7 Facts You Have To Know About Gaza

7 Facts You Have To Know About Gaza • Menzene.com

By Raoof Zubair

Since the last few  weeks we have been hearing a lot about Gaza and particularly related to the atrocities that are being committed by the Israeli Defense Force on unarmed civilians in the region. Many have been voicing out their concern  and held numerous protests across the globe against the Israeli attacks on Gaza. But do you really know exactly what is Gaza like? Read on to know a bit more about this place that has been in the news for quite some time now.

1. Size of Gaza

Gaza is located on the  Banks of the Mediterranean sea and is only 45 km (25 miles) long and at most 10 km (6 miles) wide. It borders Egypt to it south-west and Israel to its north and east. It is separated from the other part of Palestine known as the West Bank with Israel in between.

2. Population 

1.5 Million People live in Gaza, half of whom are under the age of 14. A sizable population of adults remain unemployed around 35%.The population density is 20000 people per square mile, one of the highest in the world. The annual growth rate of the population is 3.5%. It is projected that by the end of 2017 its population will be 2 Million.

75% of the population in Gaza are refugees who were forced out of their original homeland in modern day Israel during the 1948 and 1967 wars. Their decedents have permanently been barred from returning to their homeland. According to Humanitarian Aid groups average income in Gaza is less than $2 per day and nearly 80% of the Gazzans survive on food aid.

3.Governance

Egypt controlled Gaza until 1967, when Israel occupied it (along with the West Bank) in the Six Day War. From then onwards Israel governed the region till 2005. Following which it withdrew away from Gaza, but still controls Gaza’s air space and maritime access. Israel even control’s the entire region’s border crossings except the Rafa crossing which is controlled by Egypt. All flow of goods into and outside Gaza are still controlled by Israel that includes basic necessitates such as food, electricity, water, fuel and humanitarian aid.

4. Hamas was democratically elected

Pushed by the George W. Bush administration, the Palestinian Authority held popular elections across the West Bank and Gaza for the Palestinian legislature in 2006. Hamas won a slight majority  and is governing the region ever since.

5. Fishing limits

Since Israel controls Gaza’s maritime the Palestinian fishermen are allowed to fish only within 3 nautical miles (5.5 Km) from the sea coast.

6. No go zone on the Israeli border

The Israeli Defense force maintains a 1 Km buffer zone or no go zone inside Gaza all along the entire Israeli-Gaza Border. The border also includes high-tech observation posts which have a biometric scanner and can track records of people that come near the buffer zone. There have been few reports of some Palestinians being killed once they are in the buffer zone.

7. Tunnels in Gaza are important

The tunnels in Gaza are excessively important as they serve as a lifeline for this tiny strip of desert land. These tunnels carry basic necessities and humanitarian aid  into Gaza. Majority of the tunnels run into Egypt.

Let My People Go

On August 9th, 2014 a rally supporting the people in Gaza took place at Columbus Circle in NYC. The rally lasted for 2 hours which was followed by a march to the United Nations.

This is that special speech that Chris Hedges wanted to deliver that day. He talked about the historical and religious background to what is the re-occurring violence in the area that the Israelis and Palestinians presently live in.

      Chris Hedges, Gaza Rally in NYC: God's Covenant in the Promised Land



God’s covenant in the Promised Land was not made with those who pilot F-16 fighter jets that drop 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs over the concrete hovels of Gaza. It was not made with those operating Apache or Cobra attack helicopters that unleash lethal fire over crowded refugee camps. It was not made with drone operators that clinically kill children ... outside mosques. It was not made with M-60 tank units and artillery crews that murder families huddled in terror in their homes. It was not made with those on gunboats that slaughter boys playing on a beach. It was not made with those that fire Sidewinder missiles and drop 250-pound “smart bombs” on apartment blocks. It was not made with snipers from the Golani Brigade that gun down unarmed men and women for sport. It was not made with occupiers that reduce an entire people to a starvation diet—indeed count the calories to keep them barely alive—or to those who use words like “mowing the lawn” to justify the indiscriminant slaughter of innocents.

God’s covenant in the Promised Land was not made with politicians—including every member of the U.S. Senate—that mouth words for peace and perpetuate war, that call for justice and perpetuate injustice, that refuse to stand up for the rule of law and the right of a captive people to be free.

God’s covenant in the Promised Land was not made, finally, with any race or religion. It was not made with the Jews. It was not made with the Muslims. It was not made with the Christians. God’s covenant—in the Bible and the Koran—was made with the righteous. When Ibrahim asked in the holy Koran if the covenant could be inherited, he was told bluntly: “My covenant is not given to oppressors.” And God’s iron requirement to stand with the oppressed occurs as well in the Hebrew and Greek bibles. Those who turn away from righteousness—be they Jew, Christian or Muslim—violate that covenant. They are not God’s people.

God’s covenant is made with those who love mercy and do justice, with those who care for the stranger, the orphan and the widow, with those who frustrate the ways of the wicked, with those who bring good news to the oppressed, who bind up the brokenhearted, who proclaim liberty to the captives and release to all those in prison, including those imprisoned in Gaza. God’s covenant is with those men and women—Jews, Christians and Muslims, believers and nonbelievers—who say, “Let my people go, oppressed so hard they could not stand. Let my people go.” And God calls these people oaks of righteousness. And they are God’s people.

Why does God weep in the Promised Land?

God weeps because families, huddled in terror in their homes, are dismembered and killed by Israeli bombs. God weeps because mothers howl in grief over the bodies of their children in U.N. schools hit by Israeli shells. God weeps because the old and disabled, who could not flee the deadly Israeli advance, died helpless and afraid. God weeps because the powerful, here and in Israel, lie and dissemble to justify murder. And God weeps for all those who stand by and do nothing.

God weeps because the assault on Gaza is not about Israel’s right to self-defense or about removing Hamas from power. It is not about achieving peace. God weeps because the assault on Gaza is about the decades-long campaign to destroy and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their land. God weeps because Israel is constructing squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos where life for Palestinians is barely sustainable. God weeps because Israel restricts or shuts off movement, food, medicine and goods to accentuate the human misery. God weeps because Israel has turned Gaza, now largely without power, running water and sewage [systems], into a vast gulag.

God weeps because the failure to condemn Israeli war crimes by our political establishment and our compliant media betrays the memory of those killed in other genocides, from the Holocaust to Cambodia to Rwanda to Bosnia. God weeps because we have failed to learn the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which is not that Jews are unique or eternal victims, but that when you have the capacity to stop genocide, and you do not, you are culpable. And we [Americans], who provide 95 percent of Israel’s weapons, are very culpable.

All tyrants fall under the weight of their own depravity. Justice does come. The captives are set free. There will be a day when the instruments of war will no longer leave our shores to be delivered into the hands of killers. Not one bullet. And those who have broken God’s covenant will feel the blast of justice, the fury of the righteous who will rise up on behalf of the oppressed.

Peace in the Promised Land is in our hands. It will not come from politicians here or in Jerusalem. It will not come from courts of law. It will not come from international bodies.

Peace in the Promised Land will come when those who love mercy and do justice build a sustained mass movement—as we did against the apartheid regime in South Africa—week after week, month after month, year after year until the captives are set free. Peace in the Promised Land will come when we force, through boycotts, divestments and sanctions, the powerful to end the blockade of Gaza and deny the instruments of death to Israel. But it is up to us. We are all that stands between the Palestinians and obliteration.

The road to justice will be long and hard. It will require sacrifice, including personal sacrifice. Those who worship power cling furiously to it. And they will use that power against us. Our names will be reviled. Our voices will be marginalized. Our motives will be impugned. Our character will be assaulted. Our bodies will be taxed. We will be jailed. And we will know frustration and despair.

The road to justice will be long and hard. But there is no turning back, for we are no longer driven by a vision of suffering but possessed by it. We hear the cries from Gaza. We carry these cries within us. We will not rest until there is a balm to anoint the afflicted. We will not rest until there is comfort and justice for the oppressed. We will not rest until the children of Gaza have their childhood returned to them. We will not rest until the people of Gaza, no longer imprisoned, live in a free and independent Palestine.

Let my people go,Oppress’d so hard they could not stand, Let my People go.Go down, Moses,Way down in Egypt’s land,Tell old Pharaoh,Let my people go.

We Are Gaza. Look Into Our Eyes.

                We Are Gaza. Look Into Our Eyes.


Published on Aug 8, 2014
(watch the full interview with Kash here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KL57...)

White

White phosphorus burning meat off the civilian bones, burning the single moms hopes of peace, chemical gas greeting the dusty morning sunshine, shelling orchestrating a symphony of death, breath by breath, the long forgotten dream of survival awakens the nightmare of Israel’s arrival, Airstrikes, ground invasion, the rape and theft of an entire nation,

Media, money, and mendacity corroding the remains of a heart sold to the musings of Zionist colonial congregation, the truth locked behind the delusion of defense, the a victimizing story lying about Zionist glory….

return the military funding and start the next chapter of your story, the blood NEVER washes off but your comatose conscience will greet the beauty of compassion as the scars of a killer begin to close with vigor, you’ll soon walk upright evolving in the gaza sunlight

The chemicals in the water can’t be prayed away, Zionism is here to stay

White mobs in the streets, chanting death to peace, leave the defenseless Palestinians deceased, burn the olive trees, drain the pipes of hope and wash away the resistance in the streets, cut the electric lines, poison in the food supply, divide the dirt from the earth to the sky, go to sleep Miley Cyrus has a new song, the newest Iphone will sing you songs all day long, the lullaby that takes a lifetime too long,
just stay passive don’t speak of JUSTICE until dust from bombs dropped on Gaza sits

White cloth covers the corpse of a comrade called Mohammed Hussein Saeed Abu Khudair, at 16 occupying the cemetery the creation of a corrupt colonial congregation, could’ve called him my cousin, the white cloth covers his future contributions, cowards pumped gasoline in the blood stream to light his soft skin, pumped adrenaline in the veins to ensure he’s conscious and awake, while the fire on the flesh forces his fate, the smell of skin burning, the sand storm of bombs dropped on the beaches, flesh wounds, butchered pieces

Well….

Take a long look in our eyes, we are the insect in your ears, the rust upon your gears, the resistance you fear, the faith you smear, the justice you want to disappear

We are the Palestinian mothers who continue to send their children to school amidst gunfire, children they gave birth to behind a checkpoint, take a long look

We are the shame on the face of a Zionist at the point of realization, the crux of courage to refute the support of a gangster nation, take a long look

We are the tears of a father holding his mangled child in a hospital about to be set to the fire, take a long look

We are the soldier turning against his battalion, the drone operator turned freedom fighter, take a long look

We are the world knocking at your front door come outside and face the bombs you fight for, the guns your taxes afford, the death your cheering citizens SALIVATE for,

So take a long long look into our eyes, justice is frozen in time, FREE FREE PALESTINE!!

by Khashayar Nikazmrad