Eva Bartlett

Recent massacre of civilians lined up for food aid highlights deliberate nature of humanitarian catastrophe inflicted on Palestine

Following the February 29 Israeli slaughter of at least 115 starving Palestinians lined up for food aid, there was little or no outrage by the same Western media which would have howled if the perpetrator were Russia or Syria.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, early morning on Thursday, February 29, Israeli forces opened fire on unarmed Palestinians waiting just southwest of Gaza City for desperately needed food aid. As a result, 115 civilians were killed and over 750 wounded. Popular US commenter Judge Andrew Napolitano said in a recent interview with award-winning analyst Professor Jeffery Sachs,

💬 “Innocent Gaza civilians were lined up to receive flour and water from an aid truck, and more than 100 were slaughtered, mowed down, by Israeli troops. This has got to be one of the most reprehensible and public slaughterings that they’ve engaged in.”

The official Israeli version of events, unsurprisingly, puts the blame on the Palestinians themselves. The deaths and injuries were supposedly caused by a stampede, and the Israeli soldiers only fired when they felt they were endangered by the crowd. The BBC even cited one army lieutenant as saying that troops had “cautiously [tried] to disperse the mob with a few warning shots.”

Mark Regev, a special adviser to the Israeli prime minister, went as far as to tell CNN that Israeli troops had not been involved directly in any way and that the gunfire had come from “Palestinian armed groups.” Testimonies from survivors and doctors tell a different story, though, saying the majority of those treated after the incident had been shot by Israeli forces.

More »

Eva Bartlett

The daily suffering and humiliation of Palestinian civilians at the hands of the Zionists is captured by Eva Bartlett, an International Solidarity Movement activist, who has spent much time in Occupied Palestine.

Since May 2007, I have lived in different parts of Occupied Palestine witnessing the crimes of the Zionist entity and sharing in the daily tragedies, injustices and realities of the Palestinians. In 2007, I volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement for eight months in the Occupied West Bank during which time I was detained at a protest against a Jewish-only highway, arrested at a roadblock removal action, and was finally deported and banned from Occupied Palestine.

During those months, I was witness to the ugliest aspects of life under Zionist rule: attacks by illegal armed Jewish colonists and by Zionist soldiers on Palestinian children, women, and the elderly; humiliating military checkpoints, some with zoo-like turnstiles all of which serve to delay or completely prevent the Palestinians’ movement; and raids and weeks-long lockdowns on Palestinian towns and cities, in which the Zionist army ransacked homes and usually abducted one or more member of the family, including children. There are currently 195 Palestinian children in Zionist prisons.

In Susiya, a hamlet in the South Hebron Hills, I witnessed land being stolen and quickly annexed by the illegal Jewish colonists. As we were documenting this annexation, a colonist gleefully admitted that the land was Palestinian but that the grape vines they’d planted on the land were worth 60,000 shekels (roughly $17,500) and were intended for wine production. “It doesn’t matter. See, the grapes we grow will be wine. And I will drink the wine. It doesn’t matter at all that you speak.”

More »

Eva Bartlett & Ali Mallah

You may rob me of the last span of my land
You may ditch my youth in prison holes
Steal what my grandfather left me behind:
Some furniture or clothes and jars,
You may burn my poems and books
You may feed your dog on my flesh
You may impose a nightmare of your terror
On my village
Enemy of light
I shall not compromise
And to the end
I shall fight...
~ Samih al-Qasim

With the passing of the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, (the establishment of the illegal Zionist state on the land and homes of Palestinians), should we mourn or celebrate? Professor Nurit Peled–Elhanan wrote of her mourning:

“I will mourn on Nakba Day. I will mourn for vanished Palestine most of which I never knew. I will mourn for the holy land that is losing its humanity, its landscape, its beauty and its children on the altar of racism and evil. I will mourn for the Jewish youngsters who invade and desecrate the homes of families in Sheikh Jarrah, throw the inhabitants into the street, and then sing and dance in memory of Baruch Goldstein, the infamous murderer of Palestinian children, while the owners of the desecrated houses with their children and old people are sleeping in the rain, on the street, opposite their own homes. …All these things I will mourn on Nakba Day. I will join the millions of dispossessed, downtrodden and humiliated who have not given up on the future and who still believe there is a chance, who stand as witnesses and as firebrands of the true human spirit.…”

For the last 64 years, Palestinian women, men, elderly, and youth have steadfastly and spiritedly resisted the occupation and the Zionist state. It is a resistance that continues flourishing among Palestinians from all walks of life both inside and outside Palestine, be they farmers, workers, students, poets, or intellectuals.

More »