I'm off to Cairo later today, and then on to Gaza, I hope. Thanks to the generous support of readers of this site. I'll be in Cairo when my president gets there, next month.
Whether my group of 14 humanitarians/journalists gets into Gaza depends on the Egyptian government and the United States, too, which has the ability to urge the Egyptians to let us in. My congressman, John Hall, is a big progressive. He knocked off a longtime Republican incumbent in '06 over the Iraq war. John, I've called your office a couple of times and am still hoping that you will call the State Department on behalf of my group. This site, Mondoweiss, is a newssite that typically gets 10,000 hits a day. The plight of the Gazan people is also a progressive issue, central to the U.S. problem in the Middle East.
And below is the appeal by Dorothy Zellner on my group's behalf. Anyone who can lend their voice–we appreciate it.
I'm writing you on behalf of Felice Gelman, who is now in Cairo. She is leading a group of 14 people who will try to get into Gaza. The group will arrive in Cairo on Sunday and then, hopefully, will get to the border of Egypt and Gaza at Al Arish on Monday. Code Pink, as you may have heard, is also organizing delegations, and there is one also from Canada. This is part of a large organizing drive to break the siege on Gaza.
All told, there are about 160 people, most of them U.S. citizens, who will try to get through to Gaza in the next few days. They have received an umbrella invitation from UNRWA, the UN agency that provides assistance to Gazans, and will be bringing humanitarian aid, particularly items needed for the children of Gaza.
Independent of these is a group of medical doctors who are stuck at the Rafah entrance after being refused admittance into Gaza; these doctors already treated people in Gaza and were going back to do follow-up visits with patients. Amazingly enough, they are staging a HUNGER STRIKE at the border.
Felice reports that the Egyptians seem quite nervous about this venture and apparently have informed bus companies not to take people to Al Arish. Felice and other leaders of the delegations are working to get alternative transportation, but they feel that the most important thing that can be done today is to call elected representatives and Senator Gillibrand to request assistance for constituents and urge the Egyptians to let them through. (Cindy Albert is Sen. Gillibrand's assistant but if she is not available, leave a message with anyone.)
I hope you can send this out widely ASAP to catch people before they leave for the holiday weekend. All calls will be helpful and may make the difference between sitting in Cairo or delivering desperately needed humanitarian goods to the Gazans.
Related posts:
- Overwhelmingly, Egyptians say Obama’s Cairo speech was about Israel/Palestine
- Update from Cairo: Gaza Freedom March rejects Egyptian offer to allow only 100 protesters into Gaza
- Cairo meets the movement, with tears and chaos and exaltation
- Hope lives in Gaza despite siege, desperation and anger
- Obama’s credibility hurt during Cairo speech because of silence on the horrors of Gaza and Iraq
{ 39 comments }
Can Ellison or Baird help? I'll reach out.
10, 000 hits a day?? No wonder the site seems a bit inoperative sometimes… But, that means that about 99.8% of them are what we call 'lurkers' — they never leave comments. I'm not sure that that's plausible.
Dude, if Mubarak is dead and you get to be there for the party I will be seething with jealousy.
If worst comes to worst, try a tunnel.
Best of luck and be safe Phil Weiss…
Go with God, Mr. Weiss. The amenities on His flight are amazing! Best of luck and be careful.
Lurker leaving a message…
" I'm not sure that that's plausible." Not to you, or for that matter, me, of course. But you might be surprised, Rowan, the compulsion to air ones views on the internet has not, as of yet, afflicted a large proportion of the population. It's just that the ones it does afflict (mea culpa!) never shut up!
Lurker leaving a comment. Don't worry – we've got your back.
What? 10k hits a day is only 417 hits per hour if we assume even distribution throughout the 24-hour period; I would guess that in actuality traffic is weighted towards US daylight hours, but even so, the load is probably no more than 2k hits in an hour at peak. That's about 30 hits per minute, one every two seconds. You could handle that load with a single server running on a home broadband connection. Mondoweiss is hosted at TypePad, where 10k hits a day probably falls below the noise floor. As for the lurkers, yes, of course 98% of readers don't post. That's probably true everywhere.
lurker (as charged!)
Lots of lurkers out here. We get informative comments from many of your regulars–the ones that do not simply call people names and indulge in rhetoric we can find easily all over the web.
Godspeed, Phil.
Best of luck and lots of reporting!
Don' t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
This is the only site where I post, except quite rarely on M J Rosenberg's site at TPM cafe. As they say down here in Mexico, "VAYA CON DIOS"! Have a safe journey.
> Jewish history will need require the visions and creativity of a lot of Jews who are close to the ground, > and working with non-Jews Like always, jews at the center of everything … Phillip: this is Palestinian history, and somehow the opportunism of jews from everywhere basking in the image of being "humanitarians" and giving too little too late to repair the atrocities comitted by their brothers and cousins, well, I think that rather than giving alms to the Palestinians, there should be restitution in every sense of the word, and the payment of damages, without limitations. Personally, I hope to see less, far less jews engaging in this kind of disgustiong show of "we are good". And, why dont you and other jews who have a blog post an article along the lines of "I am sorry, I am ashamed, …" ??? I am waiting, and not alone at that.
Stay safe Phil! All the best to you my man!
Good luck. I hope you get to see more than just a tour. You need to if you are going to actually comment anything of meaning.
Please stay safe. It is inevitably a foreign language with foreign facial and verbal cues. I spent a week in non-English speaking parts of Egypt, and had a very confusing time (but also wonderful at times, but not predictably wonderful). Please don't risk being a hostage.
Philip never claims to speak on behalf of the Jewish community, nor should the actions of fellow Jews reflect upon him.
Not sure it's appropriate considering the destination but.. just finishing a bottle of Morey-Saint-Denis 95, "Les Millandes". Cheers!
Watch out for stray gas canisters and anything with the word Caterpillar on it. I guess you can be as careful as you like and still cop one, by 'accident' of course. There are I'm sure people in Israel, and in the US, who know you're coming and would like some such 'tragedy' to occur. There are at least 10,000 of us here who fervently hope it doesn't. Best of luck.
Make that 9,999
Good luck. I hope all of you get in, including the doctors.
Best of luck! Hope you all get in. (And, incidentally, I'm a lurker most places, so 98-99% not leaving comments doesn't sound odd to me.)
Unfair in the extreme. Philip did too lamented the great grievances committed in the name of Jews. Of all people he (and Adam) deserve better than your comment. If he could arrange for the restitution you ask no doubt he would. In the meantime, we need people getting into gaza, bearing witness and perhaps bearing a few gifts.
Bon voyage – and stay away from those mine fields. No peeking in the tunnels now!
go to Alexa to see Mondoweiss stats. They are quite accurate. I am very heartened by the amount of Iranian readers. If your country is under constant barrage of threats it must me helpfull to find a site that is not spewing irrational hatred. Hi guys (and girls!)!
Good luck Phil… it's quite a journey — I've done it myself (several years ago). I may not be a lurker, as I used to comment frequently. But I stopped I find the company of Rowan Berkeley's anti-semitic bullshit tiresome. Almost enough to make me look forward to Witty (who used to be the bane of the comments section). So now I generally lurk, as with the vast majority of readers of this site.
Have a good trip Phil, thanks for your blog and may you get 100,000 hits/day. Kevin, who is deserving of the epithet "anti-semitic" must be a subjective judgment as I don't find Rowan anti-semitic. Provocative and impatient at times, but not anti-semitic. In fact, I find the whole idea of dividing people into these two groups (pros and antis), tiresome, dualistic and unproductive. Besides, the slur is losing its impact, having recently been somewhat lavishly over-applied by the Israel right or wrong push to its critics. You may also be a bit behind the times, as the term, "holocaust denier" seems to be supplanting the "anti-semitic" jibe in its branding power. It is easier to "prove", just leave out the term "6 million" from the credo and you are a goner. :-) If you disagree with what someone has to say, why not just state your case? Full Disclosure: I post comments on Rowan's blog. e.g. http://niqnaq.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/john-pilge...
Phil, I hope that your trip will lead you to the truth based on the facts on the ground that Insha Allah(God Willing) you will be given the opportunity to see and witness for yourself. Please do try and let our President know that he will be addressing the so-called moderate Muslim world in Egypt, and that the pro-resistance to Israel(therefore considered immoderate) Muslims and Arabs (which includes non-Muslims) would appreciate it if he would make plans to address us from Iran. LOL!
That's not really fair. Many Christians in America (i.e. Hagee and Congress) are helping in the destruction of Palestine. Because someone is Jewish doesn't make them an opportunist, but will likely have better access to Jewish organizations. It's gonna take more than Phil to start this movement inside the US.
I didn't say 98%, I said 99.8%. I base this on the rough figure of twenty different commenters per day, mostly leaving more than one comment, of course, as you can see. If 90% of the attempted comments were so abusive they had to be deleted on sight, that would explain the discrepancy, though it would also keep someone busy practically full-time, deleting 180 of 200 commenters and letting the remaining 20 commenters keep appearing. So that isn't too plausible either.
You are right Rowan. My estimate is that 300 hits a day is closer to the truth, or perhaps 150. But since January I have gotten to the sight perhaps a 100 times via stephen Walts blog. simply because I am too lazy to copy the adress to this site, I just enter via Stephens blog, which I visit daily. And the funny thing is that Phil then thinks a lot of trafic comes from Steptehn blog! :-)
RE: "To Cairo, and then to Gaza, I hope" MY COMMENT: Try not to rock the casbah!
Good grief, Richard, you sound like the famous yiddishe mame. "Don't overtax yourself – shoot a Turk, then rest."
What is more For the last 3 months I have had my browser opened for several hours a day with some 30-40 pages in tabs waiting to be read (when I get time). That means that this is counted in the statistrics for each page, which just shows that you cannot rely on this sort of statistic.
I have just been spending some time on this Alexa-site. I actually fail to see the exact number of visitors. I can get a percentage of all internetusers, and I can see a 'trafficrank' number, which are calculated using parameters like time spent on the site. And because this site is so filled with text, and has a lot of new content added daily, people spent a lot of time making sense of it, and trying to decide what is relevant. Seing that i BBCnews.com has a score of 354.664, Philipweiss.org some 87.000 and CNN.com 54 is just not credible, and above all says nothing about the popularity of the respective sites, their outreach, their credibility and thrustworthiness and their standards of accurate reporting.
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