Progressive Politics

On my first day, the second official day of the mission, we were overrun; it was pure chaos. At the aid site’s entrance gates, we had people waiting in five lanes separated by metal fencing. One lane was strictly for women and children. The other four were all men, and they were letting people in, five, 10, 20 at a time – whatever we could handle. It was not organized, and people were getting smushed and trampled. Eventually, there were so many people in the lanes that the gates burst.

We fell back, letting people get the aid. They were never aggressive towards us. They were only trying to get aid – aid, by the way, that consisted of flour, rice, lentils, tea bags, and noodles; things that need water. They don’t have any water. And we’re not giving out water.

We soon had to fall back again, to a second perimeter. At that point, some personnel started firing warning shots in the air. I was later told that the Israeli military needed to clear those people out because they were going to come through. They soon showed up with tanks, as some sort of security presence, but we had pushed people out by then.

This idea that the Israeli military isn't involved is bullshit. They're very much involved. They have offices in our compounds. We share our radio communications with them. The higher-ups claim the Israeli military is not involved, but it feels like they’re the man behind the curtain. Sure, they’re not on-site with us, but their snipers and tanks are just hundreds of meters away. You can hear them shooting all day.ere.

People sometimes have to travel miles to get to the sites – and that means through Israeli-controlled areas. Any excuse the military can come up with to say someone is a threat, they’ll take. There’s not really any international media in these areas, and the West doesn’t really want to believe the Palestinian media, so you get to this point where the truth itself is murky. All the while, all I’ve heard all day is Israeli tanks, machine guns, snipers, and bombs.

But never any fire from the opposite direction.