Life & Death Under Siege in Gaza

by Laura Stuart
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

We in Britain are a nation of animal lovers, in fact we often seem to care more about animal rights than human suffering.

Stories of eccentric wealthy people leaving their fortune to cats’ homes and Brits opening up donkey santuaries in Cairo are typical manifestations of our love for “defenseless creatures” (of the non human variety). Perhaps we need to publicise the plight of animals in Gaza as a means of raising awareness on the effects of the illegal and immoral siege. Dead Muslims are just statistics, but animals looking a bit thin and siege-weary should cause absolute outrage here in the U.K.

For the citizens of Gaza, death is always close by – now even some of the animals in the zoo are dead! It would be impossible to shelter the children of Gaza from the reality of death, since it happens around them as a daily and weekly occurence - and I do not mean the death of elderly relatives. I mean that they witness the murder of their school mates shot in their class rooms, or children out picking up stones to earn money to feed the family. One of the great traumas for every Gazan parent is the knowledge that they are completely unable to save or protect their children from death at any moment, at the hands of the Israeli Occupation forces. This sad reality is something which parents living live in freedom and relative safety in the U.K. with our myriad of health and safety laws, would find impossible to comprehend.

Mater artium necessitas’ in Vulgaria – necessity is the mother of invention

This surely should be the moto of Gaza and especially its zoo. a story I especially loved was that zebra-stripe painted donkeys a couple of years ago – you can read about that here.

A new threat is facing Gaza’s donkeys since the rise of the “Tuk Tuk” which are smuggled through the tunnels from Egypt and run on very cheap fuel.

What is going to happen to all of those redundent donkeys now? I think this is a question that will trouble many of our most ardent activists for animal rights in the West. Who knows, perhaps animal rights activists might find a way to end the siege where we activists for human rights have failed. I really hope they join us in the struggle.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
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