"And we wonder why they hate us....God weeps." -Alan Sabrosky, Ph.D
(SALEM, Ore.) - Human Rights Activist Ewa Jasiewicz witnessed unspeakable things in Gaza before and after Israel's brutal series of assaults in December and January during the IDF's Operation Cast Lead.
This event led to the deaths of more than 1,400 people in Gaza, among them several hundred children.
The video below from Ewa's speech in Berlin, Germany, features imagery and sound recorded by volunteers in Gaza during Israel's overwhelming military assault on the civilian populace last winter, which included entire neighborhoods, hospitals, at least one school, and United Nations facilities.
Israel claims the civilians were shielding members of the political group, Hamas, which Israel and the U.S. have branded as a terrorist organization. Hamas had fired rockets into Israel, as a reprisal for Israel failing to live up to a political obligation to reopen a Gaza border crossing. What Hamas did was wrong, and at least five Israeli citizens were killed. Israel's response was the indiscriminate killing of over 1,400 innocent civilian Palestinians; the total number of Israelis killed, including several IDF soldiers from friendly fire, was 14.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the same reasoning to explain their attacks on the school children and UN facilities. They have not had any reasonable excuses to explain why the IDF chose to rain White Phosphorous on the roofs of families, burning people alive in a way that is reminiscent of napalm use during the Vietnam War.
A growing number of Israeli citizens are condemning the attacks on Gaza, and the overall regard of Israel for Palestinians, as the Israeli peace movement gains momentum.
The video shows ambulance drivers being targeted and shot by Israeli soldiers, farmers of Gaza shot while trying to harvest their crops, again by Israeli soldiers, and it discusses Israel's attempts to block relief shipments as they enter the port at Gaza. Israel and Egypt already halt relief supplies at mostly closed Gaza entry points.
Dr. Alan Sabrosky, Ph.D who writes for Salem-News.com, cites how the main photo for this story is something nobody will see on network news, adding, "And we wonder why they hate us....God weeps."
We'll publish it Alan, as hard as it is and as much as it makes hearts fill with pain, we will run it. And we will always have the courage to show life as it really is, with your help 'Doc' Sabrosky, and Jeff Gates, Debbie Menon, Karin Friedemann, Alan Hart, Gordon Duff, Daniel Johnson and a long list of other people who write consistently about the Palestinian/Israeli question.
It is so difficult for Americans to imagine how badly things have gone, and they must remind themselves that right is right and wrong is wrong. People require more than what the Gazans have and the clock is ticking.
How can the world allow the madness, murder, starvation and disease? In the video, Ewa talks about PTSD, and cites how there is no "post" here; trauma is part of everyday life in a place that is bombed and rebuilt, bombed and rebuilt, continually.
Slowly and surely, Israel seems intent on killing off the Palestinian population. Ewa Jasiewicz discusses the growing BDS Movement in America and other western nations, that stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions for Palestine. The group advocates a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, "based on the premise that these institutions are complicit in the system of oppression that has denied Palestinians their basic rights guaranteed by international law."
In other words, as long as western students are laden with pro-Israeli propaganda, particularly from professors of higher education, the struggle for the people of Palestine and the honest appraisal of Israel on a worldwide level is delayed.
It is not racist to criticize Israel. It is certainly not anti-Semitic; nobody asked any particular group to attack the people of Palestine.
This is an extremely important video.
To learn more, follow this link to all of our Salem-News.com reports on the Palestine/Israel crisis
Another good source is: intifada-palestine.com
Images of Ewa speech by: Doris and Björn, German Palestine Solidarity Organization publicsolidarity.de
Other footage by :Volunteers of ISM GAZAAlberto ArceRamattan Video Studios GazaAl Jazeera
Images of prisoners:B'TSELEM.ORG,SABR, palestinianprisoner.blogspot.comTADAMON! tadamon.ca
If you are interested in a speaker from Free Gaza, please go to freegaza.org/join-in/speaker-bureau ... and you will find several speakers there who would be happy to come and speak.
Video
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Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor.Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim holds numerous awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), the first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several other awards including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators.You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com
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