Articles
WRMEA, August 2010, Pages 63-64
Waging Peace
Iowans Protest Gaza Aid Ship Massacre
IOWANS rallied at Nollen Plaza in downtown Des Moines on June 2 to protest Israel's massacre of civilian aid workers and activists during the May 31 attack by Israeli military forces on the ships of the Free Gaza Flotilla in the eastern Mediterranean.
"It's a travesty; it's a blatant massacre; it's a war crime," said David Goodner, a community organizer and a Des Moines Catholic Worker.
"It's the most recent in a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity that Israel has committed, the first being the 40-year-old occupation. The second Lebanon war in 2006 was a war crime. The invasion of Gaza and the bombing of Gaza in 2008 was a war crime. The blockade of Gaza and the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza are war crimes and crimes against humanity. And this massacre is a war crime. Enough is enough. It's time to put an end to this," declared Goodner.
"There's a non-violent popular resistance movement in the Occupied Territories, a coalition of Palestinians, left-wing Israeli Jews, and International Solidarity Movement activists. They're using non-violence as an effective means of ending the occupation. I've been there and I've seen it," said Goodner.
"The nonviolent popular resistance movement is broad-based, it's international, and it's effective," Goodner added, "and that's why the Israelis are deliberately and violently trying to repress that movement, because they know it's effective and they're scared of the change that's lapping up on their shores."
"Sounds to me like [the Israeli military commandos] were super-aggressive," said Gil Landolt, a member of the Des Moines chapter of Veterans for Peace. "They killed people, and they hurt a lot of people, and I think that's insane."
"The Israeli government is no longer defending itself," said Ismael Hossein-zadeh, a professor of economics at Drake University. "They are defending an illegal siege, they are defending starvation. It seems to be a mad kind of policy."
Israel's attack on the aid ships will further isolate it from the international community of nations and increase international support for an end to the siege of Gaza, predicted Hossein-zadeh.
"I'm here today to help end the siege of Gaza," said Sana Akili, a former lecturer in the College of Business at Iowa State University in Ames.
"We need to speak up, as Americans," she urged. "The blockade, the suffering, is intolerable. I have children, and I understand what the children of Gaza are going through. To help the children of Gaza is my main cause today," Akili concluded.
Kathleen McQuillen, coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee's Iowa Program, organized the rally. "We are focused today on the attack by Israel on a relief convoy of civilians in international waters," she told the crowd. "We are focused, too, on the siege of Gaza, which led to this tragedy."
McQuillen read from a statement that she and other peace and social justice activists hand-delivered to the Des Moines offices of Iowa's two senators—Democrat Tom Harkin and Republican Chuck Grassley—in the Federal Building across the street from Nollen Plaza following the rally. The statement calls upon the senators to work to "close the checkbook to Israel...to [be] an honest broker in the peace efforts between Palestine and Israel, or...for the U.S. to get out of the way and let the international community work for a just peace in that region."
Catholic Worker leader Tom Cordaro, former Catholic Peace Ministry executive director Brian Terrell, and 2007 Bishop Maurice J. Dingman Peace Award honoree Rev. Chet Guinn also addressed the crowd and accompanied McQuillen to their senators' offices to meet with staff and present the statement to their elected representatives.
—Michael Gillespie
