Nader Speaks Out On Gaza

Ralph Nader slams Israel's brutal siege and America's complicity
Gaza is the world's largest prison. It has 1.5 million inmates and many of them are starving, sick and penniless.
Israel is causing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza by blockading it and stopping international relief organizations from bringing in food, medicine, fuel and other necessities. Incredibly, America's government approves all this.

Israel has militarily occupied Gaza for forty years. Yes, it pulled out its colonials in 2005, but it has maintained an iron grip on the area, controlling all access, including its airspace and territorial waters. Israeli F-16s and helicopters gunships regularly destroy more and more of the public works and neighborhoods of the area and inflict collective punishment on civilians in flagrant violation of Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

This is not "self defense". According to a leading Israeli human rights organization, B'Tselem, the primitive rockets fired from Gaza have taken thirteen Israeli lives in the past four years. Yet Israeli forces have killed more than 1000 Palestinians in the occupied territories in the past two years alone. Almost half were civilians, including some 200 children.

And this is only part of the story. Israel's siege has also caused extensive loss of life in Gaza from crumbling health care facilities, electricity cut-offs, malnutrition and contaminated drinking water from broken public water systems. The victims here are mostly children and civilian adults who expire unnoticed by the West. The suffering of Gaza civilians is ignored by 98% of the US Congress, which gives billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel annually.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), "Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and - some would say - encouragement of the international community." UNRWA reports that children are being stunted by malnutrition. Cancer patients are deprived of their chemotherapy. Kidney patients are cut off from dialysis treatments and premature babies cannot receive blood-clotting medications. Yet America approves all this and fully supports Israel.