[Peace] follow me to Gaza...

[martin smith]

Greetings!  I am sending this message out widely to friends, comrades, and family--so hello from the JFK Airport!

As
i've mentioned to you, I'm currently on my way to Gaza as part of a
humanitarian mission to deliver aid, mostly medical supplies that are
desperately needed due to the Israeli blockade.  While aid to the
people of Gaza is the convoy's first priority, the trip has another
purpose.  A secondary goal is for the participants to witness the
suffering of the Palestinians and to share our experiences with as many
people as possible, so as to play a small part in shifting public
opinion in the United States.  This is incredibly important given the
propaganda in the mainstream press that continues to mischaracterize
Palestinian resistance as "terror" or as a conflict of religious
extremism that has lasted since time immemorial.  


Yet, at the same time, there have been cracks in the Israeli-US
media propaganda machine.  The outpouring of world anger over the
brutal siege of Gaza, the student occupations for divestment from
Israel, the growing aid convoy movement aimed to break the blockade,
and even Barack Obama's recent description of Gaza as a "humanitarian
crisis"--all suggest that there is a small opening at this moment that
must be seized and the struggle widened.


To that effort, and in order to better share my experiences on this
journey, several friends who are traveling with me have created a blog
where you can follow our diaries, correspondence, pictures, and
musings.  


You can find our collective blog here, and we aim to update it regularly:
http://www.thesitch.com/gaza-dispatches/


As well, you can follow me on Twitter, where i promise to send daily updates:
username: send2smith

But a note of humility!
This
is very much an experiment--and to be frank, this new world of
technological possibilities raises a whole host of problems, in
particular, being sure that the focus remains on the seriousness of the
mission at hand and the Palestinian people in particular, and doesn't
become trivialized by use of "tweets," "glogs," and "blargon."  At the
same time, i hope that these new technologies offer some means, even if
imperfect, to better support our goals and mission.


I'll admit--I'm not sure what to expect, and i look forward to
sharing my experiences with you along the way--so expect a mix of the
personal and the political.  i think the best part will be that you can
read several of our journal entries on the site.  i'm really honored to
be among such warm-hearted and committed activists, and i think that
you will greatly enjoy getting to know them too.


More than anything, I want to thank you for your support and look
forward to a safe return and the ability to share with you, in person,
my experiences as part of our shared and collective project in winning
Justice for Palestine!


Viva Palestina!
-martin




      
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