I AM A JEW (Part V - Gaza Is A Huge Prison)

As the title shows this is the fifth part of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the titles: "I AM A JEW (Part I)," "I AM A JEW (Part II)," "I AM A JEW (Part III)," "I AM A JEW (Special Bulletin)" and "I AM A JEW (Part IV - The Torah & The Talmud)."

And so I refer back to Part I of the series where I wrote in its seventh paragraph:

Every time I see some prominent person, who I never knew was Jewish, described as Jewish I swell with pride. Sometimes I exclaim, “Is everybody Jewish?” Most recently I felt that way when Lauren Bacall died. I never knew she too was Jewish.

I come back to that paragraph because Joan Rivers died recently, and I found out as a result that she too was Jewish as was set forth in the New York Times obituary.

But what also strikes me as I find out that these prominent people were Jewish is that they never seem to have Jewish names. That is because they hardly ever used their real names, which did sound Jewish. According to ABC News:

Joan Rivers Was Not Her Given Name: The comedian was born Joan Molinsky, but at the behest of her agent, Tony Rivers, she adopted a stage name. On a whim, she chose "Joan Rivers," just because it felt right. (and of course it didn’t sound Jewish)

Ditto for Lauren Bacall who I mentioned in Part I of this series. She too changed her name to avoid it being obvious that they were born Jewish. As biography.com advises us:

Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924 to a working-class family in New York City. Her father, William, was an alcoholic who left the family when Bacall was six; Bacall and her mother later changed their last name to her grandmother's maiden name, Bacal, and added the second "l."

There were so many others who changed their names to hide their Jewishness. See here. Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky, Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch, Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler and Mike Wallace’s family's surname was originally Wallik. The famed conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas, while born as Thomas, is the grandson of noted Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, who performed in the Yiddish Theater District in Manhattan.

I could go on and on, but the importance of this is that they changed their names because of the prevalence of anti-Semitism in the U.S.A.

Jews know a lot about the treatment of peoples because of their ethnicity. 

That is one reason why I am so appalled about the treatment of Palestinians by the Jewish state, Israel, and even more appalled at its attempt to avoid criticism by calling all criticism of its apartheid policies by non-Jews as anti-Semitism and by Jews as self hatred. I use the term ‘apartheid policies” knowing full well that Jimmy Carter was subjected to great abuse for using that term in relation to Israel’s policies. But the term, I have concluded is appropriate. 

Let me assure my readers that I, the author of these articles on Israel, am neither an anti-Semite nor a self-hating Jew. 

But the policies of Israel, which have very cleverly been covered up, are appalling.

I have written about some of the abuses, but I never realized just how bad they were until I started the research for this series.

Let me say at the outset that I am not naïve about Hamas. Their charter makes for very disturbing reading. See here. My biggest objection to Hamas is not that they have the avowed desire never to recognize Israel, because in my view that is nothing more than a bargaining position. They, I believe, will recognize Israel when Israel recognizes a Palestinian state within a viable and contiguous landmass. It is their fundamentalist views that give me pause. I have difficulty with the fundamentalist views of that segment of American Christianity, (which I might add are the strongest supporters of Israel) which holds fundamentalist views, and those of the fundamentalist Muslims scare me even more. 

Here is what the charter of Hamas says about the P.L.O.:

…the PLO has adopted the idea of a Secular State, and so we think of it. Secular thought is diametrically opposed to religious thought. Thought is the basis for positions, for modes of conduct and for resolutions. Therefore, in spite of our appreciation for the PLO and its possible transformation in the future, and despite the fact that we do not denigrate its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we cannot substitute it for the Islamic nature of Palestine by adopting secular thought.

But to me that is the more reason to strengthen the P.L.O., and what better way to strengthen it then to successfully bring a free Palestine into being under the auspices of the P.L.O.

But I am digressing from the main topic of this commentary, which is that:

                                      Gaza Is A Huge Prison.

This was brought home to me by an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that appeared under the headline: Gazans demand right of passage to West Bank See here*: 

I cannot improve upon the language of the article and accordingly quote a portion:

Of the 1.8 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, only a few thousand are permitted to apply for an Israeli exit permit allowing them to leave Gaza through the Erez checkpoint. If their declared destination is the West Bank, they are also required to get a sort of Israeli “tourist visa” for the West Bank. The situation is similar to that of a resident of Yeruham or Arad being permitted to visit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem only if he’s obtained a special internal visa. The permit has been dubbed the “checkpoints visa” – and is shown to soldiers so they do not order the Gazan ID-holder’s deportation to Gaza….

And quoting from the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories:

As of November 2007, any resident of Gaza who is in the West Bank must hold a ‘permit to stay in Judea and Samaria,’ and the permit is intended for that purpose only.

And continuing to quote from the Haaretz article:

The visa for Gazans visiting the West Bank is yet another logical step in the bureaucratic evolution of restrictions on movement that Israel has imposed on the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip.

Here are a few of the major chapters in this campaign: Since 2005 (“disengagement”), there has been a sharp decline in the number of Palestinians, as well as in the categories of Palestinians, whom Israel permits to leave Gaza via the Erez checkpoint for the West Bank.

Since the early 2000s, Gazans in the West Bank whose date of return in their permit to cross Israel has expired have been declared “illegal visitors” in the West Bank. Since 1997, residents of the Gaza Strip have been forbidden to enter the West Bank via the Allenby Bridge crossing. Since the early 1990s, Palestinians have only been permitted to leave the Gaza Strip (or the West Bank) with an Israeli permit (a restriction that did not exist in the 1970s and 1980s).

Let me say that I was shocked when I read this, and I hope that readers of this post will, I trust, be equally shocked.

I was, of course aware that Israel had a blockade of Gaza that prevented all supplies to be imported into Gaza including construction materials, foodstuffs, etc. It was the cause of the rift between Turkey and Israel. Before then Turkey had widely been described as being Israel’s closest friend in the Muslim world. NPR put it this way:

Just four years ago, Turkey was considered one of Israel's closest allies in the region. The two countries staged regular joint military training exercises and had an open line of communication among the various divisions of their armed forces.

But after Turkey tried to bring needed foodstuff into Gaza and I quote again from the NPR article:

The Turkish-registered ship Marmara was the target of the Israeli commando raid that left nine people dead and dozens more wounded. Eight of those killed were Turkish nationals; a ninth had dual U.S.-Turkish citizenship. Fury over their deaths has led to the biggest crisis in Israeli-Turkey relations in years. (Ibid) 

But the blockade doesn’t just stop imports, making Gaza entirely dependent on Israel for its needs, it blocks even Gazan fisherman, from going far enough out from their shores to allow for fishing in the most productive areas. After the recent end of hostilities between Israel and Gaza, Gaza won some concessions from Israel on this point, or as Newsweek put it:

Some of the biggest cheer was among Gaza's fishermen, who were able to sail six miles offshore to cast their nets rather than the usual three, even as Israeli patrol boats kept watch, allowing them to return with full catches.

I understand perfectly well that Israel defends all these measures as necessary for its security, but security cannot justify collective punishment, including children, nor the mass deprivation of the most basic human rights to people of another ethnicity and religion.

I have a lot more to write on this subject and I ask the reader to be patient. The subject is worth my time and, I believe, the reader’s as well.

*For those who may try to access the Haaretz articles and find themselves blocked because they are not subscribers, I suggest putting the headline into Google. This usually brings the article up in full without regard to any subscription. But if it doesn’t work, I will supply a copy of the article upon request.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any until this series is complete.