GAZA: How to Send Humanitarian Aid

From: stillwaters@mindspring.com
To: stillwaters@mindspring.com LIST
Sent: 1/5/2009 2:23:46 P.M. Pacific Standard Time
Subj: Personal report on Gaza

We are getting reports directly from Gaza via the American Friends of the
Diocese of Jerusalem, the most recent is attached. It is concerned with the
Ahli Arab hospital, one of the Episcopal Diocese¹s oldest institutions.

I offer you the following perspective from Edward Said. His father was
American, and mother Palestinian born, both were Protestant Christians, and
Said, who called himself a Christian wrapped in Muslim culture, was educated
in English schools, eventually at Princeton and Harvard. He taught at
Columbia, then Johns Hopkins, and Yale.

Please send this on to others, and consider contributing to the crying need
in Gaza via the Ahli Arab Hospital, mentioned in the attached. Thank you
for taking the time to read this.

Pat Royalty
404-355-1516
2868 Sequoyah Dr NW
Atlanta Ga 30327 USA
stillwaters@mindspring.com

Words on Gaza by the late Edward Said in 2002:

"Every Palestinian has become a prisoner.
Gaza is surrounded by an electrified fence on three sides: imprisoned like
animals, Gazans are unable to move, unable to work, unable to sell their
vegetables or fruit, unable to go to school. They are exposed from the air to
Israeli planes and helicopters and are gunned down like turkeys on the
ground by tanks and machine guns. Impoverished and starved, Gaza is a human
nightmare.

Hope has been eliminated from the Palestinian vocabulary so that only raw
defiance remains.

Palestinians must die a slow death so that Israel can have its security,
which is just around the corner but cannot be realized because of the
special Israeli "insecurity." The whole world must sympathize, while the
cries of Palestinian orphans, sick old women, bereaved communities, and
tortured prisoners simply go unheard and unrecorded. Doubtless, we will be
told, these horrors serve a larger purpose than mere sadistic cruelty. After
all, "the two sides" are engaged in a "cycle of violence" that has to be
stopped, sometime, somewhere. Once in a while we ought to pause and declare
indignantly that there is only one side with an army and a country: the
other is a stateless dispossessed population of people without rights or any
present way of securing them. The language of suffering and concrete daily
life has been either hijacked or so perverted as, in my opinion, to be
useless except as pure fiction deployed as a screen for the purpose of more
killing and painstaking torture - slowly, fastidiously, inexorably.

That is the truth of what Palestinians suffer."

Edward Said
August, 2002
----------------------------------------
JANUARY 2009 POSTED JANUARY 4-6 from below: "Streets are covered with blood"

Eyewitness report of Suhalia Tarazi, Director of the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza:

I was able to speak to Suhalia Tarazi, Director of the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza. I took notes and I am sharing with you as best I can her situation in Gaza.

From a few days ago:

things are wearing on her, days of no sleep and great grief. She just returned from the death of a 15 year old cousin's niece who died of a heart attack brought on by fear when her neighbors home was bombed. They could find no rice to buy in the market today, and so she served macaroni for the patients. They are running out of flour. An invasion will be devastating.

January 5:

" The situation is terrible. The injured are in their homes and unable to get to the hospital and the International Red Cross can't reach them. Gaza is now divided into three areas. 20% of the staff including 2 doctors are now unable to get to the hospital. Unfortunately a bomb went off in Jerusalem Square, right outside the hospital, only 30 meters away and it blew a hole in the hospital wall.

* One of the aid's husbands was unable to reach his children. Later he discover that 1 child died and other members are all injured because a bomb destroyed a neighboring building.

* The 19-year-old son of one of the surgeons volunteered to work in the government ambulance. He was killed when his ambulance was hit by a missile. Three ambulances have been hit by Israeli missiles, five have died.

* There is no electricity and no water. Fortunately the International Red Cross has provided Ahli Hospital with some food.

* It is terrible and not safe to walk on the street.

* After the invasion, Ahli Hospital on Sunday received 17 cases. Twelve were admitted to the hospital and 2 to government hospitals.

* Today Monday morning 5 cases were received with 4 admitted for surgery. One doctor has slept in the hospital for the last 4 nights. Our staff is now working 2 -12 hour shifts, two shifts no days off.

* Streets are covered with blood.

* Staff members have taken people in their homes, with 20-30 people for refuge.

* The ambulance driver has 80 living in his home.

* We all have received leaflets and telephone calls " you have to leave your home, we will attack it” Where to go for the 700,000 people in Gaza City?"

* I feel very fortunate and blessed to be able to speak to Suhalia and I have promised her that I will tell her story and the story of the innocents. Thank you for all you are doing to circulate these messages. Please feel free to forward them the family and friends.

I offer her hope and encouragement and our commitment to help, with prayers and financial support. Remember tax-deductible gifts may be sent to the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, PO Box 240, Orange, CA 92859, or on line at www.americanfriends-jerusalem.org here

I will continue to keep you up to date on this catastrophe happening in Gaza. If I can be of help please don't hesitate to call or email me.

Peace, Love and Joy,

The Rev. Charles Cloughen, Jr.

President Emeritus, American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem

PO Box 313

Hunt Valley, MD 21030

410-229-0172

frcharles@verizon.net