Galway IPSC : The EU colludes with Israel as Gaza is slowly broke on the Zionist wheel?

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Sunday February 17, 2008 14:08

by Paddy F. - Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign

"a terror of sonic booms that came every night and sent Gazan children mad" (John Pilger)

Yesterday, Galway IPSC took to the street to protest against the collusion of a spineless and conscienceless EU with Israel and to encourage shoppers to boycott Israeli goods.

Belfast based, David Morrison, who writes for the Labour & Trade Union Review puts the pertinent question in a Electronic Intifada article: "How is Israel able to strangle the Gaza Strip when there is supposed to be an international crossing between Gaza and Egypt not controlled by Israelis?" and then goes on to answer with telling detail that: "It was primarily through the good offices of the European Union (EU), which had a formal role in managing the Rafah crossing, that Israel always had a veto on the opening of the crossing. In practice, whenever Israel didn't want the crossing open, the EU obligingly kept it shut". http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9303.shtml

Yousuf

Besides that, the EU (and its member states) in terms of the Geneva Convention, the UN and the International Court, has failed in its obligations under International Law, to challenge the crimes against humanity committed by rogue state, Israel, and the EU continues to turn the blind eye to Article 2 of the Euro-Mediterranean Association Agreement which obligates it to suspend the trading privileges enjoyed by Israel if it is in breach of human rights and continues to turn the deaf ear to the calls, two, of the European Parliament to take this action. Meanwhile, Israel's siege and closure of Gaza continues leading to shortages of fresh fruit and drinking water because there isn't enough fuel to power the electric water pumps more than four to six hours per day and the World Food Program is currently unable to provide 84,000 of its poorest dependents their full aid rations.

Meanwhile, the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, is reporting that Chief of Staff, Gaby Ashkenazi, is preparing a major IDF assault on the Gaza Strip; a further turning of the screw and implementation of the "genocidal policies" agains the Gaza people ("ghettoized, quarantined, unwanted and demonized") that Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe has charged Israel with http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11882 For the Gazans, this is a further revisiting of Ground Hog Day where in 2005, after the 8,000 Israeli "settlers" in the Gaza Strip were relocated, Operation First Rain was unleashed where low flying F-16 Israeli fighter jets deliberately created sonic booms over the tiny coastal strip knocking pictures from the walls of Palestinian homes, compelling the residents to keep their windows open lest the pressure blow them out and in the words of John Pilger sending "Gazan children mad" http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=475 and according to Sajida Srour, director of a kindergarten and nursery school in Gaza City making them scream and urinate on themselves when the thunderous claps ripped through the air. Ilan Pappe in the same article quoted above states that: "From 'First Rain' to 'Autumn Clouds' one can see escalation in every parameter. The first is the disappearance of the distinction between civilian and non-civilian targets: the senseless killing has turned the population at large to the main target for the army's operation. The second one is the escalation in the means: employment of every possible killing machines the Israeli army possesses. Thirdly, the escalation is conspicuous in the number of casualties: with each operation, and each future operation, a much larger number of people are likely to be killed and wounded. Finally, and most importantly, the operations become a strategy -- the way Israel intends to solve the problem of the Gaza Strip".

Israel justifies the ongoing collective punishment and proposed invasion/slaughter on the grounds of Hamas's and other Gazan resistance groups launching of Qassam rockets into Israel, chiefly into and around Sderot flying in the face of the fact, as it were, that Hamas offered a ceasefire several months ago and which was recently repeated.

What hope for Palestine then? bugger all, according to Pilger for the next uber-Meister of the country that backs Israel to an extraordinary degree and has the clout to muzzle it, if it willed, will be a chip off the old block, if not Bush, for: "John McCain, almost certainly the Republican nominee for president, wants a “hundred-year war”. That the leading Democratic candidates are a woman and a black man is of supreme irrelevance; the fanatical Condoleezza Rice is both female and black. Look into the murky world behind Hillary Clinton and you find the likes of Monsanto, a company that produced Agent Orange, the war chemical that continues to destroy Vietnam. One of Barack Obama’s chief whisperers is Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan, which spawned jihadism, al-Qaeda and 9/11".

After their travails, Galway-Palestine Solidarity Campaign activist, Treasa Ni Cheannabhain and daughter, Naisrin, will be returning to this city on Feb 25th after their successful humanitarian mission to Gaza where and, shortly afterwards, they will be the guest speakers at a public meeting organized by Galway Alliance Against War.