| THE HANDSTAND | APRIL2011 |
UPDATE:
Vera Macht: Vik, You Are missed
Sunday, April 24, 2011 at 9:08AM
You are missed with such an intensity that makes you even more present. In all of our minds, in all of our hearts. It's your absence that makes your strength, your kindness and your impressive dedication to people and to humanity so incredibly present.
You are missed as a symbol of the struggle for justice, and for the value of each individual, the value of especially those people who seem to have been forgotten.You are missed in this world. Vik, I miss you in my world. I miss you as my best friend, as the one who was always there in the last year, in good and bad times. You once told me I should smile, because my smile would light you. But Vik, it was you who made me laugh. Not only by your great sense of humor, but through your unique way to make the world around you a little brighter, just by being there. Everybody who knew you knows that, even those who met you even just once.
You cast a spell on people, through your charisma, through your personality, through your warmth. The world has become a bit darker without you, and it is also my own little world that has become a bit darker through your absence.
And Gaza of course, which I can’t imagine without you, probably no one here can imagine it without you yet. Your Arabic vocabulary of: Mushkile? Leeesh? Mish Mushkile! Yallah! was completely enough to brighten up the people around you, and to make everyone in Gaza your rafiq and your rafiqa.
And people in Gaza have loved you and appreciated you, you knew that and you would never have thought anything else. We were all touched and overwhelmed by the grief and sympathy your death has caused. A compassion that has helped all of us to overcome our initial shock, I want to heartily thank you all for that.
Adie, my friend and ISM colleague once said, being as ISM in Gaza doesn’t only mean to support the people here, but to be a bit of a Palestinian yourself, and to join carrying the burden for a little way. To not only feel with the pain of others, but to feel for yourself what it means to lose a loved one. Because being Palestinian means losing people you love.Whoever is behind this senseless, cruel murder, he reached exactly the opposite of what he intended. Vik, through your death, we all have become Palestinians. We are more determined than ever. We will go on, and we will continue to fight, in the spirit of your humanity and with the strength and steadfastness of the Palestinians.
Not only because you would have wanted us to, but because we couldn’t do anything else. Not the people out there that you have inspired and woken up, and not us here, being united in the same dream, in the same goal for which we fight: a free Gaza, a free Palestine.
I remember one morning in autumn. The day before had been a black day for Gaza, and so we were all together the whole night, sitting in the ISM office and writing. Vik and I left at dawn. And just as we had walked a few steps, it started to rain. The first rain of the year. And we stood in the middle of the road, feeling the rain pouring down upon us, and laughed, and suddenly it was as if the whole sadness of the last hours was washed away. As if it was a new beginning, in which the world was pure and innocent and full of hope.
I will not grieve because I know that where you went, there was such a morning waiting for you. I will not grieve, in gratitude of having gotten to know you. Because people like you show us that also for our humanity there could be such a morning waiting for us."
?PRESS RELEASE: ISM COMMITTED TO STAYING IN GAZA
ISM GAZA
Following the murder of our comrade and friend Vittorio, we, activists
of the International Solidarity Movement, reiterate our commitment to
remaining in Gaza. We will continue to work with and live among the
Palestinian population as we continue the work to which Vik was so
committed.
In these days of mourning, Palestinians have organized numerous
memorials for Vik; they constantly remind us how sorry they are to
have lost him, of how they loved him, his closeness, his affection,
and his indignation at what is happening here in Gaza. We know that
the group that perpetrated this horrible crime does not in any way
represent Palestinian society. The Palestinians of Gaza are our
friends, our colleagues, and our reason for being here; we will
continue to stand by their side.
As we had done when Vittorio was with us, we will continue to stand
alongside the Palestinian people, we will continue to struggle against
the occupation, we will continue to accompany farmers to their lands
along the border, we will continue to participate in demonstrations,
and we will continue to tell the world what happens here in the Gaza
Strip, Palestine. We think that Vik would agree with Che Guevara when
he said, “Don’t cry for me if I die, do what I was doing and I will
live on in you.” The best way to honor Vik is to continue the work
that he was doing. In particular we will soon begin crewing a boat
whose mission is to monitor the violation of human rights in
Palestinian waters. This boat will have its maiden voyage on April
20: Vik had strongly backed this project and he had enthusiastically
participated in its realization.
Vik has been an inspiration to all of us, we all hope to live up to
his example. In a documentary about him, Vik said he would have liked
to be remembered by Nelson Mandela’s quote; “A victor is merely a
dreamer who never stops dreaming.” Your dreams are our dreams; we
will never forget you, Vik.Buzek on the killing of Vittorio Arrigoni in Gaza
Brussels - Friday, April 15, 2011
Commenting on the death of Vittorio Arrigoni, the President of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek stated:
"I condemn the brutal killing of Vittorio Arrigoni in Gaza in the strongest terms. This murder is vile, cowardly and barbaric.
Arrigoni was in Gaza to try to help Palestinians face their daily hardships; he had left his family and home country to serve people in need. His death is a loss not only to his family and friends, but also to all those Palestinians whom he was trying to assist."
SundayApr172011
I Do Not Believe That A Palestinian Killed Vittorio Arrigoni
We should bear in mind that Israel is horrified by the tidal wave of Palestinian solidarity. It is aware of the 40 countries strong 'breaking the siege Flotilla' that is planned to embark soon.
Israel is desperate to intimidate us all.
But we are determined. We will keep fighting. We will expose Israeli crimes and 'tricks'. We will bring this murderous racist state down.
Vittorio Arrigoni
It is not clear who killed him: I personally think that the various Bin Ladenite kooks and gangs in Gaza are run by Fath/Israel to sabotage Hamas. But Hamas is clearly responsible for the lousy mini-police (non) state that it runs in Gaza. It has been getting more and more repressive and people in Gaza (from the ones who write to me) are so fed up with the Hamas rule. Hamas should at least conduct a quick investigation to find and punish those who are responsible, especially that this is a man who gave his life to Palestine and the Palestinians. I looked up his name in my inbox and saw that the name appears in many emails I have received on Palestinian matters. And please, spare me the crocodile tears of the New York Times: they only put the story on the front page for purely pro-Israeli propaganda purposes and to scare off Western supporters of the Palestinians. Where was the care of the New York Times when the Israeli terrorists killed Rachel Corrie.
salafi-jihadis: nihilists and butchers everywhere
April 15, 2011
You can watch their nasty video here (no embed) : www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiUknDdhwYE – RB
Palestinians call for release of Italian activist kidnapped in Gaza
ISM, April 14 2011Today, our friend and colleague, Vittorio Arrigoni, a journalist and human rights defender working in the Gaza Strip, was kidnapped in Gaza. Vittorio has been active in the Palestine cause for almost 10 years. For the past two and a half years, he has been in Gaza with the International Solidarity Movement, monitoring human rights violations by Israel, supporting the Palestinian popular resistance against the Israeli occupation and disseminating information about the situation in Gaza to his home country of Italy. He was aboard the siege-breaking voyage in 2008 with the Free Gaza Movement and was incarcerated in Israeli prisons several times. He was in Gaza throughout Israel’s brutal assault (Operation Cast Lead), assisting medics and reporting to the world what Israel was doing to the Palestinian people. He has been arrested numerous times by Israeli forces for his participation in Palestinian non-violent resistance in the West Bank and Gaza. His last arrest and deportation from the area was a result of the Israeli confiscation of Palestinian fishing vessels in Gazan territorial waters. Vittorio frequently writes on the issue of Palestine for the Italian newspaper, IL Manifesto and Peacereporter. Additionally, he maintains a popular blog and a Facebook page. Khalil Shaheen, a friend of Vittorio and Head of the Economic and Social Rights Department at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, said:
This is outside of our traditions. We are calling for the immediate release of my best friend. Vittorio Arrigoni is a hero of Palestine. He was available everywhere to support all the poor people, the victims. I’m calling on the local authorities here in Gaza, and all security departments, to do their best to guarantee his safety and immediate release.
Vittorio was granted honorary citizenship for his work on promoting the cause of the Palestinian people. Members of Gazan civil society are demanding his release; tomorrow at 4:00pm there will be a mass demonstration in Jundi Square.
Body of Italian found in Gaza Strip house
Reuters, Apr 15 2011Security officials found the body of an Italian man who had been abducted in the Gaza Strip in an abandoned house on Friday, a Hamas security official said. Two men were arrested and others were being sought. A Jihadist Salafi group in the Gaza Strip aligned with al Qaeda on Thursday had threatened to execute Vittorio Arigoni by 17:00 local time unless their leader, whom Hamas arrested last month, was freed.
Abducted Italian activist found executed in Gaza
Agencies, Apr 15 2011The body of an Italian pro-Palestinian activist was found hanging in the home of a Palestinian militant in the Gaza Strip early Friday, hours after he was reportedly kidnapped. Hamas officials reported that the body of Vittorio Arrigoni, 36, was discovered in the home of a member of the Monotheism and Holy War group that claimed responsibility for the abduction in a video released Thursday. Two suspects have already been arrested, and Hamas claims to be searching a third. The video claiming to show the victim emerged from Gaza on Thursday afternoon, teamed with the extremist group’s demand that Hamas release its leader who was arrested last month. The group threatened to execute the hostage if it demands were not met by Friday afternoon. Huwaida Arraf of the ISM confirmed that the abducted man in the video appeared to be Arrigoni. Later Thursday, Hamas police reportedly stormed a Gaza City apartment and found Arrigoni’s body. In a statement, the Hamas Interior Ministry said the man was killed “in an awful way” shortly after he was abducted at mid-day Thursday. Interior Ministry spokesman Ehab al-Ghussein said the kidnappers had planned from the beginning to kill their victim not to trade him for captives. He also said that a member of the militant group led them to the house. An Italian doctor was reportedly on his way to Gaza from Israel to identify Arrigoni’s body. The video released by the militant group shows a man with a thick black blindfold and a large bruise on his face. Apparently seated, he is held in front of the camera by an unseen person. In a message on the video, the extremist group demanded that Hamas free its leader, arrested in early March, and two other members whose names had not been previously known. Sheikh Abu Walid-al-Maqdasi [sic - RB], the leader of the group, was arrested in a crowded beachside neighborhood of Gaza City last month.
COMMENT :
Vittorio Arrigoni – Eyewitness from Gaza
By Vittorio Arrigoni
6:05 PM, Marna house, Gaza city
An acrid smell of sulphur fills the air while the sky is shaken by earth-shattering rumbles. My ears are now deaf to the explosions while my eyes are all out of tears from all the corpses. I stand in front of Al Shifa hospital, Gaza's main hospital, and we've just received Israel's terrible threat that they intend to bomb its under construction wing. This would be nothing new, as Wea'm hospital was bombed just yesterday, along with a medicine warehouse in Rafah, the Islamic university, which was also destroyed, along with various mosques scattered along the Strip. Not to mention many CIVILIAN structures.
Apparently, they can no longer find "sensible" targets, the air force and the navy is killing time targeting places of worship, schools and hospitals. It's another 9/11 every single hour, every minute around here, and tomorrow is always a new day of mourning, always identical to the previous one. You notice the helicopters and airplanes constantly overhead, you see a flash, but you're already a goner and it's too late to take flight. There are no bunkers against the bombs in the Strip and no place is really safe. I can't contact my friends in Rafah, not even those who live North of Gaza City, hopefully because the phone lines are overloaded. Hopefully. I haven't slept in 60 hours, and same goes for every Gazan.
Yesterday three other ISM members and I spent the entire night at the al Awda hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp. We were there because we were fearing the much dreaded ground raid that never happened. But the Israeli tanks are posted all along the Strip's border, and their corpse-hungry creaks will apparently form a funeral march tonight. Around 11:30 PM a bomb fell about 800 metres from the hospital, the shock wave blow several windows apart, injuring the injured. An ambulance arrived, then they blew up a mosque, thankfully empty at that time. Unfortunately, though it actually has nothing to do with bad luck but with the criminal and terroristic will to massacre civilians, the Israeli bomb has also struck the building adjacent to the mosque, which was also destroyed. We watched as the tiny bodies of six little sisters were pulled out of the rubble – five are dead, one is in life-threatening conditions. They laid the little girls out on the blackened asphalt, and they looked like broken dolls, disposed of as they were no longer usable.
This wasn't a mistake, but a voluntary, and cynical horror. We're at a toll of 320 dead, more than a thousand wounded and, according to a doctor at Shifa, 60% of these are destined to die in the next few hours or days, after a prolonged agony.There are many missing, and for the last two days despairing wives have been searching for their husbands or children in hospitals, often to no avail.
The morgue is a macabre spectacle. A nurse told me that after hours of searching, a Palestinian woman recognised her husband from his amputated hand. All that's left of her husband, and the wedding band on her finger from the eternal love they had sworn one another. Out of a house inhabited by two families, very little has remained of their bodies. They showed their relatives half of one bust and three legs.
Right now, one of our Free Gaza Movement boats is leaving the port in Larnaca, Cyprus. I spoke to my friends on board. They've heroically amassed medicine and steeped it everywhere in the boat. It should reach the port of Gaza tomorrow around 8:00 AM. Here's to hoping that the port will still exist after another night of endless bombing. I'll be in touch with them for the entire night. Please, someone stop this nightmare.
Choosing to remain silent means somehow lending support to the genocide unfolding right now. Shout out your indignation, in every capital of the "civilised" world, in every city, in every square, covering our own screams of pain and terror. A slice of humanity is dying in pitiful in a useless listening.
From Italy to Palestine: Vittorio Arrigoni writes from Gaza
Posted 12 January 2009
Vittorio Arrigoni is an Italian human rights activist who is currently in Gaza, one of a number of activists who arrived with the Free Gaza movement. Vittorio (Vik) blogs at Guerrilla Radio [it], and also writes for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto. His posts vividly describe what the people of Gaza are experiencing right now. In one, a doctor describes the effects of the white phosphorus shells Israel is accused of using: “He said that what was totally inexplicable was the total absence of eyeballs, which even in the case of trauma of that magnitude should stay in place, at least traces of them.”
In a post on January 8, also published at Il Manifesto, Vittorio writes:
“Take some kittens, some soft little pussycats, and put them in a box,” says Jamal, a surgeon at Al Shifa hospital, the main one in Gaza, while a nurse places a couple of cardboard boxes just in front of us, covered with spots of blood. “Seal the box, and with all your weight and your strength jump on it until you hear the bones crack, and the last miaow is choked.” As I stare at the boxes dumbfounded, the doctor continues, “Now try to imagine what would happen immediately after a scenario like that was publicised: the justified outrage of the world, complaints by animal welfare organisations…” The doctor continues his story, and I cannot remove my eyes for a moment from those boxes placed at my feet. “Israel has locked up hundreds of civilians in a school as if in a box, dozens of children, and then crushed it with the full brunt of its bombs. And what were the reactions of the world? Almost nothing. It would have been better to be born animals, rather than Palestinians; we would have been better protected.”
At this point, the doctor bends towards one of the boxes, and opens it in front of me. Inside are mutilated limbs, arms and legs from the knee down or entire femurs, amputated from the injured who had come from the UN Fakhura School in Jabalia, more than 50 victims until now. Pretending I had an urgent phone call, I take my leave of Jamal; in fact, I head to the toilet, double up, and vomit.
Just before that I was engaged in a discussion with Dr Abdel, an ophthalmologist, about the rumours, the uncontrolled reports which for days have been moving up and down the Strip, according to which the Israeli military have been using a hail of non-conventional weapons, prohibited by the Geneva Convention. Cluster bombs and white phosphorus bombs. Exactly the same as the Tsahal [IDF] used in the last war in Lebanon, and U.S. Air Force used in Fallujah, in breach of international laws. In front of Al Awda hospital we witnessed and filmed the use of white phosphorus bombs, about five hundred metres from where we were, too far away to be sure that under the Israeli Apaches there were civilians, but far too close to us.
The Geneva Treaty of 1980 stipulates that white phosphorus should not be used directly as a weapon of war in civilian areas, but only as a smoke screen or for lighting. There is no doubt that using this weapon over Gaza, a strip of land which has the highest population density in the world, is already a crime. Dr Abdel told me that Al Shifa hospital did not have the military and medical competence to see if some of the wounds of the corpses they had examined were actually produced by white phosphorus shells. But according to him, in twenty years of working, he had never seen cases of death such as those brought to the hospital in recent hours. He described trauma to the skull, with fractures of the vomer bone, jaw, cheekbone, lacrimal bone, nasal bone and palatal bone that would indicate the impact of an immense force to the face of the victim. He said that what was totally inexplicable was the total absence of eyeballs, which even in the case of trauma of that magnitude should stay in place, at least traces of them, inside the skull. However, in Palestinian hospitals corpses without eyes are arriving, as if someone had surgically removed them before delivering them to the coroner.
At the end of the post he says:
I headed back to Al Quds hospital where I would be with the ambulance service throughout the night. Riding in one of the few reckless taxis that still zigzag, defying the target shooting of the bombs, I saw a group of filthy kids with patched clothes standing at a street corner, just like the shoeshine boys in post-war Italy, who with slingshots were throwing stones towards the sky in the direction of a distant and unapproachable enemy that is playing a game with their lives. A crazy metaphor that captured the absurdity of this time and place.
In a post on Janury 10, also published at Il Manifesto, Vittorio writes about visiting the hospital again:
Yesterday at Al Shifa hospital I went to visit Tamim, a reporter who survived an air bombardment. He told me that he thinks Israel has adopted the same terrorist techniques as Al Qaeda, by bombing a building, awaiting the arrival of journalists and rescue services, and then dropping another bomb that slaughters them. In his opinion that is why there have been many casualties amongst paramedics and reporters; the nurses around his bed nodded in agreement. Smiling, Tamim showed me his stumps. He lost his legs, but is happy to have made it out alive; his colleague Mohammed died holding his camera. The second explosion killed him.
In a post published on January 9, he explains the importance of the Rafah tunnels:
My toothpaste, toothbrush, razor blades and shaving foam. The clothes I am wearing, the syrup to treat a bad cough that has afflicted me for weeks, the cigarettes bought for Ahmed, the tobacco for my arghile. My cell phone, the laptop computer on which I schizophrenically fight to get out a testimony of the hell surrounding me. Everything needed for a humble and dignified life in Gaza came from Egypt, and arrived on the shop shelves downtown by passing through the tunnels. The same tunnels that Israeli F16 fighters have continued to bomb heavily in the last 12 hours, resulting in the destruction of thousands of homes near the Rafah border. A couple of months ago I had three bad teeth fixed. At the end of the operation I remember that I asked my Palestinian dentist where he obtained all the dental equipment, anaesthetic, syringes, ceramic crowns, and the tools of the trade. Slyly, the dentist made a gesture with his hands: from under the earth. There is no doubt that explosives and arms also passed through the tunnels of Rafah, the same that the resistance is using today to try to stem the fearful advance of the deadly Israeli armoured vehicles; but this is small compared to the tons of consumer goods that flowed into a Gaza reduced to hunger by a criminal siege.
He concludes the post by saying:
Gaza has been shrouded sadly in darkness for ten days; only in hospitals is it possible to recharge computers and cell phones, and watch TV with the doctors and paramedics waiting for an emergency call. We hear the roars in the distance, and after some minutes the Arab satellite networks report exactly where the explosion occurred. We often watch the pulling of the bodies from the rubble on the screen, as if it were not enough to have seen it directly. Last night, scanning with the remote control I came across an Israeli channel. They were showing a festival of traditional music, with lots of girls in short dresses, and fireworks at the end. We turned back to our horror, not on the screen, but in the ambulances. Israel has every right to laugh and sing, even while it massacres its neighbour. Palestinians are only asking to die a different death, one of old age.
............Jama’at al-Tawhid wa’l-Jihad (JTJ) was founded in Iraq in 2003, and later, under the leadership of abu Musab al Zarqawi, changed its name to Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (“Organization of al Qaida in the Country of the Two Rivers”). Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi was supposedly the ‘mentor’ of Zarqawi, and runs a rather famous jihadi website, Minbar al-Tawhid wa’l-Jihad. Wikipedia has an entry on him saying he is in a Jordanian prison. Abu al-Walid al-Maqdisi is, according to MEMRI, “one of the sheikhs in the fatwa council created by abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi”:
http://www.memritv.org/report/en/4191.htm
There is a tendency to blame Israel for having created or promoted all or some of these groups at different times, but the fact is that Saudi Arabia created and funded all of them, to outflank the Arab Left, and Israel, like the West in general, came along for the ride. One might argue that Israel is just nasty enough to counter-balance all these nasty people, and no nastier, although parts of the Western media scene excel at painting the Israelis as demented thugs and the Arab guerrillas as misunderstood freedom fighters. The Israelis do have a tendency to ham it up, which doesn’t help. Someone ran into Israeli mercenary Emil Sa’ada at a dinner party in Massachusetts sometime in the 1970s and said to him in the way that one apparently does at dinner parties, “What do you do” and he replied, “I kill people.”
I think Said Aburish is the best writer on Arab affairs I have come across. He is a Palestinian himself, and he makes it clear that all the Arab bosses since Nasser died have been basically not much different from western mafiosi. Nasser himself, however, Aburish has a special fondness for. He calls him “the last Arab,” meaning, I would take it, “the last Arab nationalist.” Aburish very sensibly lives in Nice, on the French Riviera, not in Palestine.
Olivier Roy has an interesting theory about this, to the effect that Arabs have been unable to form the idea of nationhood, so there is nothing between asabiyya (the clan) and the umma (pan-Islamism). Olivier Roy recommends a book by a certain Mohammed Arkoun, called Pour une critique de la raison Islamique. Someone discussing this author noted:
This makes me think again about zionism and ‘the Jews’. As you know, I argue from time to time that ‘the Jews’ are merely a confessional group, not a nation. Obviously if this was accepted zionism would be impossible, which was the point of asserting it. But since in fact zionism has constituted ‘the Jews’ as a nation, the weak point of zionism now is that ‘the Jews’ simultaneously claim the right to be nationals of the various countries of their diaspora, accusing anyone who questions the resulting dual loyalties of being ‘anti-Semitic’. Herzl observed long before the zionist entity was created that ‘anti-Semitism’ would be its best friend, and it follows from this that it is in the interest of zionism to encourage ‘anti-Semitism’ in the diaspora countries, partly by vociferously condemning it. And it is this pressure which leads to the rather distasteful efforts of people like Philip Weiss to maintain a Jewish-USAian ethnicity without any suspicion of zionist dual loyalty attached to it. So while the Arabs, and Muslims elsewhere influenced by Saudi ideology, suffer from an pernicious negation of nationalism, Jews suffer from an invidious duplication of it. But as I suggested yesterday, this may just be “the cunning of history,” which according to Hegel juggles with all these categories in an intelligent and constructive way only apparent to us in historical retrospect.