color:blue; \ttext-decoration:underline; \ttext-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed \t{color:purple; \ttext-decoration:underline; \ttext-underline:single;} p.BalloonText, li.BalloonText, div.BalloonText \t{mso-style-name:\"Balloon Text\"; \tmargin:0in; \tmargin-bottom:.0001pt; \tmso-pagination:widow-orphan; \tfont-size:9.0pt; \tfont-family:\"Lucida Grande\"; \tmso-fareast-font-family:\"Times New Roman\"; \tmso-bidi-font-family:\"Times New Roman\";} p.Noparagraphstyle, li.Noparagraphstyle, div.Noparagraphstyle \t{mso-style-name:\"\\[No paragraph style\\]\"; \tmso-style-parent:\"\"; \tmargin:0in; \tmargin-bottom:.0001pt; \tline-height:120%; \tmso-pagination:none; \tmso-layout-grid-align:none; \ttext-autospace:none; \tfont-size:12.0pt; \tfont-family:Times; \tmso-fareast-font-family:\"Times New Roman\"; \tmso-bidi-font-family:\"Times New Roman\"; \tcolor:black;} @page Section1 \t{size:8.5in 11.0in; \tmargin:1.0in 1.25in .5in 1.25in; \tmso-header-margin:.5in; \tmso-footer-margin:.5in; \tmso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 \t{page:Section1;} --> <\/style>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-right: 0.5in; margin-left: 4.3pt; line-height: 150%\"><strong><span>Community Church, January 25, 2009<o:p><\/o:p><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-right: 0.5in; margin-left: 4.3pt; line-height: 150%\"><em><span>By Nancy Murray, President, Gaza Mental Health Foundation, Inc.<span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><o:p><\/o:p><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoBlockText\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>On Dr. Martin Luther King Day, when foreign journalists were finally permitted to enter the Gaza Strip and report on the horror they encountered, I re-read Dr. King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s truth telling sermon of April 4, 1967 about the need to break the silence on Vietnam.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-right: 0.5in; margin-left: 4.3pt; line-height: 150%\"><span><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>&#8220;As I ponder the madness of Vietnam,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said,<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153and \u00c2\u00a0search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind \u00c2\u00a0goes constantly to the people\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6who have been living under the \u00c2\u00a0curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/span><span>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><o:p><\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-right: 0.5in; margin-left: 4.3pt; line-height: 150%\"><span><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>If only Dr. King were with us to hold up the folly of a US Middle East policy which makes no attempt to either connect with the humanity of Palestinians who have, for six continuous decades, been living under the curse of war and threat of ethnic cleansing, or to hear their broken cries.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>What would Dr. King say about the unleashing of the armed might of the fourth largest army in the world on a tiny intensely crowded territory only a little larger than Boston, in which more than half the residents were children?<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>What would he say about the massacre of more than 1,300 Palestinians, 300 of them children, whose bodies are still being pulled out of the rubble?<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Would he try to convey the immensity of this loss to his audiences by telling them this is the equivalent of 300,000 dead in US terms? What would he say about the intense bombardments using US armaments that have left more than 5,000 Palestinians injured, including 1,200 children \u00e2\u20ac\u201c many of them now lying in the corridors of the densely crowded, undersupplied hospitals with horrific injuries the doctors had never before seen and do not have the capacity to treat?<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>What would he say about the widely reported use of lethal new weapons like Dense Inert Metal Explosives and white phosphorous shells fired into densely crowded neighborhoods in the laboratory for experimentation that the Gaza Strip has become? What would he say about the bombing of 3 UN schools being used as shelters for displaced persons, leaving 45 dead, in including 13 children? And what would he say about the damage or destruction of at least 60 other schools, including the American International School and Gaza Music School, and 21 hospitals, and clinics and 16 ambulances? (The figures I am giving you are from a Save the Children fact sheet, dated January 19).<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Then there is the targeting for destruction of a university, of Gaza\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s major municipal buildings including its legislative assembly, of more than 22,000 homes and essential infrastructure such as sewage and water facilities.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Where is the person today of Dr. King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s moral authority and vision, who can tell our new president that the change that the world hopes for is an end to the wholly uncritical support of Israel on the part of our government and elected officials which is giving our client state the green light to commit genocide?<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><o:p><\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-right: 0.5in; margin-left: 4.3pt; line-height: 150%\"><span><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>I do not use this word lightly.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>In the rest of my remarks this morning I want to speak from my personal experience, and describe what the Gaza Strip has gone through since I first began to visit it in 1988.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>In this way I hope to make the case that Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s war on Gaza was not, as it has claimed, prompted by the need to keep its citizens safe from Hamas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 firing of homemade rockets, which had killed a total of 16 Israelis between the years 2002 when they were first used and December 2008.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>During that time nearly 3,000 Palestinians had been killed in the Gaza Strip alone, nearly 700 of them children, and hundreds of Israelis had been killed by Palestinian suicide bombers.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Instead this latest attack is part of an old story, with an overarching objective: the destruction of the notion that there is a Palestinian people with a cause that can arouse the world.<span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>I believe that Miguel D\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Escoto Brockmann, the president of the UN General Assembly, had it right, when, on January 14, he asserted that Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s real intention was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153genocide\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which is defined by the international community as the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153<span>intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-right: 0.5in; margin-left: 4.3pt; line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The Gaza Strip, just 26 miles long and 4-5 miles wide, is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea on the West, Egypt on the South and Israel on the North and East. Because of its strategic location Gaza was at various times besieged by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians and successfully conquered by Alexander the Great.<span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>After World War I, the Gaza District became part of Mandatory Palestine.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>In 1947 Gaza contained perhaps 80,000 people.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>With the creation of Israel the following year, two-thirds of the Gaza District became part of the State of Israel, and some 250,000 refugees flooded into the tiny Gaza Strip which was then administered by Egypt \u00e2\u20ac\u201c with their descendents, refugees now number nearly 700,000.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Most of them had been forced to flee from those parts of Israel which were reached by Hamas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 rockets.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Stateless from that day to this, they live in 8 refugee camps, often 10 people to a room, with sewage running down the narrow camp roads.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The biggest of these camps \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Jabalyia \u00e2\u20ac\u201c has been largely destroyed in the last few weeks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>In 1967, the Gaza Strip, like the West Bank, was occupied by Israel, and Palestinians came under Israeli military rule.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Over a thousand military decrees governed every aspect of their lives, dictating for instance, when they could plant tomato seedlings or whitewash a house.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>My first trip to Gaza took place early in 1988 as part of a fact-finding mission a few months after the first Palestinian uprising began in a refugee camp in Gaza.<span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Like most Americans, I knew virtually nothing about the Gaza Strip. I encountered one of the most densely crowded pieces of land on earth \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a spit of sand that was home to more than a million people, half of them children 14 years and younger, and two-thirds of them impoverished refugees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The most fertile land in the Strip \u00e2\u20ac\u201c about a quarter of the total land &#8211; was set aside for a few thousand Jewish settlers or was part of a closed military zone which was off limits to Palestinians. To give you an idea of the disparities between the two populations, while there were 166,000 Gazans per square mile in the Gaza Strip, there were 80 Israeli settlers per square mile. Even at the time of my first visit 20 years ago, the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip was experiencing a severe water crisis.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>I remember wondering how people could drink the salt water that came out of faucets.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Meanwhile, the few thousand Israeli settlers in their midst had their own water supply with which they irrigated fields and greenhouses and kept their swimming pools full. Before Israel removed its settler population in 2005, when any of those Israeli settlers wanted to move along the main road running the length of the Gaza Strip, all cars belonging to Palestinians were forced to stop at one of the major roadblocks, often for an hour and sometimes much longer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>During my first visit in 1988, the few poorly equipped hospitals in the Strip were full of young people \u00e2\u20ac\u201c many of them children &#8211; who had endured the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153force, might and beatings\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered to put down what was essentially an unarmed uprising of the entire population. Beginning at 7 PM a curfew was imposed on the entire Strip confining everyone to their homes.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Gazans were under curfew, which sometimes turned into a round-the-clock house arrest lasting days or even weeks at a time, for 5 straight years.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Although there was no one on the street after 7 PM, all night long I would hear screams, gunshots and the wailing of ambulances.<span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>During my early visits, I found conditions in Gaza almost unbearably grim.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>But compared to what Gazans face today, those were hopeful times.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The people of Gaza \u00e2\u20ac\u201c like Palestinians in the West Bank \u00e2\u20ac\u201c had faith that they would be able to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153shake off\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (this is what the word intifada means in Arabic) Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s military occupation which was already decades old, which was illegal in the eyes of the international community. In 1988,<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>I heard Gazans express their fears that Israel was secretly backing the new Islamic group Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement), which was the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, in an effort to undermine support for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). But at that time no one could have predicted that one day there would be open warfare between the largest group of the PLO and Hamas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>In 1988, it was possible to drive from the West Bank through Israel to the Gaza Strip.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Many Gazans would go to Israel to work as laborers and to the West Bank for university studies and for medical care.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>No one imagined that one day Israel would no longer need Palestinian labor because of the numbers of Filipino, Thai and other guest workers it could import to take their place.<span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>No one could conceive of the Strip being encircled with an electronic fence and all movement in and out strictly controlled at a few crossing points and then choked off altogether.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The Gazan economy suffered greatly during the first intifada of 1988 to 1992 (which saw a decline of 60 percent in per capita GNP) and as a result of the first Gulf War, when Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait and Gaza lost their remittances.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>By 1992, the economy was so bad that when the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which supports refugees by providing schools and food) advertised 8 jobs for garbage collectors, it got 11,655 applications \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which represented 10 percent of the entire labor force.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>But it was under the so-called Oslo \u00e2\u20ac\u0153peace process\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the mid and late 1990s that Gaza was turned into a big prison and the economy throttled.<span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Palestinian entrepreneurs who returned home to Gaza to build up the local economy soon encountered a process termed \u00e2\u20ac\u0153de-development\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by Sara Roy, a<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>researcher at Harvard University and daughter of Holocaust survivors who has done the most important scholarly work on the political economy of Gaza.<span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>In her book <em>Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict<\/em>, Dr. Roy defines de-development as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the deliberate, systematic and progressive dismemberment of an indigenous economy by a dominant one, where economic \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and by extension, societal \u00e2\u20ac\u201c potential is not only distorted but denied\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6De-development ensures that there will be no economic base \u00e2\u20ac\u201c even one that is malformed \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to support an independent indigenous economy (and society).\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Between 1993 and 1996 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c when the world still considered Oslo a promising \u00e2\u20ac\u0153peace process,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the Gaza Strip was entirely sealed for a total of 342 days \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a third of each year.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>During that time, raw materials could not be imported, and agricultural produce and industrial products could not be exported.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>During those years the Gaza GNP continued its downward slide.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Economic decline provided the opportunity for Hamas to win support in a society which was largely Sunni Muslim (there are also Greek Orthodox Christians in Gaza) but not particularly religious.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Most Palestinians wanted \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and still want \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a secular national state, not a religious state.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>But Hamas provided for the essential needs of an increasingly desperate population through a network of orphanages, schools, clinics and emergency aid distribution.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>People also turned to Hamas in disgust at the performance of the Palestinian Authority set up under Oslo to administer what was called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153autonomy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and run schools, hospitals, municipal services and police the population. After Yasser Arafat returned from Tunis to Gaza in 1994, the PA was controlled by his Fatah group.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>It rapidly became both corrupt and authoritarian.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>This is the main reason why Hamas did so well in the democratic elections of January 2006, leading Israel and the US to impose collective punishment on the entire Palestinian people for voting for what they termed a terrorist group.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Hamas and some other Palestinian groups \u00e2\u20ac\u201c most notably Islamic Jihad and some militant Fatah factions \u00e2\u20ac\u201c had turned to violence as the Oslo \u00e2\u20ac\u0153peace process\u00e2\u20ac\u009d faltered in the mid 1990s and Israel continued to expropriate Palestinian land and doubled the number of its settlers.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The first Palestinian suicide bombing occurred in April 1994.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Hamas claimed it carried out the bombing as a response to the killing by Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein of 30 Muslims as they were kneeling in prayer in the Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The failure of Oslo led to a second, Palestinian uprising which has had catastrophic consequences for both peoples.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Under international humanitarian law, targeting civilians is absolutely prohibited.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>That law has been repeatedly violated by both Israelis and Palestinians.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>I would like to tell you about one particularly significant incident whose aftermath I personally witnessed.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>In July 2002, after the Israeli military had re-invaded the West Bank and Gaza Strip, destroying thousands of Palestinians houses and hundreds of lives, Fatah and Hamas reached an understanding that suicide bombings within Israel had to stop.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Just 90 minutes before a joint announcement to that effect was to be made on July 22, the Israeli air force dropped a one ton bomb on apartment building in an intensely crowded area of Gaza City in effort to kill a Hamas leader \u00e2\u20ac\u201c16 Palestinian civilians, including 11 children perished.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>I had arrived in Gaza on that day, and immediately went to the site of the bombing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c people in shock, kids shoes, school supplies scattered through the rubble.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>And the suicide bombings continued.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Since 9\/11, Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actions against Palestinians have been framed as an essential part of the global \u00e2\u20ac\u0153war on terror.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Over the past seven years, many Americans seem to have lost sight of the Israeli military occupation, which reached its 40<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary in 2007.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>During this time, Israel has sought to destroy Palestinian resistance to occupation once and for all \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and remember, under international law Palestinians DO have the right of resistance to an illegal military occupation, although that right does not include the right to attack civilians.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>In the Gaza Strip\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Rafah refugee camp, the Israeli army destroyed over a thousand homes, leaving 20,000 people homeless.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Hundreds of thousands of fruit trees belonging to Palestinians were uprooted and huge tracks of agricultural land by Israeli bulldozers.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The statistics are numbing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>I would like to read to you from a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Letter from Gaza\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I published after a visit in 2004.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I saw a landscape where guard towers, miles of razor wire and concrete slabs have replaced the buildings, greenhouses, crops and date trees &#8220;shaved&#8221; by the Israeli army in the name of &#8220;self-defense.&#8221;<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>At the checkpoint near the Kfar Dorom settlement which divides the Gaza Strip in half, vehicles can pile up for miles and wait as long as 12 hours for passage &#8212; assuming the checkpoint opens at all.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>It is &#8220;normal,&#8221; I was told, to wait for two to four hours. Drivers have been shot from a guard tower for opening the car door or rolling down a window to get a breath of air.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>At the southern end of the Gaza Strip is the Rafah refugee camp, bludgeoned by the Israeli army in its &#8220;Operation Rainbow&#8221; invasion in May. Parts of Rafah come under daily fire from soldiers in machine gun turrets along a 25-foot high steel wall, or from sniper nests that tower above the dunes. The press has speculated that the gunfire is remotely controlled by soldiers through high tech surveillance equipment. Or it might be automatic, triggered by any sign of movement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Whatever the cause, the road around us was peppered with automatic gunfire when we visited the site where on May 19 at least ten, possibly as many as twenty, unarmed demonstrators were killed by Apache combat helicopters and tanks. They were among the 3,000 old and young men, women and children who had marched from downtown Rafah towards the besieged Tel al Sultan neighborhood carrying food, water and blankets.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The year following my 2004 visit, Israel removed its settlers from the Gaza Strip.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Dov Weisglass, the advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in an interview in the October 2005 Israeli newspaper <em>Ha\u00e2\u20ac\u2122aretz<\/em> stated that the purpose of the removal was to freeze the political process.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The settler withdrawal \u00e2\u20ac\u201c written about as a major Israeli concession in the US press \u00e2\u20ac\u201c completed the transformation of the Gaza Strip into what the Israeli human rights group B\u00e2\u20ac\u2122tselem has called the largest prison on earth.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Gaza was totally encircled by walls, fences and towers, as Israel continued to control its air, sea and land, and who goes in and out.<span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Once the settlers were withdrawn, Palestinians were repeatedly subjected to glass shattering sonic booms, tank fire and missile strikes, day and night.<span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>In June 2006, Israeli air strikes destroyed the only power plant in the Gaza Strip, which impacted hospitals, water and sewage systems and plunged the Strip in darkness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The closure was tightened after Hamas won the 2006 legislative election \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so much for the promotion of democracy in the Middle East &#8211; and was transformed into a chokehold following the Hamas-Fatah clashes of June 2007 (encouraged by the CIA) and the total Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian economy no longer functioned.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>In November 2007 the International Committee of the Red Cross, which generally maintains a discreet behind-the-scenes profile and rarely makes public pronouncements, issued a report called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dignity Denied in the Occupied Palestinian Territories\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which was nothing less than a clarion call for action.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The dignity of the Palestinians is being trampled underfoot day after day, both in the West Bank and in Gaza,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the Red Cross wrote.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s harsh security measures come at an enormous humanitarian cost, leaving those living under occupation with just enough to survive, but not enough to live normal and dignified lives.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>I have never before seen an ICRC document which goes so far as to demand an immediate political solution to a conflict.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>But that is how this report ends: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Only prompt, innovative and courageous political action can change the harsh reality of this long-standing occupation, restore normal social and economic life to the Palestinian people, and allow them to live their lives in dignity.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Needless to say, that never happened.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Under the harsh economic siege imposed by Israel for the 18 months preceding its December 2008 attacks,, only 12 basic items were permitted to enter the Gaza Strip \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and just enough of them to keep people alive.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Electricity and fuel were severely rationed and cement, soap, many medical supplies, clean water and raw materials kept out altogether. <span>\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>Hospital shelves were practically bare and patients were barred from leaving the Gaza Strip to get treatment elsewhere.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>On March 6, 2008 a coalition of human rights groups including Amnesty UK, Care International UK, Christian Aid, Medecins du Monde, Oxfam and Save the Children UK issued a devastating report entitled <em>The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion<\/em>. It concludes: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This humanitarian crisis is a direct result of on-going collective punishment of ordinary men, women and children and is illegal under international law.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Isolation and poverty are breeding increasing levels of violence for which both Palestinians and Israelis are paying the price\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6peace will not be achieved by locking 1.5 million people into a prison of spiraling poverty and misery\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6the policy of isolation and refusal to engage with all elements of the Palestinian leadership only closes doors to negotiations while reinforcing the political and humanitarian crisis.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Israel turned a deaf ear to this call<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>the siege went on, preparing Gazans for the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153shock and awe\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ,military might.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>On December 15, 2008 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c shortly before Israel launched its war &#8211; an article in the <em>Sunday Times<\/em> (UK) of December 14, 2008 was headlined, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gaza families eat grass as Israel locks border.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Subjecting an entire population to collective punishment is a war crime under international law. We often hear of famine, and starvation in various places in the world \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know of any other place where inflicting starvation on an entire people was a matter of government policy, and was done with the collusion of the US and international community.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>And I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know of any issue where the United Nations, the reach of human rights law, and human rights organizations, have been more demonstrated to be more impotent than in the matter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>In late October 2008, I, along with 100 other internationals including a dozen from the Boston area, tried to enter the Gaza Strip to participate in an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153end the siege\u00e2\u20ac\u009d conference organized by the Gaza Community Mental Health Foundation.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>We were denied entry, despite the efforts of the World Health Organization to get us permits.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>We were in good company \u00e2\u20ac\u201c<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter had also been denied entry. One of the few people to be allowed into Gaza in November was the former Irish president and head of the UN Human Rights Commission Mary Robinson.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>On November 4, she told the BBC, that it was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153almost unbelievable\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that the world did not care about what she called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a shocking violation of so many human rights\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6their whole civilization has been destroyed.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not exaggerating.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>On this same day, the Israeli army entered Gaza and killed six Hamas members, breaking the six-month truce between Hamas and Israel that was due to expire in December.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The fact that Israel broke the truce, and that it had never in fact fulfilled its part of the truce requiring it to ease the economic blockade, has been largely ignored by the US mainstream press.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>I urge you to read an important piece by Henry Siegman called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gaza: The Lies of War\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which has just been published in the <em>London Review of Books<\/em> (January 29, 2009.)<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Siegman, a former head of the American Jewish Congress, bluntly exposes as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a lie\u00e2\u20ac\u009d all claims blaming Hamas for the war and the sorry state of Middle East peacemaking.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>He argues that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hamas is no more a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcterror organization\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 (Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s preferred term) than the Zionist movement was during its struggle for a Jewish homeland,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that it was ready to back a Palestinian state within the 67 borders to exist alongside Israel, and that Israel was determined to destroy Hamas because it believes \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that its leadership, unlike that of Fatah, cannot be intimidated into accepting a peace accord that establishes a Palestinian \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcstate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 made up of territorially disconnected entities over which Israel would be able to retain permanent control.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>If Gaza was a sealed off prison whose population was facing starvation before Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attacks, it is now a sealed off prison whose residents are living in unspeakable conditions of trauma, broken bodies and a landscape strewn with rubble.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>And American taxpayers, who give Israel $10 million every day, have a measure of responsibility for this situation.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Noparagraphstyle\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman'\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>I hope that everyone here will undertake to contact our government officials, from President Obama on down, and tell them that Gaza\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s borders must immediately be opened.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The siege must end!<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Please mail this message to <a href=\"mailto:president@whitehouse.org\">president@whitehouse.org<\/a>.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Senator Kerry the new head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we should focus our attention on him (202) 224-2742 or<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>(617) 565-8519.<\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman'\"><o:p><\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span style=\"color: black\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Tell him that the Israeli Army is using weapons supplied by the US to kill and maim Gaza\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s civilians (80 percent of the casualties)<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>in violation of the US<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Arms Export Control Act, the US Foreign Assistance Act, and the Geneva Conventions.<span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Demand that Israel is held accountable for violating US law, and that US military aid to Israel be cut off, as required by law. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 150%\"><span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>I am here in my capacity as President of the Gaza<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Mental Health Foundation, Inc. \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a 501 c 3 organization which raises funds for the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>or GCMHP.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>It was founded in 1990<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>by a tremendous humanitarian and the first psychiatrist in the Gaza Strip, Dr. Eyad el Sarraj who, in 1997, received the first human rights award given by Physicians for Human Rights at its 10<sup>th<\/sup> Anniversary celebration in Boston.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>The headquarters of the GCMHP was badly damaged by an Israeli air strike.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>On January 17, Dr. el Sarraj sent a message detailing the psychological impact of the attacks on children and appealing to the world community to help fund a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153massive plan of action to deal with the immediate crisis and avert its medium and long term effects.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>You can find out more from the pamphlet and our website <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gazamentalhealth.org\/\">www.gazamentalhealth.org<\/a>.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>A tax-deductible contribution to the Gaza Mental Health Foundation will be sent in its entirety to help with this critically important work.<span>\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Thank you.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->\u00c2\u00a0<!--[endif]--><o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Community Church, January 25, 2009 By Nancy Murray, President, Gaza Mental Health Foundation, Inc.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 On Dr. Martin Luther King Day, when foreign journalists were finally permitted to enter the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.communitychurchofboston.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- 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