أهلأ. انا لورا.
Lora A. Lucero is a community journalist, climate change educator, land use attorney, city planner, community gardener, mother and grandmother. Her home is in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
Lora traveled to Gaza in September 2012. She taught a climate change seminar to environmental engineering students, lived with Palestinian families and made many friends. Returning to the USA in June 2013, she is now writing about her experience.
After the puzzled looks, the first question family and friends ask is “Why Gaza?”
Answering that question is not so easy. This blog is an attempt to begin the process of answering that question.
Lora Lucero arrested in front of the White House in August 2011 protesting the Keystone XL pipeline.
لماذا غزة؟
Why Gaza?
Why is Gaza occupied? Why is Gaza seemingly hidden from view? – at least for many Americans. Why is Gaza “off-limits” as a travel destination? – at least according to the US Embassy in Cairo. Why is Gaza seemingly the epicenter for conflict and strife in the Middle East? Why is Gaza so misunderstood by so many Americans?
These and many others questions will be shared in this blog, along with the journey to find some answers. Lora has an invitation to return to Gaza, but has been unable to get permission from Egypt or Israel to cross into Gaza. The U.S. Embassy in Cairo refuses to assist travelers to Gaza as well, but she won’t give up.
If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life. ~ Charles Bukowski
لماذا غزة؟ Why Gaza? 
Saw you last week at the demonstration in Abq. Thanks.
The Great March of Return constitutes an act of “satyagraha” by the native Christian and Muslim Palestinian people. The Jewish colonists response was to stand behind that apartheid wall and systematically murder of 200 protestors. Not one protestor was armed.
I wish we had met at the demonstration …. it’s always nice to connect the virtual with the real. 🙂
Hi Lora, I am a journalist with BBC radio and I was hoping I might be able to ask you a question about your time in Gaza in 2012. How can I get in direct contact with you? Many thanks! Chloe
Hi Chloe ….. my email is loralucero3@gmail.com I’m also on WhatsApp.
Hello…..
Just read your latest blog…very good analysis….I too raise the same questions you do….”Why Gaza?”. I am trying to find the answer with the newly created web site WE ALL LIVE IN GAZA. The URL is: http://www.wegaza.com
Hope this email note reaches you and that you have a chance to look at the site. Your comments, critique and feedback are welcomed.
I also saw in your bio that you were hoping to return to Gaza last year….did you make it…..
It would be excellent to talk about a possible collaboration on some level.
Hope to hear back….
All the best,
Maurice Jacobsen
310 251 2056 mobile in Los Angeles
You’ve heard nothing about Max Blumenthal’s book because rightfully so, he’s finally recognized as a anti semitic, self loathing Jew who consistently misrepresents the facts. No mainstream media is interested in him anymore. If they were, you’ld see much more about his book.
A couple weeks before Lensic he gave a speech in London preceded by an avowed white supremacist. His speech as reported in the press and confirmed by other media contained many inaccuracies.
Furthermore, while I have no issues with him or anyone else supporting the Palestinians, Max never takes Hamas to task. He never had a single criticism of any action taken in Gaza during the conflict this summer. Not one, yet criticises everything involving Israel. (review his Twitter stream) Even many Arabs were critical of Hamas, but not Max. He has no balance what so ever. One must be honest if putting oneself out as an “expert”.
He can invent catchy acronyms like PEP to explain away his critics but really it’s his own messages and absolute hatred that’s his problem. Not others.
I would like to add my thanks for your website. I was stationed in ABQ in the 60’s – still on Leslie Lakinds list serv from Santa Fe. I just posted a link to your website on my @ronfox twitter account but wondered it you have considered going on twitter? You also might be interested in the 5 Part series on my blog (link below) analyzing the cycle of violence in Gaza in 2007
For (hopefully relevant) thoughts of mine on this and that, see Swans Commentary Letter 239 and also Killing The Buddha, December 8, 2010.
And I hear Gaza, and all I can think of is “… and the rockets red glare…” If Gaza had been anyplace else on earth, it would have been eradicated by now. Praise Allah they have to live next to the Jews. Imagine if Bashir Assad was next door.
Dear Lora
Yes we heard from Fadi immediately, and he visited the family and connected them to Al Shifa and to Susan, who is now Yasser’ss pediarician. And thanks to Fadi. and to a wonderful doctor.(Mohamed Abouhemeid who was visiting in Canada and heard about him from our friend Dr Ghada Azeel) little Yasser is now regisered for tests in Al Shifa Hospital, and able to get the assessment he needs, Finally something positive..
We are very grateful!
Heather
Copenhagen
Lora thank you! much ís happening because of this connection, and baby Yasser is being followed, tested and treated at Shifa Hospital in Gaza starting today. Thank you very much! wish I could send you a picture of him
Heather, Copenhagen
spears.heather@gmail.com
Please let me know if you do not hear from my friend in Gaza within 2-3 days. He said he would send you contact information for the doctor at Shifa. I gave him your email address.
Dear Lora
Did you get a contact address for Al Shifa Hospital? I need to contact Dr Thabet Al Masri, Shifa Hospital, about a baby patient Yassr who need s a liver transplant, just an email or phone nr would be a big help –
thanks
Heather
Copenhagen
I’ve given your message to a friend in Gaza who may help you with your connection.
Brava, Brava, Lora Lucero! I’m a San Francisco Bay Area-based Palestinian solidarity activist who loves your blog. I’m also a former Albuquerque resident (1965-1984) who loves that your current home is my former home. ¡Muchísimas gracias!
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Why Gaza? You cant understand Gaza without putting in mind that the vast majority of the people living in Gaza are actually not from Gaza, they had been ethnically cleansed from their homes by the zionist colonizers in 1948. Most of the Agazans are from Tel-Aviv, Ashkilon, Ashdod and the rest of the Palestinian towns and villages occupied by the zionists … I am personally from Ashdod (after had been kicked out of my home ) living a refugee in my own homeland while the Russian or Ethiopian “jewish” settlers are enjoying my home and land … …
What is ethnic cleansing?… isn’t it like this: President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it in 1942, (6 years before the actual ethnic cleansing of Palestine): “I actually would put a barbed wire around Palestine, and I would begin to move the Arabs out of Palestine…. I would provide land for the Arabs in some other part of the Middle East…. Each time we move out an Arab we would bring in another Jewish family…” …. and it was far more violent than that !! @
http://samibedouin.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/29/
Bless you, and thank you for being so brave
Thanks for what you are doing. Wish you good luck and safety. Tell your students and other Palestinians that Americans and Jewish groups are against what the government of Israel has done and is doing to them. They, both government groups, need to “Wage Peace NOT War”. I live in Albuquerque, NM.
Thank you for sharing, we can only imagine the grief our Palestinian brothers and sisters may be going through right now.