Sonofabitch Jews squash surfing in brave Palestinian territory…
Do you know what hackles are? They’re the erectile hairs on the back of a dog. Piss a dog off and the hackles dance. It’s a warning. Don’t come any closer or this bitch gonna bite.
A couple of days ago, there was a spurt of hot water over a silly little piece of propaganda that appeared on Magic Seaweed.
The story reported on a movie called Gaza Surf Club. The film is simple enough. It follows a couple of Palestinians as they live, and surf, in that tortured little forty-one clicks of Med coast called Gaza. The joint’s been an international football since forever. The Ottoman Empire had it. Then the Brits. The Palestinians sorta got it for a decade in the fifties. The the Egyptians, the Israelis (after the Egyptians tried to annihilate ’em in 1967) and now it’s back in the paws of the Iran-backed Sunni-Islamic militant group Hamas. They got Egypt on one border, Israel on the other.
If you’re gay, a gal, someone who doesn’t believe the Jew is your mortal enemy or you enjoy riveting Western music it ain’t the place to be.
With its fifty-one clicks of shared border with Israel it also makes an excellent place to toss munitions into their hated enemy’s backyard. You’ll remember the war in 2014. Two thousand Palestinians dead, seventy Israelis, after Hamas and the various other militias started firing thousands of rockets over the border.
Anyway, old news.
From what I hear, the Seaweed story has got Israeli surfers’ hackles up. It paints a picture, they say, of a couple of boards being shared around as all the sleds get confiscated in Tel Aviv. Of impossible Jewish oppression.
Thing is, Surfing 4 Peace, which was created in 2004, just before the Israeli government forcibly evicted 9,000 Jewish settlers, has gifted the surfers of Gaza thirty-eight surfboards, a couple of dozen wetsuits, and two hundred kilos of surf turns, tees, wax, surf mags etc.
Here’s how that went down.
On July 27, 2007 The Los Angeles Times published an article by Louise Roug detailing the plight of Palestinian surfers living in the Gaza Strip and forced to share a single surfboard between them. Within hours, Doc Paskowitz was on the phone with his son David, Arthur Rashkovan, and Surfing World Champion Kelly Slater. They decided then and there that something must be done.
Within several weeks, the Surfing 4 Peace crew had gathered 14 used surfboards from Israeli surf companies, for donation to the small but passionate surfing community in Gaza. With the assistance of One Voice and with international media coverage, Doc, David and Arthur handed the boards over to the grateful Palestinian surfers at the Erez Terminal between Israel and Gaza on August 21st. Articles detailing the donation appeared in scores of newspapers, journals and magazines around the world.
So the Israelis get a little sore that they’re painted as the architects of Gaza’s misery. A pal of mine recalls taking a couple of Arab surfers around Europe and sitting there as one of ’em regaled his crowd with his hatred of the Jews.
“But I’m a Jew,” my pal protested.
“Everyone but you!” he beamed.
It ain’t simple.
As the Israeli writer, peace advocate, and founder of Peace Now, Amos Oz, posited“What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap and starts shooting machine gun fire into your nursery? What would you do if your neighbor across the street digs a tunnel from his nursery to your nursery in order to blow up your home or in order to kidnap your family?”
