FW: How to help Gaza

[Phillyactivist]

From: Berta H. Joubert-Ceci [mailto:bjceci at gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 8:18 PM
To: Phillyactivist at action-mail.org
Subject: How to help Gaza

 

Dear activists,

I wanted to share this article with you since it mentions several things
that can be done to help our sisters and brothers in Gaza.

In solidarity,

Berta

 

 

 

http://www.workers.org/graphics/wwlogosm.jpg

EDITORIAL 


How to help Gaza


Published Jan 15, 2009 8:57 PM 

Anyone who watches the Israeli slaughter in Gaza, armed and backed by the
U.S. government, and understands what is behind it will want to do what is
possible to make it stop. As in any wars waged by a well-armed oppressor
with a racist ideology, that is easier said than done. Mere symbolic protest
seems inadequate. One wants not only to shout at the Israeli and U.S.
criminals and to counteract the slander and demonization of Hamas, the
organization now leading the defense of Gaza, but to lend more substantial
support.

A recent appeal to the world movement by the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, an organization with a long history of struggle,
calls for more mass actions, and adds:

"The PFLP salutes the hundreds of thousands internationally who have
continued to take to the streets, and the millions in the Arab homeland who
have done so as well."

Mentioning many of the places there have been protests, it continues, "In
various cities, demonstrators have surrounded Israeli embassies, as well as
U.S. and Egyptian embassies, besieging them with a demand for justice and an
end to the massacres and siege. These actions and others have been impacting
and providing support to the steadfastness of the Palestinian resistance,
and we can feel the power and commitment of such actions, which strengthens
the morale of all of our people facing massacres and siege."

The PFLP also calls for "the broadest mass demonstrations and the escalation
of popular international action, especially the takeover of the embassies of
the occupier," as was done, for example, by Jewish women in Toronto.

Its most specific appeal was to "the Greek movement, the Greek people and
all international progressive forces to halt the planned shipment of U.S.
arms to Israel from the Greek port of Astakos." Some 3,000 tons of U.S. arms
were due to be shipped from there to Israel. Much to their credit, some
left-wing Greek parties that oppose the Greek government plan to hold
protests Jan. 15 and 16 at Astakos. They will go ahead with the actions,
even though the Pentagon has since said it changed its plans. The shipment
will now allegedly avoid Greece. The Pentagon spokesperson added that the
Greek government "had some issue" with the shipment.

It is possible to continue the mass mobilizations. It is possible to give
people-to-people humanitarian aid to Gaza. It is possible in the longer term
to harness the worldwide anger against the U.S. and Israeli war criminals
and organize for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, as many
have suggested. It should also be possible, depending on circumstances, to
obstruct Israeli war diplomacy as suggested.

And it is also possible, where class-consciousness and anti-imperialist
activity is at a high level, to have specific and concrete acts of
internationalist solidarity that throw a wrench in the U.S.-Israeli war
machine.

All these actions can help. May they grow and spread around the world,
including right here in the U.S.

  _____  

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Page printed from: 
http://www.workers.org/2009/editorials/gaza_0122/

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