The Morrocan-Algerian border has been opened only twice in the last 10 years.

British MP George Galloway, a fervent advocate for Palestinian rights, speaks in Dearborn on March 27.

Both times, it was for George Galloway.
The British Member of Parliament led an aid convoy through the two countries on the way to Iraq in 1999.

Last month, Galloway led another humanitarian convoy of 110 British vehicles through eight countries over 10,000 km to get aid to Gaza victims of Israel’s 22-day offensive that ended in January, and the tight siege on the coastal territory that continues.

“When this great convoy… crossed into Palestine on the birthday of the Prophet [Mohammed], peace be upon him, and kissed the holy ground of Palestine, it was the happiest day of our lives,” Galloway told a crowd of about 1,300 in Dearborn on March 27. “And I think it helped the Palestinian people too… because this criminal siege is worse than the bombardment.”

Galloway spoke at a fundraising dinner for the student group Humanitarian Organization for Palestinian Equality (HOPE), of the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

The event raised about $97,000 for the group American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), which operates in Gaza and other impoverished areas throughout the Middle East.

“I’m not now nor have I ever been a supporter of Hamas,” said Galloway to the massive crowd at the Hyatt Regency. “But I am a supporter of the Palestinian people. I am a supporter of their right to resist, and above all I’m a supporter of democracy.

“I saw something in Gaza I’ve only ever seen on the National Geographic… I saw families going over garbage heaps to find food… The desperation of the population in Gaza is clear and palpable… but there was something else clear… The people of Gaza were not defeated. The Palestinian resistance in Gaza is not defeated, it’s not broken, and if Israel wants to invade again they’ll fight them all over again and the people will resist them all over again.”

Galloway said an old man in Gaza clutched him at one point during the trip and said “People like you give us hope that one day we can return to our country, that one day our country can be returned to us.”

He called on the Arab American community to send its own convoy into Gaza, with trucks with American flags flying.

“If I lifted the spirits of the people in Gaza with 110 British vehicles, what do you think you’ll do with 500 American vehicles, with American flags — the kind of flags that normally bring them death and destruction.”

A voice in the crowd could be heard in response shouting “It will be done.”

ANERA President Bill Corcoran said his staff in Gaza is undergoing psychological therapy to help them deal with witnessing the death and destruction there, and that moral support from abroad has meant a lot to keep the aid workers and the Gazans going.

“Thirteen hundred of you cared enough to do something about it,” Corcoran said. “As long as you continue to care, that is the crucial thing to allow the Gaza people to go on.”

Galloway told the students of HOPE that it was a student who knocked on his door years ago asking him to speak at an event on Palestine, who lit the spark that made him a champion of the Palestinian cause.

“Each and every one of you can be like that young man was to me,” he said.