I am a political activist who has worked and lived in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This blog chronicles my time in Palestine and also provides news and analysis about Palestine and the situation on the ground in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Occupied Palestine – The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), the broadest Palestinian civil society coalition and the Palestinian leadership of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, commends human rights and Palestine solidarity organizations across Australia who signed a unity statement reiterating their support for BDS as the most effective and non-violent campaign to end Israel’s systematic oppression of the Palestinian people [1]. We stand with Australian activists in the face of the organized repression and smear campaign they have been facing for the past year, since the attempts to overturn the Marrickville council BDS motion. As Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation, refugees not allowed to return to our homes and Palestinians living as second class citizens in Israel – we are heartened by the courage of Australian activists and their commitment to building a grassroots movement across Australia in support of Palestinian human rights.
Most recently, the repression campaign has culminated with the Victorian Consumer Affairs Minister Michael O’Brien singling out Palestine solidarity organisations calling for them to be investigated by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) for suspicion that they may be involved in ‘secondary boycotts’ against Israeli-owned businesses in Australia. An article in The Australian reported that the “Victorian Consumer Affairs Minister Michael O’Brien said the protesters had deliberately pinpointed businesses with Israeli ownership and who they believed traded with the Israeli government” [2]. This is a completely false accusation and a cynical attempt to smear BDS activism in Australia. Nowhere in the world are BDS activities about targeting specifically business with Israeli ownership, based on the nationality of their owner. Businesses and institutions are rather chosen based on their direct contribution to grave human rights abuses and international law violations of the Israeli state and military, or to rebranding campaigns that attempt to whitewash Israel’s crimes.
We admit that it is confounding to Palestinians who lead the BDS movement, that as youth across the Arab world take to the streets and risk
their lives in the fight for basic democratic rights and freedom of expression – in countries that claim to be democratic, such as Australia, politicians are going to great length to curtail freedom of expression and shield the state of Israel from any criticism. The problem lies with staunch supporters of Israel who refuse to admit that universally recognised standards of international law and social justice apply as much to Israel as they do to any other state.
Israel’s long-standing, systematic and deeply consequential violation of international human rights and humanitarian law has come under global scrutiny and criticism like never before. “Apartheid” has, once again, become a household word. Whereas in the 1980s it became synonymous with South Africa, apartheid is now widely recognized as the foundational condition of Israeli policy and practices towards Palestinians.
The Australian people played an important role in the South African anti-apartheid movement, unions implemented the oil embargo, a trade and arms embargo was carried out as well, and the sports boycott actions continue to be remembered internationally with great pride across social movements. We are witnessing today politicians who attempt to criminalize these types of BDS actions, but just as Australians had a right to challenge apartheid then, they have every right to challenge Israel’s system of apartheid, colonialism and occupation as well. The Palestinian-led BDS campaign and supporters internationally will not be deterred by desperate attempts to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
The curtailment of freedom of expression and the smear campaigns are unfortunately consistent with the Australian state’s support for Israel. Australian politicians across the spectrum have boasted about the “special relationship” and “bond” with the Israeli state. Inflammatory accusations of anti- Semitism are patently false, intellectually and morally dishonest, and serve to discredit and silence any form of criticism directed against Israel’s war crimes and human rights abuses.
We remind the government of Australia of its obligations under international law to respect basic human rights and end all support of Israel’s war crimes and other serious violations of international law. The Australian government must urgently end its arms trade with Israel and impose sanctions upon it rather than investigate dissident organizations who, in the tradition of principled international solidarity, are taking the moral responsibility to end Israel’s impunity and Australia’s complicity in it.
We will continue to work closely with human rights and solidarity organizations across Australia, despite all silencing attempts, until Israel respects international law and freedom, justice and equality are achieved for the Palestinian people.
Notes
1.Human Rights and Community Organisations condemn attempts to silence BDS Movement
www.justiceforpalestinebrisbane.org/node/37
2. Israeli boycotts: ACCC Called In at www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/israeli-boycottsaccc-
called-in/story-fn59niix-1226110465124
We the undersigned call on the Victorian Consumer Affairs Minister Michael O’Brien to withdraw allegations he made singling out several pro-Palestine advocacy groups calling for them to be investigated by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) for an alleged suspicion that they may be involved in ‘secondary boycotts’ against Israeli-owned businesses in Australia.
These allegations form an ongoing campaign of intensified attacks on Palestine solidarity organising and freedom of expression in Australia. We understand the current round of attacks to be a direct reaction to a growing international solidarity movement in support of Palestinian human rights, so we take the opportunity to reiterate our support for the Palestinian civil society’s call for boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) from Israel.
The BDS campaign is based on well-founded criticism of the Israeli state for its ongoing violations of international law, violations that include: Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories; its settlement-building and construction of an apartheid wall on occupied land; its refusal to respect the right of Palestinian refugees to return; and its ongoing military siege on the Gaza strip.
As in the past when the Australian people participated in the boycott campaign against apartheid South Africa, we affirm our right to participate in the BDS campaign against apartheid Israel in our churches, unions, professional bodies, local councils, parliaments and community groups. This campaign has provided a vital and viable framework and non-violent approach to building an anti-apartheid movement grounded in principles of international solidarity. People of conscience in Australia, have a proud history of principled international solidarity through BDS campaigns – any legalistic attempts, employing anti-union laws such as the ‘secondary boycotts’ law, will fail to deter social justice groups from vocally advocating the BDS campaign and supporting Palestinian human rights.
It is very disappointing that elected politicians choose to launch investigations into human-rights and solidarity organisations, rather than explain to the public why Israel is not held to account for its violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice against Israel’s Wall and colonial settlements. The active attempts to repress Australian organisations that work to promote Israel’s accountability before international law is beyond reproach.
We stress that the BDS movement is an anti-racist movement that rejects all forms of racism including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. The consumer-boycott campaigns are aimed at institutions and businesses that provide support for ongoing Israeli violations of international law, they do not target any particular religious or ethnic group.
We note that most of the organisations named by the Minister for the investigation did not take part in the protest he refers to against Max Brenner stores in Melbourne. This is a clear indication that he has not looked closely into the matter, but is purely targeting all pro-Palestine advocacy groups on the basis of their support for BDS. Although, we may not have all participated in this specific protest, we strongly believe in the basic right to peacefully protest and raise awareness about businesses that have questionable policies and show blatant disregard for basic human rights.
We urge elected officials to remember that their job is to protect rights and freedoms and to represent democratic values, not to waste our hard earned tax dollars on trying to appease a foreign state and those who blindly cheer for it.
Justice for Palestine (JFP-Qld)
Australians for Palestine (AFP)
Women for Palestine (WFP)
Australian Friends of Palestine (AFOPA-SA)
Action for Palestine (SA)
Friends of Palestine (FOP-WA)
Students for Justice for Palestine (UTS)
Students for Palestine (Vic)
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC-Melbourne)
Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA)
Australian Palestinian Professionals Association (APPA)
Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN)
Artists Against Apartheid (AAA)
Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine (CJPP-Sydney)
Dear friends,
as you will be aware, since early July, there has been an attempt by the Victorian state and the Victorian police to intimidate pro-Palestine and BDS campaign and to try and criminalise pro-BDS activism. In early July, Israeli pro-BDS campaigners issued a statement in solidarity with the 19 Melbourne activists arrest on July 1, when a peaceful non-violent BDS action outside of Max Brenner in the Queen Victoria centre was brutally attack by police.
Israeli activists from the pro-BDS campaign in Israel, on 11 August, issued a second statement in solidarity with pro-Palestine solidarity activists and the Australian BDS movement, which is currently facing police and state repression.
Please find below a copy of both their statements, as well as a video by the Alternative Information Centre in Israel at the end of the statement, which includes an interview with Boycott from Within activist, Ofer Neiman.
In solidarity,
Kim
***
14 July 20011
Statement in solidarity with the 19 activists arrested on July 1.
We, Israeli citizens, members of Boycott!, would like to express our solidarity with the Australian citizens who were brutally arrested by the police during a non-violent demonstration near a Max Brenner store on July 1 in Melbourne. We consider these activists as friends, and we thank them wholeheartedly for promoting the BDS initiative, as well as challenging the Australian’s government’s complicity in Israel’s policies of apartheid and occupation.
Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within
http://boycottisrael.info/
______________________________________________________________________________
11 August, 2011
Following anti-Democratic Arrests and Intimidation Attempts: Israeli Citizens in Solidarity with Australian BDS Activists!
We, Israeli citizens, members of Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within, would like to express our solidarity with the numerous Australians who are involved in the burgeoning BDS campaign in Australia.
Witnessing first-hand the brutality of our government against the Palestinian people, we have joined the July 2005 Palestinian call for a comprehensive boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against the state of Israel and its institutions. Such means should be applied as long as Israel continues to flout international law and UN resolutions and refuses to acknowledge the Palestinian people’s universally recognized human rights: The rights of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, the rights of Israel’s Palestinian citizens, and the rights of Palestinians who were expelled from their homes during the Nakba (the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine).
As Israeli citizens, we are angered by the outrageous attempts to exploit the horrors committed by the Nazi regime, through a comparison of the Palestinian led BDS campaign to the 1933 Nazi boycott campaign, in order to try and silence the Palestinian non-violent popular struggle for freedom and justice. The deplorable and racist Nazi boycott campaign targeted all Jews, without exception, and only for being Jewish. The Australian BDS campaign does NOT target Jewish businesses, as argued by demagogues in Australia! The lesson from the Jewish Holocaust should be, in our view, the need to oppose all forms of discrimination and violence committed against different ethnic groups in the name of nationalist or supremacist ideologies. The state of Israel has failed to learn that lesson.
To reiterate, we are concerned that some politicians in Australia have accused the activists involved in BDS of being anti-Semitic. We reject those accusations. The BDS campaign is a legitimate form of non-violent political action, whereby people and organizations are required not to participate in or support violations of international law. We take a clear stand against all forms of racism, including antisemitism and Islamophobia. Not only does the BDS campaign oppose anti-Semitism, it is also a responsible call that targets only complicit institutions rather than individuals. BDS is neither anti-Jewish nor anti-Israeli, since it does not oppose all that is Israeli because it is Israeli: the campaign simply insists that Israel abide by its obligations under international law. Furthermore, by attempting to lump together all Jews around the world as a monolithic block that is expected to support its criminal policies, the state of Israel is denying the fact that many Jews, including in Israel, oppose the occupation and apartheid policies inflicted on the Palestinian people.
The current debate within Israeli society shows us that the boycott campaign is extremely effective. The latest attempt by the Israeli government to silence its own citizens, the new anti-boycott legislation, in addition to other explicitly racist laws, is yet another indication of the need for this Palestinian-led non-violent global movement, in order to insure the rights of all people in this region.
The recent Australian BDS actions have been a great inspiration. We are encouraged to know that as far-away as Down Under there are individuals and groups active in the BDS campaign, promoting the Palestinian people’s unassailable rights. The BDS movement needs your help and support. We call upon all Australians to join and support the struggle for freedom and equality in Palestine.
With the deepest gratitude and all our support,
Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within
Australian solidarity activists are facing intense police repression.
(Erik Anderson/Flickr)
In the largest show of support for the Palestinian-initiated boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign so far in Australia, more than 350 persons marched on 29 July in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle — and in opposition to an attempt by Victorian Police to criminalize Palestine solidarity activism in Melbourne.
A month earlier, on 1 July, a similar, peaceful BDS action involving 120 persons was brutally attacked by the Victorian Police. Nineteen individuals were arrested.
Charged with “trespassing” and “besetting,” those arrested are now facing fines of up to AUD $30,000 (approximately US $32,300). The 1 July action, organized by the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, had sought to highlight the complicity of two Israeli companies, Jericho and Max Brenner Chocolate, with Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies. The action was the fourth protest against both companies since December 2010.
Jericho, located in Melbourne Central Shopping Centre and other shopping centers around the city, produces cosmetics made from minerals exploited from the Dead Sea. While Jericho and other Israeli companies — such as Ahava, also a target of BDS campaigns — profit from the Dead Sea, Palestinians are regularly denied access by Israel’s military checkpoints, exclusion zones and Israeli-only roads.
Max Brenner Chocolate, the other Israeli company subject to BDS protests in Melbourne, is owned by the Strauss Group — one of Israel’s largest food and beverage companies. On its website, the Strauss Group emphasizes its support for the Israeli military, providing care packages, sports and recreational equipment, books and games for soldiers.
Strauss boasts support for the Golani and Givati Brigades, which were heavily involved in Israel’s military assault on the Gaza Strip in the Winter of 2008-09, which resulted in the killing of approximately 1,400 Palestinians, the majority civilians, including approximately 350 children. While Strauss has removed information about their support for the Golani and Givati brigades from their English language website, information about the company’s support for both brigades remains on their Hebrew language site.
BDS repression coordinated with Israeli government
Trade union and community representatives spoke at the rally on 29 July before the crowd marched through the city. In spite of repeated threats of mass arrests by Victoria Police — and the deployment of police horses in one of the shopping centers — the protest marched into both the Melbourne Central and Queen Victoria centers, staging peaceful sit-ins in front of the Max Brenner stores located within.
Two day earlier, on 27 July, the Victorian police confirmed during a bail variation hearing at the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria (local District Court) for some of the activists arrested on 1 July that a decision had been made to arrest the protesters before the demonstration. This decision was made after discussions with Zionist organizations, the Victorian government, shopping center managements and state and national management of Max Brenner.
In April, the Australian Jewish News (AJN) reported that the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) had made representations to the Victorian police. According to the AJN, JCCV president John Searle had “called on the police to stamp down harder on aggressive protesters” (“Police questioned as protests turn violent,” 15 April 2011). Similar calls for a government and police crackdown on BDS protests against Max Brenner in Sydney were made in June by former AJN journalist Walt Secord, who is now a member of the NSW State Parliament (“Police called to action on BDS,” 24 June 2011).
On July 29, the same day as the BDS action against Max Brenner in Melbourne the Australian Jewish News carried a “debate” piece between Vic Alhadeff, the CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, and Ted Lapkin, a former staffer with the key pro-Israeli lobby group in Australia, the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council. The piece reveals that the various calls for police and government crackdown on BDS activism was part of a “nationally coordinated strategy” developed with and backed by the Israeli Foreign Ministry (“BDS: To protest or not to protest?”).
Arguing against any Zionist-organized BDS “counter” protest, Alhadeff writes: “It is important for the community to be aware that our response to BDS forms part of [a] coordinated national strategy. Furthermore, this strategy is endorsed by counterparts abroad and Israel’s Foreign Ministry.”
Alhadeff outlined this coordinated national strategy in response to BDS, stating that it “included, but is not limited to, engagement with civil society and politicians, patronage of boycotted outlets, cooperation with police, shop owners and center managers and exposure of the motives behind the BDS movement.” According to Alhadeff, Zionist policy in response to BDS should be one which seeks to “speak softly” but to also carry “a suggestion of a big stick.”
Activism leadership targeted
During cross-examination by Robert Stary, the lawyer representing the activists, Michael Beattie, an operational support inspector with the the Victorian Police, conceded that both Melbourne Central and Queen Victoria shopping centers were “public places” and that neither center prior to 1 July had sought any civil injunctions to prevent entry to the public places inside.
The cross-examination by Stary also revealed that the main reason that police had decided to criminalize the actions against the Israeli companies was because they had been well-organized, coordinated and effective.
Victorian Police acknowledged that the demonstrations had been peaceful, that solidarity activists hadn’t damaged property and there was no record of police or any member of the public being injured.
According to the testimony given by Inspector Beattie, the police had specifically sought to target the leadership of the protests, in particular those activists the police perceived as “operating a command and control function,” in order to diminish the possibility of well-coordinated demonstrations — and to ensure “no protesters go to property and disrupt targeted business or additional businesses.”
According to Inspector Beattie, “the protesters had their own way” for too long and a “decision [was] made to draw a line in the sand and make arrests.” Another police officer, Senior Sargent Andrew Falconer, also gave testimony at the court hearing and acknowledged that police infiltrators had been sent to pro-Palestine solidarity meetings in order to monitor the activity of BDS activists.
In a statement issued after their arrests, the nineteen activists noted that “the attack on the peaceful BDS action in Melbourne highlights increasing attempts to criminalize BDS and Palestine solidarity activism internationally. Currently in the US, France and Greece, hundreds of pro-Palestine activists are facing criminal charges for nonviolently standing up for Palestinian human rights” (“Support the Boycott Israel 19 Defence Campaign”).
James Crafti, one of the activists arrested, told The Electronic Intifada that “the attempt by Israel and governments around the world to criminalize pro-Palestinian and BDS activism ignores the fact that the real criminal activity is being carried out by the Israeli state.”
“Since its founding in 1948, Israel has sought to ethnically cleanse the indigenous Palestinian people through war, occupation and apartheid practices. Israel regularly engages in collective punishment, arbitrary arrests, extra-judicial assassinations and the demolition of Palestinian homes and civil infrastructure, all of which are illegal under international law,” he added.
Crafti noted that while the Victorian and Australian governments sought to criminalize support for Palestine self-determination, they refused to hold Israel accountable for its human rights abuses, war crimes and apartheid policies.
All of the arrested activists who spoke to The Electronic Intifada said the police attack on the protest also highlighted the increasing repression of civil liberties and freedom of speech by the Victorian (conservative) Baillieu government.
One Palestine solidarity activist, Sue Bolton, who has been charged with “besetting” (obstructing or hindering the right to enter, use or leave a premise), asserted that the police reaction to the action on 1 July was “over the top.”
“There were massive numbers of police, well over a hundred, not counting those behind the scenes in the loading docks,” she said.
According to Bolton, the Queen Victoria Centre loading docks had been cleared of delivery trucks, allowing the police to set up a processing unit and bring in prison transport trucks to be used as holding cells for those arrested.
Bolton described how police had sought to “kettle” the demonstration by corralling protesters and physically pushing them into a smaller and smaller area. According to Bolton, this resulted in a number of protesters being injured and crushed when the police had surrounded and violently pushed protesters from all sides.
Similar tactics have been used by police forces in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Finland and Denmark. The use of kettling by police in the UK against student protesters in November 2010 has led to legal challenges and the calling for a ban on the use of the tactic in the British High Court and the European Court of Human Rights.
Damian Ridgwell, another Palestine solidarity protester arrested on 1 July, told The Electronic Intifada that he had been standing away from the peaceful picket, speaking on a megaphone when three policemen grabbed him.
“I was dragged behind police lines,” Ridgwell said. “Once they grabbed me and started dragging me, I went limp and dropped to the ground … As I was being carried through the corridors of the loading dock, I lost consciousness because one of the police had me in a choke hold. I am not sure how long I was out, probably a few minutes. I woke up on the loading dock floor and heard the police saying I was ‘out.’”
Ridgwell, who was charged with trespassing, said “while it is outrageous we were arrested for peacefully demonstrating, our arrests have to be seen in the context of the Australia government’s support for Israel and its continued theft of Palestinian land … it’s important we don’t let the police intimidate protests like this. It is important to keep going with the protests and to keep supporting BDS.”
Australian government’s support of Israeli apartheid
Successive Australian governments, including the current Gillard government, have long supported Israel’s colonial and apartheid policies.
Current Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard signaled her uncritical support for Israel when she was still deputy Prime Minster of Australia. During the early days of Israel’s bombing of Gaza in the winter of 2008-09, she blamed Palestinians for Israel’s all-out assault, saying that Hamas must “renounce violence” and that Israel had the “right to defend itself.”
During a visit to Israel In 2009, Gillard was thanked by Israeli government minister Isaac Herzog for standing “almost alone on the world stage in support of Israel’s right to defend itself” (“Israel to Gillard: thanks for standing by us,” The Age, 24 June 2009).
The arrested activists noted that in June, the Baillieu government had established a new 42-member riot squad — and the attack on the 1 July protest was the first time it had been used in any significant way.
According to James Crafti, “the Victorian government thinks it can easily get away with attacking a pro-Palestine action because they think they can label us anti-Semitic.” Crafti, who is Jewish, said that the police and those opposed to the BDS actions, however, “underestimate the sympathy towards both Palestine and the [Palestine solidarity] movement in the broader community.”
“The amount of force used by the police and the response of the political elite to our protests, particularly the fact that the Australian Foreign Minister [and former Australian Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd felt the need to go a few days after our protest to Max Brenner as a public relations stunt is a sign of the pro-Israeli forces’ desperation,” he added.
The eleven activists succeeded in changing the original bail conditions preventing them from entering either shopping center (which also host medical clinics and a major train station) until the end of their case, to a lesser restriction of being prohibited from being within fifty meters of Max Brenner in both centers. However, Stary said he was still “anxious about the criminalization of dissent.”
“The police should not be used to protect the interests of an international commercial company,” he said.
Building on the success of 29 July, Melbourne activists will continue to campaign in support of Palestinian rights and oppose the criminalization of Palestine solidarity activism. The next Melbourne BDS action is scheduled for 9 September, the same week those arrested will plead not guilty to the charges against them. The defense campaign in support of the arrested activists has gained wide attention, with well-known public figures such as filmmaker John Pilger, author Norman Finkelstein and radical thinker Noam Chomsky supporting the campaign.
In a media release issued immediately following the success of the 29 July BDS action, Melbourne activists said the Victorian Police “thought that by attacking the BDS demonstration they would put an end to our movement. They were wrong … [we will] not be silenced” (“BDS returns to Max Brenner in spite of police intimidation,” 5 August 2011).
Kim Bullimore has lived and worked in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She is a member of the Melbourne Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid and a co-organizer of the first national Australian BDS conference, which took place in Melbourne in October 2010. Kim writes regularly on the Palestine-Israel conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action. She has a blog at livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com.
Dear friends, in April, on the eve of the vote by the Marrickville Council in Sydney to rescind their support for BDS, the Socialist Party of Australia issued a statement on their Yarra Socialist website opposing BDS. In response to the Socialist Party of Australia's position - a position which is held by the CWI tendency which they are a part of - I have written this response arguing why not only are the Socialist Party wrong to oppose BDS but why socialists should support the Palestinian initiated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. The Socialist Party position contains many arguments against BDS which is similar in some aspects (but not all) to the position also put forward by The Alliance for a Workers Liberty. While Workers Liberty and the Socialist Party are two socialist groups who have come out publicly against the Palestinian initiated BDS, many other socialists in Australia and internationally are actively in support of BDS (including my own political party, the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Australia www.rsp.org.au).
I have included here a link to the statement issued by the Socialist Party of Australia and my response as to why socialists should be supporting BDS below, which has been published in Direct Action (www.directaction.org.au)
On April 19, the same day that Marrickville Council met to reconsider its vote in support of the Palestinian-initiated boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign for Palestinian human rights and against Israel, the Socialist Party of Australia issued a statement opposing the BDS campaign.
The statement, posted on the web site of Stephen Jolly, one of two Socialist Party councillors elected to the Yarra City Council in Melbourne, said “The “Socialist Party has been asked by a number of groups and individuals if our Councillors ... would consider supporting the campaign”. No doubt many of these inquiries would have been occasioned by the concerted campaign by the capitalist media against the NSW Greens and the Marrickville Council, both of which had voted to support the BDS campaign in December 2010. The media campaign, led by Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing pro-Zionist Australian newspaper, sought to cast the Marrickville Council as fiscally irresponsible and the NSW Greens as “nutters” and to pressure them into rescinding their support for BDS.
On April 19, the 12-member council voted to rescind its support for the international boycott of Israel, which had been adopted by a 10-2 vote on December 14. The April 19 motion, bizarrely, reaffirmed the three key planks of the BDS campaign, while at the same time resolving not to pursue BDS against Israel. The three BDS planks are an end to Israel’s occupation of all Arab lands, the dismantling of the apartheid wall and the right of Palestinians living in Israel to full equality and the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties.
In its statement, the Socialist Party argued that, while a call for the “boycott of Israeli goods and institutions is understandable and usually well-intentioned”, it would not aid the Palestinian struggle. This was because “a boycott is unlikely to have a significant economic impact, not least because it will attract only partial participation” and because “it would play into the hands of the worst right-wing warmongers in Israel, and alienate Israeli workers, who are the only force capable of removing the brutal Israeli regime and participating in a lasting settlement with the Palestinian people”.
The Socialist Party of Australia sought to justify its position by saying, “Unlike several other groups on the left we understand that there is a class divide within Israel”. The statement went on: “... we are concerned that the BDS campaign has already been used by Israeli capitalist politicians to launch a propaganda offensive aimed at Israeli workers, driving those workers into the arms of the Israeli right. They argue that it shows that Israeli Jews are under siege and need to stick together against what they portray as an anti-Semitic stance.”
South African example The statement notes that the South African BDS campaign, which the Palestinian BDS campaign is modelled on, did mobilise support for the struggle against the South African apartheid regime. While correctly noting that the key to ending apartheid was the mass movement of black South African workers, the Socialist Party downplays the contribution of the international BDS campaign to the overthrow of apartheid. The South African BDS campaign, launched in the 1950s after calls by black South Africans for an international boycott, significantly boosted internal resistance to the regime. In addition, the economic boycott and sanctions made it difficult for the regime to maintain internal cohesion among the capitalist class, whose profits were being impacted. As South African anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu noted in a 2008 speech to participants in the sporting boycott, “Refusal to kow-tow to racism was the sanction that hurt the supporters of apartheid the most”. Tutu went on to explain that the boycott campaign had aided the internal struggle by showing black South African workers that people outside South Africa stood with them in their struggle.
Challenging accepted ideas The Socialist Party and others who hold a similar position ignore the fact that the BDS campaign has never been solely about making an economic impact. While this is an important objective, one of the primary aims of BDS has been to challenge the dominant discourse around the “question of Palestine”.
The Towards a Global Movement report issued by the Palestinian Stop the Wall campaign in 2007 notes: “... turning the tide within popular discourse and the media - building an acknowledgment of Palestinian rights - is a core objective of the campaign and goes hand-in-hand with activities on the ground attempting to implement the BDS appeal”. In particular, BDS, which is consciously shaped as an anti-colonial campaign, seeks to highlight Israel’s policies of occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing and to counter the reduction of the “question of Palestine” to being merely a dispute over “contested land”. In particular, it counters attempts to exclude and ignore the rights under international law of the majority of Palestinians who are scattered around the world. While there is still a long way to go, in just six years the BDS campaign has dented the once unassailable discourse about the “Palestine question” in the corporate media and popular discussion. Today, discourse about Israel is peppered with words such as “apartheid”, “boycott”, “right of return”, something barely heard six years ago, when Palestinian civil society launched the BDS campaign.
Economic impact Despite the claims of detractors such as the Socialist Party, BDS has also started to have an economic impact on the Zionist state. In April 2009, the Israeli manufacturers’ association reported that 21% of its 90 local exporters who were questioned had felt a drop in demand due to boycotts, mostly from the UK and Scandinavian countries. In recent months, as a result of BDS campaigns by solidarity activists, an increasing number of international contractors have pulled out of Israeli projects. For example, in May, the German state-owned company Deutsche Bahn, which was part of an Israeli rail project cutting through the occupied West Bank, pulled out because of potential breaches of international law.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli former prime minister and current defence minister, in a May 5 interview with the Hebrew edition of the Tel Aviv Haaretz newspaper, acknowledged the impact that BDS was having. According to an English translation of the interview by Israeli activist Ofer Neiman from Boycott from Within (the Israeli campaign in support of BDS), Barak said that BDS was more “dangerous than what the [Israeli] public perceives at the moment”. According to Barak, BDS is uniting trade unions, academics, consumers, green political parties and others in a movement to do to Israel “what was done to South Africa”. He noted: “... there are people in the European Council that deal with export and import; they are capable, without any government decision, of inflicting significant damage on the Israeli economy”.
Workers’ views One of the arguments of the Socialist Party against BDS is that, unlike in South Africa, where “a majority of black workers supported international sanctions against the ruling white elite, Israeli workers are not in agreement with sanctions against Israel”. It is because of this, according to the Socialist Party, that a boycott would be “a gift to the Israeli right”.
It is clear from the Socialist Party’s statement that when it speaks about Israeli workers, it is in fact speaking predominantly about Jewish Israeli workers. Rather than challenging Zionism, a reactionary and racist ideology, which the majority of Jewish Israeli workers have adopted, the Socialist Party chooses to pander to it. Prior to the Oslo Accords, the majority of Jewish Israeli workers opposed talks with the Palestine Liberation Organisation and opposed even a two state-solution, something that the Socialist Party supports. Is the Socialist Party saying that because these positions were held by the majority of the Jewish Israeli working class, it would never have have put forward demands that countered such positions?
This amounts to acting as the rearguard of the working class rather than its vanguard. As Lenin noted in his 1903 polemic What is to be done?, the role of revolutionary socialists, whether in the trade unions or in social movements, is not to tail-end the working class but to raise its political consciousness. Lenin pointed out: “Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected — unless they are trained, moreover, to respond from a Social-Democratic [revolutionary socialist] point of view and no other”.
Unfortunately, in opposing BDS on the basis it does, the Socialist Party fails to seek to raise the political consciousness of Jewish Israeli workers. By failing to challenge politically the dominant ideology of Zionism, the Socialist Party leaves open the door for the Israeli ruling class to continue to exploit the Jewish Israeli working class.
‘Into the sea’ The Socialist Party’s pandering to Zionism is most evident in its argument that “The Palestinians and the Israeli Jews have a right to their own separate states”. Rather than calling for a democratic secular state for all, which would afford equal rights for all its citizens, the Socialist Party supports the creation of a Jewish-only (socialist) state for Israeli Jews.
When challenged about their reasons for supporting a Jewish-only state, albeit a socialist one, members of the Australian Socialist Party cited a 2002 article by Lynn Walsh, a leader of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), based in Great Britain, as offering a more in-depth explanation. In his article on the Palestine-Israel conflict, Walsh makes it clear that the CWI sees the Zionist movement as a national liberation movement of the Jewish people. The Socialist Party fails to understand that, far from being a movement of national liberation, the Zionist movement from its inception was, and continues to be today, a settler-colonial movement that seeks to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their land.
Walsh’s article makes it clear that the Socialist Party and CWI believe the notion that Jews are constantly under threat of being “driven into the sea” and that the Jewish state is the only way to protect the human rights of the Jewish people. According to Walsh, the aim of the Arab regimes “whether blatant or thinly veiled, appear[s] to be to drive the Jews into the sea”. This claim is a longstanding piece of Zionist propaganda, which originated not in a speech by an Arab leader but in a speech given by Zionist leader David Ben Gurion to the Israeli Knesset in 1961. Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, sought to justify the ethnic cleansing of more than 1 million Palestinians in 1948 by repeating the falsehood that Palestinians had left Palestine on the instruction of Arab leaders. According to Ben Gurion, they did this willingly “under the assumption that the invasion of the Arab armies at the expiration of the Mandate will destroy the Jewish state and push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive”. This assertion was proven to be a historical falsehood by BBC journalist Erskine Childers in May 1961, several months before Ben Gurion’s speech. That a socialist organisation should uncritically promote a historical falsehood and blatant piece of Zionist propaganda is astounding.
‘National consciousness’ In their anti-BDS statement, as well as in informal comments in social media debates about their position, members of the Socialist Party reveal that they are politically confused about the issue of “national consciousness”. Socialist Party members have argued that their support for a Jewish-only state is justified because a national consciousness regarding Israel exists amongst the Jewish people. This is concretely reflected in the Socialist Party’s April 19 anti-BDS statement, which advocates “the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own”. In advocating this position, the Socialist Party reveals that it has bought into the Zionist notion that all Jews are part of a national grouping, rather than part of a religious or ethno-cultural grouping. This is a decidedly un-Marxist and un-Leninist position.
In 1903, in opposition to the Jewish socialists in the Bund, Lenin argued that it was “absolutely untenable scientifically” to claim that the Jewish people formed a separate nation. He said that “the idea that the Jews form a separate nation is reactionary politically” and that the “the idea of a Jewish ‘nationality’ is definitely reactionary not only when expounded by its consistent advocates (the Zionists) but likewise on the lips of those who try to combine it with the ideas of Social-Democracy [revolutionary socialism] (the Bundists)”.
The Socialist Party has sought to mitigate its support for a Jewish state, which is contrary to Marxist tradition, by saying that while it did not support the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, it must now support one because there is now a national consciousness among Jewish people.
Now that a territorial entity called Israel exists, the Socialist Party argues that socialists should abandon the position advocated by Lenin and adopt the reactionary and unscientific Zionist notion that all the Jewish people of the world form a national grouping. The Socialist Party fails to distinguish between a “Jewish state” and an “Israeli nation”. This is primarily because it has adopted the reactionary Zionist position that all Jewish people form a national grouping.
Within the Zionist framework, there is no such thing as an Israeli nation or nationality; instead Israel exists as a “Jewish nation” not an “Israeli nation”. Therefore, Israel makes a distinction between Israeli citizenship and nationality. While all Israelis (both Jews and the Palestinian minority in Israel) qualify as “citizens”, the state itself is defined as a “Jewish nation”. Thus it is a nation belonging not to just the Jews in Israel but to all Jews around the world. The Israeli state lists more than 130 nationalities for Israeli citizens - the two most predominant being Jewish and Arab. The one nationality that does not exist among the 130 is “Israeli”. This is to ensure that Palestinians do not have equal status with Jewish citizens.
By adopting the formulation of a “Jewish state”, even a socialist one, the Socialist Party buys into the reactionary Zionist narrative. The party’s support for a Jewish state, far from being in the interest of the Jewish proletariat, runs counter to their interests, as Lenin noted, because it reinforces and supports the reactionary fears and racist attitudes fanned by Zionism.
As Lenin noted in his polemic against the Bund, supporting a Jewish state “is to degrade the struggle from the plane of ideas and principles to that of suspicion, incitement and fanning of historically evolved prejudices. It glaringly reveals a lack of real ideas and principles as weapons of struggle.” We can only hope that the Socialist Party will reconsider its position of support for historically evolved prejudices and decide to support real ideas and principles as weapons of struggle, namely the Palestinian-initiated BDS campaign.
[Kim Bullimore is a member of the National Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist Party. She is a long-time Palestine solidarity activist who has lived and worked as an international volunteer in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories]
Dear friends, Israel has begun to step up its hasbara (propaganda) campaign in order to try and discredit the upcoming Gaza flotillas. Their latest attempt comes in the form of a youtube video accusing the London Flotilla organisers of homophobia. The video, however, has been exposed by American Jewish writer and activist, Max Blumenthal, along with Ali Abunimah and Benjamin Doherty from Electronic Intifada as not only being a fraud but being closely linked to the Israeli government and no doubt a piece of Israeli government propaganda. The video is clearly part of the ongoing Israeli government attempt to "pinkwash" its apartheid and occupation practices.
I have included links here to Ben Doherty's article (here), as well as links to the articles by Max Blumenthal (here) and Ali Abunimah (here).
Dear friends, this week my good friend Bassem Tamimi was brought before Israel military occupation courts for organising non-violent demonstrations in opposition to Israel's occupation and apartheid policy and the on going stealing of his village's land by the illegal Israeli colony of Halamish.
Please find below a media release from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee about Bassem's court appearance. The media release also includes, in full, Bassem's speech to the military court (one which he was not allowed to give in full).
The Real News have also put together an excellent news report on the struggle of An Nabi Saleh and the arrest of Bassem and Naji Tamimi.
West Bank Protest Organizer, Bassem Tamimi, to Judge: “Your Military Laws Are Non-Legit. Our Peaceful Protest is Just” By Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
Press release: Monday, 6 June 2011 West Bank Protest Organizer, Bassem Tamimi, to Judge: “Your Military Laws Are Non-Legit. Our Peaceful Protest is Just” Tamimi, who has been held in custody for over two months, pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and held a defiant speech explaining his motivation for organizing civil resistance to the Occupation. (See his full statement below)
After more than two months in custody, the trial of Bassem Tamimi, a 44 year-old protest organizer from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, finally commenced yesterday. Tamimi, who is the coordinator for the Nabi Saleh popular committee, pleaded not guilty to the charges laid against him.
In a defiant speech handed before a crowded courtroom, Tamimi proudly owned up to organizing the protest in the village saying, “I organized these peaceful demonstrations to defend our land and our people.” Tamimi also challenged the legitimacy of the very system which trys him, saying that “Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws [...] that are enacted by authorities which I haven’t elected and do not represent me.” (See Tamimi’s full statement at court bellow).
Tamimi was interrupted by the judge who warned him that it was not a political trial, and that such statements were out of place in a courtroom. Tamimi was cut short and not allowed to deliver his full statement.
After Tamimi finished reading his shortened statement, the judge announced that the hearing’s protocol has been erroneously deleted. However he refused to submit the full written statement to the stenographer. She went on to dictate a short summary in her own words for official record.
Media contact: Jonathan Pollak +972-54-632-7736
The indictment against Tamimi is based on questionable and coerced confessions of youth from the village. He is charged with’ incitement’, ‘organizing and participating in unauthorized processions’,’ solicitation to stone-throwing’, ‘failure to attend legal summons’, and a scandalous charge of ‘disruption of legal proceedings’, for allegedly giving youth advice on how to act during police interrogation in the event that they are arrested.
The transcript of Tamimi’s police interrogation further demonstrates the police and Military Prosecution’s political motivation and disregard for the suspect’s rights. During his questioning, Tamimi was accused by his interrogator of “consulting lawyers and foreigners to prepare for his interrogation”, an act that is in no way in breach of the law.
Tamimi’s full statement: Your Honor,
I hold this speech out of belief in peace, justice, freedom, the right to live in dignity, and out of respect for free thought in the absence of Just Laws.
Every time I am called to appear before your courts, I become nervous and afraid. Eighteen years ago, my sister was killed by in a courtroom such as this, by a staff member. In my lifetime, I have been nine times imprisoned for an overall of almost 3 years, though I was never charged or convicted. During my imprisonment, I was paralyzed as a result of torture by your investigators. My wife was detained, my children were wounded, my land was stolen by settlers, and now my house is slated for demolition.
I was born at the same time as the Occupation and have been living under its inherent inhumanity, inequality, racism and lack of freedom ever since. Yet, despite all this, my belief in human values and the need for peace in this land have never been shaken. Suffering and oppression did not fill my heart with hatred for anyone, nor did they kindle feelings of revenge. To the contrary, they reinforced my belief in peace and national standing as an adequate response to the inhumanity of Occupation.
International law guarantees the right of occupied people to resist Occupation. In practicing my right, I have called for and organized peaceful popular demonstrations against the Occupation, settler attacks and the theft of more than half of the land of my village, Nabi Saleh, where the graves of my ancestors have lain since time immemorial.
I organized these peaceful demonstrations in order to defend our land and our people. I do not know if my actions violate your Occupation laws. As far as I am concerned, these laws do not apply to me and are devoid of meaning. Having been enacted by Occupation authorities, I reject them and cannot recognize their validity.
Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws which lack any legitimacy; laws that are enacted by authorities that I have not elected and do not represent me. I am accused of organizing peaceful civil demonstrations that have no military aspects and are legal under international law.
We have the right to express our rejection of Occupation in all of its forms; to defend our freedom and dignity as a people and to seek justice and peace in our land in order to protect our children and secure their future.
The civil nature of our actions is the light that will overcome the darkness of the Occupation, bringing a dawn of freedom that will warm the cold wrists in chains, sweep despair from the soul and end decades of oppression.
These actions are what will expose the true face of the Occupation, where soldiers point their guns at a woman walking to her fields or at checkpoints; at a child who wants to drink from the sweet water of his ancestors’ fabled spring; against an old man who wants to sit in the shade of an olive tree, once mother to him, now burnt by settlers.
We have exhausted all possible actions to stop attacks by settlers, who refuse to adhere to your courts’ decisions, which time and again have confirmed that we are the owners of the land, ordering the removal of the fence erected by them.
Each time we tried to approach our land, implementing these decisions, we were attacked by settlers, who prevented us from reaching it as if it were their own.
Our demonstrations are in protest of injustice. We work hand in hand with Israeli and international activists who believe, like us, that had it not been for the Occupation, we could all live in peace on this land. I do not know which laws are upheld by generals who are inhibited by fear and insecurity, nor do I know their thoughts on the civil resistance of women, children and old men who carry hope and olive branches. But I know what justice and reason are. Land theft and tree-burning is unjust. Violent repression of our demonstrations and protests and your detention camps are not evidence of the illegality of our actions. It is unfair to be tryed under a law forced upon us. I know that I have rights and my actions are just.
The military prosecutor accuses me of inciting the protesters to throw stones at the soldiers. This is not true. What incites protesters to throw stones is the sound of bullets, the Occupation’s bulldozers as they destroy the land, the smell of teargas and the smoke coming from burnt houses. I did not incite anyone to throw stones, but I am not responsible for the security of your soldiers who invade my village and attack my people with all the weapons of death and the equipment of terror.
These demonstrations that I organize have had a positive influence over my beliefs; they allowed me to see people from the other side who believe in peace and share my struggle for freedom. Those freedom fighters have rid their conscious from the Occupation and put their hands in ours in peaceful demonstrations against our common enemy, the Occupation. They have become friends, sisters and brothers. We fight together for a better future for our children and theirs.
If released by the judge will I be convinced thereby that justice still prevails in your courts? Regardless of how just or unjust this ruling will be, and despite all your racist and inhumane practices and Occupation, we will continue to believe in peace, justice and human values. We will still raise our children to love; love the land and the people without discrimination of race, religion or ethnicity; embodying thus the message of the Messenger of Peace, Jesus Christ, who urged us to “love our enemy.” With love and justice, we make peace and build the future.
Background Bassem Tamimi is a veteran Palestinian grassroots activist from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, north of Ramallah. He is married to Nariman Tamimi, with whom he fathers four children – Wa’ed (14), Ahed (10), Mohammed (8) and Salam (5).
As a veteran activist, Tamimi has been arrested by the Israeli army 11 times to date and has spent roughly three years in Israeli jails, though he was never convicted of any offence. He spent roughly three years in administrative detention, with no charges brought against him. Furthermore, his attorney and he were denied access to “secret evidence” brought against him.
In 1993, Tamimi was falsely arrested on suspicion of having murdered an Israeli settler in Beit El – an allegation of which he was cleared entirely. During his weeks-long interrogation, he was severely tortured by the Israeli Shin Bet in order to draw a coerced confession from him. During his interrogation, and as a result of the torture he underwent, Tamimi collapsed and had to be evacuated to a hospital, where he laid unconscious for seven days.
As one of the organizers of the Nabi Saleh protests and coordinator of the village’s popular committee, Tamimi has been the target of harsh treatment by the Israeli army. Since demonstrations began in the village, his house has been raided and ransacked numerous times, his wife was twice arrested and two of his sons were injured; Wa’ed, 14, was hospitalized for five days when a rubber-coated bullet penetrated his leg and Mohammed, 8, was injured by a tear-gas projectile that was shot directly at him and hit him in the shoulder. Shortly after demonstrations in the village began, the Israeli Civil Administration served ten demolition orders to structures located in Area C, Tamimi’s house was one of them, despite the fact that it was built in 1965.
Legal background On the March 24th, 2011, a massive contingent of Israeli Soldiers raided the Tamimi home at around noon, only minutes after he entered the house to prepare for a meeting with a European diplomat. He was arrested and subsequently charged.
The main evidence in Tamimi’s case is the testimony of 14 year-old Islam Dar Ayyoub, also from Nabi Saleh, who was taken from his bed at gunpoint on the night of January 23rd. In his interrogation the morning after his arrest, Islam alleged that Bassem and Naji Tamimi organized groups of youth into “brigades”, charged with different responsibilities during the demonstrations: some were allegedly in charge of stone-throwing, others of blocking roads, etc.
During a trial-within-a-trial procedure in Islam’s trial, motioning for his testimony to be ruled inadmissible, it was proven that his interrogation was fundamentally flawed and violated the rights set forth in the Israeli Youth Law in the following ways:
1.Despite being a minor, he was questioned in the morning following his arrest, having been denied sleep. 2.He was denied legal counsel, although his lawyer appeared at the police station requesting to see him. 3.He was denied his right to have a parent present during his questioning. 4.He was not informed of his right to remain silent, and was even told by his interrogators that he is “expected to tell the truth”. 5.Only one of four interrogators present was a qualified youth interrogator. While the trial-within-a-trial procedure has not yet reached conclusion, the evidence already revealed has brought a Military Court of Appeals to revise its remand decision and order Islam’s release to house arrest.
Over the past two months, the army has arrested 24 of Nabi Saleh’s residents on protest related suspicions. Half of those arrested are minors, the youngest of whom is merely eleven.
Ever since the beginning of the village’s struggle against settler takeover of their lands in December of 2009, the army has conducted 71 protest related arrests. As the entire village numbers just over 500 residents, the number constitutes approximately 10% of its population.
Tamimi’s arrest corresponds to the systematic arrest of civil protest leaders all around the West Bank, as in the case of the villages Bil’in and Ni’ilin.
Only recently the Military Court of Appeals has aggravated the sentence of Abdallah Abu Rahmah from the village of Bilin, sending him to 16 months imprisonment on charges of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations. Abu Rahmah was released on March 2011.
The arrest and trial of Abu Rahmah has been widely condemned by the international community, most notably by Britain and EU foreign minister, Catherin Ashton. Harsh criticism of the arrest has also been offered by leading human rights organizations in Israel and around the world, among them B’tselem, ACRI, as well as Human Rights Watch, which declared Abu Rahmah’s trial unfair, and Amnesty International, which declared Abu Rahmah a prisoner of conscience.
First popular single to support Palestinian freedom struggle
Leading international musicians today announced plans to make history with the first popular song to support Palestinians’ struggle for justice.
The song, ‘Freedom for Palestine’, is performed by musicians calling themselves OneWorld. Faithless/Slovo star Dave Randall was inspired to write and produce the single after a trip to the West Bank.
OneWorld includes Randall, Jamie Catto (1 Giant Leap), Maxi Jazz (Faithless), LSK, Harry Collier (Kubb), Andrea Britton, Sudha (Faithless), Andy Treacy (Faithless/Moby/Groove Armada), Attab Haddad and Joelle Barker.
The track brings together leading members of seminal dance act Faithless for the first time since the band officially split up in April.
Dave Randall said,
“As a child growing up in Britain, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa seemed a long way away until I heard the song 'Free Nelson Mandela' by The Special AKA. Now, apartheid in South Africa has fallen, but something very similar remains in Palestine - as I discovered when I visited Gaza and the West Bank recently. What I saw convinced me that it is time for a new generation of musicians from around the world to stand up for Freedom for Palestine.”
Many commentators – including Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former US President Jimmy Carter – have drawn a parallel between Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land with South African apartheid.
The song also features the Durban Gospel Choir and members of the London Community Gospel Choir.
During the last year Faithless, Massive Attack, Elvis Costello, Gil Scott-Heron, the Tindersticks, the Klaxons and the Gorillaz Sound System have all cancelled gigs in Israel over increased repression of Palestinians.
The news comes as British foreign secretary William Hague today backed US president Barack Obama’s call for an independent Palestinian state.
It also emerges only days after Israeli troops shot dead at least 13 Palestinians in protests over the occupation.
The single will be available for pre-order from 31 May, one year on since Israeli commandos killed and injured many activists in a raid on a flotilla of ships delivering aid to besieged Gaza.
The music video – which features the artists recording the single, as well as comedian Mark Thomas, rapper Lowkey and poet Michael Rosen, the former children’s laureate – will be made publicly available on YouTube on the same day.
Chart release will be on 3 July.
The track is being remixed by notable dance producers including Phil Jones from Specimen A.
It is backed by the anti-poverty charity War on Want and proceeds from sales of the song will go to support its projects in Palestine.
On May 20, Palestine solidarity activists and human rights supporters in Melbourne staged a peaceful BDS action to highlight the complicity of Israeli companies, Max Brenner Chocolate and Jericho, in Israel's Apartheid and Occupation policies.
Israeli company, Jericho, exploits minerals from the Dead Sea. While Jericho profits from the Dead Sea, the indigenous Palestinian people who live on the land surrounding the Dead Sea are regularly denied access. Palestinian access to the Dead Sea is prevented by Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands. Restrictions are place on Palestinian access to the Dead Sea via a network of military checkpoints, Israeli-only roads, exclusive zones and other apartheid and occupation policies.
Max Brenner Chocolate is owned by the Strauss Group, Israel's second largest food and beverage company. On its website, the Strauss Group emphasis its support for the Israeli military, providing care packages, sports and recreational equipment, books and games for soldiers. Strauss boasts that it supports both the Golani and Givati (Shualei Shimshon) Brigades of the Israeli military. Both of these brigades were heavily involved in Israel's 2008/2009 Gaza massacre, which killed more than 1300 Palestinians, the majority civilians, including 300 children.
In 2005, Palestinian civil society issued the Palestinian Unified Call for Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid, the Palestinian-initiated BDS campaign is conducted in the framework of international solidarity and resistance to injustice and oppression and calls for non-violent punitive measures to be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognise the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with international law.
BDS calls for non-violent punitive measures against Israel until it complies with international law and meets its internatonal obligation to recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination.
For more information on the BDS campaign visit: http://www.bdsmovement.net/
Dear friends, an open letter to the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival from Israeli activists involved in the pro-BDS Boycott from Within campaign protesting the censoring of Van Rudd's pro-BDs artwork.
To the directors of The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival,
"The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival’s (HRAFF) mission is to make human rights accessible and engaging to everyone through creative media. Our vision is a vibrant human rights culture and community across Australia." ~ The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival online About page
We are members of the Israeli group BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within[1] and we are appalled to learn that the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival would ban art. Especially the art of Van Thanh Rudd, a person of color, who's committed his art to commenting on human rights abuses and racism. Specifically a piece supporting the human-rights-based Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement[2], which is a Palestinian initiative and as such, the voice of the oppressed.
Rudd's choice to highlight the connection between your chosen venue (above a Max Brenner outlet) and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people[3] is as relevant as art may get. It's an artistic choice that takes into account not only the canvas, but the exhibition venue. A choice that would make many an art professor and critic jump for joy, but you choose to cower behind your sponsors, instead of staying committed to your own stated aspirations.
"HRAFF endeavours to:
* Advance and encourage education, debate and awareness of human rights issues amongst the broader community through creative media. * Showcase and support Australian and international artists who are concerned with human rights issues. * Promote works by or about Australia’s indigenous communities. * Create a stronger, diverse and more cohesive human rights community within Australia * Promote businesses and organisations that use and advance human rights, fair trade and environmentally friendly policies. * Encourage participation and patronage from diverse and marginalised communities in Australia. * Provide patrons with a way to take action by connecting them to human rights organisations and campaigns." ~ The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival online About page
Rudd dares to imagine a different world than our existing one, where people of Justin Beiber's caliber would use their influence to highlight the plight of the oppressed, as they choose to identify it. In return you turn your back on your own stated values, erasing Rudd's voice from the debate completely.
We understand that you plan on screening the film Budrus as part of your program this year. As many of us take part in the weekly village demonstrations (some of us took part specifically in the Budrus demonstrations documented in the film), we know the importance of anti-occupation action on the ground, as well as abroad. For some reason you choose to draw a line between two pieces that are obviously parts of one united struggle.
We hope that you choose to uphold your stated values of encouraging debate and awareness of human rights issues and showcase and support artists who are concerned with such issues and the rest of it. We hope you allow the debate of human rights to run its course, without silencing the most tenacious and relevant voices, especially within the human-rights-concerned community. Silencing Rudd is silencing all of us. Silencing Rudd is silencing the Palestinian people.
Sincerely on behalf of Boycott from Within, Oshra Bar Ohal Grietzer Shir Hever Liad Kantorowicz Assaf Kintzer Edo Medicks Jonathan Pollak Deb Reich Tal Shapira Kobi Snitz
Dear friends, the pro-BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) artwork of my good friend Van Thanh Rudd, a Melbourne visual artists and social justice activist, has outrageously been banned by the Melbourne Human Rights Arts and Film Festival.
Please find below the media release issued about HRAFF's censorship and the violation of their own mission statement to promote debate and to connect people to real human rights campaigns.
in solidarity, Kim
*** Pop Goes the System - by Van Rudd
Immediate Release: 12 May, 2011
Rudd’s Pro-Palestine/BDS"Justin Bieber" Artwork banned by Human Rights Festival
Melbourne visual artist Van Thanh Rudd was informed by HRAFF (Human Rights Arts and Film Festival) organisers late yesterday that his artwork titled Pop Goes the System, which depicts Justin Bieber supporting Palestinian human rights, will be banned from the 2011 Human Rights Arts and Film Festival.
The artwork was to be part of a group exhibition, “Create an Example”, at No Vacancy Gallery in Melbourne’s QV shopping centre, opening on Thursday May 12 and closing on May 23rd.
Rudd’s artwork consists of two cartoons painted on both the front and back of a large piece of canvas. Once exhibited, it can be viewed from both sides. One side of the canvas depicts a cartoon figure 'exploding with people power' - a tribute to the democratic revolutions taking place in the Middle East and north Africa. The other side shows global pop icon Justin Bieber spray painting on Israel's separation wall in support of the pro-Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) Campaign against Israel.
Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid, the Palestinian-initiated BDS campaign is conducted in the framework of international solidarity and resistance to injustice and oppression and calls for non-violent punitive measures to be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognise the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with international law.
According to Rudd, the exhibition organisers strongly opposed displaying the side of the canvas that depicted pop icon Justin Bieber spray painting on Israel's dividing wall because it incited “racism”, “violence” and “division”. Bieber is shown painting a logo of Israeli-owned chocolate company, Max Brenner Chocolate, which has been a target of the non-violent boycott campaign due to its support of the Israel Defence Force units which participated in Operation Cast Lead, resulting in the death of more than 1300 Palestinians, the majority of whom were civilians, including 300 children.
"I wanted to imagine if Justine Bieber decided to support the BDS campaign - what impact that would have on the youth that worship him," said Rudd.
"There is clearly no incitement of racism and violence in this artwork. It strongly opposes it. The incitement of racism and violence clearly comes from the Israeli state towards Palestinians. It maintains the world's largest open air prison, conducts frequent military raids, maintains hundreds of military checkpoints, illegally constructs settlements and conducts massive military bombardments".
Justin Bieber recently performed in Israel, defying the requests of Palestinian civil society and Israeli supporters of the Palestinian BDS campaign not entertain apartheid by playing in Israel. In a letter to Bieber, Israeli supporters from the Boycott from Within campaign called on Bieber to “create an example” and listen to the voices of the oppressed. http://www.boycottisrael.info/content/justin-bieber-you-can-choose-do-more-pray
Rudd had asked he be sent an official statement from the festival organisers as to the reasons for the artwork's rejection. So far the organizers have refused to do so, informally saying the artwork 'doesn't fit the theme of the show'.
"This banning is not only antithetical to the quest for human rights and freedom of expression on a global scale against colonisation and occupation, it also infringes on the individual human right of freedom of expression through art", says Rudd.
"The fact that a human rights arts festival bans an artwork that contributes to a discussion on very important human struggles, shows that they breach the very position they seek to uphold and are not committed to their own mission statement which advocates encouraging debate on human rights issues and providing festival patrons with a way to take action by connecting them to human rights campaigns " http://hraff.org.au/festival-info/about/
"This week also happens to be the commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) - where over 60 years ago, over 750 000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland by Zionist forces. Today Palestinians make up the largest refugee community in the world, with more 7 million living in exile. So debate and action on the issue of human rights for Palestinians is crucial in their struggle for self-determination and human rights", said Rudd.
Direct Action - Issue 31: April 2011 http://directaction.org.au/issue31/palestinians_rally_for_unity
By Kim Bullimore
Tens of thousands of Palestinians rallied for national unity across the occupied West Bank and Gaza on March 15. The rallies, led by Palestinian youth and inspired by the recent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, sought to bring to an end three and a half years of bitter division and rivalry between Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas.
In Gaza, at least 3000 Palestinians began gathering in the Square of the Unknown Solider on March 14, the evening before the scheduled unity rally. By the morning of March 15, tens of thousands had joined the demonstration, with estimates of the size of the rally ranging as high as 100,000.
More than 10,000 Palestinians rallied throughout the West Bank, including 4000 in Ramallah and 2000 each in Nablus and Hebron. Smaller rallies took place in other Palestinian cities, including a rally of approximately 1500 in Bethlehem.
While protesters in both the West Bank and Gaza carried a range of placards and banners, the most common slogan read simply: “The people want to end the division”. Years of division
In January 2006, Hamas candidates won a majority of seats in elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), ending Fatah’s political control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) since its inception in 1996. In response, Israel, the US and the European Union imposed an economic and financial embargo on the PA in an attempt to undermine the democratic choice of the Palestinian people. The blockade pushed more than 85% of Palestinian households below the poverty line.
As the blockade devastated the Palestinian economy, the US channelled millions of dollars to Fatah leader and PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Most of the funds were earmarked to bolster Abbas politically, but some were for the training of hundreds of presidential guards to ensure that Fatah remained in control of the PA security forces. In the months after the PLC elections, Israel arrested at least 33 members of the PLC, the majority of whom were elected on Hamas’ Change and Reform ticket.
In October 2006, fighting erupted between armed Hamas and Fatah militants. Under pressure from the Palestinian street and jailed Palestinian resistance leaders to end these armed clashes, the two groups agreed in February 2007 to form a “national unity” government. This government, however, was short lived, as the US and Israeli rulers continued to push Fatah to carry out a “hard coup” against Hamas. Over a period of one year, fighting between Hamas and Fatah killed more than 450 Palestinians and wounded 1800.
Throughout May 2007, a Gaza-based Fatah warlord, Mohammed Dahlan, used the PA Preventive Security Service to provoke clashes with Hamas. In June 2007, Hamas-led forces in Gaza quickly overran Dahlan’s CIA-trained thugs, seizing control of the coastal strip. In retaliation, Abbas declared a state of emergency, dismissed the Hamas-led national unity government and installed a PA cabinet headed by Salaam Fayaad, whose Third Way party held only two seats in the 132-seat PLC. Inspired by Tunisia, Egypt
The youth-led unity movement began in February, when Palestinian youth in Ramallah and Gaza organised demonstrations calling for unity between Fatah and Hamas. Inspired by the mass uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, the Palestinian youth organised a Facebook campaign to demand the establishment of a national unity government, calling for demonstrations to be held on March 15.
The demands of the March 15 demonstrations included the holding of democratic elections for the Palestinian National Council, in which all Palestinians could participate, including Palestinians living inside Israel and those living in other countries around the world. The youth also demand the release of all political prisoners held by Hamas in Gaza and by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. In relation to the demonstrations themselves, the March 15 Coalition demanded a ban on all factional or party flags and called for the Palestinian flag to be the only one flown.
While the Palestinian Authority and a range of Palestinian political parties — including Fatah, Hamas, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Palestinian People’s Party and the Palestinian National Initiative — all issued statements praising and supporting the youth initiative, the leaders of the youth coalition organising the rallies have fought to ensure their movement was not coopted by any political party or group. In a statement issued by rally organisers a week prior to March 15, they noted that the various groups had been “attempting to legitimise themselves by falsely stating that they are the main organizers behind this event”. The statement rejected those attempts, saying “[we] do not welcome attempts by leaders to redirect efforts”.
In Gaza, Samah al-Rawah from the March 15 Coalition told the French news service Agence France-Presse that the Hamas Interior Ministry in Gaza had refused to give them a permit for the march, instead awarding it to a Hamas-dominated group called “National Campaign for an End to the Division”. According to al-Rawah, the reason many protesters gathered in the Square of the Unknown Soldier the previous evening was to avoid the cooption of the rally by any political faction. Similarly, in Ramallah, protest organisers refused attempts by Fatah to coopt the unity movement. Attacks
Despite assurances by both the Palestinian Authority security forces and the Hamas security forces in Gaza that the rallies would be allowed to proceed unhindered, the two largest rallies, in Gaza City and Ramallah, were attacked.
In Gaza, despite a ban on factional flags, more than 500 members of Hamas attempted to march into the rally carrying Hamas flags. According to eyewitnesses, when protesters attempted to stop them, the Hamas members began attacking protesters. Hamas security forces, rather than protecting the rally began to disperse it violently. March 15 Coalition members told Maan News that hundreds of Hamas security forces stormed the protest and tried to end it by force.
Maan also reported in its March 15 updated article that protesters and PA security forces clashed in Ramallah, when the PA attempted to gain control of the demonstration: “At least 20 people have been injured by security forces in the main square, and six were taken away in ambulances, our correspondent reported from the scene”. Ramallah protest organisers later issued a statement saying that four protesters had been arrested. Israeli journalist Amira Hass in her March 20 article in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz noted that while there had been widespread coverage of the Hamas attack on the Gaza Unity rally, very little had been written about attacks on the Ramallah rally.
Despite the attacks on the rallies, Palestinian youth have continued to protest and demand national unity. In Gaza, Ramallah, Nablus and Bethlehem, dozens of Palestinian youth in each city have continued to stage “sit-ins” in public squares, with many embarking on a hunger strike saying they will not go home until the division ends and national unity is achieved.
Dear friends, please find below my latest article. A version of the article has been published by Palestine Chronicle at:http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16755
As mentioned in the article, I recently produced about An Nabi Saleh, which includes interview with Naji and Bassem Tamimi. YOu can view the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FnaYdG2MJU (or below on this blog).
Please feel free to distribute the article and the video to your networks.
in solidarity, Kim
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Reality vs Propaganda: the truth about the An Nabi Saleh protests By Kim Bullimore
On 26 March, a piece of Israeli Occupation Forces propaganda masquerading as journalism was published by YNet, an Israeli news website, which publishes in both Hebrew and English. The Ynet article, headlined “Secrets of Nabi Saleh protests” purported to offer a “behind-scenes look at [the] most violent protests around” [1]. However, the article by Yair Altman did nothing of the sort. Instead it gave carte blanche coverage, with little questioning, to the preposterous and often ridiculous assertions by Israeli Occupation officials against the recently arrested non-violent Palestinian leaders from An Nabi Saleh's Popular Committee against the Occupation.
According to Altman, An Nabi Saleh village leader, Naji Tamimi, who was arrested on 6 March when the Israeli military raided his home at 1.30 am in the morning, was a “pied piper” who “organised [an] army of boys”. Quoting an unnamed Israeli military police official, Altman writes: "Tamimi oversees an army of demonstrators divided in an extremely organized fashion into regiments of 14-17 people”.
Naji Tamimi in An Nabi Saleh
According to Altman's unnamed military police source, Naji Tamimi is “a very charismatic and militant person and is well versed in the rules of the game – what's allowed and what isn't. He does nothing by chance. Every action is well planned – not a folksy protest. He excites them and directs them towards confrontations with IDF forces”.
Altman goes onto state, with absolutely no proof to back up his assertions, that Naji Tamimi directed the demonstrations by phone from “the roof of one of the village's structures”. Altman also asserts in the article that the shabab (young boys) of the village were under the command of another village leader, Bassem Tamimi, who was arrested on March 24 when dozens of Israeli military stormed his home.
When I first read Altman's article, I burst out laughing. I have known both Naji Tamimi and Bassem Tamimi, along with their families, for more than fifteen months. The men described in Altman’s article, along with the actions ascribed to them, bore little resemblance to the men I know or their activities in relation to the non-violent struggle being carried out by their village. Having spent large quantities of time with both men and their families and having attended numerous demonstrations in An Nabi Saleh, very little in Altman's article rang true. Instead it held the stench of unadulterated Israeli military propaganda.
I first met Naji Tamimi and Bassem Tamimi, when I attended the first demonstrations in An Nabi Saleh. In December 2009, An Nabi Saleh - a small village of just 500 people – began holding weekly non-violent demonstrations in opposition to the illegal Israeli colony of Halamish annexing and stealing of more of the village’s land. At the conclusion of the first demonstration I attended in the village, I was invited to visit Naji's home by his brother-in-law. At Naji's home, I was introduced to not only Naji and his family but also to Bassem and his family and other families who were also visiting at the time. In the weeks that followed, I visited the village many times, both on the days of the demonstrations and on days when there were no demonstrations. During my visits to the village, I spent time with Naji and Bassem's families. We spent our time discussing the impact of Israel's occupation on the village and the Palestinian people and the non-violent struggle of the village against the attempts to steal more of the village's land. During these visits, I also played games with the children, learning to bake bread and tried to practice and improve, with the help of my new friends, my limited and badly pronounced Arabic. Over the course of the next year, after I had returned back home, I kept in regular touch with both Naji and Bassem and their families. When I returned to Palestine recently, An Nabi Saleh was the first place I visited in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The focus of the dozens of conversations that I had with both men was the importance of the development of a non-violent model of protest. Both Naji and Bassem believed in the power of non-violent struggle and the challenge it provided, in stark contrast, to the brutal colonial violence meted out each week by Israel's Occupation Forces against their tiny village and its non-violent protests. During the many demonstrations that I attended in An Nabi Saleh, myself and other internationals, as well as Israeli activists opposed to their government’s policies, would join with Naji and Bassem and other members of the village to walk unarmed and peacefully from the centre of the village, out onto the main street of An Nabi Saleh in order to make our way peacefully to the village’s land which were being stolen by the Israeli colony of Halamish.
As we marched peacefully onto the street, we would be hit almost immediately with a barrage of teargas and rubber bullets fired at the peaceful, non-violent demonstration by the Israeli military. On numerous occasions, live ammunition was also fired at us, despite the fact that this is in direct violation of Israeli military operating orders which forbid such actions when Israeli citizens are present at the demonstrations. The non-violent demonstrations would start at noon and the violent assault on the village by the Israeli military would continue for the next five or six hours until the Israeli Occupation Forces would finally leave the village at dusk.
As Bassem noted in a recent video interview I did with both him and Naji before their arrests, the Israeli military was determined to break An Nabi Saleh's model of non-violent resistance to the occupation [2]. The primary aim of the Israeli military, as Bassem noted, was to try and force Palestinians to engage in violent resistance to the occupation by crushing the non-violent resistance by increased Israeli military violence. This way, Israel could justify its continued occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people.
A recent article by the Israeli newspaper, The Jerusalem Post, similarly noted that the primary concern of the Israeli Occupation Forces, particularly in the wake of the recent Egyptian revolution, has been to contain and crush any possible Palestinian non-violent resistance to Israel's ongoing occupation. According to the February 18 Jerusalem Post article, the Israeli military were “concerned by the prospect of the Palestinians replicating [non-violent] Egyptian style mass demonstrations with dozens of simultaneous marches and protests in the West Bank [3]. The Jerusalem Post article reported that “the IDF is beginning to build rapid-response forces”, as the Israeli Occupation Forces Central Comment had assessed “that Palestinians could resort to so-called non-violent resistance, on a scale previously unknown in Israel, in the absence of peace negotiations”. The article went on to note that the primary aim of the rapid response teams would be to “quickly manoeuvre throughout the West Bank and arrive at the scene of a demonstration in its early stages in an attempt to contain it”, with this containment possibly “lead[ing] to a high number of casualties”.
The attempts by the Israeli state and its military to crush the non-violent Palestinian resistance is not new. In 2004, I interviewed the leaders of the non-violent struggle in the tiny village of Budrus about the attempts by the Israeli military to crush their non-violent resistance to the building of the Apartheid Wall. At the time, one of the village leaders told me that he had been informed by commanders of Israel's military that the Israeli Occupation Forces “would do everything in its power to stop the [non-violent] movement, even if it meant people died” [4].
Approximately two years ago, unable to stop the non-violent resistance by Palestinian villages against the building of the Apartheid Wall and the Occupation, the Israeli state and its military introduced its current tactic of arresting and jailing leaders of the non-violent struggle. In 2009, Adeeb Abu Rahma and Abdullah Abu Rahma, two of the leaders of the Bil'in non-violent struggle were arrested and jailed. This month, less than 10 days after the release of Abdullah Abu Rahma, after he had spent a year and half in Israel's prisons for his non-violent activism, Bassem Tamimi was arrested for his non-violent activism. Just twenty-four hours before his arrest on March 24, Bassem had met with leaders of the Bil'in Popular Committee Against the Wall, one of whom had quipped “Now that Abdullah Abu Rahma has been released from jail, the Israeli soldiers and the honorable military tribunal judges will have time for Bassem Tamimi” [6]
Bassem Tamimi (centre) in Bil'in with Abdullah Abu Rahma (on left) after Abdullah's release from Israeli prison.
One of the few positive things about Altman's article about the popular non-violent resistance in An Nabi Saleh is that it clearly outlines the ridiculous charges being levelled against Naji Tamimi by the Israeli Occupation Forces. According to Altman, the charges include “incitement, supporting a hostile organization, taking part in an illegal procession and entering a closed military area ...”. Of course, what Altman or the Israeli military fail to mention is the fact that an occupied people do not need the permission of their occupier to hold demonstrations, instead under international law they have the right to resist colonial occupation and repression and to engage in civil disobedience and demonstrations. While international law affords Palestinians the right, as an occupied people, to engage in armed struggle against their occupier, the people of An Nabi Saleh choose to engage in unarmed and non-violent struggle against their oppressors and occupiers. In addition, far from “entering a closed military area”, Naji Tamimi was simply in his own village and the Israeli military came to him and imposed a closed military zone on the streets and fields of his home.
Altman also points out in his piece that the Israeli Occupation Forces had arrested several boys from the village, all under the age of 16 and that their testimony was being used against Naji Tamimi and Bassem Tamimi. However, as Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli activist who is belatedly quoted in Altman's article notes, what the Israeli military police fail to mention is that the testimonies were extracted from the children via verbal, emotional and physical abuse. The testimony being used against both Naji Tamimi and Bassem Tamimi was obtained primarily from 14 year old Islam Tamimi, as well as his younger brother, 11 year old Kareem.
Islam Tamimi was kidnapped from his home at gun point at 3 am on 23 January by the Israeli military. He was kept incommunicado, beaten and verbally abused. Islam's parents and lawyer were denied access to him. In early February, Kareem was kidnapped from the streets of An Nabi Saleh and held for five hours during which the terrified child was verbally, emotionally and physically abused. The behaviour meted out to both boys was typical of the treatment visited on Palestinian child prisoners by the Israeli military
Islam Tamimi, 14 years old.
As a recent report issued by the UN in January 2011 points out in 2010 Israeli occupation forces regularly arrested children “at checkpoints, off the street or, most commonly, from the family home” [7]. The Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, went onto note that “in the case of house arrests, large numbers of Israeli soldiers typically surrounded the family home in the middle of the night. Children were beaten or kicked at the time of arrest and put at the back of a military vehicle where they were subject to further physical and psychological abuse on the way to the interrogation and detention centre. Upon arrest, children and their families were seldom informed of the charges against them”. According to the UN report, “Children were often subject to abuse during interrogation”. The report noted that abuse of children in many cases included the children being given electric shocks and sexually assaulted and it was only after this treatment that the children provided their interrogators with confessions
The UN report noted that “each year, approximately 700 Palestinian children (under 18) from the West Bank are prosecuted in Israeli military courts after being arrested, interrogated and detained by the Israeli army”. The report went onto highlight the fact that Palestinian children are subject to a dual legal system which operates in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This dual system sees settler children, who are rarely apprehended in any violent acts they may have carried out, prosecuted in the Israeli civil courts, while Palestinian children are brought before a military court system, which impose higher degrees of accountability at lower ages.
In the weeks before I left Palestine, I spoke with both Naji and Bassem many times. They knew their arrests were imminent but the remained steadfast and committed to the non-violent popular struggle and the struggle of their village for human rights and dignity. As Naji told me, “we cannot live under the occupation ... we want, like all the people in the world, our rights. We want to build our state and we want a good future for our children”.
Non-violent protest in An Nabi Saleh - Photo by Oren Ziv.
Naji has now been in prison for three and half weeks. It took the Israeli military 19 days to finally come up with charges against him. The Israeli military court has also ordered that he will be kept under indefinite remand until the military legal procedures against him are concluded. No news has come through yet on Bassem since his arrest, but in the coming days we can expect to hear that similar preposterous accusations and charges, similar to the ones outlined in Altman's article against Naji Tamimi, will be laid against him. Despite the arrests and the repression, the people of An Nabi Saleh are not bowed and they will continue their struggle against the occupation and the stealing of their land. As Bassem told me when I interviewed him before his arrest, “Our duty is to resist the stealing of our life and our land”. “We are under occupation, the normal thing is to resist against the occupation. The non-normal thing is to be quite and not do anything”.
Kim Bullimore is a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service in Palestine (www.iwps.info). Kim writes regularly on the Israel-Palestine conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action (www.directaction.org.au) and has a blog at www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com
