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The next fast day sponsored by Ta’anit Tzedek – Jewish Fast for Gaza will take place on Thursday, August 19. To mark the occasion, we will host “A Conversation About Women, Health, Children and Human Rights in Gaza,” a conference call with Dr. Mona El-Farra, Director of Gaza Projects for the Middle East Children’s Alliance.

Dr. El-Farra is a physician by training and a human rights and women’s rights activist by practice in the Gaza Strip. She was born in Khan Younis, Gaza, and has dedicated herself to developing community-based programs that seek to improve health quality and link health services with cultural and recreational services throughout the Gaza Strip.

Our conference call will take place on Thursday, August 19, at 12:00 pm (EST).

Call info:

Access Number: 1.800.920.7487

Participant Code: 92247763#

There will be a question and answer period during the call.

When Tony Judt passed away from ALS on August 6, the world lost a brilliant historian and a brave, unflinching observer of current political events. In the Jewish community, Judt was famous (some undoubtedly would say infamous) for his views on the Israel/Palestine conflict; particularly for a piece he wrote for the New York Review of Books in 2003:

The problem with Israel, in short, is not—as is sometimes suggested—that it is a European “enclave” in the Arab world; but rather that it arrived too late. It has imported a characteristically late-nineteenth-century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law. The very idea of a “Jewish state”—a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded—is rooted in another time and place. Israel, in short, is an anachronism.

Judt’s historical/political analysis of Zionism, needless to say, ensured that he would become persona non grata in many Jewish circles. But whether or not you agreed with his conclusions, I believe he courageously raised crucial, if painful questions that we continue to confront today – and whose relevance, I predict, will become only more critical in the coming years.

One of his final editorials on the subject was this trenchant analysis of the recent Gaza flotilla tragedy. Click above to get a poignant glimpse of the man himself. May his memory be for a blessing.

Today Ta’anit Tzedek sponsored an incredibly informative and thought-provoking conference call with Sari Bashi, Executive Director of Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement.  We were also joined by Reut Katz of Physicians for Human Rights – Israel who shared information about the medical infrastructure in Gaza and the difficulties faced by Gazans needing medical treatment

Toward the end of the call, I asked Sari why the crisis in Gaza always seemed to be so central to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Her incisive response:

I think Gaza is a bit like the canary in the coal mine. What is being done now in Gaza is being done to a lesser extent in the West Bank and we will see some of the terrible effects in the West Bank as well if we continue on the path we are on. The concern about Israel’s behavior in Gaza is that it is exercising control without taking responsibility. It is controlling people’s lives by controlling movement and access but it is not taking responsibility for the effects of that control on a million and half civilians who need to be able to access all of the things we’ve been discussing.

In the West Bank that process is also underway. Israel is dividing up the West Bank between Jewish areas, where the settlements are, and Palestinian areas – and it is slowly disengaging from responsibility for what happens in the Palestinian areas without giving up on control of those borders and of movement and access. And it can’t be both ways: either Israel continues to control movement and access but takes responsibility for that control or if it wants to disengage from responsibility it must let go of control – and that also means letting go of checking for security reasons what leaves and enters Gaza and the West Bank.

Click here to hear the call in its entirety. The conversation begins at 1:38 minutes and includes several questions from participants.

To mark our July fast day Ta’anit Tzedek – Jewish Fast for Gaza is sponsoring “Myths and Facts About the Siege of Gaza,” a conference call with Sari Bashi, Executive Director of Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement on Thursday, July 15 at 12 noon EST.

Since Israel’s easing of its blockade of Gaza, international pressure to end the siege has eased as well. Does this “easing” in fact represent actual change for the people of Gaza? What kinds of good and services are Israel allowing in? What is the status of Gazans’ freedom of movement? What are the current effects of the blockade on the lives of residents?

To help us better understand these questions, we turn to Gisha, one of Israel’s leading human rights experts on the siege on Gaza. Founded in 2005, Gisha seeks to protect the freedom of movement in the Occupied Territories, offering legal assistance and public advocacy to protect the rights of Palestinian residents. Because freedom of movement is an essential precondition for the exercising of other basic rights, Gisha’s work also helps residents of the Occupied Territories gain access education, jobs, family members and medical care.

Gisha’s work in Gaza has been critical in this respect. I’ve long been referring folks to their website Gaza Gateway, an essential resource that present credible information about the amount of traffic that Israel allows to pass through the Gaza Strip border crossings. I also highly recommend Gisha’s publications for critical, up-to-date reports on the effects of the siege.

Call-in info:

Phone Number: 1.800.920.7487
Participant Code: 92247763#

As with our call last month, we will be offering the opportunity for Q&A during the call.

Click here for a recent Gisha article, “Unraveling the Closure of Gaza.” Click on the clip above to watch “Closed Zone” – a brief animated film about the basic effects of the siege created for Gisha by Yoni Goodman, Director of Animation for “Waltz with Bashir.”

More than one Israeli politician has commented that there is “no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” Fair enough. During Ta’anit Tzedek’s monthly conference calls with Gazans we heard over and over that Gazan citizens do not want this crisis to be viewed as a humanitarian issue.

For instance, journalist Sami Abdel-Shafi told us in March that he believed casting Gaza as a humanitarian case is ultimately harmful to Gazans (80% of whom are dependent on foreign aid to survive). That is to say, the longer Gazans are kept dependent on humanitarian largess, the longer Gaza will successfully be kept isolated from the international community:

As long as the so-called “humanitarian” classification continues, I’m afraid we can stay like this for years. But the key is, why leave a population of more than 1.5 million people almost completely deprived of being educated and being developed and of the opportunity to be effective contributors to the regional economy, in addition to the economy of the world?

The answer (as I’m sure Abdel-Shafi well knows) is that this is precisely the point. The blockade of Gaza has never been about Israel’s security. From the very beginning, its aim has always been the isolation of Hamas through the collective punishment of Gazans.

Of course Israel has long tried to make the case that its blockade was initiated to keep weapons out of Gaza, but this justification has grown increasingly hollow over the years. (The surreal revelation that coriander was on the “forbidden list” is perhaps the most infamous example.)

I’ve noticed that even Israel has become less and less inclined to defend the blockade on security grounds.  This past week, it was reported that Israel’s defense establishment is urging the government not to cave in to growing international pressure and permit Palestinians to export goods from the Gaza Strip.  As one defense official put it, “If this happens, we will lose all of our leverage over Hamas.”  When I read this, I couldn’t help but think about Abdel-Shafi’s comments. What possible security benefit could Israel gain with this kind of economic warfare?

On a more heartening note, I just read in the Israeli press that “reliable sources” report that Obama will insist on a full lifting of the blockade when Netanyahu visits Washington in two weeks. According to the report, the President considers the continuing travel ban on Gazans to be (you guessed it) “collective punishment.”

Here’s hoping…

Yesterday Ta’anit Tzedek hosted an incredibly powerful conference call with journalist/blogger Ashley Bates, who spoke to us from Gaza City. If you didn’t make the call, you can listen to it yourself by clicking here. Ashley’s personal testimony provided an extremely important antidote to the misinformation about Gaza that we’ve heard bandied about – particularly since the flotilla crisis.

At the opening of our conversation, I asked Ashley to address the claims of the Israeli government that “there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza” and that no one is starving as result of Israel’s blockade. I also asked her to address press reports that cite the upscale Roots Restaurant and well-stocked market stalls in Gaza City as proof that things are not nearly as dire as critics are claiming.

Ashley validated the reports that these kinds of goods are indeed available in the more affluent areas of Gaza. She added, however, that the only ones who can afford them are internationals such as herself or a relatively small number of affluent Gazans. She pointed out that the Gazan economy has completely collapsed as a result of the blockade, causing widespread unemployment and poverty for an overwhelming number of citizens. Ashley herself can afford to live a relatively comfortable life in a rented Gaza City apartment. Unlike most Gazans, she could purchase her own electric generator – so she is unaffected by the daily eight hour blackouts that are a familiar part of life in Gaza.

Ashley said that she saw no signs of starvation, but it was clear to her that the nutritional needs of Gazans are not being met. Eight out of ten Gazans are on some form of international aid. In the refugee camps, Gazans are essentially living on diets devoid of fruits and vegetables. As a result, anemia and malnutrition is on a sharp rise – particularly among children.

She also witnessed considerable numbers of homeless Gazan families, whose homes were destroyed during Israel’s military assault in December 2008. The majority of them have moved in with relatives or friends and live in very cramped quarters. Others rent apartments they cannot afford, relying upon the largess of landlords. Still others are forced to live in unstable, partially destroyed residences or in tents next to the rubble of their former homes (see pic above).

Ashley said she was not qualified to to comment as to whether this all constitutes a “humanitarian crisis.” She did, however, call it “a crisis of human dignity” – and it is clear to her that these circumstances are a direct result of the blockade.

It is also becoming clear to me that the world is becoming less and less inclined to buy the Israeli government’s calculated misinformation campaign about the blockade. Yesterday, blogger Richard Silverstein posted an extremely telling e-mail missive that the Israeli PR org The Israel Project recently sent out to its members:

Subject: In the “messages that fail” department, please see this…
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:36:40 -0400
From: Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi
To: Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi

As to research on saying that there isn’t a “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza and that no one is starving, we will have that on what Luntz and Greenberg are testing next week. But you don’t need that data to know it is a complete dead-end of a message. Reporters and leaders all over Washington are complaining about this and some say they see Israel and cold and heard hearted. Given that 6 more flotillas are headed to Israel (including one of Jews from Germany and one of Jews from the UK) we need to make sure we understand this well.

Watch this from Jon Stewart. Watch to the end and listen to how they react to when Krauthammer uses the message…ouch!

http://vimeo.com/12350665

Clearly we need to be saying that “While no one is starving in Gaza because Israel delivers so much aid, there IS suffering in Gaza. We want the suffering to stop. That is why Iran-backed Hamas must stop using supplies for rockets and Hamas must release Gilad Shalit. Hamas must be accountable for their actions and for the suffering they are causing their OWN people.”

On a good note, the topic in the US tonight will shift to energy. Alternative energy is obviously a great topic for Israel as Israel has much to say that could help on this.

Thanks!

Jennifer

Spin notwithstanding, it’s an amazing admission. (You know, it’s often occurred to me that if Israel spent just a fraction of the time and energy it spends on public relations to actually own up to its responsibility for this crisis, we might see some real progress toward a resolution).

In the meantime, thank God for sane witnesses such as Ashley Bates. Please listen to the call.

The next Ta’anit Tzedek fast day is Thursday, June 17 and to mark the occasion we’re sponsoring a conference call with freelance journalist Ashley Bates.

Ashley has been living in and reporting from Gaza for the past several months and as I’ve written before, her pieces offer invaluable, in-depth perspectives of life under the blockade. Her articles have appeared in Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem Post Magazine, Global Post, Huffington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, and Ha’aretz and she posts regularly on her blog Dispatches from Gaza.

Of course Israel’s recent raid on the Freedom Flotilla has recently put the blockade back on the mainstream media radar screen. Misinformation about this crisis has been on the increase – and it is all the more critical to hear from those such as Ms. Bates: reputable sources of information about life on the ground in the Gaza Strip.

The conference call will take place Thursday, June 17 at 12 noon EST.

Call-in info:

Access Number: 1.800.920.7487
Participant Code: 92247763#

We are thrilled that Ashley will be able to join us for this important and critical conversion. Please join us.

More odds and ends re the flotilla fallout:

- In contrast to the Israeli characterization of flotilla participants as jihadist thugs, pictures released by Turkish newspaper Hürriyet show activists actually protecting and aiding injured Israeli Navy commandos. (H/T to Ali Abunimah for the link).

- Flotilla participant Jamal Elshayyal (a British citizen and producer for Al Jazeera English) has written an extensive account of his experiences on the night of the raid. While there no way to verify his testimony, it does square with numerous other eyewitness reports. At the very least, it underscores the need for a credible international investigation to get to the bottom of what actually happened aboard the Mavi Marmara:

After spotting the warships at a distance, (at roughly 11pm) the organisers called for passengers to wear their life vests and remain indoors as they monitored the situation. The naval warships together with helicopters remained at a distance for several hours.

At 2am local time the organisers informed me that they had re-routed the ship, as far away from Israel as possible, as deep into international waters as they could. They did not want a confrontation with the Israeli military, at least not by night.

Just after 4am local time, the Israeli military attacked the ship, in international waters. It was an unprovoked attack. Tear gas was used, sound grenades were launched, and rubber coated steel bullets were fired from almost every direction.

Dozens of speed boats carrying about 15-20 masked Israeli soldiers, armed to the teeth surrounded the Mavi Marmara which was carrying 600 or so unarmed civilians. Two helicopters at a time hovered above the vessel. Commandos on board the choppers joined the firing, using live ammunition, before any of the soldiers had descended onto the ship.

Two unarmed civilians were killed just metres away from me. Dozens of unarmed civilians were injured right before my eyes.

One Israeli soldier, armed with a large automatic gun and a side pistol, was overpowered by several passengers. They disarmed him. They did not use his weapons or fire them; instead they threw his weapons over board and into the sea.

After what seemed at the time as roughly 30 minutes, passengers on board the ship raised a white flag. The Israeli army continued to fire live ammunition. The ships organisers made a loud speaker announcement saying they have surrendered the ship. The Israeli army continued to fire live ammunition.

- Finally, click above for a deeply disturbing clip of journalist Max Blumenthal interviewing participants at a recent Israeli rally in front of the Turkish embassy. I’m not sure what made me sadder: the callous celebration of an incident that led to the deaths of nine civilians or the “us against the world” siege mentality expressed by so many Israelis on the street.

From a piece I’ve just posted in the Huffington Post:

As I read the myriad of reactions to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla tragedy last Sunday, I’m struck by one recurring theme: the sense of astonishment that these activists responded to the Israeli Navy with violence.

In other words, they didn’t act according to the script. They didn’t behave like proper practitioners of civil disobedience. The implication: if they had responded like the non-violent activists they were purported to be, this whole tragedy could well have been avoided.

There’s only problem with this calculus: non-violent Palestinian protests have actually been ongoing throughout the Occupied Territories for years – and the Israeli military has been responding to them with much the same kind of brutality that was used against the passengers of the Mavi Marmara.

Click here to read the article.

For a full, updated list of rabbinical signators to this letter, visit the Ta’anit Tzedek Blog.

Dear Friends,

In the wake of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla tragedy, we once again feel the need to raise our voices as rabbis in the Jewish community.

According to press reports, we now know that at least 9 people have been killed and many more have been injured when Israeli Navy Seals boarded a boat that held 600 people in the middle of the night – conducting a military operation against civilian activists in the midst of international waters.

We also know that the essential aim of the Freedom Flotilla was to carry humanitarian aid to those who have been severely suffering under the effects of Israel’s crushing blockade of Gaza. We call upon our community not to turn away in denial or blame those of good will and good purpose who risked their lives to relieve the beleaguered people of the Gaza strip.

We lift up our voices and call upon Israel to conduct an independent, transparent, and credible investigation of this incident. We also call upon the government of Israel to open the gates of compassion and allow these ships to dock so that they may deliver humanitarian aid to the 1.5 million citizens of Gaza. In so doing, we note the overall context of oppression in which this incident has occurred and call upon the government of Israel to turn away from the policies of occupation, siege and indifference to international law.

Our silence now is an act of betrayal to the values we purport to live by and to the words of the prophet we read every Yom Kippur:

Is this the fast I desire? A day for people to starve
their bodies? Or bow their heads like a bulrush
or wear sackcloth and smear oneself with ashes…
No! This is the fast the Lord desires:
Unlock the fetters of oppression
Untie the cords of the yoke
Let the exploited go free, break off every chain.
share your bread with the hungry,
Shelter the poor in your own house
clothe the naked and do not ignore your own kin.

As rabbis, we believe all human beings are our kin. We cannot abide the suffering inflicted upon the people of Gaza.

We lift up our voices and say: Unlock the fetters of oppression. Untie the cords of the yoke. Open the gates.

Moshe Yaroni, writing in Realistic Peace:

The bottom line is that Israel raided these ships with commandoes, and the end result was a great deal of needless bloodshed. And apparently, according to the IDF spokesperson, as reported by journalist Gregg Carlstrom, they couldn’t even wait to do it until the ships had passed out of international waters, which makes it, if no explanation is forthcoming, an act of piracy as well.

Israel crossed a line today, in a way not dissimilar (though certainly of a much smaller scope, thankfully) to the line they crossed in their massive attack on Gaza in 2008-09. Whatever Israel’s detractors have said over the years, this incident, like Operation Cast Lead, was far beyond anything Israel has done in the past.

This was a shocking massacre, and there’s no way to pretty that up. These were people engaged in direct action of civil disobedience. True, the siege on Gaza should simply be lifted, but being that it’s there, yes, Israel can be expected to take action to stop the flotilla. But this doesn’t just go above and beyond and justification, it zooms light years past it.

Ashley Bates reporting on the reaction inside Gaza:

Many of the International Solidarity Movement activists living in Gaza gave interviews with the press, including Bianca Zimmit, an activist from Malta who was shot in her thigh by Israeli troops during a demonstration against the buffer zone last month. Here’s the link to a previous blog post I wrote about this incident and here’s the link to a blog post I wrote about a Palestinian demonstrator who was killed the week after Zimmit was shot.

“I’m surprised that Israel would go this far with internationals,” Zimmit said… “The reality is that they are doing this sort of thing every day with Palestinians—farmers and fishermen are killed every day….I don’t know why [Israeli citizens] would oppose these ships. Because they don’t understand what’s happening? Because they don’t understand the daily reality of the siege? The siege hurts the people, not the [Hamas] government. The poor people are bearing the brunt and are the hardest hit.”

The final word goes to the always eloquent Emily Hauser:

It doesn’t matter if the activists were armed — I’m pretty sure they were, to some degree. It doesn’t matter if they were entirely pacifist in their behavior — I’m pretty sure they weren’t. It doesn’t matter if they were planning for an armed confrontation, or merely fairly certain it might happen, or even if they were naive enough to think that when Israel turned them away (I’m pretty sure they knew they wouldn’t get to their destination) that it wouldn’t involve violence.

What matters is the blockade they were symbolically trying to break.

What matters is the roughly 300,000 refugees in Gaza who live in abject poverty — a 200% increase since early 2007, according to UNRWA — because of Israeli policy. What matters is the fact that many of the 1.4 million people living in Gaza must make do with 8-12 hours a day without electricity — up from 6-8 hours before the start of the year — because of Israeli policy. What matters is the “ongoing deterioration in the social, economic and environmental determinants of health” that the World Health Organization wrote about in January (back when people were still only dealing with 6-8 hours of daily power outages) — including 27 people who died while waiting for permission to leave Gaza to receive treatment — because of Israeli policy.

What matters is the blockade — what matters is the occupation.

In the wake of Israel’s military attack against Gaza flotilla activists (latest death toll: 14-20), I’ve been scouring the Israeli press to find any semblance of soul searching over how things could have come to this.

To my sorrow, all I’m finding is an analysis of the “tactical mistakes” made by the IDF and the public relations fallout of this tragic attack. In the meantime, there’s the same old defensive posturing from the government:

Jerusalem Post:

The defense minister also called on Arab and Palestinian leaders not to let this “provocation by irresponsible people” ruin the progress made in proximity peace talks…

Israeli Navy commander Vice-Admiral Eliezer Marom said Monday that IDF soldiers that raided Mavi Marmara acted with “perseverance and bravery…”

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that the flotilla of ships “was an armada of hate and violence…”

I have no doubt that the reaction of the American Jewish community will be just as defensive, if not more so.  As for me, I’ll be hoping against hope that we’ll start to hear different kinds of reactions:

- That the Freedom Flotilla was not simply a movement of provocateurs seeking to “delegitimize” Israel, but a group of activists mounting an act of civil disobedience to bring attention to 1.5 Palestinian citizens who are suffering under a crushing blockade.

- That mounting a military operation against civilian activists in international waters was bound to be futile, illegal, and yes, even immoral.

- That for all our concern over an organized “delegitimization campaign” against Israel, it may well be that Israel is actually delegitimizing itself through oppressive acts such as this.