Egyptian Journalists Break Their Fast with Only Bread in Solidarity with Gaza
(AWP) - Egyptian journalists staged a protest on Tuesday on the steps outside their union headquarters in Cairo in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, breaking their fast on the second day of Ramadan with only bread.
Journalists said that their symbolic gesture is a condemnation of what they described as Israel’s enforced policy of “starvation” in the besieged Strip, particularly during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, during which observant Muslims refrain from eating and drinking from dawn to dusk.
According to journalist Nour el-Houda Zaki, who organised the protest, “This is a symbolic gesture in front of the Journalists’ Syndicate. We are sending a very symbolic message to our people in Gaza and Palestine that we are breaking our fast like you, with nothing but bread and water; though they cannot even find bread. This is due to our overwhelming feeling of failure and shame.”
She added, “Today we are here to say that people – our people in Gaza in Palestine – can’t even find bread. This is a symbolic protest which we will repeat weekly, God willing.”
Khairiya Shaalan, another journalist taking part in the protest, said that they chose bread and water because “they symbolise two simplest necessities for human survival.”
She added, “We hope that the ordeal to which the Palestinians are subjected, and the suffering they are enduring, will end.”
Sayed Huweidi, a visual artist who participated in the protest, asked, “What have the people in Gaza done to deserve such a painful fate? What is this silence? Why this silence? Why this neglect from the whole world?”
“The Gaza issue exposes the extent of the falsity of international policies, the falsity of international institutions, and the falsity of regimes in the entire world,” he added.