Dear Friends,
I’m leaving for Beirut today to join the latest ships attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
For many years, and intensified since 2006, 1.5 million people have been kept in a virtual prison surrounded by fences and security forces, denied many of the most basic foods and commodities, forbidden to travel except in rare cases with the permission of the Israeli occupiers and not even allowed to fish off their own shores. This is intolerable from any humanitarian point of view and its effect is collective punishment which violates International Law.
A new humanitarian flotilla is departing soon from Lebanon, with Arab and International participation, following up on many previous efforts which have helped to crack, but not yet to break the siege of Gaza: Viva Palestina convoys under George Galloway, Free Gaza boats, the Gaza Freedom March from Egypt last winter and, most dramatically, the Turkish-led IHH Freedom Flotilla which was brutally attacked by the Israelis last month.
Do not be fooled by recent claims that Israel is ending the blockade of Gaza. They – together with Egypt -- will still control whatever is allowed into Gaza and are only marginally increasing the supplies they will permit; people will still not be free to go in or out of Gaza without grudging permission from the Israeli or Egyptian authorities.
The aim of this latest effort from Lebanon, like the previous ones, is both to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza AND to strike a symbolic blow against the injustice of Israel’s siege. Some people call these actions as “provocations” and that is partly true. Repeatedly sailing to Gaza is a “provocation” in the same way that civil rights workers challenged segregation in Southern buses and schools. It is a provocation the way African-Americans risked beatings and jail to sit in at lunch counters in the South. Those who continually stepped forward to replace others hauled away or beaten by thugs were risking their lives for more than just a hamburger at Woolworth’s. Brave people kept returning and resisting until segregation was finally broken. In the same way, hundreds of heroes have continued to sail, continued to march, continued to risk injury or even death to break the inhuman siege under which 1.5 million people in Gaza are forced to live.
I am humbly honored to join these good people. All the world’s decent humanity is affirming one heartfelt pledge:
Together, in the spirit of justice, we and the Palestinians will surely overcome.
Peace/Salaam,
Jeff Klein
[See the Boston Globe article on Jeff's ship -- Ed.]
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