Breakout from Ghetto Gaza
By Israel Shamir
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/togethernet/


They went out, risked their lives, rushed the army, overturned the
fence, strode the barbed wire, wiped out the border between two
states, committed so many heroic acts, worthy of great warriors,
suffering casualties -- and when they were through, they went to shop
and bought bread for their children. This gave a lie to the image of
Palestinians that the Jews had tried to plant in world conscience:
that of wild violent fanatics bent on rampage. Instead, the guys broke
out of jail and bought bread. Meaning, they were kept hungry by their
Jewish overlords. A stronger picture will not come soon from the
Middle East than that of these family men carrying bread back home.

They are so normal, these Gaza, like you and me – they carry out their
normal lives, they work in a bank or a garage -- but they get full
medieval treatment. First, they were dispossessed and corralled into
Gaza, then they were treated like even dogs should not be treated;
they were not allowed to travel by a highway if the road is used by a
Jew, they were not permitted to see their immediate family living only
a mile away. And then, this siege. No food, nothing to feed the
children with. No future, either, with Israel as the neighbour. They
suffer for only one crime: they are not Jews, though, ironically, many
of them are descendent of Jews, some with famous Jewish family names,
who embraced Christ or the Prophet.

They were supposed to suffer quietly, but the Gazans have a lot of
dignity. They voted for Hamas against the will of Israel and America,
and they expelled the collaborationist gang of Dahlan. Now, they have
rushed the fence, and that was a good example for all of us: nothing
can be done within the legal limits our enemies had enforced. There is
a need for the push that is called Revolution.

When the brave Gazans walked back, loaded with their lucky catch, with
bread and rice, with salt and blankets, with vegetables and lambs, the
Jews were decidedly unhappy. The natives will forget that we are like
God unto them; we provide and we punish, we feed and we starve.
Instead of accepting our doom, they took their fate in their hands.
With bread and rice, the Gazans will smuggle guns, and this may force
us to postpone the big offensive already agreed upon with George W.
The Jews prefer to assail weapon-less victims.

The Egyptians also failed Jewish expectations. "I believe Egypt knows
what its job is", said the arrogant Israeli general Ehud Barak. The
job he gave to Egypt is the job of jailer of their Palestinian
brothers. "The Gazans would never dare to break the siege to Sinai, -
wrote Israeli pundits a week, even a day ago - Egyptians will meet
them with deadly fire." When there was a shoot-out, the Israelis were
so happy for a while. Effi Eitam, a right-wing religious Jewish
leader, who looks like a `well-fed kosher pig in yarmulke'(in words of
Gilad Atzmon) wrote in the Yediot Ahronot an op-ed dripping of
crocodile tears. We Jews are so soft and merciful in comparison to the
Egyptians, he wrote. But Mubarak wants to survive, and he knows there
are limits he may not push too far. He gave orders to his soldiers to
cease fire. The Jews wailed that Egyptians must enforce the border,
and supply their pound of flesh per agreement. In vain. Mubarak does
not want to follow Anwar as-Sadat to hell.

Deeply dissatisfied, the Jews watched this stream of people that got
out of their jail for a short break. But then, they are hard to
please, these Jews are. The Palestinians have to kill each other in a
civil war, or die of hunger to please the Jews.

My grandfather did that, he died of hunger and exhaustion in 1942 in
the ghetto of Stanislaw. The Germans and their Ukrainian quislings did
to Jews what the Jews did to Gazans: they gathered them in the ghetto,
and left them to starve there. The slogans of the Nazis were also
taken from Homerton-Barak's book, mutatis mutandis: "they must suffer
because their leaders are our enemies, they should be punished for
their terrorism in the revolution, let them go hungry because their
brothers harass the German troops and bomb German cities". My
grandfather Israel – I was named after him – succumbed to hunger, cold
and exhaustion, they did not even have to shoot him; he did not
qualify for their targeted killing program.

Wait, you'll say, how could Barak and Olmert starving Gazans in 2008
influence the Germans of 1942? How could they be responsible for death
of my granddad? The answer is given in the secret language of Jewish
mysticism: Ein mukdam, ein meuhar beTorah. The sequence of events - in
the Holy Writ and in the world – is irrelevant, because all events and
their alleged consequences take place in the same hyper-time, forever
playing vicious circles of Cat-pursuing-Mice-that scared-Elephant-that
trampled-the-Cat. Poincare and Einstein translated this concept into
the language of modern physics when they described Time as just one of
dimensions as bendable as the others.

Douglas Adams popularised this in his novel: his characters go back in
time to fix a problem, they do it, but at some cost: they save a fish,
but dodo dies out, they gain music of Bach, but lost Coleridge's
poems. The people are not aware that the world already changed; that
now they have more of Bach but less of Coleridge. Only those, who
could exit the time frame, know: the world is changing all the time
because of our deeds, and these changes go "back" and "forth", because
there is no such thing as "back" and "forth". Thus, the Armenians
slaughtered and expelled the Azeris, and their ancestors were deported
into desert to suffer in the Kurds' hands, and the Kurds suffer for
this crime, and for their support of the US-Zionist occupation.

And some things have not materialised yet, but they will: when I
listen to the Jews (and Poles, and Ukrainians, and Americans) who
insist that "Stalin was as bad as Hitler" and "there is no difference
between Nazis and Commies" and of "Russian antisemitism", I know that
in the next future, the Red Army will not fight the Germans, will not
liberate Poland and Czechia, will not open the gates of Auschwitz and
Treblinka.

This world is just, and the Lord is just. He punishes ingratitude by
undoing the deed one had to be grateful for.

Do an evil thing today, and the past will change and kick you back.
Starve the Gazans and your grandfathers will die of thirst and hunger.
Torture Palestinians, and your ancestors will be tortured by the
inquisition using the same reasoning you applied today to your
enemies. Turn Hebron into a prison for its inhabitants, and the Jews
will be slaughtered in 1929. The crime of Jewish mistreatment of
Palestinians is being punished even now. Do not ask who is starved and
who is tortured: it is somebody quite close to you.

===

One should always keep in mind that everything one reads in most of
the English language Western media, is not dispassionate reporting but
is actually authored by elements whose sympathies are, to say the
least, definitely not with the Palestinians. Having said that, I
recommend not only reading the following article but also the comment,
ignoring, of course, the sour grapes from the usual suspects!

Sami Joseph

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3238615.ece

From The Times
January 24, 2008

Hamas 'spent months cutting through Gaza wall in secret operation'
James Hider at the Rafah border crossing
As tens of thousands of Palestinians clambered back and forth between
the Gaza strip and Egypt today, details emerged of the audacious
operation that brought down a hated border wall and handed the
Islamist group Hamas what might be its greatest propaganda coup.
Hamas, which took control of the coastal territory last June after a
stand-off with Fatah, has denied that its men set off the explosions
that brought down as much as two-thirds of the 12-km wall in the early
hours.
But a Hamas border guard interviewed by The Times at the border
admitted that the Islamist group was responsible and had been involved
for months in slicing through the heavy metal wall using oxy-acetylene
cutting torches.
That meant that when the explosive charges were set off in 17
different locations between midnight and 1am the 40ft wall came
tumbling down, leaving it lying like a broken concertina down the
middle of no-man's land as an estimated 350,000 Gazans flooded into Egypt.

The guard, Lieutenant Abu Usama of the Palestinian National Security,
said of the cutting operation: "I've seen this happening over the last
few months. It happened in the daytime but was covered up so that
nobody would see."
Asked whether he had reported it to the government, he replied: "It
was the government that was doing this. Who would I report it to?"
Abu Usama, who normally works from a small guard cabin in no-man's
land, added: "Last night we were told to keep away from the wall. We
were ordered to stay away because they were going to break the blockade."
As Gazans flooded into Egypt, the strip's Hamas prime minister, Ismail
Haniya, called for an urgent meeting with his rivals in Fatah and with
the Egyptian authorities to work a new border arrangement.
Mr Haniya called for the border crossing to be reopened "on the basis
of national participation," meaning that Hamas would be prepared to
cede some control to President Abbas and his Fatah-led government in
the West Bank. "We don't want to be the only ones in control of these
matters," Mr Haniya said, speaking from his Gaza City office live on
Hamas TV.
"Everything Haniya is saying is simply to exploit this situation to
win political gains. ... It is a part of the problem, not the
solution," said Ashraf Ajramim, a Cabinet minister in Mr Abbas's
government. Israel refused to comment on the developments in Gaza.
The skill of the Hamas demolition operation was clear to see along the
border, although The Times could not visit the entire length of the
border. Where the charges had been laid, the wall was heavily damaged.
Elsewhere it appeared to be clearly cut.
The destruction of the wall prompted hundreds of thousands to cross
into Egypt – and Egyptian border guards did not try to stem the tide
of humanity.
Instead Rafah became a huge Middle Eastern bazaar. Thousands of people
were herding back cows, sheep and even camels from Egypt into the Gaza
strip. Others brought back motorbikes while many women lugged back
cans of olive oil and men could be seen weighed down with jerry-cans
full of fuel.
Moneychangers flocked to the border, offering Egyptian pounds and
American dollars for the Gazans' Israeli shekels. The shops soon began
to run out, however, and those returning were complaining of
sky-rocketing prices.
Instead, many people jumped into taxis - or even on the roofs of taxis
- to take themselves to El Arish, 45km away, the nearest town with shops.
In no-man's land, along the stretch that the Israelis used to call
Philadelphia Road before their disengagement in 2005, Hamas gunmen
raced along in pick-up trucks flying the group's green flag. Egyptian
riot police waited by the gates of the old border crossing, leaning
with nonchalance against their riot shields.
Among those returning were Osama Hassan, 25, who went shopping with
his 17-year-old fiancee Sarah for their wedding essentials. He bought
a special mattress for his injured back; she brought kitchen supplies.
"I'm Fatah, but today, I wish I could see (Hamas prime minister
Ismail) Haniya and kiss his forehead, because without the gunmen doing
this, we would have been stuck in the Gaza Strip," he said.
Egyptian shopkeepers swiftly raised prices of milk, taxi rides and
cigarettes, but that did not deter the Gazans, for many of whom it was
their first trip out of the territory.
Some staggered back into Gaza carrying televisions, and others sported
brand-new mobile phones. In Gaza City, prices of cigarettes - which
had skyrocketed during the total blockade of the past week - fell by
70 per cent in a few hours.
Rami al-Shawwa, a 23-year old falafel vendor, said he planned to head
to Egypt in the afternoon, after his brothers returned from there. He
was going to buy waterpipe tobacco and just "smell some new air".
"We have been living in darkness for days, and closure before," he
said, adding that he is not concerned about getting stuck in Egypt.
"For my 23 years in Gaza, a year in Egypt will make up for it."

===

Hamas outmaneuvers Israel with three quick moves
By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondents
25/01/2008
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/948098.html


In a week when Israeli leaders were boasting about their successful
adoption of the conclusions in the Winograd Committee's interim
report, which included in their view the attack on Syria, recent
events on the Gaza Strip and Egyptian border are raising concerns to
the contrary: Perhaps not enough lessons were learned or have been
implemented.

This week Hamas checkmated Israel in three quick moves. No less
worrying are the problematic developments regarding Egypt. Cairo would
like to avoid a confrontation with Hamas and its parent organization,
the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a lot more important for Egypt than
the angst in Israel. This is a strategic change that will make any
future operation by the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip more
difficult and could make relations between the two countries even more
complicated.

These are moments of glory for Hamas, after a long period during which
the organization was battered by Israel. It conducted its campaign
brilliantly last week, and it seems, so far, with complete success. At
no stage did Israel have a sufficient response to the initiatives of
Hamas: It did not when the group plunged the Strip into darkness on
Sunday, or when it caused the clashes along the border on Tuesday, and
certainly not when it brought down the Philadelphi wall on Wednesday.
Advertisement

All the while Hamas benefited from an impressive level of Arab support
including the Muslim Brotherhood in the neighboring countries and
favorable broadcasts on Al Jazeera, many of whose reporters openly
promote an agenda favoring the Muslim Brotherhood. While all this was
happening, Hamas managed to pay salaries this week to 20,000 civil
servants in Gaza, even before the border was turned into an open
passage in which people, arms and goods moved freely.

But Hamas did not only beat Israel in this round -Egypt and the
Palestinian Authority also lost. The Ramallah-based state is now
further and more disconnected from Hamas than ever. With impressive
timing that still leaves us guessing whether the breach of the Rafah
wall was was preplanned, the group's politburo chief, Khaled Meshal,
held a National Palestinian Conference in Damascus on Wednesday. The
event was meant as a challenge to the PLO and PA leadership, and to
stress that there is an alternative leadership for the Palestinian people.

In attendance were leaders of militant Palestinian organizations who
came to reiterate that they would never relinquish the right of return
to the "territories of 1948," armed struggle and jihad. The dramatic
broadcasts from the Gaza Strip underscored the summit in Damascus and
presented the Hamas leadership as the real decision makers for the
Palestinian people, while PA President Mahmoud Abbas was trying in
vain to explain that "the Palestinian people desire peace."

The scenes from the Gaza Strip, which showed happy crowds of people
loaded with goods returning home from Egypt, support the notion that
Israel's decision to impose an economic embargo on the Strip was
fundamentally mistaken. Israel tried to punish the entire Gazan
population to cause it to overthrow Hamas rule. Preventing soda,
cigarettes, cleaning materials and newspapers was thought to be an
effective means of pressure in the war against the Qassam rockets.

In this Jerusalem also accepted recommendations from the Fatah
leadership, who wanted to settle old scores with their Hamas rivals.
But the security establishment, like the media, failed to appreciate
correctly the enormity of the poverty in Gaza, and with it the hatred
for Israel. It only pushed Hamas to bring down the wall, in a manner
that will now make it difficult to restore the blockade on the Gaza Strip.

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