Forum: Let them in
Stanley Heller is executive director of the Middle East Crisis Committee (CT). He can be reached at mail@thestruggle.org.
Our former vice president [of Middle East Crisis Committee], Mazin Qumsiyeh, is in Naples, Italy on “The Return”, one of the boats of Freedom Flotilla 2018. Despite its grandiose name, the “flotilla” is a collection of small boats that have gone down European rivers to the Mediterranean though which they hope to sail to the Palestinian port of Gaza.
This is a perilous journey.
Israeli forces have put the Gaza Strip and its 1.8 million people under various levels of siege for 12 years. The excuses vary. Once it was that Palestinians had captured an Israeli soldier (long since returned). Other times, it’s because rockets are fired from Gaza (usually after Israelis kill a Palestinian). Always, it’s the litany that Hamas has vowed to destroy Israel so Gaza must be crushed until Hamas is overthrown.
What’s allowed in by truck to Gaza varies over time, but there is never trade by sea. A score of attempts by activists to defy the Israelis started 10 years ago and at first, a few boats got through. None have gotten in since 2009. In 2010, Israeli commandos attacked the Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara which was trying to reach Gaza. Nine passengers were killed immediately and one died after a coma of four years. Israel claims it will allow no trade to the Strip because weapons might be brought in that way.
Astoundingly, no trade or travel is allowed out of Gaza either even though that could hardly harm Israeli security. Gaza’s Ark was being readied to export goods in 2014 when it was bombed from the air. This year there were two attempts to take wounded Palestinians out of Gaza by boat to Cyprus. The first was in late May. The boat made it 14 nautical miles into international waters and was seized. If the people captured were anyone other than Palestinians it would have been considered piracy. The second attempt was this July. Same result. The Israeli Defense Force issued a statement saying this was a “provocation on sea”. Imagine the gravity of such a crime.
Besides being our colleague, Qumsiyeh is past head of the Cytogenetics Lab at Yale Medical School and the current director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History in Bethlehem. Another passenger on board the boat is Joe Meadors. He’s a retired Navy veteran, a survivor of the Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967. One of the organizers of the boat is retired colonel and former U.S. diplomat Ann Wright.
This is, of course, partly a U.S. responsibility. U.S. administrations, Democratic as well as Republican, have supported the siege. Under President Trump, support for the extremism of Israel’s Netanyahu government apparently has no bounds. Congress is even considering a bill that would punish Americans who act in support of U.N. calls for economic pressure against Israeli violations of international law. Is it too much to ask for Connecticut members of Congress to speak out publicly and demand that Israel not harm American citizens and let them complete their vital human rights mission?
Stanley Heller is executive director of the Middle East Crisis Committee (CT). He can be reached at mail@thestruggle.org.
Read the article online at the New Haven Register Forum site here.
