Feeding the caged animals

On August 21st 2007, NZZ writes about the total blockade of Gaza from our Jewish friends. One point that seldom breaks news, is that the blockade also helps Jewish companies. The Pepsi bottling plant in Gaza can’t buy any carbon dioxide and had to shut down. Not just did Mohammed Yazegi, director of that plant, have to send home 250 workers, but also he loses market shares to Coca-Cola which still can be imported from Israel.

Mohammed Almi, owner of Future Tech in Gaza, says „Israel wants to controll our market and a total blockade is the best way to ruin the Palestinian competition. Some businessmen had to flee to prison because they feared revenge of their creditors because no business means no paying of debts.

UN says 1600 containers heading for Gaza are being held in Israeli storage costing around 80 dollars a day. 2500 workers have lost their jobs because Israel does not allow building materials into Gaza, 25'000 workers have lost their jobs because 600 textile and cloth factories can’t export, clothes worth over 12 million dollar are ready to be exported but are not allowed to leave the Strip.

You may attack me if I use Jewish and Israeli synonymic. I do make a difference in Switzeralnd or outside of Israel. But I feel wrong, when I say that this is the mistake of the Israelis, because with that I include the Christians and Muslims Israelis who don’t support the politics of the Jewish majority.

You may also attack me you think there is no difference between what I say and what Jean Ziegler says. I do believe, there still is. I do not hate the Jews, not even the Israeli Jews, but I think that a lot of them don’t see the reality or don’t want to.

I am not saying that the Israeli Jews are the SS of today. But I do strongly believe that the Israeli Jews have lost the right to criticise the Germans of WWII not directly involved in the Holocaust because as those Germans were to some extent were involved in the Holocaust, they are responsable for the suffering of the Palestinian people today.

Two reports about Israel/Palestine in NZZ of 2007.08.22

The occupation of Palestine by Jews is theme of two articles in today’s NZZ. The first is about the situation in Gaza’s hospitals. Fatah demands, that all medical workers in Gaza’s hospitals only work during the morning, or they will not get paid. Needless to say, that this kills Palestinians. One more reason to hate Fatah.

And the Israeli have stopped shipment of fuel to Gaza for several days therefore leaving the hospitals partly without electricity. This because the EU stopped payments but also because Israel still withholds millions worth of tax dollars they are obliged to pay to the Palestinian authorities. The article is a bit out of date because deliveries of fuel have restarted. But still spare parts for machines are withheld.

The chief surgeon says that Hamas is not corrupt as Fatah was, but replaces the old leaders with their own people. I don’t know, but perhaps they were replaced, because they were corrupt.

On the other hand Scort for Peace, for Aid, for Development, organized soccer training in Israel between Israelis and Palestinians. On the second day, of the 14 boys from Jericho, only two were allowed to enter Israel. The rest was sent back at Israeli road blocks. It is unfair just to blame the Israelis. In Fatah-controlled West Bank, a soccer tournament was named after Ziyad Daas, a Fatah-member who in 2002 killed 6 people and maimed 35 at a Bar Mizwa.

Israel has a refugee-problem

Yeah, you might say, there are the Jews, who fled/came to Israel and the Palestinians who fled during the different wars.

But now they have a third refugee-problem with people from Sudan. About 200 Sudanese have fled, crossing the Egyptian-Israeli border. About one Million refugees from Sudan live in difficult condition in Egypt.

Some were killed by the Egyptian army, some clubbed to death. In December 2006, at least 27 Sudanese were killed by Egyptian police trying to brake up a demonstration near the U.N.'s refugee agency office in Cairo.

Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, the Jewish state's Holocaust museum and memorial, recently wrote to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert urging Israel to "show solidarity" with the Sudanese refugees and help find a solution.

Most of the 200 Sudanese are held in jails. Israel wants to be an ethnic-clean Jewish state, also a democracy and has no need for further presumably uneducated Sudanese.

And beside the first point, we in Europe have the same problem. The unemployment rate of uneducated is already high enough. Those jobs we had have long ago been transferred to China.

If Israel gives them the right to stay, thousands more would try to cross the border. And if the ties between Egypt and Israel were worse, the Egyptians just could look the other way. Israel needs Egypt as much as we need Libya.

I believe, that we should stop the right for asylum as it is impossible to grant it to all those that come to our doors and we deny it for some reasons. And we should send those back, which manage to come here. If they don't say from where they come, we should send them back to where we think they came from.

On the other hand I would grant the right to stay to following groups:

A) Workers and their families for jobs which we can't find anyone in Switzerland or the EU.

B) People which were persecuted, because either they were for democratic changes or free speech (not because of religion and not if they were part of an antidemocratic, say Islamic, movement).

C) A contingent of people from around the world, as the Green Card Lottery in the US.

D) A contingent of people from war-zones. Families with young children preferred.

Israel deliveres arms to Fatah

Today the NZZ had a very good article about the Gaza Strip and about its future. As you should know, Hamas won the election, Fatah lost, mostly due to its corruption and failure to aid the Palestinian cause. Israel boycotted Hamas, delivered and delivers weapons to Fatah, which of course only strengthens the voices, that Fatah is a kind of Kapo, who help Israel steal more land from the Palestinians. I think, as the acts of the Israelis have turned Gaza Strip and the West Bank in a big prison or Ghetto, Fatah should be renamed to something more suitable, showing their submissive attitude towards the Israeli occupiers.

Fatah might win the next elections, at least in the West Bank, possibly also in the Gaza Strip. But I do also think, that we have shown the Palestinian people, that Democracy is something we in the West talk about, but do not respect. The Palestinian people will find out, that Fatah has no interest in the wellbeing of the ordinary people, but only in its own survival.

And the Muslim world, one again, sees our double standard (which they have themselves too) regarding Democracy and recognition (we still talk, trade, etc. with the Jewish State, even though we know, they are one on the largest Human Rights Violators worldwide. Of course, the last point also goes with every other Muslim country, in which I wouldn’t want to live either.)