Ίσως λίγοι γνωρίζουν ότι μια από τις γυναίκες που πήραν στα χέρια τους το εγχείρημα για σπάσιμο του αποκλεισμού της Γάζας είναι Leigh-Ann Naidoo η αγωνίστρια αθλήτρια της ομάδας Βόλεϊ της Νότιας Αφρικής που μετείχε στους Ολυμπιακούς αγώνες της Αθήνας.
Η Leigh-Ann Naidoo ήταν πρώτη πρέσβειρα της Νότιας Αφρικής, μετά την ανατροπή του εκεί ρατσιστικού καθεστώτος, στους Gay Games που είχαν διεξαχθεί στο Chicago τον Ιούλιο του 2006.
Η Leugh-Ann Naidoo πριν ξεκινήσει το ταξίδι της προς την αποκλεισμένη Γάζα έλαβε μια επιστολή από τον αγωνιστή πατέρα της που αγωνιζόταν μέσα και έξω από τις φυλακές του καθεστώτος Απαρτχαίντ, στην οποία της συγχαίρει για την απόφαση της να λάβει μέρος στην αποστολή αυτή και την καλεί να συνεχίζει να αγωνίζεται μέχρι να πέσει και στην Παλαιστίνη το ρατσιστικό σιωνιστικό καθεστώς και να στηρίζει ανοιχτά τον λαό της Παλαιστίνης και την Αντίσταση του κατά της κατοχής και του σιωνισμού.
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(…)So I received this email from my dad who is often too busy helping people, running popular education workshops, training Union shop stewards, speaking to anyone who will listen about the state of the world and the need for all of us to get involved in changing the unjust system, to write. I texted him a few days ago and asked him to write something for me reflecting on his 41 day hunger strike in 1981.
He was lecturing me recently about the Palestinian hunger strikes. So he sent me what follows. He hasn’t as far as I know written about the torture and hunger strike he endured. Many people have had the pleasure of my dad lecturing them to get involved. Here is what he wrote me to read before I leave tomorrow – A Call for Solidarity.
Many of us stand by and watch as the Zionist occupation in Palestine continues violating every basic human right through their modern day fascist state, beginning to rival Hitler’s Germany.
The courage and commitment of Palestinian liberation fighter’s ongoing resistance against all odds within this huge Apartheid prison called Israel is indeed an inspiration and a lesson in struggle for all revolutionaries and freedom fighters worldwide.
Revolutionaries like Bobby Sands (66 day hunger strike) have demonstrated that even under the most hopeless situations of imprisonment, the last option to resist and win is usually the hunger strike. The hunger strike by imprisoned Palestinians today brings back vivid memories of my own personal experience (41days) of this under Section Six of the Terrorism Act in South Africa.
Continuous interrogation, solitary confinement and an accumulation of human rights abuses make the necessary ingredients for prisoners to choose a dangerous path of resistance. A choice to inflict personal damage on themselves as a political statement, sometimes a last stand for justice. Whilst the international community supports the Tokyo Declaration, a very limited agreement related to the hunger strike, more is required. We need collective action from all of us not only to expose inhuman treatment of prisoners but to support the just liberation struggles internationally.
Barbarism in the 21st Century
Gaza, is now a modern day concentration camp and for many, has begun to rival similar such inhumane practices world -wide. The first known experiment in conscious human extermination through concentration camps were carried out in southern Africa. In Namibia, Snake Island represented the location where over 3000 women and children were dumped over time on an isolated island to die. This killing through starving people to death was only one of the steps in the process of killing thousands of Nama people by their German colonisers. The cost of these genocides was comparatively inexpensive to the modern day one’s, as the prison walls in this case became the icy Atlantic Ocean.
The next hideous example of the concentration camps manifested itself during the Anglo-Boer war by English colonisers in the early 1900’s. Once again, large number of indigenous South Africans with over 100 thousand Boers (Afrikaners) were imprisoned in concentration camps and died in their thousand although in separate camps. The same Afrikaners who suffered such outrage decades later constructed a crime against humanity called Apartheid. It appears that Jews persecuted under Nazi Germany led by Hitler who had perfected a more systematic extermination of Jews using large concentration camps and finding the most vicious and dehumanising modes of killing.
It is ironic, that theses hideous camps that Hitler used against Jews to exterminate millions of their families in Germany is adapted today by Israel. Zionists today even try to justify repeating similar camp atrocities against Palestinians in the 21st century.
This must represent the most sophisticated form of concentration camps, judging by not only the international world’s tolerance but the ongoing military support of U.S.A. The shooting of children, bombings and blockades coupled with land dispossession at the same time, probably represents some of the most barbaric and inhuman actions in modern history. The most shocking aspect is that Zionist Israel continues to break every international convention with impunity with a deadly international silence being the usual response.
International Solidarity Action can Break the Blockade
This is the context that has given rise to some of the most desperate forms of resistance including suicide bombing and the recent hunger strikes. The recent hunger strike demonstrates prisoner’s valiant effort to expose Israeli occupation and its fascist type application of detention laws. While the recent hunger strike might be over the struggle continues. In my own experience of assurances given by the regime to stop my 41 day hunger strike eventually were betrayed and never honoured. This is the most probable reaction.
If Gaza is undoubtedly the weak link in the Zionist plan then it is maximum security section of this large concentration camp called Israel.
The free movement of capital today represents the very antithesis of Palestinian’s ability to move. Egypt’s collaboration with Israel to enforce the Gaza blockade is indeed an act of betrayal. This explains why attempts to break the blockade will be met with extreme violence. This should serve to motivate collective and creative action to support the
Palestinian freedom fight. {THANKS DAD}
facebook.com/leighann.naidoo.5
Lefteria 