When I told my parents I was traveling to Cairo, they immediately assumed that I would somehow find myself on the wrong side of a Hamas rocket the second I stepped off the plane because I am a Jew. This is really less a condemnation of my parents than an example of the craziness among many whipped up by the U.S. war propaganda machine.
The fact that Cairo is hundreds of miles from the Palestinian border and that Egypt isn’t actively at war with Israel didn’t seem to matter. Reason doesn’t seem to matter when it comes to the cascade of U.S.-pushed lies. Either way, I am thrilled to report that neither myself — from the Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly — nor John Parker — a national organizer for the Socialist Unity Party and the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice in Los Angeles and current congressional candidate — were struck by any missile of any kind upon our arrival in Cairo.
I guess I should count myself lucky that I was spared from the supposed great epidemic of Hamas missiles hurtling through the Middle East.
Piff aside, John and I landed here yesterday in Egypt’s capital city and one of the urban centers of the Arab world. While Cairo is an amazing city, the nature of our trip is not leisure. We came to Cairo to join the Global Conscience Convoy, a massive humanitarian and journalist convoy to Gaza organized by the national Egyptian Journalists’ Union and a coalition of socialist organizations here in Egypt. The goal of the convoy is not only to deliver material aid. On the convoy will be truth-telling war correspondents intent on showing the horrors of Israeli genocide to the world and relieving the severely embattled journalist core inside Gaza.
At least sixty journalists have been killed since Oct. 7 throughout the Gaza Strip as the IDF continues to target reporters of all stripes intentionally. For that reason, nearly 170 journalists from all over the world converged on Egypt to organize and partake in this humanitarian convoy to the Rafah border crossing. They hope to provide much-needed supplies and coverage of Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinian people. The world deserves to know the truth.
The Convoy was initially supposed to launch on Nov. 24. However, the Egyptian government held up security clearances with the hope of sabotaging such a show of strength and solidarity by unions and socialist organizations here in Egypt. Since the announcement that the Convoy would be postponed, organizers on the ground and around the globe have ramped up the pressure on Prime Minister El Sisi’s military junta to allow the nearly 60,000 pounds of material aid through to the Rafah border crossing. The general message has been: how dare one of the largest governments in the Arab world deny material and political relief to the Palestinian people as Gaza burns?
As it almost always does, the pressure is working. Turns out, when we fight, we win. There isn’t confirmation yet, but the hard-working organizers in the Egyptian Journalists’ Union and the local Popular Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian People have expressed cautious hope that the convoy could go forward in the coming days or weeks due to the increasing pressure and the recently announced 4-day truce between occupation forces and the Palestinian resistance.
If the convoy is able to leave soon, you can bet that John and I will be on it. In the meantime, solidarity demonstrations are planned over the next several days in Cairo. We will also meet with the protest organizers and the Convoy itself. We hope to not only contribute to the struggle in Egypt any way we can during our brief stay but also to bring back this message of truth: Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people is not only very real, but it is worsening and must be stopped.
We hope to provide regular updates on Struggle-La Lucha as the trip progresses. Palestinian solidarity will never die! Down with Israel! Long live Palestine!
Please follow @globalconscienceconvoy on Instagram for further updates and calls to action.
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