Author Archives: Lilith Morris

This press release was issued this morning from Perdana Global Peace Foundation.

The Spirit of Rachel Corrie Mission, involving a Malaysian owned ship carrying aid for Palestine, has been intercepted and attacked by the Israeli naval forces in the Palestinian security zone this morning at 6.54 am local time. The ship’s 12 crew and passengers are safe. Currently the ship has been forced to anchor in the Egyptian waters at one and a half nautical miles from the Gazan waters.

This latest event occurred in the wake of yesterday’s sad commemoration of the ‘ Nakba’ in which many lost their lives. ‘Nakba’ the Arabic word for catastrophe means “the expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948″.

The humanitarian initiative is sponsored by Perdana Global Peace Foundation (PGPF) and participating in this mission includes anti-war activists and journalists from the Asian, American and European continents.

The cargo ship The Spirit of Rachel Corrie (officially known as FINCH) is carrying 7.5 kilometers of UPVC (plastic) sewage pipes to help restore the devastated sewerage system in Gaza. The ship was named after the courageous American activist who was crushed and killed by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 while trying to prevent the demolition of another Palestinian home. She died at 23.

The Spirit of Rachel Corrie Mission is part of the Perdana Global Peace Foundation’s (PGPF) “Break the Siege on Gaza” campaign. The purpose of this campaign is to highlight the effects of the illegally imposed Israeli siege and raise awareness of the human rights violations of the people of Gaza. Breaking the siege and ending the illegal collective punishment of 1.5 million people must be a priority for the international community.

On 27 December 2008, the Israeli military launched Operation Cast Lead, which not only killed some 1400 Palestinians, but also destroyed vital infrastructure leaving the Gazans with critical water and sewage problems. Repair of the infrastructure has proved impossible as Israel has prevented the entry of construction materials and fuel to resolve this dire situation.

According to a report from the Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene group (EWASH), “the release of 80 million litres of untreated or partially treated sewage into the environment and Mediterranean Sea each day is primarily a result of the Israeli imposed blockade on the Gaza Strip.”

Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated areas, is currently dealing with serious health issues such as the blue baby syndrome, diarrhea and other waterborne diseases like typhoid and hepatitis A. The World Health Organization is warning of a possible cholera epidemic if nothing is done rapidly to resolve this sanitation crisis.

According to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel: “Between 90% and 95% of the aquifers in the Gaza Strip are not safe for drinking.” The primary cause of the current problem originates from the destruction, during Operation Cast Lead, of “20 kilometers of water pipes, 7.5 kilometers of sewage pipes and 5,700 mobile water tanks”.

While the Gazans are experiencing the dramatic environmental impacts of the sewage and water crisis, the effects have already reached the Israeli shores, and could spread further affecting neighbouring countries. This severe health and environmental issue needs to be dealt with urgently. The international community must demand that the illegal Israeli blockade be lifted.

The Spirit of Rachel Corrie Mission stemmed from PGFP’s participation in the Freedom Flotilla in 2010, in which 9 activists were killed by Israeli commandos. Following a fact finding mission conducted in Gaza in October 2010, PGPF decided to continue its efforts to assist Palestinians and shows this project as the most immediate of all priorities.

The continuing efforts to break the siege of Gaza and focus international attention on the injustices committed against Palestinians is likened to the Freedom Rides of fifty years ago by Alice Walker in this powerful statement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB6qZs-VJLw

After a little delay, a  freedom flotilla will sail for Gaza in late June, comprising boats from Turkey, Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, Greece, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, USA, Canada and Britain.  They do so in the face of threats and intimidation, and mindful of Israel’s murderous attacks on the freedom flotilla in May last year.

“If we allowed the Freedom Ride to stop after so much violence had been inflicted, the message would have been sent that they can stop a nonviolent campaign by inflicting massive violence.”  –196

1, Diane Nash, Freedom Ride organizer.

My grandfather’s abiding childhood memory of Easter  in Lithuania, then part of the Russian empire, were the processions of the faithful.  He did not understand the religious significance of the icons they carried but he knew  he should be fearful.  Demonstrations of Christian devotion could turn into pogroms against the Jewish community with scant warning.  In the occupied Palestinian territory  the celebration of Purim has meant closure for Palestinians since Thursday.  The lock down will last until the end of the Jewish festival on Sunday.  Purim should be a festival of drunkenness, dressing up and reversals, an example of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque in which social hierarchies of everyday life are temporarily suspended.  Not so for Palestinians, it seems – where closures at the whim of Israel have been part of everyday life for the past decade.

Ha’aretz recently published a picture from last year’s festivities in Hebron with an accompanying article.

It is a brown-green winter’s day in Hebron. The clown’s costume glistens colorfully against the background of a disputed building in the Al-Ras neighborhood, known in settler doublespeak as “Peace House.” In a few days, these settlers will again celebrate Purim by parading along a road on which Palestinian Hebronites are forbidden to travel, past windows that have been shuttered by order of the GOC Central Command, onto a street whose residents have vanished as though into thin air – because they are forbidden to travel on it, walk on it, open stores on it or pass along it. Then the settlers will head to the very symbol of their zeal, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and maybe more clowns in yellow, blue and red will make them laugh yet again.

This clown, then, signifies a meta-reality. He is an anomaly on top of an anomaly. He is not a hollow signifier or an anecdote. He carries meaning within the meta-reality that he himself endeavors to create in Hebron through the sheer fact of taking part in this performance, and amid knowledge of what happened on Purim 1994, when Baruch Goldstein entered the Tomb of the Patriarchs, costumed as a soldier in his own uniform. He killed and killed, and since then the holiday has been celebrated in Hebron with hyper-intentionality, unbridled joy and defiant provocation, as the victory of the strong, as a sign and token of the ability to erase everything, to subordinate all will. Fitoussi’s photograph grasps this. Anyone who views it without any prior knowledge, and afterward learns about what is being wrought in Hebron, will find that he has already sensed the power of the meta-reality. He has already understood the relationship between one who dresses himself up as a clown and the soldiers who permit his performance, and those who are not seen in the photograph, whose presence is attested to only by their abandoned home.

Even in his old age – close to a century later – amongst the gentle folk of Manchester, I don’t think my grandfather ever felt Easter celebrations were entirely innocent.  These things leave their mark.