Author-activists Alice Walker speaks in Gazasee the video HERE
"I have come here," Walker says, "in part, to see what I'm buying with my tax money. So far I learn I have bought the deaths of about 200 women, about 400 children, hundreds of casualties of all sorts..."
1,400 Gazans died in the 22-day Israeli incursion into Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009. Walker notes the use of White Phosphorus against combatants and civilians during Operation Cast Lead, saying "whoever heard of such a hideous, diabolical thing?" Human Rights Watch decried the use of WP during Operation Cast Lead in a 2009 report entitled "Rain of Fire."
Of the occupation, Ms. Walker says:
"We have to stop this, this cannot continue. This endangers the world."
About the abuses and marginalization of Palestinians, Walker says, "This is a classic example of people in power... in Israel, who obviously don't even consider the Palestinian people as sentient beings."
To the US tacit involvement in the damage caused by Operation Cast Lead, Walker comments sharply, saying "If you cannot be fair here, why should the world believe that you are fair in any other area? The world is watching, the world is very aware, the world is awake... and the world will judge you."
Walker adds that on her trip to Gaza for International Women's Day, a fellow delegate commented that though Israel can destroy the land, destroy Palestine, they cannot destroy the Palestinians. Walker comments, "Meanwhile, I think [the Israelis] are destroying their own spirit. And they may well end up with all of the land, every centimeter of the land, and no soul at all. And then they will have to ask themselves: Are we Jews, still?"
4 years ago