CHICAGO, June 28, 2010(WAFA)-“A new phase of struggle is born, but at a terrible, almost unbearable price: Nine of our brothers taken from us…. Their blood now laps on the shores of Gaza.” Kevin Ovenden is a leader of the Viva Palestrina movement spoke at the Socialism 2010 conference, Socialist Workers website reported.
“Israel’s murderous assault on a flotilla of ships carrying solidarity activists and humanitarian aid to break the U.S. and Israeli-imposed siege of Gaza spurred outrage around the world.” He added “catapulted the international movement in support of the Palestinian people to a new stage.”
At the Socialism 2010 conference in Chicago, four voices from that movement discussed the future of the struggle for a free Palestine and a free Middle East at a forum attended by nearly 1,000 people.
Kevin Ovenden, is a leader of the Viva Palestina movement that has organized three overland convoys to bring aid to Gaza through Egypt's Rafah border crossing.
Kevin was on the lead ship of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, the Mavi Marmara, when it was attacked in international waters by Israeli commandos who killed at least nine people and injured many more. Along with other survivors, Kevin was detained and held in an Israeli prison in the Negev Desert until his release.
Ovenden stated, Protesters march in New York City for an end to the siege of Gaza following Israel's massacre on the Mavi Marmara.
'ALL CHANGED, changed utterly.' So wrote the great poet William Butler Yeats after the British suppression of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916. After Bloody Monday in the Eastern Mediterranean, we can complete that couplet.
“A new phase of struggle is born, but at a terrible, almost unbearable price: Nine of our brothers taken from us, scores more wounded by gunshots, their blood now lapping on the shores of Gaza.” he noted, “but their blood was not shed in vain, because the tide has turned, and we must seize this tide to make a lasting change in Palestine, the Middle East and around the world.”
“We remember all of them. I remembered them on the Monday night, bound in an Israeli dungeon in the Negev Desert, a place where any self-respecting friend of Palestine would be honored to spend just one minute,” he remembered.
“I remembered the older man, one meter in front of me, shot through the leg. The man slightly younger than me, just to the right of me, shot through the abdomen.” he said, “I remembered the photographer holding a camera, shot through the forehead, the high velocity bullet blowing away the back third of his skull, cradled by a friend of mine, Nicci Enchmarch, as the last few seconds of his life expired.”
he added, “all three of these men were shot from above. In all three instances, not one Israeli commando was in any immediate proximity. It's completely unfeasible to claim that anyone was in fear of their life or in fear of violence when the shots rang out which gunned down those men.”
The lies are falling apart, thick and fast. I could go through all the testimony and the evidence, and it will be accumulated not by the Israeli tribunal--the whitewash tribunal that they've set up in Tel Aviv.
There's only one thing you need to know about this tribunal: the bona fide for its impartiality is that Israel has invited onto it a man called David Trimble, who is a representative of the Unionist establishment in the north of Ireland, which itself is complicit in covering up the massacre of 14 unarmed civilians on the streets of Derry--covering it up for 38 years.
There will be no truth, of course, from this inquiry, and we want an independent inquiry. But we do not have to wait for an independent inquiry, because the bold and blood-soaked facts are very straightforward. On the one hand, nine people dead. On the other, three or four roughed-up Israeli commandos. As you say on this side of the Atlantic, go figure. And millions of people around the world have already gone and figured.
