Speaking out for Viva Palestina
By
CHICAGO--British member of parliament and antiwar activist George Galloway gave a rousing speech June 27 to help raise funds for Viva Palestina, the organization that is organizing a humanitarian aid convoy from the U.S. to Gaza.
Together with peace activist Ron Kovic and hundreds of others, Galloway will fly from New York to Cairo on July 4, and will lead a convoy of several hundred vehicles from the Egyptian capital to Gaza.
This is not Viva Palestina's first aid convoy. Last March, the group organized a similar caravan from London to Gaza, traveling more than 9,000 miles through Europe and North Africa.
In Chicago, Galloway emphasized the need to repeat the journey:
We have to go back--again and again and again. We have to go back to break this siege, because it's the siege that is killing the people of Gaza, not the Israelis. Israel killed 1,400 Palestinians. By the grace of god, more Palestinians were born in those 22 days than Israel managed to kill. It's the siege that's killing them.
Why is this all happening? Because the Palestinian people voted in a free and fair election for a government that Britain and the United States and Israel don't like. What a strange attitude they have to elections! They've got Iran in the dock, which had an election in which 40 million people voted. They're best friends with the Arabian side of the gulf, where there are no elections of any kind, and never have been. When was the last election, disputed or otherwise, in Saudi Arabia?
Kevin Clark of the International Solidarity Movement, a group that sends activists to Gaza for nonviolent resistance, had this to say about the event: "By raising money for medical aid, people who cannot go to Gaza in person can still make an important contribution. They did in Britain, and we can do it, too."
More than a hundred people were in attendance. Messages of solidarity were delivered by Code Pink, the consul general of Venezuela, South Side Together Organizing for Power, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Committee Against the Militarization of Youth.
