Protest at Gaza Report and More

1) Israelis, Palestinians and Internationals Protest War Crimes in Rafah_ISM report
2) Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing_Elizabeth Corrie
3) Haifa, Beirut and Beyond ..._ personal journal
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1)
Israelis, Palestinians and Internationals Protest War Crimes in Rafah
By: Gabe
May 21, 2004
Gaza

On Friday, 21 May 2004, approximately 800 Israeli, Palestinian and international
activists converged on the Kissufim crossing into the Gaza Strip to protest against
the continued destruction of Gaza and the blatant disregard for humanitarian
international law on the part of the Israeli military and government. Specifically,
the demonstrators were opposing “Operation Rainbow,” the Israeli military offensive
that has left dozens dead – mostly civilian life – and over 1,500 Palestinians
homeless. The demonstration was a united call by many Israeli and joint
Israeli-Palestinian peace movements.

12 busloads of protestors began walking towards the Kissufim crossing after exiting
their buses at approximately 1:00 PM. The organizers of the protest chose this spot
– approximately two kilometers from the crossing into Gaza – after feeling an
attempt to reach the Sufa checkpoint – the site of recent protests and peace camps –
would be blocked by Israeli police.

During the two-kilometer march to the crossing, which was along an Israeli military
and settler access road to the southern Gaza Strip, protestors chanted in both
Hebrew and Arabic and held up signs opposing the violence and murder occurring in
Rafah and throughout Palestine. Various slogans included “Soldier Refuse,”
“Bulldozers out of Rafah,” “Peace Yes, Occupation No,” and there were calls for
Sharon and Mofaz to resign. Approximately 100 meters before the actual crossing, at
an Israeli military area storing military jeeps and D9 bulldozers, the demonstrators
were blocked by a line of police across the road. A few of the organizers negotiated
with the police officers to allow the protest to continue on the side of the road in
an area previously barricaded off.

For the next 45 minutes, demonstrators began chanting, directing their protest at
the soldiers and police officers standing near the crowd and the settlers driving
by. The demonstrators were calling upon the Israeli military officers to refuse
their ‘obligatory’ service and demanding that all settlers and military get out of
the Gaza Strip immediately in order to move towards a just peace with the
Palestinian people, especially those having their livelihoods completely destroyed
by the presence of Israeli military forces and civilian settlements occupying
Palestinian land.

In addition, several speeches were made against the Israeli Occupation and the
current annihilation of Rafah. The last speaker was Jocelyn Hurndall, the mother of
ISM activist Tom Hurndall who was shot by an Israeli sniper in Rafah while ushering
Palestinian children to safety in April 2003. Tom laid in a coma for nine months
before succumbing to his injuries in January 2004. After Ms. Hurndall told the
demonstrators about her struggle with seeking justice for her son and the
Palestinian people, she reminded everyone present that Tom’s death was only one of
thousands of Palestinian deaths that go completely unnoticed in the Israeli and
international community.

A loud moment of applause for Ms. Hurndall was followed by a call upon all the
activists present to push forward towards Gaza past the barricade set up by the
police. Hundreds of those present began marching to the fence and checkpoint
separating them from the Gaza Strip, and they were met by the police officers
violently pushing, hitting, kicking and throwing them to the ground. Despite this
violent attempt to stop the demonstrators from reaching the checkpoint, hundreds
made it to the entrance to Gaza – only to be met by a reformed barricade of police
officers. Continued chanting was interspersed with attempts to push forward – again
met with violence on the part of the police.

For the next hour, protestors blocked the road leading into Gaza and held up
military and settler traffic. Activists sitting or standing in the road were
violently beaten and thrown off to the side as the police officers attempted to open
up the road. It was at this point that a small gathering of settlers began a counter
protest against the activists present.

After blocking the road, the demonstration moved to the side of the road to the
barricaded area where the demonstration started. Approximately six Israeli activists
were detained, but all were released by the end of the demonstration as many
activists refused to leave until their friends were released.

While this nonviolent demonstration was met with a violent response from the Israeli
authorities, it was in no way comparable to the violence faced by internationals,
Israelis and Palestinians while demonstrating in the West Bank. The violence in such
demonstrations includes much more severe beatings, tear gas, sound grenades, rubber
bullets and many Palestinian demonstrators have recently been shot and killed from
live ammunition fired by the Israeli military in areas of the West Bank. Similarly,
the nonviolent Palestinian demonstration of this past Wednesday in the Tel al Sultan
neighborhood of Rafah was inhumanely stopped by a missile from an apache helicopter,
several tank shells and automatic gunfire, killing more than ten innocent
Palestinians.

The coalition of international, Israeli and joint Palestinian-Israeli peace
movements that participated in Friday’s demonstration have vowed to continue with
daily demonstrations until the violence in Rafah stops. They are calling on all
activists and people of conscience to act out against the atrocities occurring daily
in Rafah and the rest of Palestine.

For photos, please see:
http://www.palsolidarity.org/pictures/PHOTOS_21May04_13_32_35GazaGabe.htm

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2)
http://www.counterpunch.com/corrie05192004.html

May 19, 2004

The Crisis in Rafah
Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing, Now
By ELIZABETH W. CORRIE

Unable to sleep, I decided to write. For the past week, my email box
has been flooded with desperate pleas for help from the people in
Rafah, a Palestinian village on the border with Egypt. Since last
week, the Israeli Army has relentlessly hammered the people of
Rafah, destroying over 100 hundred homes, leaving at least 1000
civilians homeless. The image of these people, standing by
helplessly as they watch their walls and roofs cave in under the
pressure of the armored, D-9 and D-10 American made Caterpillar
bulldozers--supplied to the Israeli army by the US government--has
destroyed my sleep.

This image would make anyone of conscience sleepless, but it
makes me sleepless because I cannot stop thinking about the
horror my cousin Rachel Corrie would have felt witnessing this
attack. Rachel worked in Rafah. Undoubtedly, she knew some of
the people killed, wounded and/or made homeless by this latest
attack. Rachel died in Rafah. She herself fell victim to the crushing
blade of the bulldozer, the driver so intent on destroying a home that
he had to destroy human life to do so.

When I pointedly mention that Caterpillar manufactured the
bulldozer used to kill Rachel, I am sometimes asked whether it is
reasonable to suggest that Caterpillar bears some responsibility for
Rachel's death, and for the deaths and homelessness of
Palestinians. I concede that, legally, it is difficult to make this
case.
Morally, however, it is not, and it is to the consciences of the people
who manage, work for, and invest in Caterpillar that I appeal.

If Rachel's death, underreported as it was, did not make clear the
inappropriate use of Caterpillar's products, surely the current attack
on Rafah--so egregious that even members of the Bush
Administration have stepped out of its typically unquestioning
support of Israeli policy to express concern--should have driven this
point home. The Israeli Army takes Caterpillar bulldozers, armors
them, and uses them to inflict collective punishment on Palestinian
civilians, in violation of international law. More to the point, it
does so
in violation of Caterpillar's own published policy of social
responsibility, which states that its "commitment to financial success
must also take into account social, economic, political and
environmental priorities," a policy guided by "high ethical standards"
that seek to guarantee its "reputation for integrity."

Is Caterpillar legally responsible for the way Israel perverts its
bulldozers from tools of construction into weapons of destruction?
Maybe not. Does it have a moral responsibility, as outlined in its own
system of values, to investigate how its products are used and to
preserve its "reputation for integrity" by holding its clients
accountable to the same standard it holds for itself? Yes. Caterpillar
should take seriously the request put forth in its stockholders'
meeting last month to look into Israel's usage of its products, and,
when it discovers incontrovertibly what seems obvious from the
current reports that its products are in fact weapons and not tools, it
should cease its sales until Israel complies with international law
and the Caterpillar social responsibility policy. It should do this,
not
because it is good business practice--although retrieving the good
name of Caterpillar from its association with war crimes is surely
good business practice--but because it is the right thing to do.

Caterpillar has the opportunity to put teeth to its own commitment to
social responsibility. It has a chance to demonstrate integrity,
courage and compassion. We should support it in doing so, thereby
demonstrating our own integrity, courage and compassion. And, we
should waste no time--the people of Rafah are waiting.

Elizabeth Corrie has a PhD in religion and is the cousin of Rachel
Corrie. She can be reached at: corrie [at] counterpunch.org

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3)
Haifa, Beirut & Beyond…
By: Perla
May 18, 2004

Seems like I haven't written in a while. Writing is not easy for me, I much rather
talk and have discussions with people than sit alone and write. It is even harder
when I have to write about myself. Last week, I met, for the first time, my family
in Haifa. For those who don't know my background my father was born in Haifa in
1940, his mother Badia – my grandmother – is from Haifa. My grandfather Antoun is
from Jerusalem. In 1948 my grandparents took their children to Lebanon out of fear
for their lives. After Israel was created the Israeli authorities never allowed them
to go back to their home in Haifa. My grandparents lived the rest of their lives in
Lebanon and I was born in Beirut. My grandmother's brother Suleiman remained in
Haifa in 1948; he had just built a four-story apartment building and wanted to guard
it. It is he and his family that I met on Friday of last week.

There is something weird about meeting total strangers and to jump over all the
normal steps of forming a relationship to go straight into a relationship of
relatives. Amira, my father's cousin, met me at the bus station in Haifa. I told her
I was wearing a gray shirt and blue pants; she told me she was wearing a red shirt
and a pair of jeans. We ended up walking past each other not recognizing each other.
We both had a different image in our mind of what the other looked like, but since
we were both searching for someone, we soon realized we were looking for each other.
Amira has short hair with red highlights that made her look much younger than I was
expecting. She later told me that I was much thinner and had a darker skin than she
imagined– the result of two months of being in the sun in demonstration. She took me
to her home where I met her husband Nabil and her children, Rami, Rana, and Amir.
There I was, sitting in a foreign home surrounded by people I had never met with all
their eyes fixed on me. Eyes full of questions, curiosity, affection and
excitement. For the next hour I had to answer a zillion question about my life, my
sister, my parents, my aunts and cousins in Lebanon. And then they started to tell
me stories about their lives and slowly I begun to feel more and more at home.

They then took me for a walk in Haifa. I saw the house where my father was born, I
walked on the streets where my father and aunts played, I went to the school that my
father attended as a child, turns out it is the same school that Rami, Rana and Amir
went to. I had seen a picture of the house in a book. One of my father's co-workers
had been to Haifa and bought him a book. While going through it, my father
recognized the house he had lived in for the first eight years of his life. The
house is next to a church, which was the focus of the picture. I was all of a sudden
part of that picture.

The next day we visited Suleiman and his wife Nadime, the long awaited reunion. I
had so many questions for Suleiman, questions about his sister, my grandmother,
about the events of 1948, about how he decided to stay back when all his sisters and
brothers left, and about his life since then. But my questions remained mostly
unanswered as Suleiman's memory is failing him. His wife Nadime, who is in good
health, tried to answer a lot of my questions, she showed me pictures of my
grandmother when she was young and a picture of my dad as a young child. I
recognized my dad's large eyes, wide forehead and small lips. We talked about the
family and I told them how my grandmother was killed during a bombing raid in
Beirut.

I spent three days with them, we visited Suleiman's and Nadime's other daughter
Lilly and I met her energetic young daughters that were so excited to see me that
they were following me around everywhere I went. We exchanged emails and promised
each other that we would stay in touch. They brought me up to date with all the
latest Arabic singers and I now have a list of artists that I need to buy recordings
for. We walked along the beach in Haifa and I dipped my feet into the sea and I
remembered the women of Biddu. I remembered the look in their eyes when I told them
that I was going to Haifa, I remembered the mixture of joy and sadness. I could see
them being pulled apart inside, for they were happy that I was going and meeting my
family but they were sad that they could not reach that sea. They told me to go for
a swim in the Mediterranean for them, as they were sorting bags of lentils, sugar,
and flour that the United Nation Development Program (UNDP) had generously donated.
The
bags had the American flag on them and each family gets one bag of lentil, one bag
of sugar, and one bag of flour every four months, and to qualify the family needs
to have more than five children and make less than $2 a day. I felt quite sick that
day, that is humanitarian aid, food that is in no way adequate with an American
flag.

I left Haifa on Monday. I will certainly go back for another visit before leaving
the country. I know that my family in Lebanon, which can't come to Israel, will
flood me with questions about my stay here. I took as many pictures as I could to
try to satisfy their desire to get close to their homeland. And in an amazing turn
of events on Thursday I saw a modern dance show in Ramallah called "Haifa, Beirut &
Beyond…" by "El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe. The show was delightful
with amazingly colorful costumes, Marcel Khalife's great music, poems by Palestine's
most eloquent voice Mahmoud Darwich, and an incredible dance performance by the
troupe which mixed modern dance with Dabke, the Arab traditional dance. Finally,
Saturday May 15th, was Nakba Day. Nakba is catastrophe in Arabic; it represents the
Palestinian catastrophe of dispossession in 1948. It is the day Israel declared its
independence and 700,000 Palestinians were turned into refugees and were forcibly
stopped
from coming back to their homes. Fellow activists and I went to Ramallah to join
the demonstrations. Together with fellow Palestinians we made signs that read
"Palestine: since 1948 Justice denied" and "Palestinian refugees, it is time to
come home" and in Arabic "A new catastrophe that we refuse, from Budrus to Biddu
the Wall will fall".

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INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
http://www.palsolidarity.org