Jerusalem — Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip has left “1.5 million people in despair,” a Red Cross report said.
The report, released Monday by the International Committee of the Red Cross, says the blockade of the coastal strip is preventing Gaza from rebuilding six months after Israel’s military operation in Gaza. Many homes were damaged or destroyed in the operation.
“Gaza neighborhoods particularly hard hit by the Israeli strikes will continue to look like the epicenter of a massive earthquake unless vast quantities of cement, steel and other building materials are allowed into the territory for reconstruction,” the report said.
It called on Israel to “lift import restrictions on spare parts, water pipes and building materials such as cement and steel so that homes can be rebuilt and vital infrastructure maintained and upgraded.”
The report also criticized the blockade for denying appropriate access to health care for Gazans.
“Health issues in Gaza are often politicized and patients find themselves caught up in a bureaucratic maze,” it said. “The procedures for requesting permission to leave the territory are complicated and involve both the Palestinian and Israeli authorities.”
The report rapped Israel for stopping Red Cross-facilitated visits with their relatives in Israeli prisons, though it made no mention of the fact that Hamas has refused to allow any contact between captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and either the Red Cross or his family. Shalit has been held in Gaza for three years since being abducted in a cross-border raid.
According to the report, “People in Gaza are trapped. Because Israel has shut the crossing points, Gazans have scant opportunity for contact with relatives abroad or for further education or professional training.”
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I read Emanuel Ringelblum's Warsaw Ghetto Diaries, and I am dismayed at the similarities between the Nazi treatment of Jews in Warsaw and the Jewish treatment of Palestinians in Gaza.
In both cases, the occupying army raised a blockade that denied the occupants food and the necessities of life.
In both cases, the occupants smuggled in food and other necessities, and in both cases, smuggling was punishable with death.
In both cases, the occupiers called upon the occupied to raise their own police force to arrest anyone who resisted (the Jews cooperated with the enemy on this, though the Gazans refused.)
In both cases, the occupier accused the occupied of terrorism. Indeed, the Jews were "terrorists", from the Nazi perspective, and commendably so -- the Jews were working with the Polish Guard, to resist the Nazis and kill as many Nazi solders as possible. Yitzhak Wittenburg organized the Communist resistance.
In both cases, the occupied fought a hopeless battle against an occupier with an overwhelmingly superior military.
The Talmud says, do not criticize anyone until you have been in his place. Had you been in his place, you might have done the same thing.
After the Second World War, people said, "How could the world remain silent, and do nothing, when such a horror was going on? Why didn't they try to stop it?"
Here's your chance. The horror is going on again right now. You can speak out, and try to stop it, the way the world should have done during World War II.
Or you can remain silent, and try to justify it, and do nothing, just as the world did in World War II. But then, how do you have the moral authority to complain about the same thing in World War II?
This is anti-Semitic. There is a celebration of Israel in Central Park and then this is published. Build up and tear down.
I am an American and I support Israel with my tax dollars. But I am against this atrocity against the Palestinians. Take that Palestinian, and feed it, my sympathy for your plight, to your hungry children. You have no hope, but you do know that there are people who have sympathy for you. So too, the Jews during the third Reich. Nobody came to their aid either, so I guess that justifies their treatment of you.
I recommend that every Jew read Emmanuel Ringelblum's Warsaw Ghetto diaries http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/resource/DOCUMENT/DocRing1.htm http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/isbn/0805204601 and decide for themselves how similar it is to Gaza.
I think Ringelblum should be neutral enough for you. He also served in the Jewish fighting forces, although he fought against considerably worse odds than you did.
This is strange. The message that I was responding to, from an Israeli who said that he served in the IDF and that he had Palestinian friends, has disappeared.
This is a big lie. Israel ships hundreds of tons of food, fuel, medical supplies and other items into Gaza. I've seen it personally. They did this during the last war also. How's that for helping an enemy? In return Gazans fire rockets into Israeli civilian ares to murder random civilians. What other country would do this? NONE!
Moreover, EGYPT has a border with Gaza. Egyptians seal their border and send the Gazans nothing. Why are they not blamed for anything? Anti-Semitism!
The Gazan Arabs suffer at the hands of their elected Hamas leadership who are responsible for all the misery in Gaza. They use the people as PR pawns and thwe children as human shields.
Wake up folks and see the truth.
How did you see it personally? As an IDF soldier?
Why should I believe you and not the International Red Cross?
Yes, the Israelis are allowing trucks into Gaza -- but they've reduced those supplies to starvation levels. In May 2007, before the Hamas takeover, Gaza had 475 trucks per day. In October 2008, they reduced it to 123 truckloads, and in November they reduced it to 16 truckloads. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/08-4
The Israelis destroyed the agriculture in Gaza, and are now refusing to allow the Gazans to rebuild it. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/02/01-6
That is for me the most disturbing parallel with the Warsaw Ghetto -- the Israelis are starving the Palestinians. If they did not allow the U.N. to ship emergency food, there would be massive starvation and death.
Already the most vulnerable are dying, because of malnutrition and the embargo on medical supplies. The death rate is climbing among infants and children, and the elderly -- just as Ringelblum described in the Warsaw Ghetto.