Thursday, January 24, 2008

Treated like Animals... The new Berlin Wall

Remember the Berlin Wall?

The Berlin Wall separated Communist East Berlin from the West Berlin. The wall was festooned with booby traps, mines, barbed wire, machine gun emplacement. All of that to prevent the people from the Communist controlled area escaping to gain freedom in the West.

Fortunately that wall was dismantled and nothing like that exists in the world right?

Not quite: Gaza's Berlin Wall

When I watched CNN and saw the internet pictures of the flood of humanity joyously pouring into Egypt, I was reminded of those heady days of freedom, when Germans, Czechs, Poles, all crossed into the Free World, able to buy foods, drinks, shoes, clothes, of quality unimaginable to them.

They stopped being caged animals in an inhuman system - for they became human beings; When the wall came down.


Same exact thing happened to the Palestinians.

When the wall was blown up with explosives...

First came the teenagers, curious to see what would happen to them on a border where, until very recently, they could expect to be shot on sight.

Then came the smugglers, aware a good turn was to be made on cigarettes bought in Egypt for £9 a carton but sold in Gaza for nearer £25.

Finally came crowds and crowds of normal Gazans, men and women, old and young, some on bicycles, a few being pushed in wheelchairs, simply enjoying the rare sensation of freedom.


They made their way to shops in nearby Egyptian communities and bought as much as they could carry of things not available so competitively priced in Gaza.

Boxes of soap powder, fuel for cooking and fuel for vehicles was all dragged back, as much as each person could afford or as much as they could carry, to their homes in Gaza.

Cement, an innocent enough item that Israel routinely blocks from entering Gaza, was dragged across by the sack load.

The flood of humanity, joyous, happy, enjoying the freedom to go exactly where they please, buy whatever they needed and wanted, of products unavailable in their homeland.

I listened to NPR radio, and the reporter (very possibly Tim Butcher, UK) at the place of this momentous event spewed as many stories as he could to his American audience, about the happiness of the Palestinians, how a woman with her 10 year old daughter crossed into Egypt, desperate to have her sick daughter operated on to save her life, how people felt free...

A hundred words a minute, pure joy of the event, blared at me from the car radio speakers!

Then the American NPR program host asked about smuggling of weapons to Hamas, and how this open border is a really really bad thing. He talked about Israel's pressure on Egypt, and American pressure on Egypt.

The man on the other end of the telephone line stumbled, slowed down, admitted that he nor anyone else knew whether any weapons or illegal supplies made it into Gaza, and anyway, those are smuggled into Gaza using a secret tunnel network, out of sight of the border.

Finally, the NPR American host asked THE question.

Exasperated NPR man: 'Will the wall be built back up?'
Resigned journalist in Egypt: 'Yes, of course. Once all this dies down, of course, as the Arab street in Egypt would make trouble for Mubarak if he did it immediately. But yes, once this dies down, the wall will be build up again.'

What is the point of all this? Simple if you think about it for a minute.

Where do Palestinians get their food? Their water? Their clothes? Israel, of course. And, due to Israeli and American pressure on Egypt, the border between Gaza and Egypt is closed by a Berlin Wall, this allows Israel to put enormous pressure on Gaza and its government, by simply cutting food, electricity, water and the like.

"Gazans often describe their home territory as a "prison" with Israel controlling all access from the sea to the west, and overland to the north and east." from Tim Butcher, UK reporter

And Egypt, number 2 or 3 by now, aid recipient of USA foreign aid funds, will listen. Because When Congress says "jump," Egypt asks "how high"

And when AIPAC says "jump", If AIPAC says jump, members of Congress say “How high?.

So.... The wall will be rebuilt ASAP... And then...

Back to your Prison, Palestinians!

Back to your Ghetto, Palestinians!

Back where you belong, Palestinians!

Back to your cages, animals!


Bonus Material:
Let me pose you a question. After reading this, watching this news on TV, thinking of the conditions of suffering in Gaza for its Arab residents, the fact that Israel controls all that goes into or out of that area, of a whole people whose homes were stolen and who were run out of them by a conquering army in 1948; do you perhaps see WHY the Palestinians are so militant?

Do you see the appeal of Al Kaida's call to overthrow corrupt dictatorships in Arab countries when the behaviour of Egypt is analysed in all this?

Do you see why the "Arab Street" hates America, and us?

Do you see that Palestinians living in a ghetto, in a prison, in a war zone, in a permanent humanitarian crisis, breeds terrorists, and puts the whole Arab world, every single one of them, as well as the moslems in Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, every single Moslem around the world, against us, Israel, our Arab government allies and puts them in the sympathetic to Al Kaida camp?

Do you see now?

Do you see?

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

In an effort to get to know you better and have a little bloggy fun, I am tagging you in a meme
7 random/weird things about me

http://fancyglass.blogspot.com/2008/01/7-random-things-about-me-meme.html

Hope you will post up and join in the randomness.

*Lauren
http://www.fancyglass.blogspot.com