Report from Gaza
Report From Gaza
By Stephen DeGange
Most of us don’t get to visit the headlines. I had such an opportunity recently week when I joined a convoy bringing humanitarian aid to the besieged people in Gaza. I was joined on this trip by my son, Powell, a graduate of Berkeley High School and UC Davis. Powell works as a labor union organizer and activist with Unite Here in San Diego and has taken a special interest in Middle East affairs since majoring in political science at Davis.
While flying to Cairo and joining a caravan of buses across the Egyptian desert, the Sinai Peninsula, and through the heavily fortified border crossing at Rafah into a war zone might not seem like a typical father-son bonding excursion, we were each called to a responsibility to try to lend succor to a desperate, war-ravaged, brutalized group of fellow inhabitants of the planet.
Current conditions in Gaza have been well documented, if not in the mainstream North American media, then certainly on progressive Internet sites. The historical ravages visited upon the Palestinian people by their “neighbor,” Israel, are similarly well known. It began, of course, in 1948 with the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. Resisters were murdered or turned into refugees. Over the subsequent 61 years, the settler state has expanded its borders with the brute force of soldiers, tanks and bulldozers. United States taxpayers have picked up much of the tab for these “settlements.” (It is estimated that U.S. aid to Israel from 1949 to 2000 was close to $100 billion. In fiscal year 2003 Israel received a foreign military financing grant of $3.1 billion and a $600 million grant for economic security in addition to $11 billion in commercial loan guarantees. This total aid package of nearly $15 billion makes Israel by far the largest single recipient of U.S. aid.)
