“This is not about security,” said the head of Gaza’s fishers’ union. “It’s economic, social, and psychological warfare, a weapon of slow, deliberate suffocation.”
Gaza sea port, February 2020. (Mounir.Kleibo/Wikimedia Commons)
By Brett Wilkins
Common Dreams
Israel has warned Gazans to stay out of the Mediterranean Sea or risk getting killed under wartime restrictions that critics say serve no security purpose and are meant to deprive Palestinians of a key source of sustenance — and respite from the horrific realities of 21 months of constant death and destruction.
“Strict security restrictions have been imposed in the maritime area adjacent to Gaza—entry to the sea is prohibited,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Arabic language spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on the social media site X Saturday. “This is a call to fishermen, swimmers, and divers — refrain from entering the sea. Entering the beach and waters along the entire Gaza Strip endangers your lives.”
While Israel has imposed a maritime blockade on Gaza since 2007 following Hamas’ victory in legislative elections and subsequent takeover of the coastal enclave, restrictions were tightened after the Oct, 7, 2023 attack as part of the “complete siege” that has caused deadly malnutrition throughout the strip, where Israel’s 646-day U.S.-backed onslaught has left more than 211,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
However, the IDF appears to have not enforced the post-Oct. 7 ban on entering the sea against swimmers and bathers. Only Palestinian fishers have been targeted, with more than 210 killed since October 2023, according to United Nations data.
“We live off the sea. If there’s no fishing, we don’t eat,” Munthir Ayash, a 52-year-old fisher from Gaza City, told the Emirati newspaper The National Monday. “Me, my five sons, and their families—45 people in total—depend entirely on the sea. With it closed, we face starvation.”
It is unclear why the IDF issued Saturday’s warning, which came amid excessive heat warnings as temperatures rose to over 30°C (86°F). With Gaza’s infrastructure obliterated by 21 months of Israeli onslaught and safe running water in severe shortage, the Mediterranean Sea provided a place to cool off and clean up.
“I used to go every day. The sea was where I bathed, where I relaxed, where I ran from the horror of war,” Ibrahim Dawla, a 26-year-old Palestinian man forcibly displaced from Gaza City’s Zaytun, told The National. “Now even that’s gone.”
Rajaa Qudeih, a 31-year-old mother of two from Deir al-Balah, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz Sunday: “I’m literally dizzy from hunger, thirst, and the heat. Gaza is going through the worst famine, we haven’t eaten, and we can’t even find a piece of bread.”
“The sea was the only outlet left. If they kill us for going there, maybe that would be easier than this slow death,” she continued. “Still, I fear for my children. My oldest is 9. How can I convince him that swimming in the sea could get him killed?”
“We are camped by the sea,” Qudeih added. “Where else can we go? Are they going to ban the air from us next?”
The IDF claims the maritime blockade is a security measure aimed at preventing weapons from being smuggled into Gaza.
However, Zakaria Bakr, head of the Palestinian Fishermen’s Syndicate in Gaza, and many other residents of the embattled enclave believe there is another reason why Israel is prohibiting them from entering the sea.
“This is not about security. It’s economic, social, and psychological warfare; a weapon of slow, deliberate suffocation,” he told The National.
Dawla said that “people here die a million times every hour; we needed the sea just to feel human again, even if only for a few minutes. And they knew that. That’s why they shut it down.”
“We called it our last breathing space. We knew it was dangerous, but it was the only place we had left,” he added. Now, “I haven’t gone for two days. None of my friends have either. We’re all afraid we’ll be shot just for standing there.”
Ayash said of Israel: “They want to take everything. They want to erase us.”
“But the sea is ours,” he added. “The land is ours. No matter how hard they try, it will stay ours.”
Palestine defenders around the world also condemned the IDF policy.
“There can be no possible military or security reason for banning the people of Gaza from entering the sea—except to satisfy the brutal sadism of the IDF,” argued Australian journalist and commentator Mike Carlton.
Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
What we are witnessing is the true face of the system we live under. It’s an ugly picture of how depraved human behavior can be. I have to believe it’s on its last legs. This barbarity must not be allowed to continue.
As a long since retired but lifelong of many previous generations’ descent commercial fisherman, I of course find this appalling. And it is a much deeper connection shared with only my fellow fishermen worldwide. One cannot adequately describe the sensations of memory and even osmosis of the sea being in one’s blood as one’s blood is of the sea. In my experience, it’s truly not possible to separate the two, and I can assure you these brothers of mine are feeling a pain so vast it is another ocean they have passed into and in which they are now fully immersed. Pain on top of pain. Drowning on dry land.
I’ve watched over the years as they were subject to incessant harassment by the Zionist coast guard and navy, interrupted, boarded, treated like… well, treated like lesser beings, a continuity of expression Israeli conceit reserves unto themselves as divine masters über alles. (Believe me, they believe it!)
So now it comes to this. Another form of death for Palestinians, one swimming shark-like in their own home, their own sea. Already surrounded by atrocities unremarked by “civilized” Western governments, now they are condemned to mere existence—not life as the landlocked only think you know it—but mere existence. And only for as long as they can bear the weight of their imposed diminishment of true identity as “men of the sea.”
Israel keeps pushing, pushing, pushing. And the rest of the world is beginning to notice, to awaken to just how repulsive and abhorrent are these people who tout themselves as “Zionists.” And are being observed for who they actually are: a people of of unlimited hubris.
Despite our “leaders'” fatuous claims, we do not now and never have had any control over Israel which, by the way, is neither “the only democracy in the Middle East” nor our ally. So why do we continue to pay for and support this rogue country’s genocide? I am ashamed of my country.
Will this insanity and sadism never cease? Why are hypocritical western world leaders condemning Israel genocide, yet supplying them with western made weapons? Not in our name. I pray to God to stop this insanity, and restore peace.
. “Bannon Flood Wreaks Catastrophic Divide in Trump Basin”
Many still lost when set adrift in the Gulf of America which was not updated in the algorithm due to understaffing .
High winds causing brilliant whitewash CAPS per Tweets from witnesses .
Sunami is possible while waves stills dissapating on the Red & Dead Sea shorelines .
Updates soon , for sure by noon .
NOAA has the chief , cook and bottle washer gassing up the ghetto sled .
This has been a recording .
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AI Overview
In politics, a schism refers to a division or split within a group, party, or organization, often due to disagreement over ideology, leadership, or policy. It can also signify a separation of beliefs and doctrines within a broader political movement or ideology. Essentially, a schism in politics is a formal split, creating distinct factions or parties where there was once unity.
Here’s a more detailed explanation:
Division and Discord:
A schism arises from deep-seated disagreements and conflict within a political entity.
Factions and Parties:
It often leads to the formation of separate groups or parties, each with its own set of beliefs and objectives.
Formal Split:
Unlike simple disagreements, a schism represents a more profound and lasting division, often with significant consequences for the original group or movement.
Example:
A political party might experience a schism if a faction breaks away to form a new party due to irreconcilable differences with the parent party’s direction or leadership.
Not just religious:
While the term schism is frequently used in religious contexts (like the Great Schism between Eastern and Western Christianity), it is also applicable to political situations, signifying a deep and formal split within a political group or movement.
Rules For Natives
1. Because we’re civilized and based in law, [{unlike like you brutal primitives}] we will allow you possession of a reservation. [{Be rid of the quaint notion of a commons; totally ridiculous if wild creatures are included.}]
2. If you cannot survive there, that’s not our responsibility. [{It’s your own fault for refusing to embrace economic modernity.{]
3. If valuable natural resources are discovered, we retain the right to utilize them. [{Since economics informs us such things have no value until they are processed, not doing so is prima facie evidence of improper behavior.}]
4. We are tolerant of religious plurality. But northern Europeans and descendants are clearly superior and our cultural foundations are Protestant, with a preference for Old Testament morals taken literally. [{Your envy of our success causes irrational anger. When it erupts in violence aimed at us, we have a duty to suppress it by any means necessary.}]
Ah, but regarding #3 especially, Palestine/Gaza did indeed attempt to develop their portion of the Leviathan field in a partnership with a UK company. But were stopped by the Usual Suspect, ostensibly “because Hamas.” (A creation of the Israeli government.)
Pssst—See what they did there?
As of January 2020, Israel has been selling gas from the field to both Egypt and Jordan.
“Last February [2019], Israel signed a $19 billion agreement with Egypt to supply it with 85 billion cubic metres of gas for 15 years. In September 2016, Tel Aviv signed another agreement with Jordan worth $10 billion to provide it with about 45 billion cubic metres of gas for 15 years.”
hxxps://www.newarab.com/analysis/palestinians-denied-drilling-rights-mediterranean-gas-fields
More on the matter: hxxps://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-gas-oil-and-trouble-in-the-levant/5362955
The Zionist Empire knows no limits to its cruelty and sadism
Obviously the forces of evil are more powerful than the forces of good in the world at this time . Words cannot describe how evil and horrific this situation is
The depravity and lack of humanity in Zionists and Israelis is unbelievable: how can a people sink so low as to retain leadership so in- humane? Where are the citizens of Israel (including those in the U.S. with dual citizenship)? What kind of religion condones genocide?
“What kind of religion condones genocide?”
Actually genocide is not only condoned, but allegedly ordered by God, in several places in the Old Testament.
DEUTERONOMY
4:1 Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers giveth you.
7:1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;
7:2 And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:
7:5 But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.
7:6 For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.
7:16 And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them:
7:23 But the LORD thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed.
I SAMUEL
15:2 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.
15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel must be completely committed to removing the evil of Hamas from the world, just like the ancient Israelites were commanded, according to I Samuel 15:3, to destroy the Amalekites.
Here is a paragraph from a letter to a Christian friend from the American revolutionary writer Thomas Paine, who was a Deist, in which Thomas Paine gives some very good reasons for not believing that the Bible is the “Word of God”.
hxxps://www.deism.com/post/a-letter-to-a-christian-friend-regarding-the-age-of-reason
(a little over halfway down)
It might be noted that Christian fundamentalists, for instance, believe in a cruel God who condemns to hell for all eternity all those who, for whatever reason, do not come to “accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior” in this present lifetime. And the Zionist Christians believe that the Jews returning to their ancient homeland in Israel is part of God’s plan for the “End Times”, which we are supposedly living in, and which heralds the soon return of Jesus Christ. Opposing or not standing with Israel is thus tantamount to standing in the way of God’s plan. Believing in the cruel God they believe in, it makes sense that they would be callous and completely indifferent to the sufferings of the Palestinians who have been and are being displaced by the Israeli settlers, and who are regarded as being mere pawns in the grand plan that God is working out for Israel, and for the “End Times”.
I myself personally am a Deist and an ex-Christian. I very strongly lean toward believing in God (though I accept uncertainty); however I now do not at all believe any alleged revelation from God, such as the Bible or the Koran, to actually be such. I am fully in agreement with Thomas Paine. I detail this in my write-up linked to by my screen handle.
The depravity of the empire and its Zionist proxy is bottomless
Shoot the bison hunter ?
On the water prairie ?
Like fish in a barrel ?
Out of the sea ?
The dammed were made for us not thee .
There is an Indian tribe which sought refuge and saftey and found the place where food grows on water . They call it home , what was alloted to them .