producer live in the studio once again with margery stewart good morning margery good morning and your guest today may be well known to changes listeners she's been on many times before but i'll let you introduce i'm very pleased to have with us eva manley who is well known and activists are close and our community she's a very busy lady and about to become busier yet as she and parks on a journey to g boat so eva without going into all of the things that you've been involved in over the years here are well known and activist circles and you are also known as a producer of films so you've been involved in research and action on subjects of human rights for a long long time and this is one of the big one sits the issue of this the plight of the palestinians in gaza so thank you so much for coming well it's a pleasure to be here so the next thing is i think it's important to try and situate for geographically for people so could you explain just where gas is situated in the w e is on the mediterranean sea and it's in the southwest corner of israel and right next door to egypt the southern part of gas and it faces into egypt and we've heard a lot about much in the kind of people who listen to chilean to our program already understand that there's a huge issue of human rights in gaza but what is interesting to u too is the fact that somebody we know is going to participate in the flick till a movement so the first question and i'm going to be working off some questions that the folks who are one of our meetings actually i should go back a step and say i am a member of a committee of the canadian boat gasa which is a movement in canada and we are part of an international movement which is called the freedom flotilla movement and with countries around the world that are part of it and there will be people women from all over the world who will participate in this and the decision the suggestion of wendy and one of our meetings some time ago was well why don't we have a women's flotilla to gaza and many people in the international community as well as canada thought that was a wonderful idea and that's how it began and we want to highlight the role of women in gaza because in the international world there really almost invisible except when we're talking statistics of numbers of people named die on unnamed people unmentioned that's right yeah yeah so the woman to woman approach has been used successfully as we know in ireland it's been used in israel the women in black movement is quite powerful within the country so this this is the flotillas approach to it you mentioned before we came on line that i should say i should but anyway you mentioned that the flotilla movement has been going on for a long time  think the first boats went in august of twenty two thousand and eight and there's a book that's really worth getting and it should be available in the library system because one of the coeditors was gaston and imo and we had a book launch at the harbor front library and that gives you the history of the first five boats there and they successfully got to gaza and it was not until after that that the the current flow tell a movement that was a free gaza movement and then it and large and became much more international in particular could you mention some of the roles that women play in the movement because we all know that women do family and community and men do the public right i mean i have one this article and one of the people who is interviewed in this truthout article is a woman named some mere dream lee and she is the media coordinator women's affairs center and the editorial secretary of the day on magazine so she sounds to me like a very well informed well informed and really engaged and she's interviewed quite a lot in this article that's really worth reading i think what i'll do is i'll go back and post it on on my facebook page  for people who want a detailed description of what has happened since those first five boats and right who has participated in true tell us before and will be on the women's boat to g former american military and foreign affairs and she she will she has written an article that i posted on facebook this morning that gives some of the history since freedom sailors was was written so some of the things that women do it says here they encourage their children to attend school so there must be barriers to going to school for children which is not something we think about  the result of a sort of a civil war situation which is what seems to be going on there well during the last bombardment well i think in each of the three major bombardments like military bombardments by israel on the on the people of gaza many schools were targeted and they were targeted even though they were being used as shelters for people who had to flee their homes or whose homes had already been destroyed and children actually died in schools sleeping in schools during the twenty fourteen bombing of gaza and so going to school i think can also be a very fearful thing for children to do if you never know when when a school might when some people might turn up with faceless mosques and military weapons well that's true too so in addition to that the women have been actually confronting the israeli soldiers in the old of groups can you say at least that is more in the occupied west bank there's generally speaking in gas there is less face to face contact between soldiers and the population theoretically god is not occupied there surrounded by military and there are since the ceasefire that was signed that was brokered egypt in two thousand and fourteen since that ceasefire was was signed there have been many incursions into gas that do not make the mainstream media in the sense that people from israel have moved in and stayed there who would want to live in the midst of gaza right and there was a settlement and that settlement was dismantled and the people left so theoretically there is no occupation but there is a constant incursion yes series of and the other thing that i think it's really important to remember is that god has on the mediterranean sea and these people are not permitted to sail out into the mediterranean there are fishers whose livelihood for generations have been to quote to sea to catch fish to feed the population of gaza and there are still people who do that but they are very restricted in how far they can go and i read maybe it was in freedom sailors that the first part of the sea has a sand bottom you don't get a lot of fish where there's a sand that is theoretically expanded to six nautical miles but i read on a regular basis of fishers who are shot at when they're out fishing the is confiscated their boats are conscious catered and they are taken to prison we know what that means in b c we know we know fisher people and we know how much their boots and here mean to them and how they're in their living that's trade i mean that's their that's their livelihood and there is one woman who began by working with her father and who is now working on her own but it is i mean for all of them i cannot imagine what it would be like for fisherman fishers in canada to know that that they will be shot at when they go out and the same thing happens to farmers israel has crew created a buffer zone inside gas that prevents people from going to the wall and or the whatever you know razor wire or wall or whatever and it has  place and that keeps getting broadened and i was very upset when i read that when the harvest was ready this is really fertile farmland when the harvest was are used to produce a lot of strawberries and various things to export to israel eastern mediterranean yes yeah and these crops that were plowed under the also the fishers who were fear they were within the limits that has been set right so but but there's never there's never a clear delineation like i just read a few days ago that farmers will get shot at by and they don't know where is the line right now because the line keeps moving encroaching further and further into and that's very typical of the israeli policy because it's the only country in the w that doesn't observe the boundaries that they're they're quite happy to extend their boundaries a bit here and a bit there because they don't care about the people outside and the other thing worth remembering is that as we think of this community in which there were cities and our cities which are being reduced to rubble when we think about this community on the mediterranean far from greece further up the coast there's the israeli mediterranean coast line where israeli citizens can freely go in and out by by water so it's it's a very em repressive move now just to change the subject for a minute so i just w thing about the fishing in the bombardments twenty ten twenty twelve twenty fourteen infrastructure was targeted same as that was in libya and other places so sewage treatment destroyed water filtration even bringing water up so even now with a lot of repairs having been done there might be water in the taps three or four days a week same thing with electrical people have limited access to electricity and i was speaking with the family from gaza who live in and imo and they said well if you get into gas you will have very limited electricity for for charging cell phone or camera or or whatever and you will not be able to sleep because of the noise and i said the noise well they have drones overhead all the time we work as equal partners and this is true in the canadian committee and it's also true internationally so there are men and women working together and this has been true for the whole flo movement bought it on some boats there are tend to be more men than women and i'm i don't know what the i don't know if anybody has done the gender breakdown but i mean for instance that the year that the maffia marmora went there were i think eleven boat with people on the boats from twenty two countries and this time we have a wide representation of people from around the world and men and women have been on all the boats but this time it'll be exclusively women note here the campaigns participating include process i began as someone who avoided these issues and became more and more involved like i was involved in and issue indigenous issues since one nine hundred fifty nine mexican americans and the great boycott and support for the chilean refugees flooding into canada after the coup and ongoing first nations issues all through all those years and then generous people indigenous people and then really involved with central america with guatemala el salvador and nicaragua in particular and then also with some countries in south america like argentina and chil and colombia but it was like all us human rights issues except and it was partly out of friendship with jewish people whose friendships mattered a lot and i also bought into the idea that this issue is so complicated and i don't believe you should engage in issues unless you can become reasonably well informed and then i had a growing set  that i really one needed to become informed and mordechai bream burke from vancouver when he spoke at vi you he simplified it for us he picked up a piece of paper that was eight and a half by eleven and he said everyone tells you it's complicated but actually it's simple and he took this piece of paper and he ripped it into he said this is the partition of one nine hundred forty eight and then he went on tearing paper and naming dates none of which i can quote to you of all the various and counters and thefts of land and the occupation of one nine hundred sixty seven he said it's all about land it's always about  and and basically that israel wants all the lab and in fact when we look at it it's a peculiar humanitarian issue in that the palestinians are the indigenous people by all the that we use to describe indigenous peoples of the world and the israelis are the incomers and yet the israelis are continually trying to present themselves as victims as previous jews were victimized by their and hitler is this long but there were i'm sure jews living in palestine in the same way as there were other palestinians all through the years they were a smaller group a lot of the original jewish population which was also a mixed population i am told that many of the muslims are are jewish people who converted like generations ago to christianity or to islam but to get back to why i am going i made i actually wrote down i've already mentioned what happens to the fishers what happens to the farmers and i grew up on a farm the statistics are really shocking like many many many people in gaza are completely dependent on  humanitarian aid for survival and many children suffer from mt attrition forty percent up to forty percent are unemployed and seventy percent of youth are unemployed infrastructure that was targeted is gradually slowly being rebuilt but there's a blockage on bringing in adequate building supplies for the promised to humanitarian aid from various countries has fallen short so that it has not got in between seventy and eighty thousand people are still homeless or displaced since twenty fourteen and there is a very limited supply of medicines a blockage on adequate health care partly because the one hospital hasn't been rebuilt yet you yes yeah and i think i think that well chris hedges made a very powerful speech in new york city at a rally during the bombing and twenty fourteen and he said he speaking to this enormous crowd we are what stands between the people of least not if they're reading mainstream media the stuff that i'm reading on the internet it's appalling yeah and it and it was already one of the poorest countries in the world and there's but ground too old if this but let's just make a little list libya libya iraq i think we kind of understand the lies that were told to about iraq and again under saddam women were much freer than they are today and very well educated and syria we're learning about syria from the syrian people who are now starting to show up amongst us because they don't have a home because of some of the stuff texas paid for and know we were talking about this ongoing continuing blockade to isolate and destroy and ethnically cleanse the people of gaza who have lived in that area from time immemorial to us well and if people doubt this then they should look up is history have a very tight overview that's worth the price of the book and the rest of the book is actually quite painful reading another humanitarian  yes yeah this is already israeli historian yes very reputable the other thing that is not talked a lot of boat and when jeff helper spoken  year jeff helped her went to israel as i think a seventeen year old to go to university and he stayed became a citizen has been an israeli academic retired now  but he became good friends with some palestinians and he had a phone call at work one day saying can you come and help they're going to bordeaux is my house we haven't even mentioned the bulldozing of houses and so he rushed off to be with his friend and as far as i know long time since i read his book on israeli and palestine he lead down in front of the bulldozer and he wasn't killed like rachel corrie was standing in front of a bulldozer but a soldier dragged him aside and he started an organization which is israeli and palestinian but it's the israeli committee too and house demolitions and when he spoke here he said that he was writing a book that would be coming out in the fall it came out  last fall and it's really wonderful difficult book not difficult to read in terms of the writing but because it carries a lot of  of the israeli administration it's very very upsetting yes and this book deals with israel's involvement in international trade  and military trade and i knew that israel had been involved with in many places over the years because a friend of ours jewish guatemalan woman who was a human rights activist back in the eighty's was arrested and in in guatemala and at the point of a gun that had a clear through symbol on it saying made in israel and she thought it was ironic that she a jewish person should be arrested at the point of an israeli gun so i knew about involvement in other countries but jeff helpers book gives you a lot of detail about how israel is creating a niche for itself a trade a trade niche and it through military and one of the things that he said he makes clear is that israel does not want to lose the occupation israel needs the occupation because it provides  test audience for the new technology and new techniques yeah and the you know techniques of control there's a new one that the new foreign affairs minister lieberman has come up with and they're going to recolor the map of the occupied territory and in the west bank and different sections will be colored green and others will be colored red i've posted this on facebook if people want to find it and so if you if there is a population that resists with weekly demonstrations like places like  other places there are weekly demonstrations because the wall is encroaching on their farmland and they are separated from more and more they're separated from means of feeding themselves and their communities are getting smaller and tighter it's their freedom of movement is more eroded more and more so that if people in one community want to visit people in another community are stationary checkpoints and a lot of places but they're also what's called flying checkpoints and you could be going from your your little community to visit family members and the next door community a few kilometers away and going there is not a problem but returning and you might not be let through so the whole question of movement  his movement and so worst blockage of movement is in gas i mean it's getting worse and worse in the west bank but in gaza it used to be possible for students from gaza to go to university  and they never won and one person i know who went to university in ramallah was from one of the original families in gas so he wasn't part of a refugee found by but he said you never knew from one day to the next whether or not you would be able to go to university because they might deny you access today but not tomorrow and he said this was particularly problematic during exam time but  so there is restriction on movement but in gaza it's much worse because in this article women the women spoke to gaza prepares a new challenge to israel's blockade she talks about  stories of women in gas and the things they are there doing and i know a woman who when she graduated in engineering she couldn't get an engineering job but she created a job for herself helping women start small businesses like a business that visor she's in canada now but i think there's a lot of an amazing amount of resilience i can't imagine coping with the things that women in gasa cope with it will bring me back to my own history and i really mean history with the fifteenth century when we're still trying to conquer the and the reason he's known as the hammer of the scots was because he hammered the scots into fierce united independence tempered them he made them resistance resilient resilient to all of the i'm really glad you mentioned that because one of the questions that i have been asked by somebody in victoria quite recently when we were in town to hear a speaker in victoria this and i was i made an announcement about the women's vote and this one person who is really in gauged in this issue she said why do the same thing over and over again when clearly it doesn't work and because they keep arresting people and putting them in jail and then deporting them so why do this again and i mention this to jim and he said you have to remember the story of robert the bruce that was in jim's grade three reader robert the bruce fighting newly crowned fighting the british and he lost and he lost and he lost and finally he and one of his friends escaped into this miserable place where they were hiding out the cave and robert the bruce was lying there thinking i should give it all up and just forget it it's not working and but he would as he was lay there he watched a spider and the spider was trying to create a horizontal line and it would almost get to the place that wanted to connect and it would fall on the line and then it would try again and he counted six times the spider tried and failed and he thought all right if the spider makes it on the next try then i will try one more time to defeat the english and you know there have been all these flotillas i think we're going to make it yes i think the tipping point is beginning to show people are beginning to understand the statistics in canada if very clear people are not happy with prime minister trudeau's continued support for the israeli regime and that that will tell over time there's no question rights of palestinians to move freely in their own country and to leave and return to their country is guaranteed by the united nations decoration of human rights and they have a list of three things they support and the israeli occupation full equality and respect to promote the rights of palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties has been has been stipulated by the united nations so very strong humanitarian grounds there yeah what what do these general statements about the human rights of palestinians what does the receipt how does that resonate for you well i think that for me that's that's the core that's the core issue i think that all people have the right to be treated as equals not as second class citizens and to be denied the return i mean in vancouver there is a woman a palestinian woman who comes from jerusalem and her husband us from ramallah and is working on a doctorate in film studies so she to go every year to renu her jerusalem residency permit and her visa is based on her residency permit but the  the last time she went they told her you've been away too long we will not read renew your permit which means that she is state less excluded she is she has no status anywhere if they aren't really be entitled to be in canada because should she can no longer get a visa to be in canada because she doesn't she's no where exactly the position many jews were in in one nine hundred forty five when canada wouldn't take jews and britain didn't want to take jews when a stray didn't want to choose and then everybody was happy when they took the country that belonged to the palestinians and gave it to the jews not that the majority of jews necessarily agree with that particular tactic no because there are a lot more issues that we need to talk about and a future time just like to point out before we take a quick break that everything that they israeli policies are of their arab citizens is a violation of international humanitarian law including the geneva conventions which we have seen our countries more and more often violate and i growing up  hold were to thought the geneva conventions were carved in stone and nobody nobody would stoop so low except maybe hitler and his friends has to ignore those conventions about what you can and can't do when involved in a struggle so suzanne we're going to come back and talk about lintz and that struggle and civil war and all of that but you may have some great things to say well i do i will now a few events for those age fifty or better vi use elder college in parksville that's vancouver island university of course has a course this fall called exploring mt arrowsmith biosphere region and that is fascinating sounds really really good there is a whole program at the university about the biosphere so the  experts will be giving this course and it will include interactive workshops with many lectures and hands on activities that explore the diverse relationships between people and nature it's happening on fridays from september sixteenth to october seventh and to register the best thing to do is call one eight six six seven three four six two five two or go to  dot ca slash elder college and that phone number again one eight six six seven three four six two five two now there's another course that's of interest on it it's different founded in one thousand nine hundred ninety five by writer and activist earl shore's and based on his book riches for the poor the clemente course in the humanities offers a doorway into secondary education to people who struggle with challenges such as mental health issues poverty and disability through dialogue about moral philosophy literature history critical thinking and writing participants show themselves that they belong in a university and that their opinions have value vi you is offering the clemente course and the thing is it's free to participants the course fees childcare books bus passes and snacks are all provided by you an island health provide space for the course at the princess royal family center students are referred through organizations like the aboriginal friendship center the john howard society of non i mo and then imo mental health and addictions so if you would like to try this out check with one of those organizations if you're their client or contact via you you can email registration at vi you dot ca or call two five zero seven four zero sixty four hundred or toll free one eight eight eight nine two zero two two two one local sixty four hundred so that again is one eight nine two zero two two two one local sixty four hundred now the program that you're listening to on c h o y is changes and today margery is talking with eva manley about the women's boat to gaza that's going to be embarking soon and even i'm just wondering before the two of you get started again if you could mention again the title of that book about the history of the first five boats is that freedom sail or even sailors ok if you google freedom sailors and i think that the vancouver island library system has two copies in circulation so you can request the map the library right and those were successful they did get yeah true yeah which  in keeping the issue in front of us because we are very fickle human beings are and we draw an issue if it's not brought to our attention so that these people who go on the flip tila are determined to make sure that we don't forget the people of palestine and it's a nonviolent movement it's a nonviolent movement and it's not about us it's about bringing the world's attention to gas are because the fact that boats go raises the question well why are they going and what is the purpose and you know are you carrying humanitarian aid while in our case we're not going to be carrying humanitarian the humanitarian aid that we bring is hope and one of the really wonderful things is that there are already all kinds of communication back and forth the women and guys are preparing for us they will be waiting on the beach when we get there do you leave well the boat the boats are actually leaving from barcelona the port port of exit on september fourteenth and for three days before hand there will be an enormous festival for the send off of the boats like when they leave barcelona it will be a really big deal and then the boats will go the two boats will go to a french port not yet named and there will be a second leg of the journey will be from a french port to a port in italy and from the port and italy two to gaza but in order to include as many people as possible and because the boats are small they have some overlap in passengers so some people will be on the boat to go from barcelona to the french port nineteenth to go over to vancouver and also jim will go with me and will stay were night with my daughter in vancouver and then the next day i will fly from vancouver airport at noon i'll check in early and get my seat selection and then there'll be a send off in vancouver at nine thirty in front of the bill read sculpture and then they're put in the international section of the airport the big shell with the little people coming out of it yes and actually judy goldsmith is going to come over and read hebrew hebrews blessing but you know and it was really interesting to begin with i thought i'm always comfortable promoting other people's activities and stuff and and have had some difficulty typical woman things sometimes of promoting something that i'm doing but an e mail from a friend in vancouver like i've been sending out information to people all over the country said you're doing this for all of us so when i speak and when i go not cheap no it's a group of courageous women to pull off this organizations around the world are raising money like canada may have to cut our committee made a commitment to raise i think fifty thousand dollars sweden norway all of the other committees that you mentioned are raising money in their own areas then there are and and the international flotilla committee which is the umbrella group that has a committee that meets regularly on skype and also they've met face to face they make all the decisions about you know which boats to purchase they did all the negotiating the and they try and figure out the budget right and sweden raised really easily all the money that they had committed and then they doubled their commitment and so yeah out there they said there's a lot of enthusiasm for the idea of women going to galvanize this things now i believe that susan has the information about how to do that's right and then you can click on support slash donate the top of the screen and that will take you to all the information that you need or if you don't remember that website just to gaza yes that should come up and there you know people can use pay pal some people aren't comfortable using pay pal but you can write a check and put it in the mail old fashioned way of contributing and lots of people are using that option and it's the turtle island humanitarian aid the checks are made out to and then on the web site there is an click on that when you first go to support slash donate you get a list of countries so there you go just go to canada and then you have all the information that eva has just mentioned so all you have to do is set your  search for women's vote to get us a and women's vote to guess and your browser will take you to that site now very quickly i also wanted to get us to the point where those of us who are not going to be able to participate in something we need for each of the two boats that's in thousands of dollar cost and it's called an a i asked system so this makes the boats visible in international traffic on the mediterranean so it's the a tracking system that they're raising money for so that at any given moment that little blip on the screen can be found and i think they'll probably post those they will be regular updates on the website they'll probably post our location i used to be able to track the style when jim was on the estelle going to gas i could see on a map and israel has again changed its bar code it's so international standards code and currently it's at eight seven one so you notice there's a seven in each of these barcode numbers unfortunately sweden also and some of their numbers it's not exactly for international standards office it's not exactly standardized so read labels and if it doesn't tell you whether something made out of stainless steel was made in israel and if they can't tell you it wasn't made an issue will you have the information you need to so tell us why you're supporting the b d s movement even the b d s movement is a completely non violent movement if we don't approve of violence and we don't we don't support violence of any kind then people have to have an alternative and the b d s movement friendship with the blacks of south africa and one of their big supporters was nelson mandela i actually just this morning came across a wonderful quote from nelson mandela on a friend's email you know how many people will put a quote at the end of their e mail the temptation nelson mandela said the temptation would be to speak in muffled tones about an issue such as the right of the people of palestine we would be less than human if we did so and that in and say it's a humanitarian issue pretty clearly doesn't it myself i was all was money will affect us blacks none of it if it trickles down to us anyway that open worked and it worked with the politicians without the governments the governments jumped on the bandwagon the very last minute and claim he threw the been there all along and we see that with politicians all the time it was the popular movement it was the puppet of so we urge you not to buy goods made in israel because if you do the resolution that went to the green convention called for boycott of companies that profit from the occupation when the united church had what they  didn't call it b d s they called it a limited economic action and targeted a few companies they were not necessarily military they were soda stream which makes personally think that we need to go for a broader boycott but i think that it's helpful to start guarding things that that that do profit from the occupation of people on a personal level so i'm going to read this statement because you complained about the print and that picture this people only a modest pedestrian will quit connected to egypt infrequently closed by its military in stoled israel  government the government of egypt lies outside the immediate regulation of israel which otherwise dominates the territory through control of its airspace banking and telecommunications systems building permits customs tax policies  entity i just want to close with one quick thing i want to say i dreamt that we made it and they wouldn't let us back out ma thank you eva manley thank you so much for being here she will be on the women's boat to gaza and thinks to marjorie stewart for bringing eva in today that's our show check out eva's facebook page and also w b g dot freedom flotilla dot org and you can support and donate to purchase the tracking system for the boats and on behalf of our production team thanks so much for joining us