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<h2><br></h2>As of this morning, McKinney and other American prisoners were set to return to the U.S., reportedly through Boston.<br><br>To follow the story, visit <a href="http://www.greenpartywatch.org/">http://www.greenpartywatch.org/</a><br><br><br>Below is a report from McKinney in an Israeli jail cell on July 4th.<br><br><br><br>
<h2>Cynthia McKinney Speaks Out From Jail In Israel</h2>
<h4>July 4th, 2009 by Ronald Hardy · <a href="http://www.greenpartywatch.org/2009/07/04/cynthia-mckinney-speaks-out-from-jail-in-israel/#comments">No Comments</a></h4>
Sent in by Scott McClarty of GPUS: <BR>
Former U.S. Congresswoman speaks out of her jail in Israel<BR>
<a href="http://www.paltelegraph.com/palestine/gaza-strip/1261-former-us-congresswoman-speaks-out-of-her-jail-in-israel">The Palestine Telegraph</a>, Saturday, 04 July 2009<BR>
Palestine, July 4, 2009 (Pal Telegraph) - This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one
of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for
trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies - and even
crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children.<div class="entry"><blockquote>
While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on
our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and
arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza.
We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how
we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian
assistance to the people of Gaza. At the outbreak of Israel’s Operation
‘Cast Lead’ [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one
day’s notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national
delegation, to deliver 3 tons of medical supplies to an already
besieged and ravaged Gaza.<br>
<span id="more-1261"></span><br>
During Operation Cast Lead, U.S.-supplied F-16’s rained hellfire on a
trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full scale outright genocide.
U.S.-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology,
DIME weapons, and cluster bombs - new weapons creating injuries never
treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by
doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel’s onslaught that Gaza had
become Israel’s veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to
test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.<BR>
The world saw Israel’s despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera
Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts
live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my
first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military
rammed the boat I was on in international water … It’s a miracle that
I’m even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli
military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.<BR>
The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we
committed a crime … I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794.
How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?<BR>
Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it
does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they
put their own lives on the line for someone else’s children. Israel is
the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security
because Gaza’s children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its
last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.<BR>
I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at
gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against
my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that
Gaza’s children could color & paint, that Gaza’s wounded could be
healed, and that Gaza’s bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.<BR>
But I’ve learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison.
First of all, it’s incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who
also had a dream … like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all
are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land.
They had a dream that their lives would be better … The once proud,
never colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the
United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and
occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower
politics [have] become more important than human rights and
self-determination.<BR>
My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the
exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to
have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held
promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was
arduous.<BR>
I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it
wasn’t cheap. Many of them represent their family’s best collective
efforts for self-fulfilment. They made their way to the United Nations
High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of
identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They
are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel only after they
arrived Israel told them “there is no UN in Israel.”<BR>
The police here have license to pick them up & suck them into
the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful,
industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The
idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely
propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a
place of refuge and safety for the world’s first Jews and Christian. I
too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.<BR>
The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the
families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who
are now trapped in Ramle’s detention facility. And what are we to do?
One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for 6 months. As an
American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United
States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8
trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought
now be clear that hope, change, and ‘yes we can’ were powerfully
presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and
nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.<BR>
It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to
the voters of America as was Israel’s marketing to the world. It
tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.<BR>
We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to
represent us. I have read and re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s
letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have
ever imagined that I too would one day have to do so. It is clear that
taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have a lot to atone for, for what
they’ve done to others around the world.<BR>
What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me
because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for
other people’s children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I’m experiencing
the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I’m lucky. I
will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?<BR>
Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men
whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock.
[Ask yourself:] what are you willing to do?<BR>
Let’s change the world together & reclaim what we all need as
human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these
women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in
Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I
appeal to the United State’s Department of State to include the plight
of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in
its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama
to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to
engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.<BR>
I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free
Palestine, and to the women I’ve met at Ramle. This is Cynthia
McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.<BR>
Cynthia McKinney is a former U.S. Congresswoman, Green Party
presidential candidate, and an outspoken advocate for human rights and
social justice. The first African-American woman to represent the state
of Georgia, McKinney served six terms in the U.S. House of
Representatives, from 1993-2003, and from 2005-2007. She was arrested
and forcibly abducted to Israel while attempting to take humanitarian
and reconstruction supplies to Gaza on June 30th. For more information,
please see http://www.FreeGaza.org<BR></blockquote>
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