It's Monday night in Egypt. We are in El-Arish, a resort town about 20 minutes from the Gaza border, where we will go first thing tomorrow morning. I'm with a group of 13 activists and humanitarians mostly from New York, but the hotel is teeming with 45 or so other activists who have answered the call to come to Gaza to try and break the blockade. Most of them are young and sunburned; they have spent the day at the border not getting in. The good news tonight is that a European delegation of 100 people, with a convoy of ambulances and trucks and cars, seems to have gotten through the border after being held up by Egyptian authorities for several days.
We got that rumor at dinner and it has filled our group with confidence. Afterward, we bought bicycle pumps for the dozens of soccer balls we are bringing in, and I grabbed a handful of cosmetics tonight, just because life is not bread alone.
It's an inspiring scene in the hotel. I wonder if Memphis hotels didn't feel like this during the freedom rides. You see college kids walking around in 1948 (Nakba) t-shirts, and Penn State t-shirts too. Some carry guitars to play at the border tomorrow, many of the women wear head scarves. You sense that the issue has finally shed its oriental taboo and taking hold among the young. Four of the groups have been organized by Code Pink, which is frighteningly good at moving bodies and headlines, and that too is an important development, an antiwar group that had long eschewed the issue has come on board. Those years in which "Palestine" was a "complicated" issue even for young lefties has fully come to an end. And this week represents a crucial stage. Nearly 300 westerners will be coming to the Gaza borders demanding to be let in. If they cannot do so they aim to sit there and embarrass the governments that control the Gazans' life.
In Cairo this morning we went to the U.S. Embassy to perform this and that rigmarole to try and get our country's blessing for our trip. Later, after we crossed the monumental bridge over the Suez canal, our bus picked up a police escort as it headed east.
"It just goes to show," said Sammer Aboelela, a 35-year-old Muslim activist from New York, "the claim that Gaza is not occupied is false. They want us to come. We want to come. But it is not up to us or them. It is up to other powers."
I'm a little confused. I am not really a movement person. I like the crowd, but I am here mostly to see and learn and figure stuff out for myself. What I've learned mostly so far is how much the Israel/Palestine issue has set back the whole region. The criticisms of the authoritarian Egyptian government feel true to me. Just as the patent sexism of Egyptian society is obnoxious (in the same way I found the culture too masculine in Syria and Morocco).
While I would never blame everything on Israel, the occupation is like a cancer of colonialism with racist overtones that has affected everything in the neighborhood, including Arab society. The religious zone has been left as the one area in which Palestinians are free to express their resistance, by using something that is uniquely theirs, Islam. Felice Gelman, our group's leader, told a moving story about this effect. A friend of her's in Gaza was rushing out of the house to get something one day when her mother called out to her that she was not covered. The daughter came back into the house angry and said, How can you say that, when there is a photograph of you on the wall on the beach in a bathing suit. Yes but that was in the 1970s, before conditions in the occupied territories had become completely oppressive.
Time to hit the hay. Wish us luck.
Good luck! And I wish you lots of patience at the border… hopefully you'll all get in.
Luck and love, too! You all carry our hearts and hope with you.
Good luck Phil, you are in my heart and mind.
It's really amazing that so few in the USA know how ISRAEL has copied Hitler. Hitler must be laughing is his grave. Actually it started in the mid-19th Century. Hitler lost; next it will be Israel In the end, Justice will rule, at least half-heartly…
Good luck! A note–"Memphis hotels"? The freedom riders went through Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. Tennessee has integrated its interstate travel facilities by that time. I grew up in Memphis.
Phil, stay safe. Your work is vital, especially as you expand Mondoweiss to TPM Cafe, etc. Your eyewitness account will be the basis of a critically important masterwork on the turning of the pages of history in the I/P conflict. We look forward to your reportage from the front lines. Be well, my friend.
Few knew? No one knows. Because it has not occurred. But you have copied Hitler's propaganda stylings. Just keep repeating the big lie. By the way, you just lost.
The brutal attitude among Jews toward non-Jews predated the occupation by many years: Jewish Zionist Dehumanization of Non-Jews. The anti-gentile behavior probably is not specifically connected with Zionism. Lubovitchers seem to have developed a full-fledged spiritual theory of racism by the end of the 18th century. Other Jewish groups soon followed.
I do not think that the freedom riders went through Memphis. Neither did they stay in hotels. The ones I knew took the bus beginning in Virginia and continued south along the Eastern shore. They stayed in the homes of local volenteers when they were not on the road. But other than that, great post Phil.
And the freedom riders had an actual moral cause. Other than that, Phil, wonderful waste of time.
This indicates you are amoral in regards to the Palestinians. You need Jesus.
Wolfen writes: <i.And the freedom riders had an actual moral cause. </i> But it was people like you who did one of the following in 1959 in N. Carolina where the greatest violence occurred. 1. Part of the mob armed with axe handles that attacked the riders and burned their busses. (I doubt you would be in that crowd, it required a certain amont of courage to physically attack another human). 2. Argued that these radicals were provoking southern sensibilities and that they were wrong for doing so. This is the tact of the southern middle classes of the time. They would have denied them any moral cause. But 50 years later they will have dropped that. This probably where wolf man would have been. 3. Argued against them claiming that direct confrontation is too disruptive and that we should proceed through legislative and legal channels. This the stand that Northern liberals advocated, but if we waited for them nothing would have happened. And then there was the courageous youth who put their lives on the line and made a difference. This is where Rachel Corrie and the other activists trying to enter Gaza are today.
Good luck. You're our eyes and ears in the region now, and I thank you for doing this.
There is going to come a day (and I think it is in the not too distant future), when people who speak out against what is being done by people like Phil and the rest of the delegation, will be looked upon by history in the same way that we now look back on people who stood on school house steps with guns in their hands in an effort to prevent segregation from ending.
Dear Wolfie, you are right again. We all know that it was Hitler who copied the Jews. I mean come on, everybody knows that.
first there is the thought or first there is the wind second is the sound of words on which these hopes are pinned third there is reflection like the moon upon the sea fourth there's realization that all this speaks to me a whisper in my ear a little light ahead there is nothing i can't endure i'm sure that's what's been said
beautiful. Your own?
in the sense you mean, yes but these words are to be shared i believe cheers est
God bless you, Phil, good luck to all of you.
i know i will be condemned for viewing gaza's problems apart from the entire palestinian issue, but… if gaza were willing to sign a separate peace with israel, there would be peace tomorrow. the freedom riders were nonviolent. one cannot say that about the rulers of gaza. the comparison is apt only in the mind of those who ignore this fact.
While I would never blame everything on Israel, the occupation is like a cancer of colonialism with racist overtones that has affected everything in the neighborhood, including Arab society. Oh, puh-lease. Discrimination and religious persecution works both ways, you know. Like there was no such thing in the region until Israel was established?
lol. That's great. Keep it up.
Well stated!!! Phil is simply too naive (or stupid, or uneducated, or whatever) and too self-centered to understand that Arab and Muslim society are also to blame. The world does not revolve around Philip Weiss, who should study a bit of history rather than relying on the propaganda that he's being spoon fed.
In order to do that, Hamas would have to sign away the right of all Gazans to live in Jaffa or the Galilee, namely where they and their ancestors were expelled from. There's no one who can waive that right for others.
Duh…. and can Jews live in Gaza???? The Jews of Gaza (who also lived there centuries ago) were just expelled from Gaza 4 years ago. The Pals even demanded that JEWISH GRAVES be removed from Gaza!!! Bigots….
That will be a sad day for humanity. Luckily for humanity, people look at you and spit.
In point of fact Jews can live in Gaza, Amira Has has lived there for many years and was recently arrested by the Israeli government for so doing. There is only one group of racists in stolen and occupied Palestine: the murderous genocidal Zionist invaders, interlopers and thieves that stole the country, ethnically cleansed about 80% of the native population, and continue the process right before out eyes. Until Jews denounce Zionism and return Palestine to the native population, hate against all Jews will increase with perfectly good and reasonable cause, hence I wrote: Jewish Peril: 1933 Versus 2009. Note that Jewish peril has both an active and passive meaning. Anti-Zionism is pro-America and pro-Humanity: Sixty-one years ago…
Well, good luck. Thanks for keeping your independance. (I assume its not a pretense). Its a difficult question, as powers enlist, even those that think they are not being enlisted. It is a mistake to assume in any way, that Israel or Zionism is the sole cause of things gone wrong. Every community "tribes up". Its a strategy for not being willing prey. It probably did feel that way in Memphis. Did you mean to present the people as on "activist vacation", "activist tourism"? I hope the efforts succeed at changing things for the better. Live and let live. Do you think that is possible?
Jews, not just one Jew willing to kiss Islamic ass for the right to breathe. Do we now cause this new strain of anti-semitism Martilloism? Or Joachimism? Or shall we just refer to it as just another fruitcake playing inellectual with only a half filled can of marbles?
Good luck, Phil
It's neither possible nor impossible, Richard, it's just an inane question.
If "Meine Kamp" is meant to be German, it's either "mein Kampf" = my struggle, fight, the title of Hitler's book, or mein Kamp = my enclosure, field Neither Kampf nor Kamp (from Latin: campus) are feminine, but masculine or neuter respectively. "Meine" is the female form of the pronoun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf
Good we have poets among us.
"You see college kids walking around in 1948 (Nakba) t-shirts, and Penn State t-shirts too. Some carry guitars to play at the border tomorrow, many of the women wear head scarves. You sense that the issue has finally shed its oriental taboo and taking hold among the young…" Wait! Noooooo! This can't be happening! What the hell is wrong with these kids today? Quick, get out the concentration camp pictures! You girls, over there, you with the iron thighs of true Sabras quick, start a hora, and damn it, get your butt moving nice. I just don't understand it. How can those dirty, smelly cockroaches be heroes? Okay, you guys, you've been to college, start writing some articles, and damn it, I want hasbara "with the penultimate of schmaltz" (as AndreAndré Kostelanetz once said to the Columbia Records Orchestra )! This can't be happening! Don't you know who we are?"
" Every community "tribes up". Its a strategy for not being willing prey." You are so right, Richard. It's good to know that Hitler had a good reason for what he did, according to you. The Germans did not want to be the "willing prey" of the Jewish community. No doubt you can understand, and approve. After all, if there had been no Holocaust, would there be an Israel? See, Pangloss, everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, until something doesn't go your way. Then it isn't, huh?
"Jews, not just one Jew willing to kiss Islamic ass for the right to breathe." "I hate it here! The food is like poison. And the portions are so small!" Look, Jacob, like those few Jews who mutilate themselves socially, physically and mentally to fit in with the Gentiles, you will always have your Jerusalem Man for their Piltdown Man. So there you go, Jacob, you got in the pool up to your knees! You're playing on the big board with the Gentiles and their nationalisms and xenophobias. Having a good time? It's what you wanted, fella.
"Arab and Muslim society are also to blame." Yes, I remember them begging, literally begging, the Zionists to come to Palestine so those awful Muslims could be mean to the Jews. Those bastards were just not gonna be satisfied until the Jews were established in their old homes, so the Muslims could show them in a bad light. Jacob is way past skin=popping now. He's mainlining ziocaine. Hey, Jacob, what do you call ziocaine mixed with schmalz</>? Answer: A Zionist speedball!
"Its a difficult question, as powers enlist, even those that think they are not being enlisted." Aww, don't worry, Richard. When you're done with them you can always blow up the hotel, or ignore their resolutions. If there is anything Zionists know, it's how to get rid of dead weight like the UN or the British.
Man, between you and Ed, a Jewish guy hasn't got a chance around here! Ed's got us all as Commies, and you've got us all as racist right-wingers. Joachim (or Provalone, or whatever), Judaism is a non-centralised religion. Any Jew, or group or sect of Jews, can do or say any goddam crazy or bigoted thing they want to, and no other Jew is obligated to pay any attention to it. So, yes Joachim, the Lubavitchers and the Zionists are nuts. So how does that implicate me, or the rest of the great majority of Jews who have nothing to do with either Lubivitchers or Zionists? Oh, BTW, Joachim, when you take the stupid or bigoted actions of a few members of a religion, and tar every Jewish individual with them, why, that's anti-semitism!
The AJC polls showed 80% support among American Jews for the IDF rampage among Gaza. In addition, silence is consent. Jews do not have the right to ignore this issue To prove to me and my organiztion (Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel) that he or she is not a murderous racist genocide supporter, an American Jew must 1. reject Zionism categorically, 2. work for the abolition of the Zionist state, 3. demand that the IDF be declared a terrorist organization, 4. advocate the arrest of all Zionists for aiding and abetting terrorism with concomitant seizure of assets, 5. call for the repatriation of Palestinians with reconveyance of property as well as payment of damages, and 6.support the establishment of Nuremberg-style tribunals for the international Zionist leadership.
BTW, for those of you who might be tempted to actually pay any attention to Joachim Martillo, or whatever his latest incarnation is, a commenter at JSF (http://www.haloscan.com/comments/levi9909/1449244... gives us a pretty good idea of what you're up against. A poster at JSF was kind enough to give us a rundown on Marillo here: http://www.haloscan.com/comments/levi9909/1449244... And if you haven't been to Martillo's blog to see his opinions on Darwin, well, you're really missing something. The complete lack of understanding , and his willingness to accept all the anti-evolutionists scaremongering about Darwin, are stunning. He is truly dumb!
Jacobwolfen, it was a sad day in America when they passed the Civil Rights Laws, huh? I mean, after that, any goddam Goy could say he was just as good as a Jew! Who knows where that could lead? Next they will want to marry our daughters. And Wolfen, you can't spit. Everybody knows that ziocaine makes your mouth dry.
syvanen, can we really blame Wofen for being angry? After all, those civil rights laws made all the Jews in America equal to the Negroes. And everybody knows that isn't true! See, you got your Christians and Jews, they're the better class human beings, and then you got your Negroes, you know, almost monkeys. No, wolfsen wants to stay where he belongs, squarely with the lost-cause Southern White Goyim. Look how far a Jewish boy has come!
Mooser: (a) your first link is kaput because of the bracket stuck to it; (b) the comment you mean is this one: http://niqnaq.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/even-if-yo... by the really tiresome thought cop Roland Rance, who excels himself in hypocrisy and stupidity simultaneously there by calling Joachim, of all things, "a vicious anti-Arab racist"; (c) Jews sans Frontieres is a horrible self-righteous little hole; (d) I got banned from there almost as fast as i did from Lenin's Tomb (and the Guardian's amusingly titled "Comment Is Free" columns), so I know what I am talking about; and (e) Dieudonné is brilliant — I have lots of excellent bits of video of him here: http://niqnaq.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/even-if-yo...
Get the f____ with it Leander22, we don't care about how you attribute gender to nouns or pronouns. There's no question that Hitler and Streicher copied the Jewish POV, with reverse in & out peoples. Grow up.
So, two jews and a black were murdered by KKK types to jump start the USA Civil Rights movement via guilt. Now it's time again, with Rachel Corrie, a white gentile girl–let her freedom ring@
Yeah, right. Nobody has a moral cause superior to the Jewish cause. So it is written (by Jews).
Yes, how could the jews be equal to the negroes in USA history since they were the capitalist who owned the slave ships, and were top machers in King Cotton?
Er, Jacobwolfen, you suffer from the same disease as Richard Witty; you neglect to see who is in actual power. You still claim Jewish underdog status in the face of reality.
You are ignoring who has the power–for starters, look at the super power USA & its annual dole to Israel, and its annual veto power in the UN Sec Council.
Rowan, they banned you at JSF? Good God Almighty, this will not stand! I'll take it up with Levi9909, personal! I mean, if JSF, Lenin's Tomb, and CIF all banned you, none of them could possibly be right, could they? Look Rowan, I know what I read. The man is a first6-class idiot, frankly. He goes on and on, indicting Charles Darwin, for things other people have said Darwin said, and never ever stopping to consider, "Did Darwin really say that?" Which he didn't. When somebody starts prattling that Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection and Evolution caused the Holocaust and Communism, they usually lose me. I don't know much, but I know that WW2 was not fought by finches and tortoises. And is his name Joachim Martillo, or is it Thors Provalone or whatever?
"Well, good luck. Thanks for keeping your independance. (I assume its not a pretense)." Well, isn't that nice of you! Of course, Richard, any criticism of Israel must procede from corruption or intellectual fraud. At any rate, it's nice to see someone get a sort of mellow, dreamy high from ziocaine. It's a refreshing change from all these zio-tweakers. And I'll be on the lookout for Phil's "pretense". I mean, what else could cause him to harsh your ziocaine mellow?
But thanks for correcting the link to the mentioned comment. Other readers can now go there, and judge for themselves. Just read his blog, is all I ask, and the conclusions are inescapable. The man is a right-wing raver.
So you want a bi-national state? Splendid. Another convert signed up with my sharp wit.
Oh, and Jews were expelled into Gaza by the Israeli govt., because they didn't want too many Jews living in Israel. Sharon thought that was unjust and decided as citizens of Israel they have the right to live in their own country.
Joachim Martillo (a.k.a. Juan Carlo Santos Martillo Ajami)
Right Mooser. I can see that your knowledge of history is deep. You might try reading again, carefully, the original post by "An Onymous". Read it carefully. Make sure you understand it. Move your lips if you need to. Perhaps you should pause on the following: "Like there was no such thing in the region until Israel was established?"
Thors Provoni is an important and prophetic character in one of Philip K Dick's science fiction novels, Mooser.
You call him names. You do not address a single issue he presents on his blog, which also affords his historical sources. You can question is logic, you can question his sources–you do neither. You have to get beyond simply saying I'm a jew who rides a motorcycle.
an important and prophetic character in one of Philip K Dick's science fiction novels Sure, Rowan. And Darwin was a naturalist, not a anthropologist or social theorist. And anyone who simply swallows, and then regurgitates every right-wing canard about Darwin loses my interest, real fast.
" I got banned from there almost as fast as i did from Lenin's Tomb (and the Guardian's amusingly titled "Comment Is Free" columns), so I know what I am talking about" Az tzvei zuggen shiker, leigst zich der driter shloffen !!
If there is anything better than riding a motorcycle while Jewish, I haven't found it. I've even had a Star of David embroidered on to my jacket. So are you also in the "evil Darwin ruined everything" club?
As the freedom riders did not have anything to do with a jewish cause, I guess we have to chalk up your comment to bigotry and racism.
Just keep heaping up the anti-semetic comments. You do Phil proud.
What has rachel corrie to do with morality? I understand part of her accidental suicide had to do with how she was going to explain to her parents how she was impregnated by a married palestinian.
If there is anything better than riding a motorcycle while Jewish, I haven't found it. How very sad for you that sounds, Mooser.
Rowan, I'm getting concerned about your eating habits. Are you sure you aren't getting an irony-poor diet? Anyway, what are you going to suggest is better? Sex? Don't be ridiculous! Commenting at Mondoweiss? Okay, good, and it doesn't waste gas, but still! You don't know how much fun it is to drive a VTR100F with a custom license plate which says "SHONDA"! And Rowan, the sound, the sound of the engine is like a whole minyan, davening, and my Bar Mitzvah haftorah comes back to me perfectly. If I close my eyes, I can see the very letters on the sacred scrolls! Problem is, I can only turn left! I'll have to ask Ed about that. He seems to know all about it.
Sorry about getting overenthused, Rowan. Maybe I shouldn't post while I'm riding. Rowan, my good fiend, the best of all is when I can get ten of The Litvaks together at one time so we have a minyan. Down the road we go, our leather caftans flapping in the breeze, peyas and beards streaming from under our helmets, our tefillin hooked to the Internet, GPS and radar detectors, the Klezmatics, or Mazeltones blasting on our stereos! Rowan, there's nothing like it! Down to the local Kosher delicatessen, for a pastrami-on-rye (I never get indigestion when I'm riding) and a couple of bottles of ice cold Dr. Brown's or a cup of cold Borscht, and it's back on the road again! By the time we get back, we all think Steppenwolf is a Jewish name! But that's just me, of course. What do you do for fun?
Racist supremacists look at me and spit. And I wear that spit with pride.