Gaza : "Overwhelming" response to the Galway Palestine Children's Appeal

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Monday February 02, 2009 18:56

by TD - Free Palestine Campaign

“The acts of solidarity by ordinary people have been breathtaking” (Dr. Philomena McKenna)

Last Saturday, members of the Galway Palestine Children's Appeal were "overwhelmed" by the public response to their appeal for humanitarian aid for the children and people of Gaza - expecting one 40ft container to be filled with medical supplies, household goods, non perishable food, clothes and toys, a further two had to be ordered and to ease the pressure, a request was broadcast by the local radio station, Galway Bay FM, for donors to procrastinate their visit to the drop-off point at the Black Box theatre until the delivery of the third container - this morning, at 7AM two of the stuffed containers started their journey of mercy and there is a large stockpile of aid awaiting the arrival of the third.

Including an operating table from Letterkenny Hospital, medical staff in the west donated money and supplies and businesses such as the Galway Radisson Hotel gifted 100 duvets and pillows.

Apart from the humanitarian assistance, last Saturday, in an effort to encourage them to ethically source their food stuffs and goods outside Israel, activists from the Free Palestine Campaign, picketed two establishments, Woodie's DIY and Tesco's, manned an information stall in Shop Street for eight hours, gathered signatures for a boycott petition and gave out flyers providing information on what retail outlets and Israeli products to shun and abhor. Unfortunately, the management of Woodie's DIY store in the Headford Rd, didn't display the same largesse of spirit towards the picket as shown to the Palestine Children's Appeal: "Woodie's are not only donating tools, but have helped us while we were loading a very heavy operating table" ( Dr Philomena McKenna) behaved quite shabbily when security and police were called to the last two Saturday's to shift us with overt intimidation, low abuse; "Haven't ye anything else better to do" (a Guard, last Saturday week) and attempts, in vain, to pull the wool over our eyes with spurious claims to a public area being "private property" (See Video).

As an Israeli company, Amdocs is part of multinational consortium bidding for an Eircom multi-million euro Eircom contact for a new computer billing system, a petition to the Board of Eircom, downloaded from the Irish Anti-War Movement's website http://irishantiwar.org/ was presented to the pedestrians on Shop Street for signing and such was the, again, overwhelming, response we ran out of petition forms, shortly, they will be mailed to Eircom's IT Director Gerry Quinn.

From L to R: Dr Philomena McKenna, Treasa Ní Cheannabháin of the Galway Palestine Children’s Appeal and Niall Farrell of Galway Alliance Against War