{"id":261987,"date":"2024-05-13T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2024-05-13T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=261987"},"modified":"2024-05-08T05:20:50","modified_gmt":"2024-05-08T04:20:50","slug":"we-tried-to-bring-food-into-gaza-but-israel-blocked-and-arrested-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/05\/we-tried-to-bring-food-into-gaza-but-israel-blocked-and-arrested-us\/","title":{"rendered":"We Tried to Bring Food into Gaza\u2014but Israel Blocked and Arrested Us"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

A delegation of rabbis from the United States and Israel march toward the Erez\/Beit Hanoun Crossing at the northern tip of the Gaza Strip on 26 Apr 2024.<\/p><\/div>\n

As Israel continues to starve the people of Gaza, a delegation of rabbis marched toward the Erez Crossing during Passover carrying sacks of flour and demanding a cease-fire.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

6 May 2024 <\/em>– In 2017, I spent several days in Gaza as a staff person for the American Friends Service Committee. Although I took away many powerful and vivid memories from that trip, some of the most indelible involved the delicious food that was continuously served to us by our Gazan hosts. Gazans are famously proud of their cuisine, and rightfully so, as it provides them with a palpable connection to Palestinian history and life outside that small 140 square-mile strip\u2014to communities in Palestine where their ancestors used to live. As journalist Laila El-Haddad has observed<\/a>, Gazan food is \u201ca sort of treasure map to a largely invisible, or invisibilized, world of Palestinian history going back well before the 1948 Nakba.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the course of our visit, Ali, a member of the AFSC Gaza staff, mentioned more than once that Gazan knafeh<\/em> (a traditional Arabic dessert) was by far the best in Palestine. When our staff group gathered at a restaurant in Gaza City for our final meal, Ali was chagrined to learn that there was no more knafeh<\/em> left in the kitchen. Determined, he got up, ran down the street to another restaurant, and returned with a huge round plate of the sticky, golden pastry for our table. It was indeed more delicious than any knafeh<\/em> I have eaten before or since.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve recalled that sweet memory often over the past seven years. When I think of it now, however, I find its sweetness has curdled into horror. As far back as December, human rights agencies determined<\/a> that Israel \u201cwas using starvation as a weapon of war.\u201d According to<\/a> the World Food Program, Gaza\u2019s food system was on the brink of collapse and the population was facing a \u201chigh risk of famine.\u201d<\/p>\n

This past March, the mainstream media published shocking, heartbreaking pictures of Yazan Kafarneh<\/a>, a 10-year-old Gazan boy reduced to skin and bones from starvation. To date, it has been estimated<\/a> that 28 children have died of malnutrition and starvation in northern Gaza. By all<\/a> accounts<\/a>, starvation in the besieged Strip has now reached \u201ccatastrophic\u201d proportions. Palestinians in Gaza are now forced to eat grass<\/a> just to survive.<\/p>\n

As a congregational rabbi, I spoke with many people who told me that they were not sure how\u2014or even if\u2014they would celebrate Passover this year. With the genocide and forced starvation of the people of Gaza deepening with no end in sight, they said it felt beyond challenging to celebrate a festival of Jewish liberation. To make the moral dissonance even more dissonant, many in the Jewish communal establishment framed the meaning<\/a> of this year\u2019s Passover exclusively around the plight of the Israeli hostages in Gaza and the call for their liberation from Hamas, with nary a mention of the 35,000 Gazans who have been killed by Israel\u2019s genocidal vengeance.<\/p>\n

More than once I was asked, \u201cHow can I partake of this festive meal while Israel has been starving Palestinians in the name of the Jewish people? How can I read about Pharaoh\u2019s oppression of Israelite children when I\u2019ve just read the latest death count of Palestinian children dying increasingly things from forced starvation?\u201d<\/p>\n

As a political-spiritual response to this unprecedented Passover moment, Rabbis for Ceasefire<\/a>\u2014a group of rabbis and rabbinical students who came together last October to demand an end to the violence\u2014began to organize an action at the Gaza border. Motivated by Passover\u2019s central imperative\u2014\u201cAll who are hungry come and eat!\u201d\u2014our mission was to bring food supplies to the Erez Crossing and demand that Israel allow us to pass through. Our action included 10 American rabbis, writer Ayelet Waldman, and 30 Israeli activists\u2014including Israeli rabbis\u2014who have been tirelessly protesting both at the Gaza border and organizing protect presence for West Bank communities targeted by settler violence.<\/p>\n

On April 26, we gathered at a preplanned meetup location, with a truck filled with half a ton of flour. We each shouldered bags of rice and, carrying banners and flags, marched in the direction of the Erez Crossing. The Israeli police quickly drove up to intercept us. During that initial stand-off, several of us offered statements.<\/p>\n

I began with an opening prayer, an adaptation of the \u201cMagid\u201d section of the Passover Haggadah, when Jews retell the story of the Exodus: \u201cThis is the bread of affliction, the bread and food systemically, cruelly denied the people of Gaza. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are oppressed be liberated this Pesach. Now, we are here\u2014tomorrow, let there be bread for Gaza. Now, we are here\u2014next year, may there be liberation from the river to the sea!\u201d<\/p>\n

Other speakers included Israeli Rabbi Avi Dabush of Rabbis for Human Rights, a resident and survivor of a kibbutz that was attacked on October 7, and Noam Shuster-Eliassi, a well-known Israeli activist, writer, and comedian. When our program was over, we pushed forward toward the border. When the soldiers violently attempted to break us up, several of us sat down in the road. During the course of the protest seven of our group\u2014four Americans and three Israelis\u2014were arrested.<\/p>\n

\"Activists
Activists with Rabbis for Ceasefire hold up pieces of matzah\u2014symbols of Passover\u2019s central imperative to \u201cLet all who are hungry come and eat!\u201d (Oren Ziv)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All of the arrested were fully prepared for this eventuality (the Israelis were veterans at protest arrests and had briefed us on protocol). They were taken to two detention centers and interrogated for eight to nine hours. The Americans were told, bluntly, that they were being held for \u201cattempting to bring food into Gaza.\u201d All the arrested were released that evening. Thankfully, the food we attempted to bring into Gaza was not confiscated, so we were able to donate it to Masafer Yatta<\/a>\u2014a community in the South Hebron Hills where almost 3,000 residents are resisting the daily threat of demolitions, evictions, and dispossession.<\/p>\n

Now that many of us are back in the United States, we are not ready to stop sounding the alarm about the atrocities Israeli is committing in Gaza, not ready to stop pressing for a cease-fire and the flow of food once again into Gaza. As it is, nearly 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza currently face mass starvation and encroaching famine<\/a>. Hundreds of trucks filled with humanitarian goods have been sitting idle<\/a> on roads leading into the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt, blocked from entering Gaza by a draconian inspection process that severely limits the number of trucks that can pass through. Inside Gaza, the Israeli military has attacked efforts to distribute aid with tragic results. According to the United Nations, the Israeli military has killed<\/a> 196 relief workers, while soldiers have shot and killed<\/a> hundreds of Gazans venturing out to seek food.<\/p>\n

Amid all this horror, the one agency that has the capacity and infrastructure to effectively distribute relief to the people of Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), has been defunded by the Biden administration. This past January, the Israeli government leveled the still-unsubstantiated claim that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in Hamas\u2019s October 7 attacks in Israel. Though UNRWA immediately fired the employees in question and launched an investigation, the US withdrew its financial support of the agency, which was founded in 1949 to provide support to the hundreds of thousands of refugees created by the establishment of the state of Israel.<\/p>\n

In its spending bill this past March, the US government extended its ban on UNRWA funding for a year. Though the agency reports<\/a> it has sufficient funds to operate until the end of May, its ability to provide services in Gaza has been dangerously hampered. Last month, Israel announced that it would no longer approve UNRWA food convoys<\/a> to the north of Gaza, where famine is the most imminent. According to a recent report<\/a>, the agency noted that \u201ca total of 420 food trucks were denied or impeded by Israeli authorities [inMarch].\u201d It warned: \u201cGaza is on the brink of famine, with 1.1 million people\u2014half of its population\u2014experiencing catastrophic food insecurity due to the intense conflict and severe restrictions on humanitarian access.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most ominously, Israel continues to amplify its threats to invade Rafah, where some 1.4 million people are currently living, many of them refugees from elsewhere in Gaza. An invasion would almost certainly result in massive human suffering and tragedy.<\/p>\n

\"Israeli
Israeli police arrest an activist as a delegation of rabbis tries to bring food into the Gaza Strip. (Oren Ziv)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And yet, in the wake our action on the border, I continue to hold out hope. It is clear to me that our border protest was part of something much larger: the dramatic rise in Palestine solidarity increasing around the world, including the growing student protest movement on campuses across the United States. And I am more convinced than ever that Israel cannot, try as it might, starve or bomb the Palestinian people from existence, nor can it destroy the love for their culture that is so deeply rooted in their homeland: In the words of El-Haddad: \u201cLately, I\u2019ve been thinking about what I would go back to, and what I would find, if I returned to Gaza. Most of the landmarks have been destroyed. Gone too are many of the people I cherished. But\u2026it feels like I am the torchbearer now, the family\u2019s keeper of treasured recipes. Like Um Hani [Leila\u2019s aunt, who was killed in an Israeli air strike], I will cook and I will teach, connecting the next generation of Palestinians to our homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

Brant Rosen is the founding rabbi of the synagogue Tzedek Chicago and the cofounder of the <\/em>Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council. From 2014 to 2019 he served as the midwestern director of the <\/em>American Friends Service Committee.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – thenation.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 May 2024 – As Israel continues to starve the people of Gaza, a delegation of rabbis marched toward the Erez Crossing during Passover carrying sacks of flour and demanding a cease-fire. They were arrested.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":261988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1854,87,865,1966,88,2571,427,1714,2159,965],"class_list":["post-261987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-hunger","tag-israel","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-palestine","tag-right-to-food","tag-rogue-states","tag-war-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261989,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261987\/revisions\/261989"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}