This archive is dedicated to Vik, and the Gaza friends who welcomed us home.

Speaking of which.

Al Jazeera made a documentary about Vik and ISM’s Gaza work, and Adie has just told me that you can watch it here, where you can also see the times it is on the telly this week, if you get Al Jazeera.

Vik had two dreams: to become a writer and to get back to Palestine after Israel refused him entry. He achieved both, and no matter how impossible it is for me to believe I will never share an evening of shisha and mojito with him again, I do actually see his life as complete.

As all our hearts follow the 2011 flotilla, named “Stay Human” in his memory, I want to give you my own translation of the first words Vik posted to his Italian blog after he and I and our comrades arrived to Gaza on our two little boats on August 23, 2008.

“History is us.
History is not cowardly governments
with their loyalty to whoever has the strongest military

- Vittorio Arrigoni

In the words of Vik’s mother, Egidia Beretta:

“This lost child of mine is more alive than ever before, like the grain that has fallen to the ground and died to bring forth a plentiful harvest. I see it and hear it already in the words of his friends, above all the younger among them, some closer, some from afar…we were a long way from Vittorio, but now we are closer than ever, with his living presence magnified at every passing hour, like a wind from Gaza, from his beloved Mediterranean, blowing fierily to deliver the message of his hope and of his love for those without a voice, for the weak and the oppressed, passing the baton.”

Aren’t we lucky to have a vision that is worth all we can give it – even our lives?

Order your copy here…

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve finished the last 12 hour shifts of my first year of midwifery studies, begun attending the lectures for my second year, and facilitated an international FreeGaza meeting in Brussels in the middle. Also this year so far, I’ve done about 30 book events – and thank you so much to all the groups and people who’ve made those happen. I’ve been posting occasionally to this blog since I returned from Gaza, but I’ve decided it’s time to stop…I need to step up the attention to my degree (it’s getting harder, and I’m not getting smarter!), while keeping going with more book events in my spare moments.

In Palestine, and in Palestine solidarity, there’s so much going on, and I’m very aware this blog is in no way keeping up. The Jewish Boat to Gaza just got stopped by Israel; Ewa has just written about the Flotilla attack, while Adie is writing from Gaza about his work with some of the people you met via my blog, including Dr Mona and the Samouni family; Sarah my co-author is blogging from the West Bank for a few weeks; the Russell Tribunal is about to convene in London and needs your support, the UN Human Rights Commission enquiry into the flotilla attacks has reached some very strong conclusions and a summary of the report is here (but it doesn’t actually recommend anything…hmm…); and the Viva Palestina convoy is on the road again. And the FreeGaza boats will sail again soon…

Anyway, for me, the role of my own writing has been much less important since I left Gaza, and I would rather you went and read writing coming out of Palestine right now (look at my links page if you need some contacts to start you off.) I will continue to tell Gaza stories via my book – you can invite me along anywhere you need a random activist-author-midwife type person (so keep an eye on my events calendar which I will keep updating) and one day I will be back here writing again. I don’t really have the words I need to thank all of you – the readers who opened your hearts to my stories of Gaza, when that meant, and continues to mean, a lot of pain and sometimes horror. I hope what you’ve also found here is some of the courage, hope, and joy that my Gaza friends have shared with me.

Ken Loach on why he supports the Russell Tribunal:

Emily and her specialty arty eye wear

Resistance is the secret of joy. Alice Walker said it and – while she also said “everything we love can be saved” and I still feel mad at her for that cos however way you look at it that is heartbreakingly not true – sometimes, sometimes, I believe the one about resistance. It looks like Emily does too. Still attached to FreeGaza twitter texts, I have just followed a link to discover 21 year old Jewish-American Emily, whose eye the Israeli army removed with a tear gas cannister last month, singing the cheerfulest blues I’ve heard in a long time about the whole thing, on her own blog, Thirsty Pixels.

As a fellow injured-by-the-Israeli-army international, I’m the luckiest I know of the collection, despite having been one of the more dramatic originally. I’ve no longterm affects (unless lead absorbtion starts to send me crazy at some point, like Van Gogh and his lead pencils, let me know if that looks to be happening, ok?) and I don’t know of any of the others who can say that. So I’m not going to speak on behalf of someone like Tristan Anderson, who has paid a much, much higher price for his resistance…as have his partner and his parents. His was the injury we all dread much more than death. Yet, now there is finally more news of him, I discover Tristan has fought back much more than I ever imagined possible. He’s finally got back to the US, and he’s made it to a wheelchair.

Sometimes the pain of resistance seems as if it will crush you to death all by itself. Everyone in Gaza knows that. I bet Gabby does too. I guess Emily, who is an artist, will have days when the loss of an eye seems a targetted cruelty she can’t rise above. But sometimes, sometimes, for us internationals whose resistance comes with the luxury of choice, the joy found in fighting injustice takes us beyond the anger, to a knowledge our lives have been given a value we would have never found on any other path.

Love and rage.

A year after his shooting, Tristan has made it back home