Ewa takes her right to return
IT WAS on December 9, the eve of Human Rights Day, that freelance Ewa Jasiewicz landed at Gaza City on the ship Dignity, in the fourth successful seaborne operation by international campaigners to break the blockade of Gaza by Israeli forces.
The Dignity carried a dozen Free Gaza supporters and journalists, including a reporter for Al-Jazeera TV, as well as a ton of medical supplies and high-protein baby formula.
Israel has forcibly intercepted ships to prevent other such missions from reaching Gaza in the past. For Ewa Jasiewicz it was an especially risky venture, since she is banned from Israel and had feared that security forces might board the Dignity and remove her.
Ewa Jasiewicz said: “On Human Rights Day it’s time the world turned its rhetoric into reality. We mounted this mission to highlight the strangulating conditions in besieged Gaza.” She was due to stay in Gaza until January 17.
She was refused admission to Israel in 2004 because of her past work in Palestine, but decided to appeal against the decision through a series of legal processes, during which she was kept in detention.
When she finally left she vowed to return again, and the NUJ backed her right to enter and work in the country.