Peoples Geography — Reclaiming space

Creating people's geographies

Meeting Palestinians In Gaza

Abdul Salam al-Hissi’s boat leaves Gaza City harbour and heads out into the open sea.

Appended below are five links to poignant short videos from the excellent Guardian series A Week in Gaza, detailing the impact of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Ghetto on ordinary people. On this 60th anniversary of the Nakba, these heart-rending portraits of Gazans is particularly timely and offers a window into life in Gaza.

As Ali Abunimah, currently in Sydney, has said, Nakba Denial not only exists, but unlike Holocaust Denial still has some mainstream intellectual acceptance. The ongoing plight of the indigenous Palestinians after 60 years deserves our attention and support now more than ever. For our part in Australia, there is a strong campaign to have the Australian Parliament acknowledge the Nakba — please consider lending your support if you are in Australia.

1. The blockade and the smugglers (4.55)
Israel’s fuel blockade has ground Gaza’s infrastructure to a halt. In response, smuggling gangs bring fuel in from Egypt through underground tunnels.

2. ‘Who’ll look after my little ones when I’m gone? (4.06)
In the second of five films, multimedia reporter Clancy Chassay hears from Karima, a 34-year-old mother of five, critically ill with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, an aggressive but treatable form of cancer. Like all but  immediate emergency patients, she has been refused permission to cross into Israel to receive vital treatment. Her doctors in Gaza say that without this treatment she will die.

3. Meet the Bakrs … a middle-class family from Gaza (4.11)
Multimedia reporter Clancy Chassay talks to the Bakrs about life under the Israeli blockade, juggling jobs, school runs and clinical depression.

4. ‘They say they have the right to shoot at us and kill us (3.12)
In the fourth of five films from Gaza, multimedia reporter Clancy Chassay meets Samir who lost his brother and two footballing friends during Israeli rocket and shell attacks on their playing fields.

5. ‘There is no normal childhood‘ (5.07)
Despite losing her own son only weeks ago, Insherrah Zakout counsels Gaza’s traumatised children.

See also:

One comment on “Meeting Palestinians In Gaza

  1. Pingback: ‘Meeting Palestinians In Gaza’ « DetainThis

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This entry was posted on 15 May, 2008 by in Activism, Gaza, Genocide, Israel, Israel Watch, Palestine, Peace and Justice, Peace education, People, Video and tagged , , , .

Timely Reminders

"Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better, but leave it either as it was, or sometimes perceptibly worse than what it was, before the crusade began. By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself."
-- Aldous Huxley

"The only war that matters is the war against the imagination. All others are subsumed by it."
-- Diane DiPrima, "Rant", from Pieces of a Song.

"It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there"
-- William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"


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