[Note that a shorter, less personal version of this post appeared today on Electronic Intifada:  http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10963.shtml. In tomorrow's post, I'll describe our evolving fight against Egypt, which has taken a stand against the march.]

On Dec. 29, I will attempt to cross into the Gaza Strip along with 1,300 other peace and justice activists from 43 countries. Some of us have traveled to Gaza previously. In fact, for me, it will be the third time since the Israeli invasion, which destroyed or damaged more than 50,000 homes and 90 percent of private industry. 

But this time is different. Dec. 27 will be one year since the attack, and nothing has changed. Due to the ongoing blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt, with the acquiescence of the United States and European Union, no homes have been rebuilt, unemployment is nearing 50 percent, children at two-thirds of the schools are laboring without notebooks and pencils, and babies are suffering from nitrate poisoning due to contaminated water. Enough is enough. It’s time to do something dramatic. It’s time for the Gaza Freedom March.

The idea for the march grew out of a CODEPINK: Women for Peace delegation to Gaza in June. Norman Finkelstein – the Jewish scholar and critic of Zionist racism – envisioned a global convergence of justice activists, arriving the week of the one-year mark to protest the ongoing siege. That “convergence” will soon become a reality – if, that is, Egypt doesn’t stand in the way by refusing to open the Rafah crossing as it is threatening to do. Our 1,300 internationals will be joined by an estimated 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza, when we march on Dec. 31 from Abu Drabo (a community in which nearly every building was destroyed during the invasion) to the Erez crossing into Israel.

Not everyone in my life understands why I am doing this – particularly since I plan to stay beyond the march to donate my skills as a communicator to two local NGOS. After all, on the face of it, there seem to be a lot of reasons why it’s a foolish, futile effort, both personally and on the sociopolitical level.

Personally, I am an unemployed 52-year-old – and I could be a poster woman for the global economic implosion.  Once a high-powered VP at a global diagnostics company, I have now been without an income for almost a year. I have never had to work that hard to change jobs when it was time to move on, but all of a sudden my luck has changed. So one might question (and they have)…Shouldn’t I worry about my own situation and keep trying to get a job instead of going to Gaza? Well, sure. I have been, and I will. But the way I see it, I can also use this “unfortunate” time of my life as an opportunity to contribute to broader human kind in a way that I normally cannot. I can hunker down until my world and my life become as small as my own back yard -- or I can look around and ask, “what else can I do with this enforced time off? What can I accomplish in the meantime?” Fortunately, “pay it forward” is more than a slogan. One good turn often leads to another: My “investment” in my chosen cause inspired more than one person to invest in me – through two grants that are helping to pay my way on the march and help me bring much-needed items to those in need. 

 But that raises the larger, macro question – why this issue? As so many people have asked me, why not help the millions of needy people here at home, instead of a people thousands of miles away who seem destined to be embroiled in a never-ending conflict? Or…how about the Congo, where so many more people have been even more brutally slaughtered? There is indeed a multitude of worthy causes – both domestic and international.  In 2007, the UN's Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), John Dugard, issued a harshly critical report on Israel's human rights record in the occupied Palestinian territories. He addressed this question by explaining: “There are other regimes, particularly in the developing world, that suppress human rights, but there is no other case of a Western-affiliated regime that denies self-determination and human rights to a developing people and that has done so for so long. This explains why the OPT has become a test for the West, a test by which its commitment to human rights is to be judged. If the West fails this test, it can hardly expect the developing world to address human rights violations seriously in its own countries, and the West appears to be failing...” The “facts on the ground” in Palestine have only worsened in the three years since then, culminating with Israel’s disproportionate attack on Gaza.

It is my belief that we should each choose at least one cause to which to commit, even if it’s only by helping one affected person or changing one person’s mind. Helping the homeless,  disabled or invalid here in the United States is indeed a worthy cause. However, in this globally connected community in which we now live, “what goes around comes around,” as the saying goes. So many of our insecurities about security stem from the seething resentment on the Middle Eastern “street” over the persistent disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people. Until those grievances are redressed, Americans will continue to be the butt of hostility from Iran to Iraq to Lebanon.

However, self-preservation is not the only reason why the plight of the Palestinians deserves my attention and yours. It’s also because Americans are partly responsible for the suffering of so many innocent people – people I now have come to count as my friends, and who are no more responsible for the bad actions of their government than many Americans were when Bush began torturing and warmongering. American taxpayers give Israel $7 million per day in mostly military aid, with virtually no strings attached – far more than to all the starving countries of Africa put together. Americans are therefore considered by much of the world as responsible for Israeli violations of human rights. In addition, the US has blocked any Security Council censure of Israel – which has violated more UN resolutions than any other country -- 42 times.

But perhaps the most important reason I am going back to Gaza and on the Gaza Freedom March is that ever since I first set foot on Palestine’s blood-and-tear-soaked land in 2007, I have felt embraced heart and soul by the people. The type of society I want to live in knows no borders between the privileged and everyone else. But if lines must be drawn – or, in this case, walls and barbed-wire fences – then I will stand with the Palestinians.