“Thousands of Palestinians were injured in Gaza, and over one thousand were killed. The number of the Palestinians who died and were not counted is unknown until now. Over 40 percent of the Palestinian houses were destroyed completely or partly, 60 percent of the Gazans are relying on UN relief, 25 percent live under the poverty line in Gaza, and 40 percent are between poverty and trying to survive. The Israeli war criminals should be brought to court, and we should not keep silence about the crimes against humanity in Gaza. All the criminals should be brought to the court”, said former Interior Minister Karl Blecha from the SPÖ in Vienna during a solidarity event with the victims of Gaza, which was held last Friday, 6 March 2009 at the Haus der Begegnung in the 22 district of Vienna. Blecha spoke before members of the SPÖ and Green parties, and many other Austrian, Palestinians and Arab participants while inviting them to give their support to the Palestinians in Gaza.
The solidarity event was organized by the Society for Austro-Arab relations, Arab-Austrian Federation of Doctors and Pharmacists and the Palestinian Forum in Vienna. Austrian Parliament member Omar Al-Rawi was present and made a generous personal contribution. He expressed his solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. As usual, MP Al-Rawi was present at this event in solidarity with Palestinians. In the past he has been present at demonstrations, protests and debates about the Israeli horrors in Gaza and the occupied Palestinians cities.
The Event Attendance
Among the attendants to the event were the Ambassador Dr. Michail Wehbe, head of the mission of the Arab League and permanent observer to the UN, Palestinian Ambassador Dr. Zuheir Al-Wazeer, the Syrian Ambassador Bade’a Khattab, the parliament member from the Austrian Green party Efgani Dönmez, who attended the event instead of Stefan Schennach, who excused himself for health problems, former Interior Minister Karl Blecha from the SPÖ, Dr. Muneer Deeb from the Palestinian Doctors Union in Europe, who came from Germany to brief the attendants about the Israeli war crimes in Gaza, Suleiman Jasir Al-Herbish, the Director-General of OPEC Fund for International Development, Dr. Tammam Kelani, the President of Arab-Austrian Federation of Doctors and Pharmacists, Abdullah Adel, the Secretary General of the Palestinian Union, Palestinian Engineer Said Khadra, musicians Marwan Abdo and Peter Rosmanith, and other members of the Palestinian and Arab communities, and many interested Austrians.
Solidarity Event for the Children of Gaza
Another solidarity event for the children of Gaza will be held on Friday, 28 March 2009 at 7:30PM at the Hotel Modul in the nineteenth district in Vienna. The solidarity event is organized by Arab-Austrian Federation of Doctors. The event is intended to raise funds to build a center for physical therapy for children in Gaza.
Another charity event in support of the victims in Gaza was held on 7 February 2009. The goal of the event was to raise financial assistance in order to contribute in the process of reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. The organizers of the event had three objectives, namely to build a medical center and fully equip it, to rebuilding one of the destroyed mosques in Gaza, and to rebuild destroyed schools. The previous event was organized by the Palestinians, the Arabs, the Turkish, the Serbian and many other Austrian Muslim organizations and mosques in Vienna.
Solidarity With Gaza
Fritz Edlinger, secretary general of the “Society for Austro-Arab Relations” in Vienna opened and headed the solidarity activities in Haus der Begegnung and welcomed the attendants. He said that the objective of the meeting was to praise the steadfastness and the resistance of the Palestinian people in Gaza in the face of the crimes of the Israelis, that there where over one thousand three hundred persons murdered, and thousands injured and left paralyzed or disfigured for the rest of their lives.
Stop the Israeli Blockade and Aggression
Efgani Dönmez, parliament member from the green party, said in the name of Stefan Schennach that they would do everything within their reach to help reconstruct Gaza, “with green energy” in order to help protect the environment.. Dönmez added that it is important that both sides, the Palestinians and the Israelis, renounce violence - I was very sad that Dönmez would equate the violence of the Israeli occupation, their unrelenting orgy of bestial crimes, and the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli behavior and their continuing blockade of Gaza, which is warranted and completely legal under international humanitarian law. At least Dönmez demanded that the Israeli government must stop the Gaza blockade and building illegal colonies.
Thwarting the Solidarity with Gaza of Austrian and Arab Doctors
Dr. Tammam Kelani, one of the event organizers, mentioned angrily the thwarted efforts of the doctors who had expressed their willingness to travel to Gaza. He said that many Austrian and Arab doctors spontaneously decided to visit Gaza during and after the criminal Israeli military attack to help their Palestinian colleagues in their work at the hospitals of Gaza. The doctors were not able to reach Gaza because of “some reasons which I prefer not to mention during this event” as he said. Dr. Kelani meant both the EU and the Egyptian government, which until now are hindering the visit of volunteer doctors and humanitarian helpers from all the world, as well as the entry of needed supplies of almost everything into Gaza, apparently in connivance with Israel and the USA. Dr. Kelani read the report about the donations of medical equipment which he and his organization had collected in Austria, and which they were waiting to send to Gaza through the Israeli borders as soon as an opportunity would arise.
He said that the Arab-Austrian Federation of Doctors and Pharmacists (AAFDP) denounced the brutal and barbaric attacks of Israel on the Gaza Strip since the first days of the attacks, which caused the death of more than 1300 and more than 5000 wounded, mostly children and women. He called on Israel to withdraw immediately from Gaza and to stop their sinful aggression. “We also sent statements, as well as letters, to Austrian newspapers and government officials asking them to take action to stop the aggression. The AAFDP protested in the streets to stop the bloody massacres against our people in Gaza. At the same time, we sent letters to the Austrian government officials and Arab doctors and fellow Austrian, as well to the Austrian medical companies to collect medical supplies”.
“The answer of the Austrian Government has so far, unfortunately, been negative, and we did not receive anything or any support from the government, but we received positive answers from the Arab and the Austrian colleagues, from friends and from Austrian medical companies, who all declared their solidarity and their desire to help us and to stand with us. Many of them declared their will to travel immediately to Gaza in order to offer the necessary surgical operations there. Unfortunately this initiative was not available to success for many reasons, which I do not want to get into details now”.
Dr. Tammam Kelani said that the material assistance which has been compiled by will be sent next week to Gaza, it has an estimated value of about one 1,2 Million Euros. He said in his speech “I can only thank everyone who participated in this humanitarian campaign, in particular I want to express my gratitude to some mosques in the city of Vienna, the Al-Shura mosque, Al-Salam mosque, Al-Fath mosque, and the Ibn Taymiyah mosque. I also would like to thank the Arab-Austrian Federation of Doctors and Pharmacists, the Syrian-Austrian Association of Physicians, Vampeix company represented by its Chairman Mr. Nabil Al-Kuzbari, the Austrian colleagues and friends, and many other Austrian medical companies, and all those who joined us in this humanitarian work. Peace, mercy and blessing be upon you all”.
Where is the ICC?
The Palestinian ambassador Zuheir Al-Wazeer, thanked the organizers of the event and greeted the diplomats present at the event, and he saluted the Palestinian struggle and resistance in Gaza. The ambassador asked the international community to stand by the Palestinians and to condemn the crimes of the Israeli occupation in Gaza. He mentioned that continuous theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and said that the Israeli practices are aimed at the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Dr. Al-Wazeer criticized the International Criminal Court, ICC, which recently approved an arrest warrant against the president of Sudan; he asked which was the role of the ICC in arresting the Israeli war criminals of Gaza. Where is the ICC when it comes to the continuous Israeli theft and murders in Palestine? He said that it seems that the ICC is ignoring the official requests for persecuting the Israeli war criminals in Gaza which the PA had signed. He added that the PA had decided to bring these criminals to the court and we would not stop before seeing the Israeli criminals being held responsible for their crimes.
War Crimes and Butchery in Gaza
Dr. Muneer Deeb, a Palestinian doctor from Gaza who works and lives in Germany, related that while he had been there helping the medical teams during the massacre, the Israelis murdered 12 of 17 members of his family, and injured critically two other relatives, one of them a female who was transferred to a hospital in Turkey. Dr. Deeb briefed us about the Israeli crimes during operation Cast Lead from his personal observation as a volunteer doctor who succeeded in entering Gaza, with a show of pictures.
He explained the suffering of the doctors working at the Palestinian hospitals in Gaza under the shortage, or rather absence, of medical equipment and medicine, of even the most basic sanitary conditions during the Israeli criminal invasion. He said that he saw serious wounds and injuries which had never had been seen by any of the doctors, and which proved that the Israelis were using illegal, non-conventional weapons against the Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The images of the Palestinian victims which Dr. Deeb showed are an irrefutable testimony of the criminality of Israel.
Dr. Deeb said that when he arrived in Gaza, they made a deal with the hospital administration to divide the volunteer medical team among the smaller hospitals, which are spread through different neighborhoods in Gaza, and where the people are not able to reach the main hospitals. He himself joined the team of French doctors which went to the Al-Quds hospital in Tel Al-Hawa in the southern part of Gaza. There, in the Al-Quds hospital, the situation was horrible, it was hell. When they arrived, one surgeon had been operating a huge number of critically injured patients, 24 hours a day since one week. They found that many injuries had not been treated correctly because of the lack of personnel and resources, and that many other injuries were still waiting for medical treatment.
During the first night in the Al-Quds hospital, they heard all kinds of shelling and bombing in the Tel Al-Hawa neighborhood, “Apache rockets, tanks shelling, F16 bombs, shelling by israeli navy boats. The wounded Palestinians were able to identify the Israeli ammunitions by thesound, and were telling the doctors team when an explosion was due to an Apache, F16, tank shell, etc.
They spent all the night working and receiving uncounted number of injured, they tried to calm the people at the hospital. The Israelis dropped sound bomb at the hospital in the morning. The white smoke spread everywhere, and they were obliged to transfer the patients from the sections where the smoke spread to parts of the hospital. Patients were given surgery masks to help protect them from inhaling the smoke.
During the second day, the Israeli tanks shelled a building of the hospital. Different kinds of bombs were dropped at the hospital. The fire spread every where in the building, and they were scared that the fire would spread into the other buildings of the hospital. Emergency was declared and then the visiting doctors were obliged to transfer the patients to ground levels of the hospital.
Dr. Muneer explained more and more of the horrors he experienced at Al-Quds hospital in Tel Al-Hawa. He showed us a list of families who had more than two dead persons in the family due to the attacks in the past week. He said that one family lost 11 persons, another one 13, another one five, another one four, etc. His own family was in the list with 12 dead persons in one strike. See more Butchery photos here“.
The musicians Marwan Abado and Peter Rosmanith played music during the event. Marwan Abado is a well known Austrian-Palestinian-Lebanese musician and singer. He was refused to visit his family in Palestine, he was refused to enter at the Israeli airport and they kept him for two days under psychological stress, in detention at the Tel-Aviv airport, and then they sent him back without giving him any reasons. They just told him “you are refused to enter Israel”. Abado often sings for Palestine, and he has a beautiful voice and songs.
The event ended with the auctioning off of some paintings among those present. One of these paintings had been done by children from Gaza before
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