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Viva Palestina USA - on it's way
Over 170 Americans and others are on their way to break the suffocating siege of Gaza! Our communities have been raising funds to buy medicines and medical supplies to take to the people of Gaza, which has been sealed off at all borders and the Mediteranean coast, mostly by Israel but with some cooperation by Egypt. After twenty-two days of Israeli bombing, this isolation is deadly: Palestinians are rarely allowed to leave to get medical care, nor are they able to import what they need. For this reason, UK Member of Parliament George Galloway organized Viva Palestina: Lifeline from the US to Gaza, a convoy designed to not only bring in aid, but to raise world consciousness about Palestinian reality. It was energized by the success of Galloway's British convoy, which took over 100 vehicles to Gaza earlier this year. Before taking off for Cairo on the Fourth of July, the convoy members were sent off with an energetic community event at the House of the Lord in Brooklyn, featuring Lamis Deek of al Awda New York, Rev. Herbert Daughtry of the host church, City Councilman and convoy member Charles Barron, and Rev. Lucius Walker the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organizations, who pledged his people to go on the convoy planned for this December. The convoy members loaded 35 of wheel chairs and walkers 20 suitcases full of medical supplies onto the plane, which they then boarded and flew off to Cairo, to challenge the Israeli-ordered Egyptian closure of the Rafah Crossing. We have spent a few days in Cairo readying ourselves for the border challenge, doing press conferences, hearing from Galloway and others about what to expect, forming work committees, and bonding with each other. This last part was especially important, as we are richly diverse representatives of many cultures: Palestinian Americans - including ones who have lived through the Nakba (disaster) of 1948, four New-York-based orthodox rabbis, and a great range of ethnicities and ages. Convoy members opened today's press conference with some spirited chanting (“Viva! Viva! Palestina!” ) Mr. Galloway outlined the project for the international media. Among the others who spoke were Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, who, flanked by the other three, strongly condemned Israel and demanded the dismantling of that State, allowing the Jewish and Arab people to live in peace as they “had for centuries” before the Zionists came. Tomorrow, the convoy will begin, traveling to Al Arish, a little Egyptian town several kilometers from the border with Gaza.
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