Why flotilla was not a ‘non-event’
IN A LETTER on October 13, Rolene Marks takes issue with the coverage received by the Zaytouna-Oliva, arguing that something of a “non-event” has “dominated the South African headlines”.
According to Marks, the story is unworthy because “no shots were fired, nobody was harmed. Nobody was manhandled”.
Her characterisation of this “non-event” is supported by an “official” IDF quote and unsurprisingly reflects the Zionist response: that the flotilla is a specious attempt by pseudo-activists to break what is not really a siege of a population.
Marks’s criticism moves, predictably, from criticising the journalists who covered so unworthy a story to disparaging the activists and caricaturing Palestinian society as in: “They (the women) live as second-class citizens and are denied the many rights their male counterparts enjoy, provided, of course, that they are Hamas-supporting, fully heterosexual, Allah-fearing and don’t complain.”
This absurd portrayal of a cowed female populace is belied by the many courageous women of Gaza like Madeleine Kulab who took to the sea at the age of 13, after her father, disabled by palsy, was no longer able to fish or Mariam Albutewi, a computer-engineering graduate, who founded Wasselni, a carpooling network, or Mona Keskin, who works as a neurosurgeon at Shifa Hospital.
It is quite obviously perverse to try to justify oppressive policies leading to further poverty (as does the blockade) by pointing to such attitudes, which are entrenched by the resulting conditions.
There is nothing new in the circular nature of Zionist apology: mistreat a people and then use the inevitable symptoms of such mistreatment in order to justify even harsher and more unjust methods.
No one can pretend that the blockade on Gaza is assisting in the fight for the rights of women.
It is a violation of the fundamental rights of everyone it encompasses and the more vulnerable are always affected worse.
Numerous human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, Save The Children, UN Relief and Works Agency have documented the ongoing and deteriorating humanitarian crisis that it has caused.
These organisations have attributed the high rates of child malnutrition and stunting, as well as inadequate access to water resources, medical care and other essential services, directly to Israel’s blockade.
If the Freedom Flotilla aims at drawing world attention to this crisis, it goes without saying that the Zionist strategy will be to defuse or deflect such attention, claiming it is unwarranted or instructing people to look elsewhere, all ways of allowing the gross injustice to continue.
The mass suffering, deprivation, illness and unemployment caused by the blockade, however, cannot be magicked away by the supercilious tone of apartheid apologists so let’s not allow their dismissive responses to lure us into complacency.
Many courageous women belie absurd portrayal
Bedfordview