Gaza: To Exist is to Resist, Iowa City, Iowa, February 9, 2017

- I want to acknowledge our University and community sponsors, the University of Iowa's International Programs, and the University of Iowa's Honors Program. They contribute vital time, talent and logistics to our organization. I also thank the Stanley UI Foundation Support Organization for their very valuable financial support and today's special sponsors, Dave, Denise and Mike Tiffany. And MidWestOne Bank. So, Maria Fillipone is a Family Physician, practicing in Des Moines, as I said earlier. Maria received her degree, her undergraduate degree, from the U of I. But, her medical degree from the Kansas City University of Medicine and Bio-sciences. Maria has participated in medical delegations, visiting Gaza, which was sponsored in part by Physicians for Social Responsibility. Maria has been pursuing a life-long dream of learning Arabic at Drake. In addition to these interests, she's a co-founder, along with her husband, of the Des Moines Young Artists' Theater and co-owner of Noce, Des Moines Premiere Jazz Club. If that's not enough, a woman of diverse interests, she also has taken yoga for two decades and continues to participate in dance. And I think she told me she's coming up on her sixth dance recital. So, without further ado, let's please welcome Maria Fillipone. - Thank you for having me. I just wanna clarify one thing and it's probably my fault because I didn't write it clearly. I'm currently not practicing. However, I keep my license current because I do all these other things, so. That's all. Okay. I am really grateful for this opportunity to be here today. In 2016 I had the opportunity to travel to Gaza, Palestine twice. My first trip was in January and my second trip was just in November. I went through the organization Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, out of Washington State. I just went with that one because there's a palliative care nurse, Gerri Haynes, who's gone to Gaza like 24, 25 times. And I was lucky enough to be able to travel with them on this trip. Since my return after the first trip I've made this PowerPoint and I've given it about 30 times. Since my return from my second trip. I've added to it a little bit. And I just wanna share with you a narrative that isn't heard in this country. We all hear the Zionist narrative of how Israel was founded, people without a land founded a land without people. And that's one narrative of this story. We tend to not listen to the other side or hear the other narrative. And we are really literally the last country in the world who will, who does not listen to this other narrative. And so that's why I'm here. On other times I've given this presentation, I've had people yell at me very angrily. I'm trying to draw a clear distinction. There's a distinction between Zionism and Judaism. Zionism is an nationalist movement and Judaism is religion, it's different. Not every Jewish person is a Zionist and of course not every Zionist is Jewish. Another thing I wanna talk about I've been accused of not being balanced in my presentation. And that's fair because I'm telling you my experiences. I'm not telling you a Zionist experience because I went there to help the people of Gaza and in the West Bank and Bethlehem and stuff so. I'm just gonna talk about Gaza today because I have such a limited time. West Bank and everything that's a whole other hour. Okay when I first created this PowerPoint I did it because my daughter, she was in seventh grade last year, they had just finished studying the Middle East and her teacher learned I had just returned. And so I put it together like this. Really simple, simply, and with maps just because I thought, okay I'm just, you know, they're seventh graders. And every time I've done it since, and everybody's grateful that I have the maps. So I guess take nothing for granted. As you can see, these are the borders of Middle Eastern countries today. Actually post 1948 post Nakba. Nakba means catastrophe in Arabic. Like I said, the Zionist founding of the Jewish Israel State is quite different than the Palestinian narrative. As you can see, a lot of these boundaries are also abnormal and did not take into account varies indigenous people that lived in the lands because this was drawn mainly by Western countries. Mainly Britain, the U.S. and France. Some Spain. Here is a map of Israel-Palestine. This is, the first map, is before the Nakba. And then that's the partition plan that the U.S. and Britain came up with in 1947 after the Balfour Declaration, which was 100 years ago this year, claiming that there should be a Jewish State. And then here is 1949 to 67 post Nakba. And then, since then, it's even less green now because green denotes Palestinian territory. This is Gaza right here on the Mediterranean Sea and this is the West Bank in Jerusalem. If you look at, and you'll see more in my presentation, how these Palestinian territories are divided up into Bantustan style ghettos. That's a term from Apartheid, South African Apartheid. There's very little freedom of movement for Palestinians. There's no freedom of movement for Gazans. Gaza has been under total and complete siege since 2007, six or seven. There's very little freedom of movement. So when people talk about a two state solution, you need to ask yourself who does this benefit? And who does it not benefit? Because a two state solution geographically is not viable at this point in time, in any ways. Also I wanted to talk about in 1948, when the state of Israel was founded, over 750 thousand Palestinians were expelled from their homes and lands. Forced into neighboring countries, or refugee camps, where many of their descendants still reside. Many of them still have the original keys to their homes and deeds and everything. Also, there were a lot of massacres that we tend to not even acknowledge in this country. For example, Deir Yassin and Dawayima in Palestine, where the Haganah, which is now the IDF, it was the Jewish Paramilitary Group which is what founded the State of Israel. Had nonaggression pacts with many of these villages. Over 530 villages were wiped off the map. And many elderly men, women and children were massacred in some of these villages. Their bodies stuffed down wells, elderly men found in mosques, murdered. So they would not no longer exist so Israel could be created. When I tell you this, I'm not saying that to demonize one side, I'm just saying it to share another narrative to a story. That is true and does exist. And we are the last country in the world, like I said before, to acknowledge this. This is a current map of the road system in Israel Palestine. And if you are Jewish Israeli, you have a yellow license plate and you can go on all of the roads except the roads in Gaza. You can go on the yellow, white and red roads, except in Gaza. If you are Palestinian, you have a white and green license plate, and you can go only on the white roads freely and on the red roads with restriction. You can not go on the yellow roads. So imagine, just trying to get to work, or to a hospital, or to an appointment. All of these pictures you'll see I took or I got from my friend Doctor Bob Haines, who was on our first trip. So this is a picture of the 24 to 30 foot tall wall, which is throughout the West Bank and part of Gaza. Palestinians have taken to putting graffiti on it to express themselves. And this is by Banksy, a famous London graffiti artist. And this image sort of sums up the, the situation there, the two sides. It's an Israeli military, an IDF solider, with full military gear and a automatic rifle, facing off against a boy, whose holding a rock. Now when you talk about this issue, we need to talk about it and put it into context. It is not two equal sides. It is Israel, the fourth most powerful military in the world, with nuclear weapons against a mostly unarmed civilian population. Now this is the Gaza strip. It's 24 miles long by four to seven miles wide. Actually on my birthday, October 11th last fall, the two millionth resident was born in Gaza. So, to compare it to the smallest state in the U.S., Rhode Island is the smallest state. Rhode Island is 8.7 times larger than Gaza, with a population of just over one million people. This is almost nine times smaller with two million people. So when you say, when they say that, I mean it's incredibly cramped, incredibly crowded. People are on top of each other. There's no airport, no power plant, no infrastructure, no cinema, no economy and no freedom of movement. During the past three wars on Gaza, Israel has bombed the last remaining electrical power plant. Bombed the only airport there. And bombed water treatment plants and also bombed hospitals. This is a form of collective punishment and is against International Law. The world refers to Gaza, other countries in the world and leaders, refer to Gaza as the world's largest open air prison. I disagree with that personally after being there twice. Prisoners in prison get water, food and medical care. Many, many Gazans don't get that. Israel controls 100 percent of everything that goes in and out. From water, electricity, food, medicine, people, supplies, everything. And 96 percent of the water in Gaza is not fit for human consumption. Most people only get four to six hours of electricity per day. I can't imagine Americans tolerating that for very long. The IDF randomly shoots into the peripheral areas of Gaza just because. And just last week, there was a five year old girl, in the neighborhood of Beit Lahia, which is Northern Gaza. Right up here somewhere I can't see it exactly. It's where my sister, I have come really close with one of our sponsors there and we call each other sister. She lives in Beit Lahia with her two little girls, Som and Maria. They're four and two. And this little, another five year old girl was playing at the only park in Beit Lahia and was shot in the stomach by an IDF soldier who was just looking and just shoot. This happens often. It happened in Rafah two weeks ago, which is southern, everything. Also, it sits on the Mediterranean Sea, and it's actually so beautiful there. International waters start, I think, at 20 or 21 nautical miles offshore. So theoretically, Gazan fisherman should be able to go up to that far off and not be in International waters and be safe. However, once they reach six nautical miles offshore or more, the IDF routinely shoots at their vessels or arrests them and sinks their vessels. This is really important because the first six nautical miles off shore is much much more shallow than after. And it's much more over fished, which is contributing to the hunger issue. Rabbi, Brant Rosen, who founded the first non-Zionist synagogue in the Chicago area, has said, to live under military occupation is to live under the constant context of violence. And he travels to the Israel Palestine often, to the West Bank, to work for justice for Palestinians. This is the entrance. The only way you currently get into Gaza is through Erez, Israel, which is in the northern part right up here. And this is what it looks like. These walls that, these concrete walls that Israel has made, are 24 to 30 feet high. The Berlin wall was 12 feet high. These are at least double. And another point I wanna make too is Israels justifies these walls by saying, there are no more suicide bombings. Because of it, the walls have stopped the suicide bombings. That's actually inaccurate. Hamas made a political decision to stop suicide bombings because it was contrary to Islam, where, if you kill one innocent person, you kill all of humanity. And that's why suicide bombings have stopped. This is the entrance. You walk through a, I thought it was one kilometer but I was told it's not quite that long so you walk through a really long cage to get from Israel to Gaza to the Hamas side. And it's open. And as we were crossing the first time in January, we heard gunshots, and we found out later two young Gazan men, like 19, 20, went to the periphery and threw rocks and to resist and were killed by IDF as we were crossing. In Arab cultures and Muslim cultures it's, suicide is frowned upon. So this was a form of suicide, but to look like they were resisting, cause there's so much despair, in Gaza. As you're walking through the cage, on your left is this beautiful green area, and it's called the Kill Zone. Israel acknowledges that it belongs to Gaza. It makes up between 30 and 35 percent of the most fertile farm land in Gaza. But Gazans are not allowed to use it because Israel deems it a security threat. So they routinely mow it down and everything and as I learned the first time I went, shoot at anything that moves on it. More pictures. On your right as you're walking through the cage, you see this not fertile area, where Palestinians are free to go there and scavenge for whatever. And there were children saying Shalom, cause they thought we were Israeli going into Gaza. Trying to find anything they can resell. Mainly that they do is they pick up wrecked concrete and grind it down and try to resell it to rebuild because reconstruction materials are not allowed in, or very little are. This is a shepard leading his sheep into the Kill Zone, at the very edge of the Kill Zone, because there's nowhere else for his sheep to graze. And this is Northern Gaza and this was one and a half years after the last assault on Gaza. Very little rebuilding had been done. There are a lot of orphanages in Gaza because they're a lot of orphans, because of the wars. And they just make the best of things. I went to a lot of different women's clinics and empowerment clinics for women when I was there and there were, usually in the periphery, in the poorer areas, just because that's where the need was, for me. I sat and listened to women tell me their stories of what life was like and it was horrific. One woman shared with me of how she had been homeless living in rubble since the last war and couldn't feed her seven children, three of whom were disabled and her husband, who is disabled because of the last war. So she'd been begging for scraps from a butcher and he was giving her scraps and she would cook the scraps, the intestines and scraps with bread, and now four of her children and her husband were both very sick from the food she'd been giving them. From what I could understand, through translation and stuff, was that I think they had kidney failure from E. Coli. E. Coli infection from the food. Another woman told me of how she tried to commit suicide three times. Each time one of her children, a different child each time, stopped her. She described each attempt in detail. Once trying to step off a building, once trying to walk into traffic, and once trying to swallow pills. These women told me their stories in front of their children, the youngest was around two. And the children, there's nothing censored, because the children live this misery too. And a lot of the women told me how, my child said to me, if all I have to look forward to is this misery, why did you have me? It's incredible the amount of suffering. And I talk about this because, here in America, the suffering is completely needless for them. Our government gives Israel 10 million dollars a day, in mostly military aide. Mostly to continue this illegal occupation and siege on a civilian population in the West Bank and Gaza. And it's gonna actually go up to 15 million dollars a day after Obama's Memorandum of Understanding, which he signed right before he left office not long before. So it's this is something that you actually can change. If you just educate yourself on this and speak up about it. Cause it will change in a heartbeat if Americans said, no more, not in my name. After the 2009 offensive, depleted uranium was found in craters from Israeli missiles. This was discovered by Italian teams. Not U.S, not Gazan, not you know, by Italian teams. Israel later admitted to using white phosphorus in that attack. But not U-238. White phosphorus is really badly, is really bad too. If you don't know what it does, just google it and see what it does to skin. Since then, at the time, at Islamic University, they had a lab in Islamic University, I've been there twice. Where they could test for toxins and contaminants and stuff from this. After that 2009 war, Israel destroyed it, that lab, during the 2012 offensive I believe. So there's no way for Gazans to check what they're exposed to now. It's completely relying on the International Committee and teams from the International community to come in and test. Israel's tightening up. And we almost didn't get in in November at this last trip. In the 2014 war on Gaza, 30,000 bombs were dropped on Gaza. 10,000 of these bombs were unexploded. Of these, only 3,000 have been found. So that means 7,000 bombs have not been found. And are not exploded and were ready to explode any time. One month exactly after I left Gaza last year, a five year old boy was killed, and his six year old brother were seriously injured, when an unexploded ordinance exploded. In Jabalia, which is in northern Gaza, it's the most densely populated refugee camp in the world. Kids play on these mounds of rubble and unexploded bombs. There's no place else to go. There are alarmingly high rates of breast and brain cancers, especially among young people in Gaza. There's no way to epidemiologically assess this because there's no infrastructure. There's no public health system. This a picture of Islamic University a year and a half after the 2014 war and they still had not been able to rebuild. I'm assuming this is where the lab was, cause this was the most damaged part. And this is northern Gaza. We also got to tour the Rafah, Egypt border, which is the southern border of Gaza, between Rafah and Egypt. It's been closed since 2013. However, Egypt does open it every so often for a day or so or a few hours, and lets a few Gazans through. Mostly students or older Gazans who have family in Egypt who need medical care. But it's really a crap shoot. Most likely you're not gonna be allowed to pass. There were around 950 tunnels between Gaza and Egypt which now, I was told by Hamas, only six of them remain, but who knows what's exactly for real. These tunnels are what made an economy possible in Gaza. Things were transported like medicine, goods, electronics, clothing, cars, furniture and even transported people back and forth to see family in Egypt. And all our media can focus on is weapons being brought back and forth. Yes, some weapons were brought back into Gaza from those tunnels but, why are they not allowed to defend themselves? Why are they not allowed to have weapons when they're being occupied and under seige by the fourth most powerful military in the world? I can't imagine Americans would stand for not being able to have our guns. But anyways, with your tax dollars, and some engineers from the U.S as well as from the Middle East, these tunnels are being destroyed and have been systematically destroyed since 2014 or 15. And what they're doing to destroy them is we're blowing them up, which is making the farmland down there unusable. Remember they can't use that 30 to 35% of most fertile land because it's the Kill Zone. Well the next most fertile land is here, Rafah, Egypt border, and blowing up these tunnels destroys this farmland. And so Rafah is currently the bread basket of Gaza. And also there's one remaining, well no longer, fresh water aquifer, which runs in that area, which we have been flooding these tunnels with saltwater, which destroyed the fresh water aquifer. And the U.N. said last year that if steps aren't taken to remedy this fresh water aquifer it would be unusable by the end 2016. Well it's 2017 nothing was done. So, this is further worsening this water crisis in Gaza. And food. These are the craters of tunnels. I couldn't count. There were so many holes. This is the deputy minister of Rafah. This is the Egypt border. And, we were there about 25, 30 minutes on this tour, and when we arrived, this wasn't here when we left. This crack had happened, so it's just a matter of time until something caves in. This is a Hamas outpost. This is a sewage area like a cesspool that Israel built when they occupied Gaza. And it drains sewage from a lot of the peripheral, more rural parts of Israel, and there's no treatment of it. And when it rains, raw human sewage floods the streets in Gaza. And they, Israel, opens the pipe when it rains and lets untreated human sewage directly into the Mediterranean. There's always a dead donkey or horse on the road by it. You can smell this area long before you see it. Our sponsor in Gaza is the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, an NGO aimed at delivering high quality mental health services to the people in Gaza. One of my colleagues coined the term Gaza Syndrome. There's no PTSD in Gaza because the trauma is ongoing. And there is no disorder because this is a natural reaction to unnatural, an unnatural condition. Oh and GCMHP, after the 2014 war, took children back to their very own neighborhoods and the children got their very own toys and created three-dimensional artwork, as well as two-dimensional artwork, to help them cope and deal with their grief and feelings. And this is what they created. This one always struck me the most, I think, because a little girl made it and there's sad faces on the flowers and the tree and on the sun. This is a fanus, which means lantern. And in Ramadan children get lanterns when they break the fast at the end of the day or little tiny gifts. It's like a month of Christmas. What one person described to me, where they get a little gift almost every day or often. And this little girl found her fanus and that's what she made. And these are just children. And that's Maria, my sister Alas daughter. I didn't know her when she had Maria, but our joke is you named her after me. I call her Hurricane Maria because she's so bold and just not afraid of anything, and so she, Alas says I'm Hurricane Maria too. This is on the beach in Gaza next to the restaurant, Adara. And this is notable because during the 2014 war on Gaza, some international news crews, in the middle of the afternoon, were sitting having tea in Adara and one of the, an MNSBC reporter was kicking a softball, or oh I'm sorry, a soccer ball, futbol, soccer ball around with four boys, brothers and cousins. And he just walked away from kicking the ball with them and went to sit with the rest of his crew. And the Israeli army killed all four boys because they were a threat. I can't remember if it was from the sea or from the air. I think it was from the sea, that particular attack. This is Islamic University and this was the first trip in the middle of winter. They still hadn't been able to fix the windows even. And this is a U.N. school. Most of the schools are U.N. because there's no other options. There are a few private schools but, U.N. school. Doctor Noam Chomsky, a linguist from MIT, Jewish man, came to his pro-Palestinian beliefs while living on a kabuts in the 1970s in Israel, and he's very outspoken. He's very critical and very outspoken about Israeli government policies. And he's a hero to many Palestinians. And he was so welcomed in Gaza. In 2012 or 13, he received an honorary degree at Islamic University from the staff there. But now Israel won't let him back into Gaza at all. The myth that the Gazans or Palestinians want to kill all Jews is just such baloney. One of my, on this last trip, one of my colleagues, Devorah, it was her second time in Gaza. She's Jewish. And she wore her Star of David earrings just about everyday. And everybody knew she was Jewish and everybody welcomed her with the same amount of love and openness that they welcomed me. So. And Miko Peled. He is a Israeli Jewish man, son of a general, the general who led the 1960 seven day war, or six day war. 1967 six day war. He has been in Gaza and he's been welcomed. And he's been all over the West Bank trying to help Palestinians. So, question what you hear and learn more. It's more. This is Gerri, the organizer of our trip. She's amazing. Everybody loves her and knows her in Gaza. We had to get a tour of northeastern Gaza on our first trip, and Israel was amassing artillery and tanks and everything at the northeastern border. So we had to decide if we wanted to go through with the tour or not go through with it or leave Gaza early and we voted to go trough with it. So we hired security and just let the Israeli know that you're gonna have Americans at the border, don't shoot. Because they shoot randomly into the northeastern and the southern area. And so, this is northeastern Gaza. Children scavenged through these piles of rubble with bare feet. Who knows what they're exposed to. And this is overlooking Gaza city Shuzieya, actually the neighborhood which is very densely populated. This was at the highest point looking over. They're still not allowed to rebuild or anything. The unemployment rate amongst Gazans in my age group, I'm 45, is like over 40 percent. The unemployment rate for young people from 18 to 30 is 68 percent and even higher. You can imagine what kind of desperation this leads to. In the 2014 war, Israel said you need to evacuate all the people from Al Waifa Rehabilitative Hospital because Hamas is hiding weapons there. Which this is in northeastern Gaza. And so they evacuated them and they leveled the hospital and no weapons were ever found. So when you go to Gaza, and if you need police or security, who do you hire? You hire Hamas. And these are our three Hamas security people who were with us on this trip where we toured northeastern Gaza. And I can't find that initial picture, but they're taking a selfie and the initial picture and now they're looking at it and they're just like, normal people. With a gun. I went to Egypt a year and a half ago and through Drake University for this model Arab League, and our professor who put everything together, cause he's from Egypt, we had security with us everywhere we went. And who was much more, he had a lot more weapons and more menacing than these guys, but. I do this, I talk about this because the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development released a report in 2015 saying that if things don't change in Gaza, if the siege is not lifted, it will be uninhabitable by 2020. That means two million people face annihilation in a short time. And Gazans are well aware of this. They have a sign in Gaza saying let's make Gaza livable by 2020. So they're trying. But we need the International community, specifically Americans, to help with this. And it's not okay with me. This is part two. These are just a few pictures from my latest trip. I don't need to reinvent the wheel, but this is crossing the kill zone again, and you can see they were plowing it and everything and pulling up everything as we were crossing the last time. There has been a little bit more reconstruction in Gaza from the second time I was there. But there's still a lot. This is a juice factory that Israel bombed cause they said there were weapons. Again, no weapons were found. This is still not able to clean up, not able to rebuild. This is from the marina. It's really beautiful. The people in Gaza are just lovely. Of course you're gonna have bad people in every group of people, but the overwhelming feelings and acceptance that we received was amazing. People would say, welcome to Gaza, where are you from? And I would say, the U.S. Ooo, why are you here? And we would explain. What do you think of Gaza? And I would say, It's beautiful I love Gaza. And a lot of people were like, it's ugly it's horrible! Some people were like, hmm, why do you think it's beautiful? And I would always say, the people! This is that sewage area I showed you before. And this is across the road from that sewage area just up a little, just north a little bit. And there's very limited space for them to grow crops and crops grown right near sewage. This is a graveyard which Gaza bombed in 2014. And, a bunch of guys, I don't know if anybody knows what parkour is. It's popular in Europe. There's a bunch of guys. They call themselves Gaza parkour in free running. And I met all of them and they're just lovely 21, 22 year old young men who really want to like, they train in these blown out buildings, and this blown out cemetery. Whereas, if you know what how real parkour people, real parkour athletes train. They have a gym, they have trainers, and they have all this safety equipment. Well they don't. But they wanna travel to Europe and take in part in competitions and everything, and they can't. That's a mosque, it's Alf Haldi mosque. It's beautiful. I added this slide, what can I do, because the first few times I gave this, I left people feeling completely hopeless. And I also have a copy of this up here in paper form and I can email it to anybody too. I also have up here, this is from the U.N. and it's what the blockade. It's now nine or 10 years of blockade. What it's done to Gaza and how it's affected them. So you can have that, too. But you can also find that on the U.N. website. What you need to do is you need to question mainstream media and think about how this particular issue is reported. They say Hamas militants whereas, you know, it's not always Hamas militants. They say, you know, just question the whole, the words used. Most mainstream media sources here don't use the words occupation, or apartheid, when that's exactly what it is there. There are a lot of Jewish voices who speak out against this and work for Palestinian rights. I have them listed here. I mentioned some of them before. Miko Peled, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Peleg, Gideon Levy. Gideon Levy is a reporter, he lives in Tel Aviv. He writes for Haaretz. And he gets death threats regularly because he's so critical of his government and the treatment of Palestinians. But he's truly a remarkable human being. Norman Finkelstein, also like Mondoweiss. It's a website and I also liked them on Facebook. They do a lot of reporting. And it was founded by two Jewish men in Brooklyn who questioned like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this isn't right. This isn't my Judaism. And then once you read those things, check out Jewish Voices for Peace. Read the General's Son by Miko Peled. And then listen to Palestinian, read about from Palestinian authors, Hanan Ashwari. Edward Said. Ali Abunimah who started the Electronic Intifada. You can follow him too. He's based out of Chicago, Palestinian-American. Who does a lot of reporting on this, and he's really good. Mohammed Omar. He's a reporter who I got to meet in Rafah. He's actually in Europe right now but he writes all the time about this. And look at other sources Internationally on this. The BBC is very similar in its reporting on this issue as the U.S. media. So I don't really, they're not my go to. I like going to Haaretz in Israel. I like going to Al Jazeera. Democracy Now is a great source here. Amy Goodman, she's Jewish too, and she reports on this. She's, pulls no punches. Also go to the U.N. website and read that article for yourself about how it will be uninhabitable by 2020. I took another class at Drake last year. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict. And we had to read a textbook with historical documents. Completely historical, very dry reading. But once you see, go to that textbook and just read parts of it, and you'll see that the U.S. has never really been an honest broker for peace in these negotiations. Talk about this and make sure you make it clear with people running for office, people who are in office, that this is not okay. Also don't fear what you don't understand. Reach out from a place of compassion. We're all connected, this situation is not sustainable for my Israeli brothers and sisters and it's certainly not sustainable for my Palestinians brothers and sisters. And if Americans start speaking up about it enough then things will change. I wanna leave you with, I'm totally running out of time but, not this one, the next one. This is Akram, he's a journalist. Akram Al Satarri, he's a journalist in Gaza, and he's, I want Americans to see this face of Gaza because he's amazing. I have another three minute video of him where he talks about the bombing and stuff. But this is what I wanna leave you with. - When you are wandering in the streets of Gaza, I met an Australian team, who came to Gaza. Some of them were parliament people. And they told me, we saw in five hours more people smiling in Gaza than we saw in Israel in three days. - [Woman] Yeah, that's true. - So smile is our weapon. Smile is our medium of recovering, and coping, and still surviving and make this very harsh condition of deprivation in the Gaza strip. So even the people, under the heavy bombardment, are aware that they are living and enduring that for their own dignity. And they are becoming the victims. But they are not victimizing themselves anymore, they are pulling themselves all together. Trying to put their life together and they know they must do nothing but to live and survive in dignity, and to look for a better future. You'll see and read that in the eyes of the children and the faces of the women and men and elderly people in Gaza strip. They invest in life, not in death. That's why, when they say foreigner, when they see foreigner, they're usually friendly and respectable. They are not aggressive. They love people. They love differences. They know in the hearts that humanity unites us all. That we are all human and that we all deserve to be treated as such. So you're all welcome to Gaza. Your second home, and for the time being, your first home in challah. Alayhi wa sallam. Alayhi wa sallam. - [Woman] What the U.S. needs, We need you. - [Maria] I wanna leave you with this. I'm happy to take questions. There's a whole lot more I wanted to say but, there's no time. Thank you. - So first question. "Do you know how many Gazans are students at colleges or universities in Iowa? - Oh that's super great. Oh, in Iowa. I don't know about Iowa. But I also wanted to say though, Palestinians are the most highly educated people of all the Arab countries. And education is extremely highly valued and important and that many, many Gazans have bachelors and masters. There's just no work because there's no economy. I don't know about in Iowa specifically. Also I wanted to say, I don't know if there's a Students for Justice in Palestine, Palestine group here. I couldn't find one on you're website, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. - [Woman] There isn't one. - I think you've guys need to start one. I went to undergrad here, and this was like my awakening as far as becoming a life-long activist in just about anything. - Are Israeli journalists banned, by Israel, from entering Gaza? - Yeah. They're told, a lot of Israelis believe fear for their lives and feel like they'll be killed. Whereas, I don't know, maybe some will? I don't know. But my experiences and what I've seen is, that's just not the case. But Israel controls 100 percent of everything in and out. And we almost didn't get in this last trip. We only got in because the Israel gave us permission to enter, we got our tickets, and then they said, oh no, you're still under review. You haven't been granted permission. We, as a last ditch effort, contacted all of our congress people, and actually Representative David Young from Iowa, Republican, got us in this last trip. And we didn't find out until 12 hours before we were supposed to enter Gaza. Cause we were traveling on election night, or day. I found out from Andy in his office when I was in East Jerusalem that yeah we finally got permission to enter. When I go I take eight or nine suitcases of supplies. This time I took 650 meals from the heartland. I took a lot of money. And I gave it directly to the different organizations I know personally so they could pay their employees and also so they could buy food and stuff to give and medicine to give to the clients who use their services. I also took, oh a lot of over the counter meds, and vitamins, and toys. I mean I took nine, eight suitcases full this last trip. Nine suitcases the trip before. - Why was it necessary for you to hire security when you were within Gaza? - Because, Israel was amassing tanks and artillery at the border, and we were told to notify the Israeli government that Americans would be touring, and also just in case we were fired upon, someone could fire back. - You never mentioned why the IDF bombs or shoots into Gaza. Do you acknowledge that Gaza, specifically Hamas, are partly to blame for the violence? I agree that violence is not humanitarian, but IDF is trying to protect Israel. Palestinians are not totally innocent. If you wanna comment on that? - Sure. Well that's true. But also, what you have to contextualize this, the two sides, they're not equal. What will happen, what do you expect two million people to do who are crammed into a space, have no freedom of movement, no economy, very little food, dirty water, very little electricity. How do you expect them to react? I'm not condoning that. Certainly I'm not. But it's not always Hamas who's doing the firing of bombs. And if you compare the two, they're, like I said, like night and day. A primitive, Gazans laugh and say, there's our military training ground, and then they laugh. Well, police, and then they laugh again. Well it's Hamas. It's quite different, the capabilities of the two. It's a very primitive military system versus the most sophisticated, one of the most sophisticated, fourth most powerful army in the world. Also just this week, Monday. I woke up Monday morning to all of these messages from people in Gaza describing how they were under attack. Well a Salafist Group in Gaza shot a rocket from Gaza into Ashkelon, Israel, just in the northern part. A Salafist Group is not Hamas. They are actually at odds with Hamas. Hamas would not, doesn't want them there. But, we have a lot of people in our country we don't necessarily agree with. And so, in response to this, Israel dropped 25 missiles from the air and also attacked from the land and the sea with shelling and bullets, all day long, all day long into the night. So the proportionality of the response is what violates International Humanitarian Law. So Israel does not just respond proportionally, they respond disproportionally. And I think I showed that in the beginning of my presentation, of how Israel's bombed power plants, airports, hospital, schools. That's collective punishment, and that violates International Humanitarian Law. - Would you please elaborate on the initiative to make Gaza habitable by 2020? - The most resourceful people in the world tend to be the people who have the least. And they are trying very much to make Gazans be proud to be Gazan. They're trying to find ways to clean seawater and make it drinkable and usable. They're trying to find ways to grow food without it having to take up much soil. Because Israel routinely takes planes and kills crops by killing them with insecticides and herbicides and stuff because they say it's a security threat, when really it's a strawberry crop or something. So they're doing all kinds of things. From the grassroots level up, from trying to make people knowledgeable about their heritage as Palestinians. And what is indigenous to them as far as food and architecture, what their houses originally looked like, to everything so. - Do you have plans for your next trip and would there be a way if someone emailed you to contribute financially toward supplies? - That would be, I don't have another trip on the books and I told my husband I'm starting to go crazy, cause I have to have one on the books to have something to look forward to. I don't know. I'm waiting to hear from Gerri. Certainly I take all kinds of donations. If someone gives me money I may ask them clearly what they want me to spend the money on. Some people give me money and say, I want to help, cause I spend about 1,000 dollars just checking bags myself. And so they'll say, I want you to put this so you don't have to spend so much checking bags. Or, I'll say can I give it to this organization? This is what they do, I give them a pamphlet. Yes or no. Or some people say, can you buy soccer balls and toys with this money and so I do that. Also people are able to give to Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and they'll use it to buy medicines that we bring in. And you can actually get a tax deduction doing it that way because that's a non-profit. I'm not a non-profit. I'll leave my email. - Okay. Think that it wraps it up for our question and answers today. I wanna thank our sponsors once again, the University of Iowa's International Programs, University of Iowa's Honors Programs and the Stanley U.I. Foundation support, for their generous financial support. And also wanna thank today's special sponsors, MidWestOne Bank, as well as Dave, Denise and Mike Tiffany. And as always thanking City Channel Four for making our programs available to viewing audiences. So, Maria, as a small token of our appreciation we present to you with the coveted Iowa City Foreign Relations City mug. Thank you again for joining us and that'll will stand adjourned. - Thank you.