Jaffa for Gaza Demonsration

"Stop the siege of the Gaza Strip" was the main message in yesterday's demonstration in Jaffa, where over 1000 people, Palestinian and Jewish Israelis. marched through Jabaliyah and Ajami neighborhoods from the public housing estate at south Kedem Street (aka "the Jungle") to the Ajami Mosque. The demo had been organized by the Jaffa popular committee in coordination with several other organizations.

One year ago Israel started its murderous atteck on the Gaza Strip, which resulted in some 1500 dead, many of them civivlians, women and children, over 5000 wounded and a total destructon of the Gaza infrastructure and many homes. Complete neighborhoods were demolished.

The continued siege of the Gaza Strip has created an additional catastrophe, when basic medicine, food, fuel for the power station and the sewage treatment and water cleaning plants, school books etc. cannot be imported.

The Gaza Strip has become a prison camp for its inhabitants. Many families cannot meet, as some of the family memebers are ni the West Bank, others in the strip. Students stucjk in the West Bank cannot go home, others, who were accepted into higher education programs are not able to leave. People cannot recveive life saving medical treatment available outside of the Gaza Strip at a mere 40 minutes car ride.

Many of the Gaza Strip's residents have Jaffa roots, their families forced to leave the city in 1948. Many are connected by family ties, so whatever goes on in Gaza, is important in Jaffa and the other way around. The peaceful Jaffa demonstration opens a week of world wide activities in support of the people of Gaza

Today at 5 p.m. "Break the Siege" demonstration in Jaffa, from 163 Kedem Street

The Jaffa Committee for Gaza invites you The Jaffa Committee for Gaza invites you

To join the "Break the Siege" demonstration

Today, saturday, Dec. 26th at 17:00, from Kedem 163, Jaffa

One year ago the Israeli attack on the Gaza strip began; 1440 people were killed, over 5000 wounded, most of them civilians and many among them were children. This on top of the large scale destruction of infrastructures and houses in the strip.

Over 70,000 residents became refugees following the attacks. Notwithstanding the popular worldwide movement denouncing the war and demanding of Israel that it lifts the siege on Gaza – Israel continues on with its policies. The siege remains, and its victims are countless; children, elderly, sick, hundreds of families whose houses were destroyed during the war and who cannot rebuild and overall one and a half million Gaza citizens who live in the world’s greatest prison.

As response Gaza civil society’s call, an international protest movement was established to call for a lift of the siege on Gaza. Activists from all over the world have joined thousands of Palestinian activists from Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.

As a follow up to the protest against the war which took place in Jaffa, we invite you to join the demonstration in Jaffa in order to add our voice to those of our international colleagues who also object to the siege.

Saturday, 26/12/09

The demo will begin at 17:00 from Kedem st. 163 and will end in Gaza park (Gan HaShanyim) (Yefet 74)

Gaza in the heart of Jaffa

Horses, border police, loads of other police and the usual police camera crew were there when some hundred people from Jaffa gathered today in the Gazan'z Park to protest the continued closure of the Gaza strip as well as have a memorial for Gaza's over 400 murdered children.
Rappers "System Ali" (from Jaffa, rap in Arabic, Hebrew and Russian) set the tone.
Placards with the names and ages of some of the children were attached to the trees as were rather macabre shrouded dolls.

Event at 15.00 o'clock today: Gaza in the heart of Jaffa

Today at 15.00 o'clock in Gan HaShnayim (which will from now onwill be called "Gan Ha'azatim" (Park of the people form Gaza) at the corner of Ehrlich and Yefet Street.

In the past the taxis from Gaza used to stop at this corner to let of passengers from Gaza and take on passengersform Jaffa. In 1948 many of Jaffa's 120.000 Palestinians were expelled to the Gaza strip. As a result, there are exetensive family ties between the two places.
After 1967 trffic became possible and people came and went. There were many marriages in both "directions", which led to even more family ties.

The horrid war on Gaza left Jaffa in pan as well: the Jaffa based Samouni family lost some 30 of its family memebers in Gaza, and they are not the only family to have suffered awful losses.

Today we will return the park's old name in memory of the murdered children from Gaza.
System Ali will perform as will many other perfomrance artists from Jaffa and beyond:

No against the conltinued closer of the Gaza strip
Yes to peace and cooperation

We don't want to be enemies!

No to the continued blockade of Gaza

Some 30 activists gathered today in Jaffa protesting quietly along clock tower square, against the continued blockade of the Gaza strip and demanding that the Israeli commanders and soldiers behind the horrid warcrimes committed by the IDF be brought to trial.

The dust storm kept many people closed in their homes and the usually very busy square was very quiet this time. Most of te cars passing by had their windows closed because of the cold and the dust, but the expressions on the faces of the drivers and passengers, not to mention their gestures said it all. some opened their windows to shout and swear at us and some stopped for discourse.
It doesn't stop to amaze me how easily the Israeli people have been duped into justifying the most atrocious acts by the all encompassing propaganda machine. Some made statements such as "a pity they didn't kill more children" and that sort of comments. Israeli society is very sick.

Send the Israeli war criminials to court and stop the blockade

Today at 12.00 at the clock tower square in Jaffa there will be a demo to protest the continued blockade of the Gaza strip and to demand a criminal investigation of the Israeli war criminals

Statistics

Sometimes numbers say a lot:

Gaza 1.300 dead as of today
Israel 13 dead as of today

Each one has a name.
Each one is missed by family, friends, neighbors

They all have the same red blood.

They are all people

PLEASE, STOP THE WAR NOW, PLEASE

Thousands marched through Jaffa against the war in Gaza

"Brothers, it's burning"*, stated a placard carried by a Jewish woman in today's protest march, eerily referring to ancient days, when Yiddish was common amongst eastern European Jews and a shtetl had been torched.

Something happened in Jaffa today. Something which is beyond the thousands who marched to protest against the war in the Gaza strip.
In 1948 the very large majority of Jaffa's 120.000 people strong Palestinian population was expelled, many in fact to the Gaza strip, others to Lebanon. The 3.200 who stayed behind were pressured into a position of "being quiet", not raising their voices.

No longer so.

Today the people of Jaffa raised their voices, loudly and clearly. Many have not heard form their Gaza relatives for days, others received messages of how their Gazan family members have been butchered by the IDF. How the wounded cannot receive treatment because there is no way of getting them into a hospital. How the IDF shoots at medical crews and ambulances. How one of Gaza's few hospitals was bombed and burnt out, no longer functional. And in Jaffa we refuse to be silent. Thousands marched through Jafa's rainy and dark streets in protest against the war, from the Charles Clore Park to the HaShnayim park, where two minutes of silence were observed, chanting for an immediate stop to the war for the sake of the children of both countries.

And on a more ominous tone: Some of the police man guarding the demo were masked. I wonder what this implies. Trying to see how we react to it?

And towards the end of the demo something weird happened. A guy with a camera posing as a writer for the NYT tried to interview me. By his line of questioning and the way he formulated his questions, it became soon quite clear there is little connection between him and the NYT. It seems more like he's from arutz 7 or other ultra right wing rag, sort of "under cover in the dangerous streets of Jaffa". Pathetic.

*Our Town Burns
Author and Composer: Mordkhaï Gebirtig (1877-1942)

It burns, brothers, it burns!
Our poor shtetl pitifully burning,
Angry wind with rage and curses
Tears and shatters and disperses,
Wild flames leap, they twist and turn,
Everything now burns!

In Yiddish:

Es Brent!
עס ברענט (גיבירטיג)

Es brent! Briderlekh, s'brent!
Oy undzer orem shtetl, nebokh, brent!
Beyze vintn mit yirgozn
Raysn brekhn un tzeblozn
Shtarker nokh di vilde flamen,
Alts arum shoyn brent!

Anti War demo in Jaffa today at 18.30

The anti-war coalition (more than 30 organizations from different sectors in Israeli society) will demonstrate today in Jaffa.
We will convene in the Charles Clore Park (the southern beach park of Tel Aviv, just north of Jaffa) at 18.30 and march' along Yefet street, to the "Gan HaShnaym Park", where we will observe a minute of silence in memory of the victims. As of now, there are almost 1200 dead in the Gaza strip.

"Palestinian and Israeli children wish to live in peace, in Gaza and in Sderot"

Sir Gerald Kaufman in the British House of Commmons: They are not simply war criminals; they are fools.

Here a slightly abridged version of the statement that Sir Gerald Kaufman made in the House of Commons on January 15:

I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist. On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine.

I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there since more times than I can count. I had family in Israel and have friends in Israel. One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 and was wounded in two of them. The tie clip that I am wearing is made from a campaign decoration awarded to him, which he presented to me.

I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir was my friend, as was Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, who, as a general, won the Negev for Israel in the 1948 war of independence.

My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians….

On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians- the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that “500 of them were militants.”

That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants….

However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more on the West Bank. They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well. The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel.

It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli Government that their conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis’ real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools.

Here’s the url:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090115/debtext/90115-0013.htm#090115102001355

Arresting journalists and placing severe restrictions on their work

Since the war started, Israel has prevented international and local journalists from entering the Gaza strip. The IDF spokesman allowed single hand-picked journalists very limited access.

But now, things are getting even worse: civil areas in the south of Israel have become restricted zones. One photographer has been arrested and another one had his camera's memory wiped out.

Freedom of the press appears to exist in theory only.

Police harassment in Jaffa

Several of the people who participated in the silent mourning vigil in Jaffa yesterday, have been remanded by the police for investigation.
They were investigated by a police woman called Oshrat, who claimed they trespassed clause 151 of the penal code. Nothing we did was in fact illegal. But they want to scare us into keeping silent.

So much for Israeli "democracy". There was nothing illegal in yesterday's silent vigil. No speeches, no shouting,no one crossed the street in an unlawful manner.
It's quite clear they try to scare us into keeping silent, not doing anything that might be seen as disagreeing to what the "leaders" decide.

The right t demonstrate is a basic right. But the police do not recognize it. What ever is left of Israeli democracy has become a farce. Our most basic rights are being trampled. They want to scare us into silence.

Silently Mourning the murdered Gaza children in Jaffa

We started off from two locations, dressed in black, silently walking along the streets of Jaffa.
At first there were perhaps some 10-15 of us. A few with burning torches, others carrying images of the children, Gaza's children, murdered by the IDF.

But along the streets of Jaffa more and more people joined us, many of the children and elderly, who never before participated in something even slightly political. They were silent as well. At the little park, today named after "the two" "Gan HaShnayim, but originally it was called the "Gazans' Garden, the two groups joined and all lighted candles and we just stood, silently.
What can one say when the little ones are murdered?
How can we stop this?
More and more people joined in spontaneously, standing silently with us, for about perhaps an hour in the dark Jaffa night. There were perhaps a 70-100 of us. Lighting candles, standing in silence. I saw tears in the eyes of some. The children, normally playful and smiling, were sad and held their candles and torches solemnly. The police came, but did not intervene.

Anti War Demo today in Baka ElGarbiya

Buses will leave from Jaffa's "HaShnayim" park (on the corner of Yefet and Ehrlich street, the littwe park also known as "the Gazans' Park") at 13.00 in order to go to Baka ElGarbiya where a big anti war demo will be held at 15.00 today.

Gaza - Sderot blog

During my short visit in the south i encountered more than a few people, both Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, who are opposed to the war and able to see the wider picture quite clearly.
Hopeman and Peaceman are special.

Anti-war demo in Jaffa: observing a minute of silence for the victims

Several hundreds, both Jews and Palestinians, attended an anti war demonstration today in Jaffa.Yes, yet another one. I've almost started to loose count. New faces, people i never expected to see in a demo. Eldery women, mothers of some of the "regulars", who always warned us not to demonstrate, suddenly they are there, Sara, Aysha and Mary (although it's Christmas for Jaffa's orthodox Christian community today, who use a different calendar) were there. Many young mothers with their small children. The news on AlJazeera, which is what most of us watch, as there are no other news sources inside the Gaza strip except for well, the IDF spokesperson, and there is rather a discripancy between the spokes person's version and what is going on.
People lighted candles and observed a minute of silence in memory of the victims, especially the 45 people killed today by the IDF, mostly children and women who took refuge in an UNWRA school, after their homes had been destroyed or after it had become impossible to sat in them any longer.
"Stop the killing of children" read many of the placards carried by the participants.
The police had constructed an enormous double-fenced cage for the demonstrators to stand any, caged like animals.
Many people in Jaffa have family in Gaza. Many have not been able to talk to each other since the war started, but some of the news has reached us. One neighbour lost her sister and the sister's 17 year old son. A younger daughter has been wounded.
The conditions in Gaza's "Shifa" hospital, after yesterday's bombing are terrible: There is a lack of everything and too many wounded for the exhausted staff. The failing electricity, the lack of drugs and surgical gloves as well as the lack of anesthetics make professional medical care close to impossible. Ambulances have been shot at, their staff killed or badly wounded.

This stupid violence will not lead to anything except more hate. If i were religious i guess i would pray for it to end. But i'm not, and all i can do is tell our story. And show you some of what is going on. And i want to scream it out:

Stop killing the children
PLEASE, stop killing the children

Some thoughts about the situation

Medical personnel of a Norwegian medical NGO just informed us through the media, that about 40% of the dead and wounded are women and children, which makes it quite clear that the targets are not military (not that it would be OK, IF the targets were military). there is very little food, no fuel, not enough medicine and medical equipment, nor the infrastructure to take care of the many wounded and the needy population. Israel says some aid is led through, but it has not arrived at the hospital, Israel is lying, not for the first time.
The French proposals for a temporary truce have not been accepted by the Israeli leadership.

The simplistic statement "but they started" is on the level of a 6-year old's "but he hit me first, mummy".
It seems so obvious, but when i listen to what is being said by many people, in the streets and in the media, i realize that perhaps things are after all not that obvious. After the colonists and their colonies were removed from the Gaza Strip, Israel closed off the Gaza-strip which was turned into one big prison. Nor enough food, not enough medicine and medical equipment, no schoolbooks, no gaz and often the electricity was shut off. People weren't allowed out nor in. In some cases mothers had been on a family visit in the West Bank, yet they could not return to their children. Students who had been accepted into foreign universities, often with full scholarships, lost their registration when they were not allowed to leave, whilst others, who wanted to go back home upon finishing their studies, got stuck abroad, unable to go back to their home in Gaza. The Gaza Strip became one big prison-camp. And due to the lack of everything, conditions worsened. No doubt the people from Gaza got incredibly angry. The ceasefire last several months, yet Israel made no steps towards any real political solution. Breaches of the ceasefire were regularly carried out by Israel. And yes, there were also a few Palestinian ones.
And i do not justify those, nor the Israeli ones.

The hideous Israeli attack on Gaza led to attacks on Israel, also on civilian targets. There have been a few victims and i feel awful about every single one. But these assaults do not justify the violence against Gaza. The cycle of violence is at full run.
Yet all of us know the solution can only be political. A giving up of ALL territories. Solving the refugee problem and Israel's becoming a truly democratic state.
We all know it, and i understand many Israelis feeling scared of the implications. There there is no other solution.
And the longer we wait, the more violence, the more hate, the more bloodshed.

WHY?

System Ali - 1 Minute of Silence

The evening started with a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the murderous attacks by the IAF in the Gaza Strip.
Amne was crying. Muhamad Ajuan and Yonatan Kunde had tears in their eyes, on stage at Jaffa's "Mandel" Cultural Center.

This was not another evening of Jaffa's leading rappers, "System Ali". It had been advertised as an evening of Jaffa poetry and rap. But how can one go to a poetry evening when people are dying just a short car-ride away?

So there were no musical instruments, no fun, no beat, no happiness. Many of the texts were written over the last 24 hours, reflecting the horror we all feel, the pain, the worry, the anger and the helplessness.

On my way, while sitting in bus nr. 10, a stone was thrown at the bus by someone in the angry crowd, gathered at the Muslim Scouts Club, where a Mourning Tent has been erected. Unpleasant, sure, but also understandable. So much anger, fear and frustration have been cropped up over the last few days.
The busdriver had to stop as a car in front of us got stuck. Some of the people in the bus started shouting at the driver to quickly drive off. "They might lynch us" they screamed, in real panic.

I have no doubt the women, who were in the bus with me, really felt scared although there was no danger at any moment. From their conversations afterwards i realized their perceived feeling of being in danger and the resulting fear, led to extremist views, of perhaps the extremist views were there before and the stone only strengthened something they already felt, based on ingrained misconcepts.
Yet a situation like that could have easily exploded. What if one of them had been armed? A guard woman on her way to her job perhaps?
Israeli society is sick and militarised and that by itself poses a grave danger.

Demonstration in Solidarity with Gaza in Jaffa

The first news started coming through around 11 o'clock: over 140 dead in the Gaza Strip. It started as a rumour. Slowly the numbers rise. It cannot be true can it? But it is true.
Then it becomes clear: war crimes are being committed an hour's drive from Tel Aviv: The IAF is bombing the Gaza strip and its civilian population. Women and children are being murdered "in the name of peace". Barak has started his election campaign by showing "he's strong" and who cares if the innocent are killed.
From the Jaffa mosques the sound of the mourning prayer becomes clear over the loud festival music.

A girls choir of Palestinian and Jewish girls from Jaffa sings songs about peace, a Palestinian women's cooperative from the Occupied Territories sell their beautiful embroidery, not yet knowing what is going on elsewhere. Yet slowly the news spreads.

Many of us felt the festival should be stopped. How can we party when there is such a catastrophe in Gaza?
From mouth to mouth and through SMS people started to turn up at the Yaffa office. Frustrated, angry, helpless.

Large white papers and big felt tip pens were used to create make-shift placards. More and more people turned up. In the area of GanTamar the shops closed one after the other, while the demo organised itself somehow. The police came, but were convinced we intend to keep it peaceful. They kept watching us from a distance and photographing us from the roof of a nearby building.

Yet elsewhere in Jaffa the party went on. And on. Peple eating and drinking, smiling and laughing, kids fighting over a candy or their turn to sit on Santa' s knee, what do they know?

Then the news came in there's one dead man and a few wounded in Netivot (in Israel) . The cycle of violence has opened up and who knows when it will close and at what cost. Rockets were fired at the Negev settlemens close to the Gaza strip.

More and more people came to the peaceful and quiet demo, in shock, sad. Many people from Jaffa have family in the Gaza strip. After all, in 1948 a large part of the Jaffa population were forced to flee to the Gaza strip.
Black flags were made out of makeshift materials, a young girl brought a Palestinian flag. Anger and shock at the sights broadcast by Al Jazeera. The crowd grew bigger and bigger, a minute of silence in memory of the dead. There are no words to describe the horror.

Will it ever stop?

Over 145 killed in Gaza, in Jaffa the party goes on

The news from the Gaza strip is getting worse and worse, but in Jaffa the part "fore the three holidays" (Hanuka, Christmas and Eid ElAdha) goes on. The streets are full of partying people, eating, laughing and listening to happy zionist and Arabic wedding songs.
The Children's "Peace Choir" things songs about peace, composed in the time of the Oslo agreements. How can they?

And hell in Gaza.

For those of you located in Jaffa, we're organizing now to protest.
Come to the "Jaffa" Headquarters at 103 Yefet Street