{"id":1082,"date":"2004-06-22T21:18:47","date_gmt":"2004-06-23T04:18:47","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2004-06-22T21:18:47","modified_gmt":"2004-06-23T04:18:47","slug":"erez-to-close-minds-to-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2004\/06\/22\/erez-to-close-minds-to-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Erez to close.  Minds to open?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Erez Industrial Zone in Gaza is notorious as a borderline industrial slave labor camp (on occupied land), though of course its creation has long been touted as a supreme act of benevolence by Israel, which of course wishes only to show how much it wants friendship and<br \/>\ncooperation with the Palestinians.  Erez is one of the last places where Gazans can earn a few shekels so that they don&#8217;t starve to death, though it is not by choice that they work there. Now its factories are closing and moving to Israel, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/ac2\/wp-dyn\/A58114-2004Jun21?language=printer\"> AP  <\/a>  and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailystar.com.lb\/article.asp?edition_id=10&#038;categ_id=3&#038;article_id=5162#\">AFP<\/a>  report.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who has bothered to read the 4-stage  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/hasen\/pages\/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=432763&#038;contrassID=1\">&#8220;disengagement&#8221; plan<\/a> by Sharon will also note that Israel hopes to phase out having any workers from Gaza enter Israel in the future &#8211; another act of benevolence, no doubt, though I haven&#8217;t heard how this is going to be presented to the media to highlight Israel&#8217;s desire for peace.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, with a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.madison-rafah.org\/\">Rafah Sister City Project <\/a> proposal before the Madison city council, Kavanna &#8212; &#8220;the progressive Jewish voice&#8221; on the UW Campus &#8212; has suggested in its <a href=\"http:\/\/madison-rafah.org\/debate.html\">oozingly liberal way <\/a> that a better choice for a sister city than Rafah (a terrorists&#8217; nest) would be the Erez Industrial Zone, since it displays such cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis.  <\/p>\n<p>Now that the Erez <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnsnews.com\/ForeignBureaus\/archive\/200406\/FOR20040608d.html\">&#8220;island of sanity&#8221;<\/a>  option has been precluded, maybe the &#8220;progressive Jewish voice&#8221; on campus   will break ranks with the fear exploiters  (e.g., the Madison Jewish Community Council, Bush, Sharon) and join the many Jews who are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.madison.com\/captimes\/news\/stories\/73624.php \">supporting<\/a> the Rafah project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Erez Industrial Zone in Gaza is notorious as a borderline industrial slave labor camp (on occupied land), though of course its creation has long been touted as a supreme act of benevolence by Israel, which of course wishes only to show how much it wants friendship and cooperation with the Palestinians. Erez is one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}