Showing posts with label Sarah Price. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sarah Price. Show all posts

Sarah Price: The Reality in the Middle East

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SARAH PRICE is an American Journalist
and a Activest woman,is interested about
the Middle East Crisis. To know the truth
about what's going on in that region;
she decidedly to go and visit "Gaza"
even she knew how dangerous that trip will be.

Sarah Price was an Eye Witness,
and she is our Guest to tell our
viewers her story.

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Gaza: Genocide and Media Lies

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Mary Sparrowdancer



During this past week, Israeli military forces
invaded civilian villages trapped within Gaza’s
closed borders with tanks, helicopters, warplanes,
and drones, massacring 39 and wounding over 100,
including scores of unarmed children, babies and
women. Israel says this is punishment for the
homemade Qassam rockets fired this week
toward Sderot.

The total number of Israelis killed by these
Qassams was Zero.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) headlines on January 18th,
based on a story from the Associated Press (AP), state,
“Israel Temporarily Closes Gaza Border Crossings.”
This is a wildly misleading statement. Israel has had
the Gaza borders sealed off since 2000, trapping
the 1.5 million civilians living in the Gaza Strip as
prisoners in their own homes.

Completely trapped, they cannot escape the wrath
or whims of the Israeli military. Empowered by
its massive and brutal military, Israel has been
systematically ethnically cleansing
Palestine of native Palestinians for 60 years now.

What Israel has been doing and continues to do to
the Palestinians, especially those it has trapped
without mercy inside Gaza, is full-blown genocide
but Israel is getting away with murder due to
misinformation continuously sold to the public as
“news.” (1) (2)

The long-closed border crossings surrounding
Gaza have been keeping Gaza residents in a state
of misery and poverty for years. In 2007,
Israel began an escalated denial of food and
other necessary supplies to Gaza after Israel
declared the civilian population of Gaza to be a
“hostile entity.”

The WSJ/AP article then creates a masterful
soft-pedaling of Israeli atrocities by stating,
“Palestinians living in Gaza have had to live
without some foodstuffs and basic supplies like
spare car parts and computer paper.”
The truth, however, is far from the laughable
“spare car parts” line. The truth is not laughable.
It is horrifying.

The truth is that the Israeli government has refused
to allow the following supplies into Gaza: bottled water,
food, soap, medical supplies, medications, anesthesia
for its growing number of sick and injured, paper,
emergency relief funds from abroad, simple care
packages, adequate supplies from the UN, winter
clothing, electricity, fuel, postal service
(US Postal Workers in Tallahassee told me,
“there is no Palestine”), cement to repair the numerous
Palestinian refugee homes repeatedly bombed and
demolished by Israel tanks and warplanes
(and a lot of cement is very badly needed as much
of Gaza is in ruins), and even batteries for the
growing number of hearing aids now needed by
those who are shellshocked in Gaza. At this time,
there is no clean water in Gaza, nor is there adequate
fuel or electricity. (3)

Regarding the outright genocide and humanitarian
catastrophe now taking place in Gaza, the WSJ/AP
article reassures the reader that there is nothing to
worry about, stating that according to Israeli
spokesman Shlomo Dror, “Gazans had enough
food that no one would go hungry.” Further seeking
to reassure us, Mr. Dror gives the following statement:
“There is a government decision that there will not be
a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” Mr. Dror, however,
speaks of the future while ignoring the past and the
misery of the present, leaving one to wonder at what
point the Israelis will view the collective punishment
of 1.5 million thirsty, hungry, and increasingly homeless
civilians as a “humanitarian crisis.” Gross increases of
malnutrition were noted as early as 2002 due to the
continuing Israeli border closure and denial of adequate
food to these civilians, many of whom are refugees
forced off their other Palestinian lands taken from
them by Israel. According to the World Food Program,
anemia rates due to malnutrition have now risen to
over 77%. (4)

In addition to the Gaza civilians being made homeless
and collectively punished by starvation, thirst and
Israeli-imposed filth and neglect, during the past
few months over 70 medical patients have needlessly
perished while awaiting medical treatment, because
the Israeli government denied them permission to
pass through Gaza’s completely closed borders. (5)

There are many ways to decimate unarmed, or
primitively armed native populations when a brutally
armed military force desires to move in and take their
land away from them. For the past 60 years, Zionist
Israel has used many methods in an attempt to drive
the Palestinians from their ancestral lands. Among those
methods is repeated, total destruction of their property.

As the Israeli military continues to drive Palestinians
from their land, Zionist Israel has also depended on its
worldwide mainstream presses to hide all of the rather
shocking details from the general public, as well as from
their own Israeli citizens. Many Israelis do not know
that each of the Jewish-only “settlements” dotting the
Palestinian countryside has been illegally built upon
land forcefully taken from the Palestinians without
compensation. Not a single settlement can be built
unless further land is again forcefully taken from
the Palestinian owners. This has been easily done,
however, because only the military aggressor who
covets this land is armed with tanks, warplanes,
and other sophisticated equipment.

The real information detailing what is going on
in Gaza and the rest of Palestine will not be easily
found in mainstream media. The majority of the
mainstream media brings us “news” written in such
a way that it is unfairly biased in favor of the Zionist
aggressors, while downplaying or completely
dismissing the slaughter of Palestinians by continuously
referring to these victims as “terrorists,” “armed
militants,” or “wanted.”

Independent journalists, on the other hand, appear
to have taken the investigation of world events far
more seriously. They tend to try and find the truth
via firsthand accounts, which they then share with
the world. One such independent, freelance journalist
is Sarah Price. Sarah, who is based in Los Angeles,
visited Gaza in October, 2007, to see for herself what
was happening there.

At the time of her visit last October, special arrangements
had to be made in order for her to cross the borders that
continue to be closed and guarded by the Israeli military.
Once inside the closed borders, she saw the grim reality of
everyday life in Gaza. She heard the constant noise of the
Israeli military presence, she saw the children smiling
one moment and panic-stricken the next following Israeli
air strikes. She saw the truth about the food situation that
Israel is now trying to hide from the world’s eyes. The
vendors in the markets had only rotting and spoiled fruits
to sell, but none of it was discarded. (6) “It will still be
gone in an hour,” Sarah quotes physician and human
rights advocate, Dr. Mona El-Farra, as saying,
“because they have to eat something.” (7)

With the borders tightly closed and no one able to
easily see what the Israeli military is doing, during
the past week Israeli forces comprised of tanks, warplanes
and helicopters invaded again civilian refugee villages in
Gaza, destroying more buildings and homes, while also
massacring 39 innocent men women and children.
In addition, over 100 civilians were wounded, a large
percentage of them children, compounding problems
for both patients and hospitals, due to Israeli denial
of medical supplies.

As the Israeli Apache choppers and warplanes roared
over Gaza Strip targeting homes at random as well as
shelling a wedding party in which one woman was killed
and scores of children were injured, an Israeli drone flew
off on its own mindless mission, and without conscience
or warning it singled out and slaughtered a mother and
her two sons who were riding home on a donkey cart
carrying oranges. Medical personnel had trouble identifying
these victims from the fragments and pieces that were left
by the vicious drone attack. (8)

According to WSJ/AP, the latest announcement of
“temporary” border closing and air strikes are due to
“recent rocket barrages” fired toward the southern
Israeli town of Sderot. (Sderot is built upon the
Palestine village of Nadj.) The WSJ/AP article goes on
to quote ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror again, this
time saying, “It’s time that Hamas decide to either fight
or take care of its population,’ he said. ‘It’s unacceptable
that people in Sderot are living in fear every day and
people in the Gaza Strip are living life as usual.”

One wonders what “life as usual” must be like for the
1.5 million hungry prisoners of Gaza. One also might
wonder what sort of weaponry Mr. Dror expects the
Hamas to use as he challenges the Hamas to fight the
Israeli military. The Palestinians have no access to
tanks, Blackhawks, Apaches, drones, blimps, F-16s,
armored vehicles, gunboats, or nuclear weapons, all
of which are possessed by Israel. What does Mr.
Dror expect the Hamas to fight with against the
massive Israeli army, navy, and air force?

The “recent rocket barrage” that Mr. Dror referred
to resulted in no Israeli deaths. In fact, the Qassams rarely
result in injuries or extensive property damage. Israeli
“Defense” Minister, Yaakov Toran, is quoted as saying,
“...we need to remember that Qassams are more a
psychological than physical threat. Statistically they
cause the fewest losses... ” And yet, it is the Palestinians
who are constantly referred to as “terrorists” by the
mainstream press. Nearly every day, those who are
armed with rifles and the boys throwing stones at
tanks and armored vehicles are referred to as “militants,”
or “terrorists,” while the criminally aggressive Israeli
military with its arsenal of weapons is referred to as a
“defense” force trying to protect itself from
“Palestinian terrorists.” (9)

The fact is, Israel is committing atrocities and
war crimes because it can do so with its extravagant
armed forces, funded and made possible by US dollars.
Israel is a military force from which the civilians of Gaza
cannot adequately defend themselves, and it is a military
force that is randomly attacking civilians without regard
for the fact that the large majority are unarmed, or are
armed only with stones. It is a military force that
considers boys who throw stones at armored tanks as
“militants” deserving death or imprisonment.

Israeli citizens who do learn the truth about the stark
suffering and loss of all human rights in Gaza and the
West Bank are usually horrified at the conditions.
They form groups, they protest, they write, and they
march in solidarity with the Palestinian refugees.
One such group is Gush Shalom. They are planning to
assemble a Convoy of trucks carrying water filter
s and other supplies desperately needed in Gaza.
Their Convoy will go to one of the Israeli checkpoints
along the GazaGaza so that they may deliver the needed
goods to the Palestinians waiting on the other side of
the fence. When I read about this planned convoy, I
sent a donation to help purchase supplies. I sent it to
the Eschaton Foundation, Resource Center for
Nonviolence, which is accepting donations in the US
for the Gush Shalom Convoy.

(10) border on January 26th, 2008. There,
the assembled people of the Convoy will stand not as
Jews or Christians, or Muslims, or anything else that
separates one group from another. They will stand together
as human beings and ask the Israeli guards for
permission to cross into.

Yesterday, I received a thank you letter from Eschaton,
and in the envelope was a charming little card with pressed
flowers on it. The card read, “Flowers from Palestine.”
I touched the delicate flower petals that had somehow
endured their journey from Palestine to Eschaton in
California, and from there to my home in Florida, still
intact. The petals seemed to suggest there might be a
simple and enduring way out of this terrible situation in
the Holy Land. Turning the card over, I read the
message on the back. “We don’t want you to bring the
Israelis to their knees, but to bring them to their senses.
We believe in restorative justice: to redress the wrongs
rather than avenge them, (signed) Zoughbi Zoughbi
of Wi’Am, Palestinian Conflict Resolution.
Bethlehem - Palestine.”

Perhaps having spent the day researching the
violence and watching videos of the carnage in Gaza
left me emotionally vulnerable, but when I read this,
I was overwhelmed. Now came the tears that I had
fought back all day long. A flower does indeed have a
far better chance of bringing about enduring peace than
bullets and artillery fire ever will.

I send my best wishes and good luck to the Israeli
Gush Shalom Convoy of compassion. May your
passage be smooth on January 26th, and may this
border be opened to you. I hope the whole world will
be watching. May this day mark the beginning of a
new era, in which many nations will come to their senses
and see that humanity does not need to live in a state
of perpetual violence.

Most importantly, after 60 years of endless suffering,
may the God-given human rights, dignity, and civil
liberties of the Palestinians finally be acknowledged
and honored for the first time.
~~~~~~
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Mary Sparrowdancer is an independent journalist
and the author of a bestselling book about the Messiah,
“The Love Song.” Her website, “Help for Palestine,”
can be found here: www.sparrowdancer.org.

Information about her book can be found here:
www.sparrowdancer.com. Mary wishes to thank
Sarah Price for her important comments and information.
© 2007 Mary Sparrowdancer

SOURCE: http://www.sparrowdancer.org
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Building hope from rubble

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Sarah Price writing from occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 18 December 2007


Three young boys from Nuseirat refugee camp say they consider Afaq Jadeeda Center their second home.

Today's youth are tomorrow's leaders. They don't make the decisions today but will be shaped by ours and will in their turn shape successor generations. Now is our moment to influence not just the present but also the future. We won't have a second chance. It is an urgent and awesome responsibility with the most profound and far-reaching consequences.
- John Ging, director of United Nations Relief and Works Agency's (UNRWA) Gaza field office, to British parliament members, November 2007

In the dirty streets of the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, the sparse fruit stands carry only rotten fruit, because it is all the market's vendors can afford to sell, and all the refugees can afford to buy.

"It will still be gone in an hour," says Dr. Mona El-Farra, "because they have to eat something."

Of Gaza's 1.5 million residents more than 60 percent are under 18. The effects of malnutrition are seen not only in the kids' hunger, but also in their brain function. They are unable to focus in school, and have become violent. Dr. El-Farra's organization, the Middle East Children's Alliance (Gaza), is the focal point of a network of organizations trying to help Gaza's children. They give food parcels to the families, which are aimed at the nutritional needs of the kids, and try to teach the parents how to feed them better.

"The lack [of food] here is all political, not from famine or drought," says Dr. El-Farra. "The kids are not hopeful. There is no safety or recreation. It's bad for everyone, but it is most profound when the kids are complaining and have no hope."

Humanitarian groups in Gaza are also trying to feed another hunger: keeping the Palestinian culture alive through teaching traditional dancing, music, and art. The Afaq Jadeeda (New Horizons) Center in Nuseirat, established in 1996, provides a creative outlet for more than 50 children daily, and holds summer and winter camps. The center also has a library, a stage for plays, a football team and a growing computer lab, and is in the process of funding English classes for kids ages 14-18. $50,000 would give them what they need for a fully functioning center, but they do what they can with what they have, as they work on bringing in more donations and money.

"The average family in Gaza has seven people," says Afaq Jadeeda vice president and schoolteacher Talal Abu Shawish. "In the refugee camps, families are trying to build up their own areas. That's why it is important to have the cultural centers: to bring the kids off the streets into something more positive."

But the problems are not only on the streets now; they are also in the schools.

"It's not easy for teachers to control the kids," says Abu Shawish. "There is violence at school -- the kids toward each other -- because of the bloody scenes they constantly see."

From left, Talal Abu Shawish, Dr. Mona El-Farra, and Hany El Sharif, who started with the association as a child and now volunteers as an activities guide for the kids. The sign reads "Palestine" in Arabic.

To help the kids channel their anger into a more positive outlet, many of the schools have formed human rights and tolerance committees with elected parliaments made up of students and teachers. The committee at Abu Shawish's school comprises eight teachers and 33 students and they concentrate on how to solve human rights issues with nonviolence. During their meetings, they define what the needs are at school and hold a workshop to come up with solutions, focusing on one human right per week. Students use scientific steps and written reports to present their ideas.

Most recently, he invited the school's human rights team to Afaq Jadeeda, where they held a workshop to discuss how the association could help the students. What resulted, with help from Afaq and the Middle East Children's Alliance headquarters in California, was a water purification system for the school that will provide healthy drinking water for 2,000 students. It is expected to be installed and functional by early December.

"The schools only have them for four hours a day, and the rest of the time they are exposed to their bloody society," says Abu Shawish. "The parents should continue this at home, so we try to coordinate with them, and we bring the parents into the meetings, too, once a month."

To help bring about this successful result, they organize trips to centers for human rights in the Gaza Strip. They also visit parliaments at other schools to discuss issues with them. He talks to other teachers about working human rights issues into their classes, and UNRWA visits him to see his plans.

The committee work is voluntary for him, he says, but necessary. These efforts are important, to combat the psychological effects of the occupation: "The Israelis mean to oppress the students. They form committees to make recommendations to the politicians on how to keep the society down, starting with the kids."

But a shortage of psychological support makes it difficult to fight the damage that is being done.

"At each school, there is one counselor -- a psychologist," he points out. "1,000 students and only one counselor."

So, again, he brings the community together to help, forming committees of teachers who have courses in guidance through UNRWA, and the committee coordinates with the counselor. They penalize problematic students and try to guide them to change their behavior. When they do, they give them awards. He also makes a list of kids who are emotionally and psychologically unhealthy and distributes it to the teachers and asks them to treat them nicer.

The organization tries to bring these practices to other areas of the society, so the nonviolent mindset is one they can carry with them through life: "We need to coordinate with other organizations to continue these practices, so they don't leave and forget what we taught them."

Sarah Price is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. She visited Gaza in October 2007, and has written for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and KNBC Los Angeles, and has appeared on Lighthouse TV in Los Angeles, discussing the humanitarian crises in Gaza. All images by Sarah Price.
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Calling Israeli-Palestinian struggle a 'conflict' misses basic inequities between two countries

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By Sarah Price

What's happening between Israel and Palestine is most often, and most erroneously, referred to as a conflict.

What's erroneous about the use of this term is that it implies two parties on equal footing who disagree with each other. That there is disagreement is correct. But it is not only that Israel wants to be recognized as a state and Palestine disagrees; it's that Palestinians believe they should be free to live their lives without occupation, sanctions, forced poverty and starvation, lack of health care, and constant fear of snipers and bombings. And Israel disagrees. In its silence and blind eye toward the actions of Israel, so, apparently, does the rest of the world.

Where the effects of the occupation are most concentrated is in the region's hospitals, which are struggling to support and heal their patients. At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, doctors have had to modify the treatment of their patients in order to give them any treatment at all, because of the depletion of drugs and malfunctioning equipment. They are so low on anesthesia, they recently had to cancel all surgeries, except for the most critical — and even those will not be possible for long.

Their 195 kidney patients have had to go from three dialysis treatments a week to two, because, of the 32 dialysis machines they have, only 25 work. The others need spare parts or to be replaced altogether. Compounding the problem is that they don't have the drugs they need to treat the patients for anemia in between visits, so even the dialysis they are able to get cannot do enough for them.

"We have to give the patients less treatment, which is a medical mistake, but we have no alternative," Medhat Abbas, general director of crisis management at Gaza's Ministry of Health, told me. "We have 13 new pieces of equipment and the spare parts we need waiting at the border, but the Israelis won't let them pass through."

Passage to Israel has been an ongoing struggle in Gaza's health crisis. Gaza does not have the money to have fully functioning hospitals and clinics and often needs to send its most dire cases abroad for treatment and surgeries.

Getting the permission, however, is an uphill battle — one often subject to costly fees the patients' families cannot afford; lengthy waiting times for approvals; the chance that even if they are allowed in for one or two treatments, they may not be allowed back for the rest; and the risk of being stuck at a closed border upon their return. If the patient is terminally ill, they are often classified as a security risk and not allowed into Israel at all because, they are told, if the patient has nothing to live for, they can't be sure they are not a suicide bomber. Better to leave them in Gaza to die, they tell them, than to take that risk.

But every day of life in Gaza is a risk. The snipers, the bombings from the F-16s and the infighting between family clans and political factions are only part of it, albeit a dangerous and tragic part of it. There is more to the occupation than the violence. There is what happens in the silence: constant fear, poverty, starvation, demoralized citizens who turn on each other, and forced lack of electricity and water, which can lead to contamination and disease. And the worst side effect of silence: implied consent.

The Gazan spirit is strong, and its citizens take it upon themselves to improve their lives, even with the few resources they have. Microfinancing programs have helped many refugees create work for themselves, ultimately bringing in more of an income than had been previously possible for them, and more importantly, restoring their dignity. Schools and humanitarian programs are also introducing creative outlets for the children, so they will find a way to act out that is productive and non-violent.

It would take so little to make such a marked difference for them. But the first difference that needs to be made is to pay attention and acknowledge what is really happening there.

"It is genocide," said Abbas. "What else do you call it when they attack you to force you out, and then forbid you to leave?"

And what, then, do you call it, when the rest of us stand by as it happens ... and do nothing?

Sarah Price is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. She was in Gaza in October.
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