Derek Graham (Free Gaza Movement) & Susan Johnson (Viva Gaza) Speak in Galway

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Monday August 24, 2009 15:22

by TD - Free Palestine Campaign

" There aren't words for what they are going through ... To describe the destruction properly I would need a new vocabulary" (Susan Johnson)

Last Thursday, 20th August to an eager audience in an overbrimming room of the Imperial Hotel, Eyre Square, Galway, with contributions from Jenny Graham, Susan Johnson and Derek Graham, husband of Jenny gave harrowing eyewitness accounts of the Israeli/US/EU created hell on earth that is called Gaza, in the case of Derek Graham, he told his story about being kidnapped at gunpoint in Mediterranean international waters along with 20 other Free Gaza Movement human rights activists, on board the Spirit of Humanity on a voyage of mercy,, forced into the Israeli port of Ashdod and then in tune with the Kafkaesque perversion and inversion of morality and reality that is the hallmark of Zionism, bizarrely questioned for violating Israeli territorial waters.

Susan Johnson told of an Israeli remote controlled machine gun tower in a Gazan farmers field that "opened like a flower" to spew death to all who strayed within its killing zone, told of the water sprinkler system still allowed to operate as a spendthrift of Gaza's precious water on the lawns of the American school, devastated by Israeli fire. Her words to a friend in an email captures the spirit of this feisty Philadelphia woman : My trip to Gaza was traumatic, I thought I was prepared for it, but wasn't. To describe the destruction properly I would need a new vocabulary. As one person told us, there aren't words for what they are going through. The effects of the siege are equally devastating. I hadn't realized how awful it is for Gaza ... The impact of my trip to Gaza is difficult to explain or describe. The situation there is beyond words. Gaza has left me traumatized, energized, exhausted and passionate ... When I found myself at home after the Gaza trip, I realized "myself" was gone and wouldn't be returning. It was beyond a life changing experience. I have a passion for the West Bank, Gaza and Palestinian Refugees I never thought possible http://vivagaza.org/

In tandem with Free Gaza activists engaged in similar projects in other countries, Derek and Jenny have returned to Ireland from Cyprus where they are based to raise the purchase funds for an Irish flagged and crewed ship where eventually, it is hoped, in a Herculean effort, a host of siege-breaking mercy ships will permanently break the Israeli death grip on Gaza - a grip whose lethality and criminality is, with relish and hypocrisy, aided and abetted by the US and the contemptible and spineless EU - so spineless and debased that led by Germany, all the EU states abstained from a UN Human Rights Council resolution condemning Israel's "massive violations" of human rights in its Xmas slaughter of the innocents in Gaza.

The meeting was graced by the presence of an anti-Zionist Jewish man, outraged at Leonard Cohen for intending to play Tel Aviv's Ramat Gan stadium on 24th of next month, thus giving succour and legitimacy to the rogue and criminal state that is Israel. (see video).

Susan Johnson