Gaza Through My Eyes - An American Journey to Gaza

Episode 1

Episode 2

On March 29, 2014 Denny Cormier, 68 and retired and an American activist, began a journey to Gaza in search of the truth about Palestine and about the Palestinians.

He had visited Gaza for a month in 2013 to meet the people with whom he had been chatting and Skyping - people who he been following on Facebook and Twitter for many months. He wanted to meet them face to face - to learn more about them - to hear and to share their stories.

He set out to discover for himself what was not being reported by Western media - to reconcile what he had been hearing for months from friends in Gaza versus what he had been reading in newspapers and seeing on television.

He had been told to beware of terrorists - but, in fact, what he found was a beautiful people - welcoming to Americans, warm, kind and generous.

Frankly he fell in love with Palestinian people during that first visit in 2013 - and vowed to return.

That opportunity came in 2014 when he was invited to work with a group of citizen journalists, photographers, filmmakers and social media activists at the Youth Media center.

Over a period of 9 months, he has shared that journey using social media - introducing Palestinians to his friends around the world - sharing stories and photographs about his journey to Gaza.

But his primary work in Gaza is not just about sharing his own experiences. With Palestinian friends he developed a training initiative that was named 1000 Voices for Gaza - an effort to empower a group of new activists who wanted to share their personal stories and the Palestinian story. Together with Palestinian friends he organizes workshops, seminars, speaking engagements, informal Q&A gatherings - and many conversations one on one in homes, coffee shops and in the streets. The focus is more effective use of social media with an emphasis on reaching out to people who live beyond the barricades that surround it.

But Denny has a story too, including his experiences while living in Gaza during the 50 day attack on Gaza that the Israelis named Operation Protective Edge. During the attacks he reported on those experiences using live streaming, Facebook and Twitter. He chose not to leave Gaza. He chose to stay with his friends - as a supporter and a witness. Many of those 50 days were spent at Al Shifa Hospital - reporting on the war, meeting displaced people and families, acting as a human shield - a witness to what he has described as horrific, barbaric in its intensity.

Gaza Through My Eyes is a series of short documentaries about this journey - what an American found in Gaza from the moment he arrived in 2013 and again in 2014 - what he has come to love and to treasure.

This is the first in a series of documentaries. It was filmed during December 2014 and was released on January 1, 2015. It will be followed with a number of other documentaries during the coming months.

This documentary series is being made with the support of and with coordination from the Youth Media Center - Gaza.

Denny is currently living in Gaza City in a home not far from the sea at Al Mena. He spends his days meeting and sharing with Palestinians from all walks of life - including students, farmers, journalists, business owners, photographers, government officials, religious leaders, policemen, taxi drivers, shop keepers, academics, fishermen, working people, families - and many, many children.

This is his story of a journey to Gaza..

Denny Cormier
Gaza City
January 1, 2015

Source: Youtube

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Egypt: Life Sentence For Those Digging or Using Smuggling Tunnels To Gaza

Cairo - People who dig and use cross-border tunnels in Egypt could face a maximum penalty of life in jail, state news agency MENA said on Sunday, citing amendments to the penal code targeting activity in the frontier area near the Gaza Strip.

Egypt declared a state of emergency in the border area last year after at least 33 security personnel were killed in attacks in the Sinai Peninsula, a remote but strategic region bordering Israel, Gaza and the Suez Canal. There were several militant attacks in the Sinai on Sunday.

The amendments to the penal code were passed by presidential decree, MENA said.

Source: what really happened

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Failure Of Israeli Hasbara And Its Propaganda Campaign

Misuse of Anti-semitism, by Carlos Lattuf

The genocidal war that the apartheid Israeli state has waged on the Gaza Strip has generated an unprecedented wave of international public condemnation and international solidarity with the Palestinians. Graphic images of unimaginable destruction and heaps of dismembered and shattered bodies of innocent children flooded social media. Circulating in the context of the recent history of a series of Israeli military incursions into Gaza (first in 2008 and again in 2012), these images prompted hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets around the world to demand an end to the Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. 

The engineers of Zionist hasbara (the Hebrew word for "propaganda") pushed back, redoubling their efforts in well-orchestratedPR campaigns that tried to reframe their genocidal war with typically hackneyed talking points. Israeli PR pressure even forced some celebrities, who had posted on Twitter both against the senseless genocide in Gaza and for recognising the humanity of Palestinians, to retract their Twitter posts.

However, the hasbara apparatus of the Israeli apartheid state failed to concoct myths and rhetorical games creative enough to whitewash their disproportionate use of force and war crimes. Their psyops tactics were largely ineffective, even in Tel Aviv, pushing them to desperate measures, including censoring the media.

Comment: The Israeli leaders got carried away, they assumed most people lacked conscience like they do and would therefore buy into their justifications for killing thousands of innocent people.

'Resistance is futile'

Hasbara engineers have therefore resorted to three main strategies to deal with the political fallout from the Gaza genocide. First, they desperately launched blackmail campaigns that attempted to conflate the irrational fear and hatred of Jews (anti-Semitism), which is unacceptable, with the legitimate critique of the apartheid Israeli state (anti-Zionism).

Linking any criticism of the Israeli genocidal policies to anti-Semitism has become an issue of contention for a growing number people around the world who clearly reject such extortion. Even the Hamas leadership has jumped on the issue, making it clear that "We do not actually fight the Jews because they are Jews, per se. We do not fight any other races. We fight the occupiers."

Underlying this international solidarity with the Palestinian is the increasing worldwide awareness of Israel's fake victimisation posturing. Palestinians are fighting a colonial occupier who has been represented in the annals of European history as the "ultimate victim". Zionistshave adopted the absurd claim that every Jew is born a victim, repackaging genocide in the rhetoric of "self-defence". More and more people, however, realise that the Israeli apartheid state's policy of ethnic cleansing in Palestine and violating Palestinian rights at a massive scale since the Nakba of 1948 is far from "self-defence".

To paraphrase the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, it is almost impossible for Palestinians to resist their Zionist colonial occupiers without being demonised and branded as anti-Semitic.

Comment: See: The virtue & necessity of deconstructing 'anti-semitism'

Forced false choices

The second major strategy of hasbara engineers is their attempt to force the international public to make a choice between Israel and Hamas. However, many people and political entities around the world reject this false choice, opting to side with the oppressed civilians who have no way to flee or seek shelter in the open-air prison known as Gaza.

The genocidal war on Gaza has made it evident that, especially in the West, a split exists between the political elite on the one hand, and civil society and the international solidarity movement on the other. Undoubtedly, criticism did come, though maybe a little late, from Israel's closest allies. There were even a few cases of defection from the ranks of their political elites (most notably the UK minister Baroness Warsi), with some even heeding Amnesty International's call for an arms embargo against Israel and for Israel's human rights violations to be referred to the Internationl Criminal Court. Indeed, Palestine has for the first time become a bone of contention in the domestic politics of some Western countries.

In general, however, those in the corridors of power remain largely entrapped within the dominant narrative that the apartheid Israeli state peddles to justify the carnage in Gaza. Many world leaders, including United States President Barack Obama and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, have toed the hasbara line in their defense of Israel's genocidal war.

At the same time, outrage at Israel's actions was most visible at the grass-root level. Indeed, larger numbers of young people have been reported to attend these rallies, protests, and demonstrations in support of Gaza. Recent polls also indicate that younger Americans are growing increasingly critical of Israel's apartheid policies in Palestine. The younger generation is increasingly dissatisfied with their governments' complicity in the perpetuation of Israeli war crimes.

The diversity of solidarity

Finally, hasbara engineers have tried to dismiss and demonise this groundswell of international solidarity with Palestinians by presenting it as an exclusively Muslim cause. Rallies in support of Palestine have always been diverse gatherings of people of all faiths and ethnicities. Condemnation of Israeli crimes has come from all around the world, including from Israeli intellectuals, international political figures and prominent academics. Even Israeli citizens have mobilised against the war in Gaza, against the hostile current of the majority.

Most importantly, this hasbara contention conveniently ignores the deafening silence and clear standoffish position of many Muslim and Arab states on the Gaza genocide. In fact, the overwhelmingly Catholic Latin America has been at the forefront of international condemnation of Israel's actions. Many Latin American countries vehemently denounced the Israeli genocidal war in Gaza; some have suspended their economic cooperation with Israel and others have recalled their ambassadors from Tel Aviv.

The outpouring of international solidarity for Palestine has clearly transcended the confines of identity politics and geography. It has emphasised that Palestinian lives are no less valuable than Israeli lives and that the international human rights regime should apply to both equally.

Comment: See also: 14 propaganda tactics used by lapdog media to manufacture consent for the oligarchy

Source: sott.net

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Blood Thirst: 'Finish The Job!' Of Killing Palestinians

—Thousands of Israelis rally in support of Gaza offense

Thousands of people in Tel Aviv rallied to show support for the IDF's military campaign in Gaza, urging the government forces to stop Hamas rocket attacks on Israel once and for all. 

An estimated 10,000 Israelis gathered in Rabin Square for first major demonstration since Operation Protective Edge began on July 8, officially to protect Israeli civilians from the barrage of rockets launched from the militant organization on the Gaza strip. 

Source: Sott.net

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Israeli Missile Kills AP Reporter, Translator In Gaza

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Gaza | Would It Be Another 'Goldstone Report' On Gaza War?

After the Israeli war on Gaza in 2008/2009, the UN formed investigation commission headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, thereafter Goldstone's report clearly charged Israel for committing war crimes. But what did the international community (including UN Security Council) do for victims?

Remember how many meetings were held to topple Syria's Bashar Al-Assad? hmmm, yes unobedient Bashar  deserves that! why should he not make peace deal with Israel? and why should he form alliance with Iran and Hezbollah?

“The United Nations announced the names of three experts to investigate possible war crimes committed by both Israelis and Palestinians during the two-month conflict in the Gaza Strip, the world body announced Monday.”

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