The Israeli NGO Gisha has just released an interactive computer game called "Safe Passage" to highlight the ongoing siege of Gaza. A player chooses one of three characters - a student trying to use a scholarship, a businessman who wants to sell ice cream in the West Bank or a father trying to stay with his family - and attempts to navigate their way through Israel's closure policies.
While Israel's draconian restrictions on common foodstuffs like coriander and nutmeg have received much needed attention, the game helps point to two larger issues - the ongoing restriction on movement and the intentional separation of Gaza from the West Bank. Gisha's director Sari Bashi, points out, "This week's announcement of 'easing' the closure of Gaza fails to end the ban on export or on travel between Gaza and the West Bank. Israel should allow the free passage of goods and persons between Gaza and the West Bank as the basis for a healthy and prosperous society."
Play the game here.
But in the meantime the Lobby has convinced the sink of corruption in Washington to declare it a sin to try to break the blockade.
The ‘easing’ of restrictions on foodstuffs alone is a complete and cynical sham. Netanyahu’s use of the asshole Tony Blair to hail this ‘breakthrough’ (and his vital part in it) is part of the Big Lie that is everyday Israeli propaganda.
His ‘signature project’, the north Gaza sewage plant, was comprehensively f**ked by the refusal of the Israelis to import any building materials
link to ynetnews.com
(see, especially, the photo of homeless Gazans, living in tents, wading through a flood of untreated sewage)
Although the petty, vindictive (and constantly changing) list of banned food items for individuals has been relaxed to an extent, there has been no relaxation on bulk food items meant for re-processing, so business in Gaza is still at a standstill
link to guardian.co.uk
Amira Hass wrote this week that without raw materials and the possibility of exporting goods produced in Gaza, a few more Israeli-made consumer products on the shelves – which no one has the money to buy anyway – will make little or no difference. What Gazans really need is to be able to rebuild their shattered homes, businesses, infrastructure and lives.
Looks like Obama will be happy with window-dressing. Maybe he should play the game Safe Passage:
link to haaretz.com
The game character trying to reunite with his young son and wife in the WB is denied first because his registered address is in Gaza, then he is denied because humanitarian ties are not recognized as sufficient reason to unite his little family:
link to spg.org.il
I got depressed and didn’t go on with the program displaying the rest of the Israeli denial justifications.
The parallels with the township and pass system from Apartheid South Africa continue to be revealed. All of this wouldn’t be occuring but for the ceaseless flow of U.S. dollars. Washington is just as responsible as Tel Aviv.
Israel is playing games of its own with the pretended easing of restrictions. Article from Maan speaks for itself about the good guys in Israel:
.
MOH: Israel prevents delivery of oxygen to hospitals
Bethlehem – Ma’an – Seven oxygen machines donated to the Palestinain Authority by a Norwegian development agency were seized by Israeli officials en route to hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza, the Ramallah-based health ministry said.
The machines, the ministry said in a Thursday statement, were confiscated by Israeli officials who claimed that the generators attached “came under the category of possible use for non-medical purposes” if they were delivered to the southern Gaza governorates.
While only one generator was bound for southern Gaza, all seven were taken, the statement said, and “all were badly needed for medical treatment.”
The six others were bound for government hospitals in the northern Gaza, inducing the European Hospital in Gaza City, the Rafdieyah hospital in Nablus, and other facilities in Ramallah and Hebron.
The Ministry of Health made an official appeal to the Norwegian Development Agency, which had supplied the machines, asking that hey intervene and demand the release of the equipment at the soonest possible date.
“Any delay in obtaining the medical equipment will negatively affect the health of patients,” the statement concluded, holding all partners responsible for the well being of Palestinians as the goods are withheld.
link to maannews.net
The “easing” of the blockade is nothing more than a ploy to legitimatize it, which the Zionist collaborators in the US government have already done.
I have just played the game, and I urge every other Mondoweiss reader to do so as well.
I chose to play as an ice cream manufacturer. Underneath each category is a link to ‘Meet the Real People’, and there I chose Mohammed al-Tibani who, until 2004 exported 60% 0f his ice cream production to the West Bank (30 tons per day; 25% of West Bank ice cream consumption).
Then:
“I can compare export from Gaza to the West Bank to the collapse of a sand castle: In 2005 and 2006 they allowed us to export weekly the about [sic] same amount that we used to export daily, and a big part of the castle came crashing down. I began to sense that we had a tough period ahead of us. There were dark clouds on the horizon. At the end of 2006 and the start of 2007, the volume of exports decreased; weeks would pass by without us being able to export, until the whole thing collapsed and the closure came: The last time we exported was on May 30, 2007.”
So, in truth, the restrictions on Gaza trade were there long before Hamas was even elected.
This has nothing to do with weapons smuggling to Hamas, or even with Hamas itself. It’s an intermediate stage in ethnic cleansing.
“This has nothing to do with weapons smuggling to Hamas, or even with Hamas itself. It’s an intermediate stage in ethnic cleansing.”
Yup
LOL, what is the beginning stages of ethnic cleansing, setting up theme parks?
you guys are crazy…… how many Palestinians were displaced or forced to move from Gaza? There is a population growth of 2+ percent in Gaza. How are they being cleansed?
Ethnic Cleansing?
link to paltoday.ps
quit the rhetoric guys.
Ethnic Cleansing?”
Yes Ethnic cleansing. The forceful removal of one race or ethnicity by another. It doesn’t have to include mass murder or genocide to be ethnic cleansing.
“quit the rhetoric guys.”
Why is it hurting your feelings?
Shingo,
LOL!!!! first Gaza is the Warsaw Ghetto where no one can get it, now you are trying to argue that their is a forceful removal of the Palestinians?
C’mon dude. you are slipping. You have your talking points down, good job…… But you are really struggling with where to apply them. LOL HAHAHA
Mondobot!
“LOL!!!! first Gaza is the Warsaw Ghetto where no one can get it, now you are trying to argue that their is a forceful removal of the Palestinians?”
Yes Gaza is a prison, and when many of the Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed in 1948, you know like from towns now called Sderot, were driven. try to keep up.”
And facts work no matter how you apply them…..Ziofascict racist.
Regardless of the semantics, the mere fact that Israeli political figures and government officials have voiced a desire to TRANSFER Palestinians from Israel into the West Bank or to neighboring states is testament to Israel’s criminal intent.
Current Israeli policy seeks to Judaize East Jerusalem and much of the Galilee. By definition that is ethnic cleansing, as one ethnic group (Jews) push out another group (Palestinians) in an attempt to create an ethnically pure state.
And this is the reason why Zionism constitutes a crime against humanity in the legal sense, as per international law. Since Israel defines the ethnicity of the majority of its citizens as “Jewish”, then an attempt to establish a Jewish homeland while expelling or forcibly removing non-Jews, it is committing the act of Ethnic Cleansing. It started in 1947 and continues until today.
Schwartzman, this may be yesterday’s news to everyone here but it may help you understand where some of the ethnic cleansing that Shingo is talking about is coming from. It describes a plan as reiterated by a fiendish Jew from Harvard telling Israel’s elite at this year’s Herzliya conference that meets every year to discuss improved ways of getting rid of Palestinians, a new way of reducing birth rates among Palestinians, by starving them. It may be educational for you and provide you with new talking points on an innovative way of getting rid of Palestrinians; from the Electronic Intifada:
Harvard Fellow calls for genocidal measure to curb Palestinian births
Report, The Electronic Intifada, 22 February 2010
A fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Martin Kramer, has called for “the West” to take measures to curb the births of Palestinians, a proposal that appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide.
Kramer, who is also a fellow at the influential Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), made the call early this month in a speech at Israel’s Herzliya conference, a video of which is posted on his blog (“Superfluous young men,” 7 February 2010).
In the speech Kramer rejected common views that Islamist “radicalization” is caused by US policies such as support for Israel, or propping up despotic dictatorships, and stated that it was inherent in the demography of Muslim societies such as Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip. Too many children, he argued, leads to too many “superfluous young men” who then become violent radicals.
Kramer proposed that the number of Palestinian children born in the Gaza Strip should be deliberately curbed, and alleged that this would “happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies to Palestinians with refugee status.”
Due to the Israeli blockade, the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are now dependent on UN food aid. Neither the UN, nor any other agencies, provide Palestinians with specifically “pro-natal subsidies.” Kramer appeared to be equating any humanitarian assistance at all with inducement for Palestinians to reproduce.
He added, “Israel’s present sanctions on Gaza have a political aim — undermine the Hamas regime — but if they also break Gaza’s runaway population growth, and there is some evidence that they have, that might begin to crack the culture of martyrdom which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men.” This, he claimed, would be treating the issue of Islamic radicalization “at its root.”
link to electronicintifada.net
Schwartzman, where are you located? The US or Israel?
The safe passage game left a lot be desired.
“The safe passage game left a lot be desired.”
it does when genocidal maniacs of the IDF stand between you and your destination.
Well, yes Schwartzman, that was the point of the game, to give the player an inkling of how Israeli rules leave a lot to be desired for basic civil rights for the Palestinian people.
Some contextual readings on this matter:
Offshore Gas Reserves – Stake Your Claim
Massive natural gas deposits found off Israel
Two more huge Israeli gas fields
Noble Energy Increases Tamar Reserve by 15%
Noble Energy – Eastern Mediterranean
Future War [apologies for the biased source]