Women of a Certain Age

NEWS OF PALESTINE and WCA

Peace Activists Sailing to Gaza Kidnapped by Israel

Israel is planning to deport within the next few days the 21 peace activists who arrived on a boat from Cyprus with the intention of entering the Gaza Strip. An Israeli Navy unit boarded their boat and escorted it to Ashdod port. Immigration police will transport the detained activists to Ben Gurion Airport, and from there they will be deported out of the country.Among the peace activists are two Israeli-American citizens, and 19 others, including five from Ireland, three from Britain, five from Bahrain, three Americans, and Danish, Jordan, and Yemenite citizens.

Hana Araf, of Meilia village in the Galilee, uncle of Huwaida Arraf, one of the Israeli-American citizens on the Gaza-bound boat said, “We haven’t managed to get a hold of her, and we haven’t received any information. We are worried. They can’t deport her, and we will fight for this to the very end.

“She has an Israeli passport. She is a citizen of the state, and Israel has no right to detain her. What for, exactly? For trying to help people who have no food? In the past there were a few regimes that did this, the apartheid in South Africa, for instance. Is this the regime Israel wants to be associated with?”

The aid boat arrives in Ashdod port (Photo: Reuters)

WCA’s Susan Johnson in Gaza

Blogging in defense of Palestinian Rights. First hand experience, seeing for myself the disastrous effects and inhumane conditions Palestinians in the West Bank endure under Israel’s illegal occupation and the devastating destruction, suffering and shortages in Gaza inflicted by the siege and bombardment by Israeli Forces.

US lawyers report on Israeli crimes in Gaza

Huwaida Arraf (New York, Washington DC), Noura Erekat (Washington DC), James Marc Leas (Vermont), Linda Mansour (Ohio), Rose Mishaan (California), Thomas Nelson (Oregon), Radhika Sainath (California) and Reem Salahi (California) February 10, 2009

We are a delegation of 8 American lawyers, members of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States, who have come here to the Gaza Strip to assess the effects of the recent attacks on the people, and to determine what, if any, violations of international law occurred and whether U.S. domestic law has been violated as a consequence. We have spent the last five days interviewing communities particularly impacted by the recent Israeli offensive, including medical personnel, humanitarian aid workers and United Nations representatives. In particular, the delegation examined three issues: 1) targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure; 2) illegal use of weapons and 3) blocking of medical and humanitarian assistance to civilians. more

“Numu Numu – Lullaby For Pilots” Written and performed by Yonatan Shapira.
A lullaby to Israeli pilots who dropped a 1 ton bomb on a densely populated neighborhood in Gaza, 2002, killing 14 children and other civilians, and wounding 150.

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Yonatan Shapira: “I want to shout as loud as I can and ask everyone to join us in this struggle, Palestinians and Israelis who want to stop the bloodshed. The massacre will not stop unless people from all over the world will wake up, join us and call for boycott, divestment and sanctions on the Israeli government” Full story here.

WCA, Active at Home: We are proud of our own Jenny and Anni, arrested with March of the Dead in Washington this week. See it on Bill Moyers Journal

We Are Women of a Certain Age

Formed to travel to Palestine in 2004, Women of a Certain Age continues to advocate for Palestinian human rights. We are proud to have WCA members who are active in Adalah-NY, Brooklyn for Peace, Code Pink, the Granny Peace Brigades, the Green Party, ISM, MECR, UFPJ, Women in Black, and more. Our list of friends is a growing community, and we encourage others to work with us. As mothers, grandmothers and daughters, we believe in the power and responsibility each one of us has to effect change. In the summer of 2004, we traveled to the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. We stood beside women and men who, like us, wish to live in a just world at peace. We met with Palestinians whose voices have not been heard outside the walls of occupation.We traveled to learn and returned to educate and inform our family, friends, co-workers, indeed, our fellow citizens to the true and terrible nature of the Israeli occupation.

We traveled because we cannot remain silent in the face of such obvious injustice. We cannot remain silent when Israel builds an Apartheid wall that divides a people, that tears asunder villages from fields, people from their livelihoods. We cannot remain silent when illegal settlements are maintained and expanded onto other people’s lands. We cannot remain silent as the Israeli army enforces the Occupation with walls, fences, razor wire, checkpoints, roadblocks, tear gas, bullets and bombs fired from helicopters upon innocent people. We cannot remain silent when Israeli bulldozers (made in the USA) raze Palestinian homes creating thousands of new refugees in a land of refugees.

While some of our members had over 60 years of experience as activists, for others it was an introduction to direct action. Our group was varied; teachers, social workers, artists and lawyers, Jews, Christians, Muslims and secularists. Each brought a different contribution to the group. Two women brought their daughters. Some documented the trip in photos, video and diaries.

As individuals we had a desire to see things first hand, but the group provided the impetus. We hope that as Women of a Certain Age we might inspire others to do the same. Here are some ways to travel to Israel/Palestine: Alternative Tourism Group, Birthright Unplugged, Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, Fellowship of Reconciliation, International Solidarity Movement, International Women’s Peace Service, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, and more. If you’re new to this and you’d like to form a group like ours, write to us, we’d be happy to share our experience.