 |
Sun Mar 21 2010
|
|
|
Departments International Issues
Fighting for the right to walk
by Ramzy Baroud
August 27, 2009
Gaza’s troubles have somehow been relegated, if not completely dropped from the mainstream media’s radar, and subsequently the world’s conscience and consciousness. Weaning the public from the sadness there conveys the false impression that things are improving and that people are starting to move on and rebuild their lives.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Since the conclusion of Israel’s war last year, the Palestinian Ministry of Health declared that 344 Gaza patients have reportedly been added to the swelling number of casualties.
Khaled Abed Rabbu, once a young father of four is a precise living example, such an eloquent paradigm of what no human being ought to endure in this world laden with international human rights organizations, mediators, advocates and diplomats.
His house was completely destroyed, as were two of his little girls. He buried 7 year old Soad and Amal, just two, soon after burying any hope that Samar his 4 year old daughter’s future would be any less bleak.
According to an IslamOnline report, Khaled’s wife, Kawthar lined up the children in front of their house in the Jabaliya refugee camp, holding a white flag. But their internationally recognized gesture was disregarded by Israeli forces and the shelling of their home and family commenced. These miserable events unfolded at Christmastime last year, when the Rabbu family was reduced by nearly half.
But since then, they, and a disgracefully large number of other such families, have somehow slipped our minds. Completely surrounded still, and prevented from ever advancing back to point zero, the Israeli siege on Gaza is what one must certainly brand the quintessence of barbarism.
Like in December of 2008, the Israeli blockade means that almost nothing enters or exits Gaza; injured in need of treatment are not allowed exit nor entrance, as is the case with medical supplies, medicine, food and almost anything in-between.
With entire neighborhoods pulverized in the attack, concrete is desperately needed to rebuild the many homes, mosques, hospitals and other structures that were destroyed. That too, is forbidden. And so Khaled, like so many others, has little hope that his home, which has now lain in shambles for the better part of a year, will be restored any time soon.
From September 14 to October 2, 2009, the Human Rights Council will conduct a session where the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights will present its report based on the fact finding mission, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, conducted after the Israeli attacks.
Nearly eight months after the bloodletting of Operation Cast Lead, a 34 page report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was released on August 13, pressing for a lifting of the Gaza blockade. The new report, which will be presented along with Goldstone’s report in September, lays out the many incomprehensible details of how the Israelis battered the Strip, one of the most impoverished and the most densely populated piece of Planet Earth. The details were laid out, chastising Israel for snubbing the most basic norms of human decency:
“Under the Universal Declaration of Human rights, everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country…and everyone has the right to seek asylum. Such calls were ignored, and the borders of the Gaza Strip remained closed throughout the conflict.”
“The right to health of children, set out in article 24 of CRC, is of particular concern in Gaza. United Nations agencies, Ministry of Health officials and health NGOs report that rising poverty, unemployment and food insecurity, compounded by the conflict, have increased the threat of child malnutrition. In January, UNICEF said that 10.3 per cent of Gazan children under five were stunted.”
The report continued on, expressing concern that the only export allowed out of Gaza in nearly two years was 13 large truckloads of cut flowers, fully recognizing that the siege was in direct response to the Gazan people exercising their right to elect the Hamas government.
From the denial of food to medical supplies to housing to clean water to education to any basic sense of what is called the “highest attainable standard of physical and mental health” according to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Israel managed, as the report concluded, to deny pretty much every last one.
One has to wonder, and even after so many years of witnessing such amazing ingenuity when it comes to tormenting the Palestinians, does the Israeli government, and further, does the Israeli public feel any sense of shame, remorse or even the slightest embarrassment when the most basic norms of human behavior must be laid out in so elementary a fashion, reminding, and then re-reminding them that it is a fundamental human right to have access to something as basic as food and clean water?
This is a thought that Khaled must ponder from time to time. It is sure that life has been no cake-walk for Khaled, but perhaps this last year has been the most trying of all. Two little ones lost, homeless, and his third of four children struggling to walk in a Belgium hospital.
Sana, his four year old, was supposedly one of the lucky ones on that day, for she survived, and was one of very few that escaped to safety through Egypt’s sealed border. But she has two bullets lodged in her tiny spine, so deeply embedded that Belgian surgeons cannot remove them. So now she is paralyzed, her body propped up and supported by a vibrant pink and purple back brace, like a fairy’s suit of armor. Chances of ever walking again are grim. Just two or three short years after graduating from a crawl, and now she will most likely be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, even though her doctors and her mother say that she is desperate to walk again.
And so it seems to be the sad case that this exhaustive 34 page report failed to mention, or perhaps it may be until this point that a clause has never been drafted, declaring the universal right for every little girl and boy to walk.
---
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author of several books and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon.
Email this article to a friend
|
|
 | |
Don't forget to check out articles from 2009 and 2010International Issues
"On Gaza drivers, rumors and Egypt’s steel wall" December 31, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"It's the system, stupid: The Ragnarok of globalized corporate capitalism and the rise of the planetarian paradigm " December 30, 2009 James Heddle
"Palestine/Israel: A single state, with liberty and justice for all" December 30, 2009 Susan Abulhawa with Ramzy Baroud
"Obama's rejection speech" December 11, 2009 David Swanson
"Peace movement objects to Peace Prize" December 10, 2009 Michael McPhearson and Josh Brollier
"Afghanistan: What Obama and the US Media Aren't Telling Us" December 4, 2009 Evan Davis
"Columbus Free Press editors Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman speak out against sending more US troops to Afghanistan" December 2, 2009 Tom Over
"Afghanistan: Our 177th Colony" December 1, 2009 David Swanson
"The Meaning Of The Gift-Giving Season, According To Rev. Billy Of The Church Of Life After Shopping" November 28, 2009 Tom Over
"A paradigm shift in Singapore: yet Apec offers no clear answers" November 25, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"Dissidents make noise -- oops, news " November 24, 2009 Saul Landau
"Thai military wants U.S. satellites to hunt Islamist rebels" November 20, 2009 Richard S. Ehrlich
"Globalization unchecked: How alien media is suffocating real culture" November 18, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"Death to no one" November 15, 2009 Bitta Mostofi
"America won't lift sanctions unless Suu Kyi is freed for election" November 15, 2009 Richard S. Ehrlich
"Admiral Mullen announces Afghanistan strategy: prepare to nonviolently resist" November 15, 2009 Jeff Leys, Co-Coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence
"America Appeals to Extradite Russia's Alleged "Merchant of Death"" October 23, 2009 Richard S. Ehrlich
"War, negation and Muslim identity revisited " October 22, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"Obama’s test: democracy or chaos in Latin America" October 12, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"The G-20 Announces the New World Order" October 1, 2009 Michael Collins
"Crucial questions on Afghanistan war" September 2, 2009 Free Press Editorial
"The scapegoat's apology" August 28, 2009 Robert C. Koehler
"Fighting for the right to walk" August 27, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"The heart of the future" July 18, 2009 Robert C. Koehler
"Italy to declare independence from US military" July 8, 2009 David Swanson
"Israel attacks justice boat: kidnaps human rights workers, confiscates medicine, toys and olive trees" June 30, 2009 Greta Berlin
"North Korea: "sanity" at the brink" June 27, 2009 Michael Parenti
"A boy and an artificial leg: a Gaza story" June 11, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"Is anyone speechless?" June 8, 2009 Iqbal Jassat
"Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi is on trial because an American had "A Vision" " June 1, 2009 Richard S. Ehrlich
"Support U.N. Economic Crisis World Conference " May 22, 2009 Ramsey Clark, winner of the 2008 U.N. Human Rights Award
"Gaza disowned: the Pope, Israel and "reconciliation" " May 20, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"Applying the lessons of Nuremburg to the USA in 2009 " May 19, 2009 Paul Lehto, Juris Doctor
"Vets Speak Out! Interview with Rick Reyes" May 17, 2009 Joan Brunwasser, OpEdNews
"Goliath's vulnerability is the truth" May 16, 2009 Robert C. Koehler
"Harvest of suicides" May 11, 2009 Vandana Shiva
"The Hague's International Criminal Court will not put Bush on trial " May 10, 2009 Richard S. Ehrlich
"War without context: Fatah, Hamas and flawed language" May 8, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"CAIR's humanitarian mission to Iran " May 6, 2009 Mahmoud El-Yousseph
"Sixth Nobel Nomination for Leonard Peltier" May 5, 2009 Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee
"The international criminal court and a rogue empire" April 27, 2009 David Swanson
"Wall of fear" April 25, 2009 Robert C. Koehler
"The big strike" April 25, 2009 Dick Meister
"Somali piracy or Somali patriotism? " April 20, 2009 Steven R. Linnabary
"Israel investigated, but will it repent?" April 10, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"Intifada: A third chapter" March 21, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"American protester critically injured by soldiers in Ni'ilin" March 16, 2009 AATW
"Engaging Hamas: Will history repeat itself?" February 28, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"A new Afghanistan nightmare" February 23, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"A new Afghanistan nightmare" February 21, 2009 Ramzy Baroud
"Under siege again, but Gaza will not die" February 12, 2009 Ann Wright, AfterDowningStreet
"The moral dead zone" January 20, 2009 Robert C. Koehler
"Children of Gaza, run to the angels" January 12, 2009 Suzanne Baroud
"Let Gaza live" January 12, 2009 Cynthia McKinney
"Gaza: Plan of Attack" January 1, 2009 Jim Miles
Read Articles by Year: 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000

All content © 1970-2010 The Columbus Free Press Disclaimer |