Back in October, Anti-Racist Action, together with almost 100 Wayne State students, confronted racist Israel supporter Daniel Pipes when he visited our university. We let Pipes know he wasn’t welcome on our campus, and it is a lesson he won’t soon forget.
One reason we opposed Pipes was his support for cutting off basic necessities to the Gaza Strip. He has expressed support for such proposals at least twice, once over six years ago and again in September 2007. In the past week, Israel has implemented just such a policy. Electronic Intifada summarized these measures and their implications in an article today: “That means no movement in or out of the Gaza Strip for people, or any kind of shipments in of vital food, fuel supplies and medicines. It is more than a miserable existence: it is a slow death.”
While Pipes and Israel assert that these measures have been taken as punishment for rocket attacks on Israel, their true purpose was revealed today, as 350,000 Gazans fled into Egypt following the bombing of the separation wall in southern Gaza. The purpose of this collective punishment is to make the Gaza Strip unlivable, to bring about the “slow death” of Gazans or force them off the land. WITH THE RECENT LOSS OF ALMOST 25% OF THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE GAZA STRIP, THE ZIONIST DREAM OF A JEWISH STATE IN ALL HISTORIC PALESTINE HAS COME CLOSER TO REALITY.
Today must be remembered as yet another Nakba in the series of Nakbas that constitute the story of the indigenous people of Palestine since the arrival at the turn of the 20th century of Zionists bent on establishing their state.
These newest refugees of Israeli terrorism must be allowed to return to Gaza, as all Palestinian refugees of this conflict must be allowed to return to Palestine. The Jewish nature of Israel must be opposed, and apartheid must be destroyed so that peace may finally come to the region.
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