The Barefoot Strip
The Free Gaza Movement’s chartered boat “Dignity” arrived earlier today in the Gaza Strip, loaded down with humanitarian aid supplies for the blockaded populace, but there’s one thing they probably didn’t think to pack, and is going to be increasingly hard to come by for your average Gazan.
Shoes.
Yes, shoes. Israel has reportedly banned shoes and other clothing from being imported into the Gaza Strip, claiming that “they could be used in producing military uniforms.”
Now, humanity has been making shoes for itself for at least 10,000 years, and there’s no denying that some of those shoes have been put the military use in that time. Still, its something one can at the very least consider a “dual use technology.”
Of course, with some Gazans finding electric car technology as a solution to harshly curbed fuel imports, the production of shoes seems well within their technological capabilities. But expensive and scarce materials will make satisfying the demands of the strip’s million and a half residents for footwear extremely difficult if not impossible.
sam
October 30th, 2008 at 2:14 am
why don’t the nazisraelies also ban air, water and food as that could be used to sustain a “military”.. really this has just about become the biggest farce on the planet. Only “democracy” in the middle east — my ass
And to think that my tax dollars are supporting this nonsense..
oh well.. our Israel uber alles media and politicians seem not to have a comment on this..
where is Obama, where is McCain?
we have become the United States of Farce-ica
david monaghan
October 30th, 2008 at 3:33 am
Life’s a bitch and then you have politics–not good
richard vajs
October 30th, 2008 at 4:42 am
The parallels between the Israeli strangulation of Gaza and the Nazi treatment of the Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII are striking. Yet, the American media seem not to notice. The American Jewish community, which has always sought fairness and human rights, is not doing enough if anything, to correct Israel’s actions. I understand that Jewish voters have historically voted Democratic by a 3:1 ratio, but this election are favoring “Bomb, Bomb, Iran” McCain and his Likud Princess Sarah. They need to wake up and start doing what is right. The mouth breathing Christian Zionist mob are not the only people in America noticing all of this. And when majority opinion changes it will come like a swift wind.
abraham
October 30th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Actually, we are the United States of Zion, apparently.
willb
October 30th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Actually the Israelis may be onto something.
A soldier carrying full gear into the field without shoes would be an easy target as
he limped along nursing stone bruises.
This could be the answer all of us anti-war pundits have been looking for.
Down with shoes!
(Acutally I think this is way too good of an idea for the Israelis to have come up with.
This must have come from our own U.S. Homeland Security bureau via the TSA having discovered
that by making Citizens remove their shoes, airport bombings have declined dramatically.)
Andy
October 30th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Call it ‘boots of mass destruction’.
Eric
October 30th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
What do you expect? Israel will destroy the home of any relative of a “Palestinian militant” as part of the “infrastructure of terror”. And the definition of a “Palestinian militant” is “a Palestinian male between 12 and 60 years of age”. Israel is vile.
Corkey
November 1st, 2008 at 10:23 am
Blame it all on that retarded shoe bomber from years ago whose name I cannot remember ?
Maybe it was Al Bundy ??
http://www.bundyology.com/bal.html
lester
November 1st, 2008 at 4:01 pm
“shoeless in gaza”
swan
November 2nd, 2008 at 4:13 pm
What horrible behavior the Iraelis engage in toward their neighbors. thanks, jason.
Israel Turns Back Gaza Aid Boat « Dr Nasir Khan
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:10 am
[...] has expressed public outrage at the suggestions of UN officials that refusing to allow food (and officially barring the importation of shoes) into a small region inhabited by 1.5 million people was a “direct contravention of international [...]