Dr. Kenneth Ring was responsible for establishing the near-death experience as a valid field of research. His following appeal for aid for a stricken people is based on first-hand reports. Even if you can only give a few dollars, give what you can. Send your check or money order to Kenneth Ring, 19A Stadium Way, Kentfield, CA 94904. No letters please. Only money. Dr. Ring will see to it that all monies are given to the right person in the right way.
Thank you so much, PMH
Dear Friend,
I have always felt it was a very bad idea to solicit funds from friends for any purpose, however worthy. Even though I have always given donations when I have received appeals from friends who are walking to help provide a cure for breast cancer or other diseases and for similar causes, I have never felt a need to send out an appeal of my own.
Until now.
So please bear with me for a few minutes while I explain what has prompted me to disregard my own reluctance to prevail upon my friends to come to the aid of a cause that has become my own.
It is the situation in Gaza, which has been under siege ever since last June when Hamas took over the reins of government there.
Most of you probably know that Gaza is a tiny strip of land about 25 miles long along the Mediterranean coast just north of Egypt. In this small incredibly impoverished region, one of the most densely populated in the world, live close to 1.5 million people, most of them (about 56%) children under the age of 16. Since June, 2007, these people have been living, suffering and dying in an open-air prison, penned up like cattle. The one airport has been closed, likewise their port, their movements both inside Gaza and at the borders are entirely controlled and restricted by the Israeli occupying forces. Murder and wounding by snipers and exploding mortars are virtually daily events.
There are desperate shortages of food, medical supplies, and fuel. Ambulances have been completely out of fuel in recent days, for example. Humanitarian supplies often can’t get through. Eight human rights organizations have released a report saying that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is now the worst it has been since 1967 when Israel first occupied this region.
I have read many reports and several books about this situation; I have seen documentaries which depict horribly mangled and permanently damaged bodies of children in their hospital beds, wailing that they want to die while around them their relatives sob with impotent rage. And even when these children escape physical violence, their lives are shattered none the less. At least 30% of Gazan children suffer from stunted growth as a result of chronic malnutrition; about a tenth of these children have permanent brain damage; 82% are afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder; the great majority of them have witnessed death first-hand. And there is no end in sight. This is a world in which terrible violence and suffering take place daily.
In recent months, I have met a number of Palestinian people and have been in touch with others living either in the West Bank or Gaza. One man who writes me almost daily from Gaza is a distinguished professor there. This is what he wrote me today (April 25th):
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Dear Ken,
Sorry to disappoint you and tell you that Israel, in fact, is still preventing us from having fuel. They only allowed the only electricity station we have here to have some industrial diesel. But that was not enough at all. I spent the whole night in total darkness.
The severe shortages in fuel have affected our teaching program. Our students and lecturers cannot attend their classes. Yesterday, I had only three students out of 80! Those who can walk long distances try their luck. But yesterday we had a heat wave and many of those who tried to walk to school had dehydration. Mind you that most of our students already suffer from malnutrition. To add insult to injury, UNRWA has halted all its activities yesterday, for the first time in 60 years. 80 per cent of Gazans depend on food handouts provided by UNRWA. So you can imagine the situation now.
Israel's continued tightened siege on the Gaza Strip has a catastrophic effect on all of us here. In addition to the chronic shortages of fuel, we also have shortages in medicine and some basic food stuffs. The situation is simply disastrous. I've just heard that patient number 138 has passed away. He is one of thousands of terminally ill patients who need urgent treatment outside Gaza, in Israeli, Jordanian, Egyptian, or even West Bank hospitals, but Israel is refusing to give them the necessary permits. Two days ago I visited Al-Shifa hospital and was told that almost al major surgical operations have been suspended due to regular power cuts and the absence of fuel to run their generator!
In addition to the dangerous shortage of electricity that threatens the lives of critically ill patients in all of Gaza's hospitals, and the chronic shortages of petrol and diesel and gas for domestic use, we are also suffering widespread shortages of bread, due to lack of electricity to run the ovens at bakeries across Gaza.
There is a lot to say, but I must tell you, on a hopeful note, that they will not break our spirit.
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Dear friend: I know from my own work in this area, my reading and my personal contact with Palestinian people that the overwhelming majority of them want only peace and that, although we never hear about this in the news, many of them practice various forms of non-violent resistance in the face of the terrible violence and deprivations to which they have been subjected for so long. They are a resilient people.
But if you were to look into this matter, and perhaps some of you have, you would quickly be convinced that they are threatened with a slow genocide, which has been going on now for more than sixty years.
However that may be, right now, in
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