Right after the flotilla incident, I passed along a friend’s wise point that people who undertake acts of Palestinian solidarity will have Palestinian experiences. People who try to break blockades will be shot at. Journalists who stand up for Palestinian freedom will get marginalized.
Well here is a video about events on the Mavi Marmara told by Farooq Burney of Fakhoora.org, (an international campaign that aims to secure the freedom to learn for Palestinian students in Gaza and the West Bank). Burney was one of three Canadians aboard the boat; he was carrying 65 computers to students in Gaza.
What is noteworthy about his story is a, his description of a friend dying in front of him at a time when bullets were flying around and hitting many passengers, and b, his description of two days of detention in Israel, without contact with his embassy or a lawyer or his family. The two days of detention seem to have been the most degrading experience that Burney had. He was humiliated and frightened, he says, and his family was worried sick the whole time. Of course they thought he was dead.
The experience was capped by a visit from a bunch of Israeli teenagers, apparently trainees in the prison, who gaped at the internationals. "Basically in a way laughing at us." Burney says that episode is engraved in his mind forever.
I pass this along with the reminder that there are about 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails. Some of them are detained without being charged. Some are young teenagers accused of throwing rocks. Burney got a taste of their experience, and it was embittering.
During the World Cup, I saw a report on Mandela’s prison notebooks, and the humiliations that never broke him, and of his triumphant release. When will we ever learn…
(Oh and I wonder what has happened to those computers…)
