Flying en route from Washington to Israel, onward to Gaza.  

Dinner on the plane has been served, a movie watched, a film that could not have been more relevant for this moment in time.

Concussion, the story of one man with a conscience standing up to a powerful, entrenched established institution.  Dr. Bennett Omalu, confronted that establishment, the National Football League, with a very uncomfortable truth....football players'  brains get scrambled, causing emotional trauma that can ultimately lead to their death. He was dismissed, threatened, vilified, yet at the end of the day he was proven correct.

The movie without question was the film needed to be seen. I am flying into a headwind. To be honest I am shocked and amazed that I have been granted access to enter Gaza by the Israeli authorities...but I have.....I think they made a bureaucratic mistake that they might catch when I arrive to border control in a few hours....time will tell.

OK I ARRIVED AT EREZ AND INDEED I WAS NOT ALLOWED TO ENTER GAZA

It is all political bureaucracy that would take weeks to sort out and I much prefer to channel energies to more creative challenges.

Moving on.....

I continue the blog from Ramallah at the Area D Hostel......

With the We All Live in Gaza web site I am certainly not alone in challenging a powerful, entrenched, established entity, the State of Israel.  I am not alone in calling them to task for their horrific treatment of the Palestinian population, for their continued suffocating siege of The Gaza Strip.  No society can keep another under domination and oppression indefinitely. There has been no instance in all of recorded history where this has been the case.  

But perhaps I misstate this truism, perhaps the U.S. is indeed guilty of keeping its own Native American population under indefinite oppression.  Perhaps this might be the underlying historic rationale for granting complete immunity to the State of Israel for its subjugation of the Palestinian people.  

In the West Bank there continues to be home demolitions, land confiscations, blatant denials of human rights.  In Gaza, in this tiny piece of Planet Earth, there continues to be a complete economic, military and political siege that is suffocating its population.

780,000 children of Gaza are under the age of 14.  They have experienced three deadly assaults. There is not one of these children who has not lost a friend, a family member or has not known the terror of being under attack from above. These children cannot call home a safe place.   These children have lost the security of knowing their mothers and fathers can keep them away from harm.

And what of the mothers and fathers. Is it not even more tragic and humiliating they cannot protect their children.

Far from Gaza at the Marin Luther King Memorial, in Washington DC, shouting distance to the White House and Capitol Building one can find quotes from Dr. King carved into granite. None ring more true for our challenge to Israeli policy......

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Dr. King did not know of Gaza, yet his words give resonance to We All Live in Gaza.  His words could not be more on point. Yet our president, President Obama, an incredibly intelligent man, who has fought for the oppressed has turned his back on the men, women and children of Gaza. And the women leading the field of Democratic candidates to be our next president is an unabashed apologist for the Israeli government.

Our political leadership appears completely blinded....their rationale beyond common sense reasoning.

Today I am angry....I am angry at Israeli policy, I am angry at American policy, I am angry with myself for not being more effective in communicating the Palestinian story.

It's time to double down....

The good news for today, although not being able to cross into Gaza, there is a crew inside.  Pam Bailey from We Are Not Numbers is now in Gaza and she has "picked up the baton". She will be working with Atif Eisa and his son Rami from the Gaza based Media Group to follow many of the stores already begun in our video series.  

Over the next days and weeks we will work to bring those stories out from Gaza and post clips here on the site.  Our goal, as it has always been, is to share stories from inside the siege, bringing them to the outside.   

Inshallah, God willing, we can complete our feature documentary by July, the date we plan to launch the arts installation in Washington

This is not fun, this is not easy, but it is important work.....as long as one person is denied their freedom, none of us are free......

Maurice Jacobsen