"That group, of four buses, has, however, been stopped from crossing over the Suez Canal and into the Sinai region, which leads to Gaza. The buses, carrying people, medical aid and bearing US, Egyptian and Palestinian flags in a spirit of international cooperation, have been held at a security checkpoint and given various, conflicting reasons for why they cannot proceed to their destination at Al Arish." -Kevin Ovenden, coordinator vivapalestina-us.org.
Also this week, a global call to Fast for Gaza began with a few rabbis and people of conscience who are committing to a weekly fast in order to focus positive energy to bring an end of the blockade that prevents the entry of civilian goods and services into Gaza and for the flow of humanitarian and developmental aid to reach the 1.5 million. The focus is also on Israel, the US, and the international community to engage in negotiations without pre-conditions with all relevant Palestinian parties - including Hamas - in order to end the blockade and vigorously engage both Israelis and Palestinians toward a just and peaceful settlement of the conflict.
On July 16, Fast for Gaza will hold a conference call with Sara Roy, a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University who recently reported, "Gaza is an example of a society that has been deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution, its once productive population transformed into one of aid-dependent paupers. This context is undeniably one of mass suffering, created largely by Israel but with the active complicity of the international community, especially the U.S. and European Union, and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
"Gaza's subjection began long before Israel's recent war against it...The Israeli occupation-now largely forgotten or denied by the international community-has devastated Gaza's economy and people, especially since 2006...If there has been a pronounced theme among the many Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals who I have interviewed in the last three years, it was the fear of damage to Gaza's society and economy so profound that billions of dollars and generations of people would be required to address it-a fear that has now been realized. After Israel's December assault, Gaza's already compromised conditions have become virtually unlivable. Livelihoods, homes, and public infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed on a scale that even the Israel Defense Forces admitted was indefensible...There is no question that people must be helped immediately." [1]
Organizer Professor Norman Finkelstein stated, "We want to send over several thousand people from around the world to march alongside several hundred thousand Gazans...If the likes of Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela are at the head of the march; if behind them are students holding high signs of the schools from which they hail - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge; if behind them are the ill and the lame, the young and the innocent of Gaza; if behind them are hundreds of thousands of others, unarmed and unafraid, wanting only to enforce the law; if around the world hundreds of thousands are watching the internet to see what happens - Israel can't shoot."
Most likely, if they had not been shot, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X would have been doing something long ago regarding the misery and military occupation of Gaza Palestine.
The Palestinians have become the 'N's' of the world-meaning their human rights/civil rights have been denied-while in the '70's it was women:
We insult her every day on TV
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When she's young we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart we put her down for being so dumb-John Lennon, "Woman is the "N" of the World"
In the '60's two black men in America; one a Christian and one a Muslim shared a similar dream with different philosophies and means to achieve them.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. had "a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed... that all men are created equal."
Malcolm X's radical creed was, "Anything you can think of that you want to change right now, the only way you can do it is with a ballot or a bullet. And if you're not ready to get involved with either one of those, you are satisfied with the status quo. That means we'll have to change you."
Both men dreamed of a world freed from the bondage of prejudice and racism, a world in which their children would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. King consistently advocated for a brotherhood of all peoples and persisted in only nonviolent actions to achieve it. Not until after a pilgrimage to Mecca, did X reject his separatist beliefs and begin to advocate for unity and a world wide brotherhood.
Both fully understood that there are "truths that are self-evident: That all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights;...[and] that, to secure [these] rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."- The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776,
King and X engaged in the struggle to arouse people whose ears were not ready to hear, whose eyes were not ready to see and whose hearts had not yet been pierced to bleed for the least and oppressed of humanity. Both men were shot dead before either could see any of their dreams realized.
According to Zionist sources, a few weeks before Rev. King bled to death on a patch of pavement in Memphis, he said: "Peace for Israel means security, and we stand with all our might to protect its right to exist...I see Israel as one of the greatest outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy."
King was murdered ten months after the beginning of the now 42 years of a brutal military occupation of what is claimed as holy land.
In November 2006, Father Manuel, the parish priest at the Latin Church and school in Gaza warned the world:
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