Grassroots International

Since returning from Gaza where I went on a Grassroots International program trip that coincided with the International Women's Delegation co-sponsored by Code Pink, Grassroots International and others, I am finding it very difficult to write.  I sit at night staring blankly at my more than a hundred pages of notes and find the personal testimonies from the War too horrific to have actually happened or to exist between the pages of my beat-up notebooks.  I spend hours sorting through thousands of photographs and stop every now and then to remind myself that the images are part of my recent experience and responsibility now and not some archives from Sabra or Shatila or Jenin or Beirut that somehow made their way onto my hard drive.   

All morning I have been talking to people in Gaza City while they were helplessly watching the United Nations headquarters and millions of dollars of much needed food and medicine go up in flames.  The UN plays a critical role in Gaza as it is the primary vehicle for feeding more than 80% of Gaza's 1.5 million people who depend on food aid.  A UN distribution coordinator in Gaza City explained to me that they had allocated scant reserves in three supply warehouses in Gaza City, Karni, and Rafah.  All three have been incapacitated by Israeli attacks.      

B'Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) has joined eight other prominent Israeli Human Rights organizations in calling on their government to put an end to their actions in Gaza.  B'Tselem is Hebrew for "in the image of" and used as a synonym for human dignity.  Since 1989, they have worked tirelessly to educate the Israeli public and policymakers on the reality of human rights violations in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.  Today-as the death toll in Gaza has just passed 1,000-B'Tselem's voice is needed more than ever to bring an end to the violence. 

Yesterday, I was on the phone with a friend in Gaza when we were cut off by a loud noise.  When I reached her a few minutes later, she politely apologized for the interruption, explaining that a missile had just hit a target next to her apartment building for the sixth time that day.  "It's already totally flattened," she said, "I don't know what more they want."