January 03, 2010

Broadcast Date: 
Jan 3 2010

One year later, a look back at Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. With Ha'aretz reporter Amira Haas, interviews with Israeli peace activists, and a look at Egypt's role in the Gaza closure.

Episode segments
  • Protestors in Tel Aviv Learn the Ground Invasion of Gaza Has Begun: January 2, 2009
    Global Justice, International Politics, Middle East, Israel/Palestine, Occupation
    Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark and Alisa Solomon, reporting from Tel Aviv January 3rd 2009

    Days after Israel began its intensive aerial bombardment of Gaza, Jews and Palestinians protesting in Tel Aviv learn that the ground invasion has begun.

  • Gaza: Days After the Israeli Withdrawal
    Global Justice, International Politics, Middle East, Israel/Palestine, Occupation
    Amira Hass's hard hitting critiques of the Occupation appear in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, where she is a regular columnist.  For several years she has lived in and reported from Gaza and the West Bank, the only Israeli journalist to do so.  She is the author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land under Siege and Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land.  She is a recipient of the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Women's Media Foundation.
    Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    The Israeli assault on Gaza killed some 1400 Palestinians--many hundreds of whom were civilians--injured thousands more and destroyed, in addition to thousands of homes, an infrastructure that had already been battered by years of Israeli blockade.

    Amira Hass entered Gaza in late January 2009, shortly after Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire.  In a talk at Columbia University in October 2009, she talked about what she found.  Here are some excerpts from that talk about what she saw.

  • Gaza: What's Egypt Got to Do with It?
    Foreign Policy, Global Justice, National Politics, International Politics, Middle East, Israel/Palestine, Occupation
    Helena Cobban is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and its affiliated Council for the National Interest Foundation. Prior to joining CNI/CNIF this past October, she has a distinguished record of living, traveling and writing about the Middle East in The Christian Science Monitor and in The Sunday Times of London, among other venues.  Her most recent book is Re-engage! America and the World After Bush.  She blogs at FairPolicyFairDiscussion.
    Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    Egypt's refusal to allow the Gaza Freedom Marchers to enter Gaza has put the international spotlight on Egypt's role as border enforcer and mediator in chief (between Israel and Hamas over the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority).  We ask Helena Cobban to explain what drives Egypt's actions v-a-v Gaza.

  • Gaza: One Year Later
    Global Justice, International Politics, Middle East, Israel/Palestine, Occupation
    Dr. Nancy Murray is the President of the Gaza Mental Health Foundation and a member of the International Steering Committee of the Gaza Freedom March.
    Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    BTP talks with Dr. Nancy Murray about the impact of decades of Israeli violence--most recently Operation Cast Lead and the ongoing blockade--on the mental and emotional health of children and adults in Gaza. 

    And with the Gaza Freedom Marchers unable to achieve their goal--to break the siege of Gaza and to demonstrate in solidarity with Gazans and Jewish and Palestinian activists in Israel--what did they accomplish in Cairo?