GUEST BLOG: Lois Griffiths – Why Support the Palestinian Cause? Three Reasons!

Why Support the Palestinian Cause?   Three Reasons!

The Children, The Children, The Children

Israeli citizen Zohar Chamberlain Regev participated in Freedom Flotilla efforts to break the maritime siege of Gaza. When a reporter challenged her, demanding to know why she, being an Israeli citizen, a Jew, wanted to go to Gaza, Zohar replied, “I am human”.

Good reason, don’t you think?

“Stay Human” has become a rallying cry for many activists around the world. It became popular because of the reporting from Gaza by the Italian journalist Victorio Arrigoni. Every port he sent back to Italy ended with the message, “Restiamo Umani” ie, translated in English publications, and tee-shirts, as  Stay Human.

When the African-American novelist and poet Alice Walker was asked why she wanted to sail to Gaza, she replied, “well, actually, I am fond of children”.

Children! What kind of  reason is that?

We like to think that New Zealand is “a good place to bring up children.” I hope most Kiwis have memories of a happy childhood. 

What kind of a childhood do Palestinian children experience? West Bank children witness IDF soldiers pointing rifles at them, their schools being invaded or destroyed, their parents farmland being confiscated, olive trees destroyed, arrogant armed ‘settlers’, colonist really , taunting them, attacking them ..being stopped and searched on the way to go to school. They see their freedom of movement being more and more restricted. They can only dream of ever going to the sea, physically not far away. 

Negev Bedouin children see their villages, which existed before the State of Israel,  being destroyed to make way for Jewish only settlements. 

Gazan children? What are their childhoods like?  

Mental health professionals report on widespread suffering, serious post traumatic stress syndrome  from periodic ‘mowing the lawn’ massacres. Children, seeing death and destruction everywhere, even deaths among their family members and classmates, fear that they too may be killed next.

Children see the despair of their parents unable to make a living, as their farms are poisoned, their fishing boats attacked. Hospitals cannot cope. The water is unsafe.

 The UN has declared that Gaza will be uninhabitable by 2020 but others say it is uninhabitable now. 

Why is the West afraid to do anything? Why won’t our New Zealand political, or media, or religious leaders  say anything? Bluntly, why are we so gutless?

The Israeli Embassy should be shut down, NOW. Shut down,  at least  until the Siege is lifted. Not just that. Until water services are restored, hospitals are restored and equipped, until Gazans have freedom to travel, until political prisoners are released. Israel should be condemned as a rogue outlaw state.

We need a nationwide debate about international law, about why Israel is ‘exceptional’.

NZ should have booted out the Israel Embassy last year, as South Africa did,  when Israeli snipers started shooting unarmed ‘Great March’ protesters, including journalists, medics , children.

The targeted killing of unarmed Gazans continues into this year. Defence of Children International-Palestine names 13-year old Abdel-Raouf Salha, the boy shown above the story, as the first child casualty of 2019.  

Why shut down the Israeli Embassy?

Three reasons!

The Children, The Children, The Children! 

Lois Griffiths is a human rights activist