There are over a million people living in the Gaza Strip, the smaller land area in the corner of Israel’s southwestern coast. Their lives are an unmitigated hell, and made bitter as gall by the Israeli occupiers and the Americans, Europeans and Egyptians who support them. They have been punished as a people for voting for Hamas in their last parliamentary election, over the Palestinian Authority. They have endured not just the crippling occupation, but a mean and small-minded blockade that has driven their economy into the dust. They’re being punished for practicing democracy.
The Israeli commando attack on peaceful protesters in the recent Freedom Flotilla is the latest demonstration of a paranoid state that sees enemies everywhere and treats them as such. The U.S., for sheer domestic political reasons, is an enabler that can’t say no to anything Israel wants to do. They have turned their lands, homes, schools and public institutions into prisons that one day will explode where least expected. From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
