11) KEVIN NEISH REPORTS FROM GAZA
Solidarity activist and People's Voice supporter Kevin Neish has spent the summer in Gaza, using his skills to help improve the lives of Palestinians. Here are some excerpts from his blog, which can be found along with many fascinating photos at www.kevinneish.ca.
June 19
I finally got back into Gaza yesterday afternoon. It took the Egyptian Intelligence Branch two weeks to issue a permission letter for me to travel to Gaza. I was told the letter would have arrived sooner but that the Egyptians were very busy dealing with the upcoming anti‑Morsi demonstrations. It was a good time to leave Cairo. There are certainly worse places to be stuck, as I saw some amazing museums and of course the Nile, Pyramids, Sphinx, etc., but it's good to now be with these fine, friendly folks in Gaza...
The Israelis have made a few recent armed incursions with bulldozers to destroy farmers' fields, they're kidnapping fishers and confiscating their boats, and F16s are making regular noisy passes over the City. So nothing much has changed from when I was here in February.
July 1
The other day, the ISM [International Solidarity Movement] folks here, went to see a farmer friend named Nasser, who lives near Johr Al Deak in Eastern Gaza. Unfortunately his farm house is only 200 meters from the Israeli border and so is within Israel's, self declared, high danger buffer zone. He has been here for many years and has never had any problems, even during the various wars and invasions.
The Israeli military seemed to accept that he was no threat to them, and left him alone, until three years ago. One quiet afternoon, without warning, the Israeli military started attacking his farm. They were so surprised and unprepared that one of Nasser's six children, a 2-year old, was left sleeping in the field beside the house. The mother ran out the door to rescue him, and an Israeli tank immediately fired a shell at her. But not just any shell, it was an anti personnel "flechette" shell. Deemed illegal by the Geneva Convention and certainly not something to be used on a poor rural farm family. She died in front of her family from dozens of terrible wounds. Attached below is a series of photos about Nasser present situation, and evidence of what a "flechette" shell does and why it is a war crime to use such a weapon at anytime...
Here is Nasser's original home, which they are now afraid to live in. All the marks on the concrete stucco wall are from the hardened steel, flechette anti‑personnel darts, from just one tank shell fired at Mrs. Nasser. She died at the lower right, in front of her children and husband. Mr. Nasser said that the Israelis would not allow an ambulance to approach for 4-and-a-half hours. The darts are driven up to two inches deep into the concrete stucco. You can see that these flechette darts easily penetrated these heavy steel panels. Imagine what they do to humans.
After a lot of digging and prying with my pocket knife and pliers, I managed to pull two of these 1.5 inch long (4 cm) flechette darts out of the Nasser's farm house wall. Evidence of a war crime. Thousands of these darts came from that one tank shell fired at Mrs. Nasser. What possible purpose does such a horrendous and illegal weapon have to play in a rural farm yard in Palestine, or anywhere. This madness has to stop. The Israeli blockade and occupation of Gaza and all of Palestine has to end.
July 4
I'm quite a well trained mechanic. I hold four journeyman mechanical certificates, as well as a College diploma to teach them all. But I'm also a fisherman's son, so I'm pretty darned good at fixing something with little more then a pocket knife and some string and wire. It's this last "qualification" that is now holding me in good stead in Gaza. I'm volunteering at the Gaza fire department's repair shop. I retired some years ago, but here I'm working on some equipment that even predates my long career. Due the blockade, the fire department has an oddball collection of old trucks from all over the world. Japanese, Italian, German and Russian trucks, that would have been retired many years ago anywhere else in the world, even if you had a proper supply of parts. But the Palestinians somehow keep them running, in spite of the Israeli blockade.
And as if that was not bad enough, during the 2008 "Cast Lead" assault on Gaza, the Israelis targeted all the fire halls in Gaza. One of the trucks damaged in that assault is still going through the rebuilding process in this repair shop, using equipment adapted from unrelated vehicles, home made parts, haywire and a lot of ingenuity. But many of the fire trucks were beyond even the Palestinians' ability to repair them...
Of course this begs the question, why did the Israelis attack fire trucks? For that matter why did they attack, ambulances, sewer plants, electrical power plants, water treatment plants, sports stadiums, Universities and various United Nations schools. And why are they still attacking Palestine today?
So here's a shout out to these grand fellows of the Gaza fire department and some humble praise to the many fire fighters who have died under Israeli fire, while trying to protect the people of Gaza, Palestine.
July 9
I've finished my work on the Fisheries Department research ship, and now it waits for people with deeper pockets then me to make the needed repairs I've documented. I am still volunteering at the Gaza fire department repair shop, pitching in here and there doing apprentice level work, as well as offering technical assistance when asked.
I was in the compressor shed sorting out a wiring problem, when I realized there were numerous broken, bent and twisted metal shears and bolt cutters lying about.
This seemed strange to me, as I well know what it takes to bend or break such heavy duty bolt cutters. And then I realized that these dozen bolt cutters and such were likely broken by rescuers trying to save people from rocketed and collapsed buildings. Every bent and broken handle must have a gruesome, sad, desperate story to tell...
July 24
...So it is Ramadan. Everyone is fasting, nor drinking or smoking, dawn to dusk, for a month (until Aug. 8). Out of respect, this includes non-Muslims while in public. The idea is that all Muslims do this in order to appreciate the situation of the poor, who have no option but to fast at times.
But with the daily fast, comes the wonderful fast breaking meal at sundown, the "Iftar meal". Everyone gathers in front of a table or floor mat, covered with food and drink. They patiently wait until we all hear the Imam's announcement of the setting of the Sun, at which point we all partake in this huge meal. I have been privileged to have been invited to several Iftars. At some, with poorer folks, we bring a big gift of food, which is the basis of the meal. At Iftars with better off families, everything that is available in besieged Gaza is offered to us. Though at the very "best" Iftar meal so far, they only offered a basic box lunch of chicken and rice, but it was with about 100 kids from the Maghazi refugee camp North of Gaza City. These are kids of refugees from the Israeli ethnic cleansings of 1948, who are still waiting for the various UN resolutions to be enforced to let them go home.
So here are a bunch of photos of these kids...
August 1
There are several thousand fishers in Gaza, but only a few boats risk going out to fish, due to the constant assaults and hijackings by the Israeli navy. On most days I can hear heavy calibre Israeli gunship fire, and at times, I can even watch from shore as the Israeli ships harass the fishers who dare to go out.
So here is a series of photos of the fishermen and their ships...
August 11
The main purpose for my being in Gaza, is to work for the International Solidarity Movement as a human shield, with farmers, fishers or in Red Crescent ambulances if the Israelis attack. While we wait for assignments, I fill my days by working at the fire department, teaching English at a school and visiting friends.
Here's how yesterday worked out.
With the end of Ramadan comes the 4-day Eid celebration. Gaza City center is full of people walking and talking, eating and drinking. Outdoor eateries like this one are open late into the early morning, as too are my favourite rustic outdoor beach cafes, with their cats, rats and cockroaches (it's Gaza, so one overlooks the small stuff). Young couples and families, drink coffee and tea and smoke sheesha through water pipes. I'm told that sheesha is as bad or worse then cigarettes, but I guess Gazans have more immediate and dangerous things to worry about.
In the morning a homemade ferris wheel has magically appeared on our street. Like so many things in Gaza, it doesn't count on the intermittent electricity to work, just the strong arms of a local volunteer. The same goes for this swing. Gaza's population is young, with little spare space or resources for playgrounds, especially in the inner city areas. So the government has built these homemade mobile playgrounds, which rotate around the communities. The kids seem to like the plan.
Next stop is Gaza's seemingly endless beaches. An amazing resource for the future.
A waterfront beach cabin is prepared for us. Our evening meal of chicken and veggies are wrapped in tin foil and buried in the sand on a bed of hot coals.
Now that all the illegal Zionist colonies have been chased out of Gaza, the Palestinians have full access to their beaches. The kids make the best of it during these hot days of summer...
And there's always fishing, but you won't find me eating any of their catch or joining them in the water here. A few hundred meters to the north of us, just past the headland, is the main "river" in Gaza, Wadi Gaza, which flows out of the hills of the West Bank near Hebron. All the Israeli towns and farms along Wadi Gaza, dump their mostly untreated sewage and chemical waste into it, such that, by the time it reaches the sea, the stench is enough, as they say, to "gag a maggot".
Due to the Israeli bombing of Gaza's sewer plants and lack of blockaded parts for them, the Palestinians too have to dump raw sewage into Wadi Gaza. New sewer plants are being planned and retention ponds are being built, to try to control the illegal Israeli discharges, but for now Gazan beaches are heavily polluted and would be closed and fenced off, if they were anywhere else in the world. But the Gazans have no choice but to make the best of a bad situation, and use their "less" polluted beaches, like this one. Even though we were within sight of Wadi Gaza's fetid, stinking outlet, we were told that the prevailing winds and current "generally" took the sewage to the North, away from us, towards Gaza City, and its crowded beaches.
The first step to making this beach safe for the kids, is to end the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza and their occupation of all of Palestine. Please tell that to Israel's "best friend in the world", Prime Minister Harper and his Canadian government.
If you want to help perhaps check out our International Solidarity Movement (ISM) website at www.palsolidarity.org. Please do remember our ISM martyrs Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall and Vittorio Aragoni.
(The above article is from the September 1-15, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC,