Smile Don't Frown

70 people attended the Palestine Solidarity meeting in Worcester last night, which is the biggest turnout we’ve had since Moazzam Begg a couple of years ago.  

Ebrahim Musaji spoke about his experiences on board the Mavi Marmara on 31^st May when it was attacked by the Israeli military. He told the packed hall that the first person to be killed was a Turkish journalist standing ten metres from him. Ebrahim said that initially the Israelis “shot whoever was taking pictures or filming – they didn’t even board”. He took the body of the Turkish journalist to the middle of the deck, where other bodies were. Ebrahim said that a Turkish charity activist was shot even though he put up a white flag, as did other activists on the boat. A British man, originally from Palestine, was shot in the head, and has survived but with dreadful injuries.

Ebrahim said that the £3.5 million of aid on the ship was taken by the Israelis, as well as phones, laptops, recording equipment, passports and credit cards. He was taken to Israel and interrogated for an hour and told to “watch out for your life”. Ebrahim said that if you support the Palestine cause the Israeli military “will treat you just like they treat the Palestinians”.

Enass al-Bittar, a student at City University in London who grew up in Gaza, told the packed hall that her house was damaged by Israeli bombs that hit other houses nearby, then on another occasion it received a direct hit from an Israeli tank. She also spoke of her experiences at the Gaza-Egypt border, which she said opens once every two months for three days. She and others were kept at the border for two days before being told to return to Gaza. Enass said: “Hope is the only thing Israel can’t take away from us.”

In September a double aid convoy (by bus and boat) will travel to Gaza in another attempt to break the illegal Israeli blockade.

BBC News article on Ebrahim:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/8715373.stm

Flotilla raid Israeli myths debunked:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufZkZIrsKFU

www.freegaza.org
www.palestinecampaign.org

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.