Gaza is alive
My group got into Gaza two days ago, and it feels like a month already. I think the most significant impression I can convey is my surprise at how vibrant and alive the place is. I'd steeled myself to see endless destruction. Certainly every image of physical destruction that we saw last December and January can be found; but the shock is the realization that Palestinian life goes forward with incredible perseverance and charm and dignity. Downtown Gaza city is vibrant, full of street life, and the traffic is now and then interrupted by a flatbed truck going by with a wedding band banging drums on it, and a Mercedes carrying the bride and groom in tow.
It is not that the world's blockade of Gaza is not evident. It is evident at almost every turn. Most buildings downtown are dark at night. Generators go in the street. Store shelves are thin, and the sense of high unemployment is everywhere at hand. The commerce feels like that of a dusty Caribbean island.
But the essential spirit of the place seems unaltered by recent events. In fact, people tell you that they insist on being engaged with life so as to be able to imagine a different future than what is right in front of them. And that includes the university student whose father was dragged away to an Israeli prison three years ago for no good reason and the young graduate who chokes tears as she tells you that four times she saw scholarships abroad evaporate because she could not get out of the country.
And I should add that no one seems to be starving. No one we have seen yet. The markets are not crowded but they're not empty either. We see piles of watermelons by the side of the road and trucks filled with potatoes, and donkeys going by hauling wagons of tomatoes. Now and then you see a gleaming motorcycle. The tunnels are in fine fettle along the border with Egypt. There are so many of them, and they are so obvious, that there must be some complicity on the part of Israel in their continued existence: they serve to lessen the horror of Gaza's condition, in the eyes of the world, and so they serve Israel too.
Of that horror I will have much to say in the days to come. This is an emotionally exhausting trip. From one hour to the next we hear one tragic story after another of persecution. That's the word that keeps coming to mind: persecution, of the Palestinians, by the state of Israel. I find myself drawing closer to the Jewish members of the trip, if only to remind myself that they feel as outraged as I do by the affliction carried out in our name.
I remember during the Gaza slaughter that some tried to stop commentators from comparing Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto. Now I am here and I find the analogy helpful. In the Warsaw ghetto, and in slavery in the south, or in Jim Crow 100 years later--in any of these historical episodes of persecution that had a racist component--it wasn't as if the victimized people laid down and died. No, the blacks of the south created a rich culture on whatever terms were afforded to them. And the books my mother gave me of the Warsaw ghetto conveyed the treasure of Jewish life and culture that persisted even under the most humiliating circumstances. So in Gaza, with Israeli jeeps creeping up one border and gunboats cruising along the other, and bomb craters everywhere, and no one allowed to pursue their dreams, Palestinians are still leading engaged, serious, and even at-time joyous lives. Last night I watched the European Cup finals with about 100 of them in a crowded restaurant. The cruelty of the fact that a global festival that calls on talent from across the world is in no real way open to the people in the place was lost for an hour or two amid the shouts for Messi and Barcelona.
What a wonderful report .
And to think I had such a wrong impression,
wondering how the world sat still for the war crimes committed against the people of gaza by israel.
Anyplace that has "piles of watermelons by the side of the road and trucks filled with potatoes", must be heaven.
May 28, 2009 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Phillip is such a profoundly decent person. I love reading his stuff.
May 28, 2009 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's something in the human spirit that thrives defiantly in the face of relentless persecution and contempt. The South was a hotbed of African-American art - especially music and dance - during the travails of the Jim Crow era. Perhaps ragtime, blues, jazz and gospel were the manifestation of humanity's resilience under the scourge of senseless, soulless abuse. Palestinian vitality may be a self-sustaining engine of the spirit, conjuring of optimism out of thin air.
May 28, 2009 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is there anything else to eat besides watermelon, tomatoes and potatoes?
I heard the Israelis bombed the main chicken farm and killed all the chickens.
I heard there were issues as to whether there is enough water.
May 28, 2009 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
what a fitting counterpoint to this evening's gaza report from the times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/middleeast/29gaza.html?hp) which is less atmospheric in nature and more "kill yourself" depressing.
as for why no one is starving, the article briefly mentions the reason: it's already bad pr for israel to have a ghetto, but it would be worse pr to have a ghetto filled with starving people. so they count calories and make sure that just enough food gets through the blockade. sort of reminds me of the doctors who would check waterboard victims every hour or so to make sure that they weren't about to die or anything...
May 28, 2009 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
. . . a Mercedes carrying the bride and groom in tow.
Would that be a taxi or an S600.
Enquiring minds must know.
May 28, 2009 9:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
This 'on the ground' report demonstrates the resilience of people. I have also read that the Gazans have begun making mud bricks for housing to defy the Israeli blockade of building materials. There is lots of mud available from the tunnels. Ingenuity, resillience and culture are their weapons against persecution.
I'll be following Mr. Weiss's further reports with great interest. I often think of the people in Gaza.
May 28, 2009 11:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great stuff Phil!
I hope you are doing some video out there.
May 29, 2009 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Congratulations, Philip, on bending if not breaking the blockade.
And kudos to TPM for bringing Weiss's world to a larger audience.
May 30, 2009 1:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
In Gaza is Alive, Mr. Weiss finds the analogy between the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza "helpful", and talks about the "treasure of Jewish Life and culture" in the Warsaw Ghetto that he read about in books his mother gave him. He also compares the refusal to lay down and die....
I had many close family members in the Warsaw Ghetto and heard personal, eyewitness stories of life in it. I think I also read maybe a few more books and facts than Mr. Weiss. He may not know that, between November 1940 and July 1942 more than 100,000 Jews died of hunger, sickness and random killings in the Ghetto. He may also not know that the German's purpose in creating and maintaining the Ghetto was to destroy the Jewish population through starvation and deliberatly induced illness. It was only when they decided, in 1942, to very quickly destroy the Jews of Europe that the Germans decided to switch to a program of complete deportation and extermination.
Yes, a section of the Jewish population did try to maintain some semblance of a normal life, particularly those (less than a majority) with more money and access to necessities, but gut-wrenching fear hung constantly over all of them. Fear of starvation, fear of illness, fear of being murdered on the street or in their dewllings during random Nazi raids. Everyday, especially after mid-1941, families put their dead--their naked bodies wrapped in paper, in the street to be picked up and taken to mass graves.
The Warsaw Ghetto was a story of terror and destruction, the first step in the deliberate destruction of a whole population. To compare it to Gaza shows a serious lack of historical knowledge and understanding. It is also demeaning to the victims.
May 30, 2009 7:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can't understand you lack of ability to contextualize the situation. Like want2no, I found your comparisons of Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto and the struggles of African Americans in the US to be false and offensive. During the Gaza conflict I spent time in both Palestinian areas of the West Bank and Israeli border towns being rocketed by Hamas. The contrast was blatant. In Bethlehem, posters of gun toting terrorists were abundant on street corners. The popular support for the murder of Jewish civilians was clear. In the Israeli border towns the mood was quite different. The residents' greatest aspiration was their desire to continue their living a secure life. The victims of the Holocaust and Jim Crow were subjected to genocide and racial persecution, respectively. Neither populations were victimized because of their engagement in a violent conflict.
In Gaza, the people are victims of the government that they chose as much as they are victims of the Israelis. When Israel opened the border crossings to allow more food and supplies to be imported into Gaza, Hamas attacked the crossings. They are more concerned with killing Israelis than they are with helping their own people. Hamas' goal is to cause Israel to tighten the blockade so that it can gain world sympathy and reap tariffs from goods smuggled through the tunnels (they earn nothing from humanitarian donations that come through Israel).
Mr. Weiss, you're sitting in the center of a violent war between two sovereign states. (Yes, Gaza is certainly a de facto state with its own government, land and people.) The abhorrent situation that you find yourself in is in no way comparable to black slavery in America. Your comparison assumes that a significant proportion of the slaves (if not a majority) engaged in or actively supported a popular violent uprising against whites. While slaves certainly did kill whites, these incidents were certainly not a popular uprising, and the slaves were not enslaved because they killed whites. Your comparison of Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto is, simply put, Holocaust denial. The Jews did revolt, but they did so when the Ghetto's population had already been almost completely exterminated. And the Jews that found themselves in the Ghetto did not find themselves there because of their involvement in an armed conflict. All other details aside, the conditions in Gaza are not comparable to those of the Warsaw Ghetto. You said yourself that people aren't starving in Gaza. In the Warsaw ghetto, tens of thousands of people starved to death in the streets. The living population was hardly able to clear their dead relatives from the streets. Over 100,000 people died in the Ghetto itself, of a peak population of about 400,000. This does not include the rest of victims, who died in other concentration camps. How many people have died in Gaza since 1967? Get your facts strait, buddy.
May 31, 2009 6:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well said, Perry. While sympathy for those enduring the wretched conditions in Gaza is understandable, these types of reports, which overlook the real reason the conditions they describe exist and focus only on one piece of the picture, play right into the hands of those who would keep Gazans on the edge of subsistence for their own political gain. As such, they encourage the persistence of Hamas' tactics and discourage any effort by Hamas and other extremists to find a peaceful co-existence.
People can argue forever about historical justice and there are certainly points to be made on both sides. But the reality is that both Israelis and Palestinians exist; neither is going away. They need to find a way to move forward without killing each other. Hamas's refusal to do so serves the interests of its leadership and its desire to radicalize the general population but is antithetical to the larger cause.
June 1, 2009 8:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your overarching analogy is sort of like pointing out a man who has severe social disorders and accusing the US government of doing it, but not bothering to mention that his disorder started after he was in jail for killing three people and then in solitary confinement for brutally attacking other prisoners as well as guards.
Victims aren't victims if there is a clear and peaceful path to not being attacked, and here there is. Hamas lays down their arms and recognizes Israel's right to exist, and suddenly we have open borders and peace and prosperity in the region. That is the solution, there is no other.
June 2, 2009 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is one thing money cannot buy: class. And this is precisely what Philip Weiss simply does not have and by the looks of it never will. In his desperate quest to be "objective" and "impartial" he ends up being outright gross - unfortunately.
Making any reference to the Warsaw ghetto in the context of Israelis vs. Palestinians conflict would be unbelievable coming from a non-Jew. In the case of Philip Weiss, it is an affront to good taste. It reminds us about the concentration camps kapos that used to be shot by the Germans after six month on the job to burry the secret of the gas chambers. The few that were caught by the Allies were, after a short trial, ceremoniously hanged.
Back to the topic, Gaza is not a pleasant place to live and no one compares it to, say, Côte d'Azur. It is a miserable place that the Arabs strive to make it more so every single day. Since the "Gazans" never worked an hour in their entire lives, used to live on charity provided usually by Christians rather then by Muslims, they can never produce anything except terrorists. Every now and then, when they cannot kill Jews, they will fight and even kill each other with gusto.
Current reality points towards a three-state solution since the old and tired two-state proposition does not seem viable any longer. The truth of the matter is simple: The so-called Palestinians are not capable to handle their own affairs. Since the Israelis don't want to have them in their midst, maybe they should pack their belongings and move among their brethren in Jordan, Egypt or any other place. The inconvenient truth does not please the politically correct crowds that Philip Weiss seems to proudly belong to. Pity!
June 2, 2009 7:56 PM | Reply | Permalink