Images of Resistance: Christmas in Occupied Palestine 2014

 Apartheid Wall, Occupied Bethlehem 

Video: Bethlehem Christmas anti-occupation protest. 
via Reuters

Video: Bethlehem protest
Via Russia Today

 Christmas protest against Israel's occupation and apartheid wall at Bethlehm Checkpoint - 23 December 2014. Photo by Majdi Mohamemd.

For reports on the protest, click here, here and here

Christmas protest against Israel's occupation & apartheid wall - 23 December 2014

Christmas protest against Israel's occupation and apartheid wall at Bethlehem Checkpoint - 23 December 2014. Photo by Mussa Qawasama.

 Christmas protest against Israel's occupation and apartheid wall at Bethlehem Checkpoint - 23 December 2014

 Christmas protest against Israel's occupation and apartheid wall - 23 December 2014

Christmas protest against Israel's occupation and apartheid wall - 23 December 2014. Photo by Majdi Mohammed 

 Palestinian activist decorate Manager Square in Occupied Bethlehem with Israeli military stun grenades - 24 December 2014

For a report on the Manger Square anti-occupation protest, please click here

 Palestinian activist decorate Manager Square in Occupied Bethlehem with Israeli military stun grenades - 24 December 2014

 Palestinian activist decorate Manager Square in Occupied Bethlehem with Israeli military stun grenades - 24 December 2014. Photo by Ammar Awad.

 Palestinian activist decorate Manager Square in Occupied Bethlehem with Palestinian flags and Israeli military occupation grenades- 24 December 2014

 Manager Square tree decorated at night with Israeli stun grenades and teargas canisters  - 24 December 2014. Photo by Oren Ziv, Activestills.

 Photo by Oren Ziv, Activestills

Photo of Palestinian minister, Ziad Abu Ein, who was killed by the Israeli military in a recent protest against Israel's illegal colonies in the occupied West Bank. - anti-occupation tree in Manger Square, Occupied Bethlehem - 24 December 2014. Photo by Oren Ziv, Activestills 

 memorial to Palestinian minister, Ziad Abu Ein who was killed by Israeli Occupation Forces during a recent demonstration against Israel's illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank.   Anti-occupation Christmas protest in Manger Square, Occupied Bethlehem. Photo by Oren Ziv, Activestills.

Manager Square, Occupied Bethlehem. Photo by Oren Ziv, Activestills

Walkley Awards: Ruth Pollard - “If this had happened in Europe, the world would not be silent”

Dear friends,
as already mentioned in my previous post, the winners of  this year's annual Walkley Awards for excellence in journalism were announced on Thursday 4 December. The Walkley Awards, which began in 1956, seek to "recognise creative and courageous acts of journalism that seek out the truth and give new insight to an issue".

This year, a number of journalists won awards for their coverage of stories relating to Palestine.  I will be posting up over the course of the week, the articles, news stories and documentaries from these award winning journalists.
   
The awards cover all media, including print (including both newspaper stories and books), television (including news stories and documentaries), radio, photographic, and online media. In 2014, 36 awards were presented for 36 categories, covering various forms of journalism and story telling, from interviews, to scoops, to international reporting, sports journalism, business journalism and investigative journalism and much much more (to view all categories, click here).

Today I am posting up Ruth Pollard's award winning article for her story on the Shifa Hospital Morgue in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge.

Pollard won the Walkley Award for the best Short Feature (under 4000 words)

According to the Walkley Awards website:

Ruth Pollard spent a day at the morgue in Shifa Hospital in Gaza, capturing both times of noisy high drama and moments of quiet, desperate grief as frightened families, often covered in blood and dust, located and identified their loved ones. She tells the stories of individuals affected by a conflict that is often reported in terms of the daily toll of dead and injured, and shocking footage of whole town blocks razed to the ground.

Through the stories of these people’s deaths, Pollard explores the horrifying choices families must make in the midst of air strikes and shelling – to stay in their house or risk a journey through the bombardment and, agonisingly, to stick together or split up.

The director of the morgue, Hamdi Khalout, allowed Pollard to shadow him for a day, and became a central part of the story, talking about his fears that one day he will walk into the examination room, open a body bag and find one of his own children.

Judges’ comments: “Ruth Pollard’s feature on the grim day she spent with the director of Shifa morgue is unforgettable. Through her careful observation and vivid description we experience the human side of the Gaza conflict. It is a compelling read, and reflective of the courage Pollard demonstrated in securing access to this war zone morgue and the sensitivity she displayed during her time there. From powerful details to the big picture, this is outstanding, sensitive journalism, beautifully written.”

Please find Pollard's award winning story below, which tells the story of the families who lost their loved ones on Day 25 of Israel's murderous assault on Gaza.

In solidarity, Kim

**
“If this had happened in Europe, the world would not be silent”

Grief grips Gaza 

The Age/Sydney Morning Herald (Fairfax Media): August 2, 2014

Ruth Pollard Middle East Correspondent

View more articles from Ruth Pollard

Follow Ruth on Twitter
 

The family procession from hospital to morgue is achingly frequent as Operation Protective Edge moves into its fourth week.

Medics wheel a wounded man into the emergency room at Gaza's Shifa Hospital. Photo: AP

His lifeless body lies on the cold metal tray, bloodied stumps covered in hastily wrapped bandages mark where his legs once were.

Doctors at Shifa Hospital had worked hard to save Ibrahim Suliman, but in the end the injuries he sustained in the Israeli attack on the United Nations girls school in Jabalia on Wednesday proved too great.

Four days before his death, Suliman had made the agonising decision to separate his extended family of 30, dividing them between the four local schools sheltering Palestinians in a desperate bid to keep them alive.

   Shifa morgue director Hamdi Kahlout. Photo: Ruth Pollard

The shell attack on the UN school in Beit Hanoun in which 15 people died and 200 were injured early on July 24 had terrified Suliman, his cousin Yassin Suliman said as he waited to collect his body for burial.

“Let’s not die together,” he told his wife and children when the shelling from the Israeli tanks around their home in Beit Lahiya became too much to bear and they were forced to flee. As his family looked on with mounting grief at his body on the table, it was clear he had made the right call.
The 42-year-old strawberry farmer died alongside two of his cousins, but the rest of his family survived.

Exhausted Palestinian medics take a break at the hospital. Photo: AP
 

Thirteen others also died in the school attack and a further 100 were injured.Standing in the small foyer of the morgue at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Yassin speaks with a quiet, eloquent fury about the death of his cousin Ibrahim.

“If this had happened in Europe, the world would not be silent,” he says, as the young men of the family carefully lift Ibrahim’s body onto a stretcher and carry him out of the morgue to be transported to his mosque for prayers.

“We buried his legs this morning and we will bury his body this afternoon,” Yassin says.
Such is the ebb and flow of life at Shifa Morgue – now one of the busiest places in Gaza – that no sooner is one body taken than many more will arrive in its place.

When a hospital becomes home
To get to the morgue at Shifa, you must first walk past the chaos of the hospital’s front entrance, where, after a large-scale attack, the arrival of a cavalcade of speeding ambulances and beaten-up private cars carrying gruesomely injured people brings with it a now familiar horror.

Fathers arrive clutching limp, bloodied children in their arms and rush them through the crowd of onlookers as security men clear a pathway to the emergency department.

There seems little hope they could survive such terrible injuries and I fear I will see those children in the morgue later that day.

Further crowding Gaza’s main hospital are the dozens of families who have set up temporary homes along the small walkways between the hospital buildings.

Told to leave their homes via phone calls, text messages and leaflets dropped by the Israel Defence Forces, they make up the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by Israel’s latest military assault against Gaza.

A young girl sits alone on a mattress on the ground, trying to read a book in the dim light, while parents hang makeshift curtains to shield their families from the constant through traffic of hospital staff, grieving families and those who spend their days at Shifa because they say it is the only safe place to go.

Many had fled the horrific violence of the IDF assault on the town of Shujaiya in which it appears whole city blocks have been flattened.

Despite their challenging living conditions on the grounds of Shifa, they know they are the lucky ones.

“They pulled 150 bodies out of the rubble of our homes,” one man says, “many of them ended up in there", he laments, gesturing to the morgue.

Men line the walls outside the morgue, smoking and talking, as a steady flow of ambulances bring in the bodies, broken only by the quieter arrival of trolleys pushed by staff from the surgical and emergency wards – some, like Ibrahim Suliman, are just beyond saving.

The morgue’s main room has two tables. In the momentary midday lull after the furious morning hours where 15 dead passed through, most from the UN school attack, just one green body bag lies on each.

In one is the body of eight-year-old Mohamed Assaf, who staff say was killed in a mortar attack on the Jabalia market earlier that morning.

His father sits weeping in the tiny room next door until the morgue nurse, Mohamed al-Barbary, is free to hand over his body.

The bag is unzipped to reveal Mohamed’s sweet face, his short-sleeved shirt and blue checked shorts stained with blood and the deep head wound and multiple shrapnel injuries that killed him.

As weeping relatives lean in to kiss him, another body arrives. Mohamed Assaf's father scoops up the body bag into his arms, holding it tight against his chest and walks wordlessly down the small staircase to the car waiting outside.

His wife stands at the passenger door sobbing, her hands clutching her face, as he carefully lays their son’s body on the back seat and closes the door.

'I cannot forget them'
Hamdi Kahlout is the director of Shifa Morgue, a jovial, open man whose demeanour stands in stark contrast to the death and destruction that surrounds him.

The forensic pathologist has run the facility for 13 years and says health services across Gaza are operating at “zero capacity” at the moment.

“We have more than 7000 injured, half of them are disabled now, our hospitals have been shelled, ambulances attacked, doctors are running on empty – everyone is exhausted and drained.”

Trained in Croatia, 50-year-old Kahlout has worked in conflict zones in Bosnia and Iraq and lived through two Gaza wars – in Operation Cast Lead in 2008/9 and in Operation Pillar of Defence in November 2012 – but these last three weeks have worn him down.

“It is the first time I have felt that we cannot bear much more of this,” he says. “I am still trying to get the images of the children who died in the strike on Shati Camp out of my mind – one of them was just one month old. I cannot forget them.”

There is no time for a full autopsy in a morgue that can see up to 90 bodies a day, all processed by a small team of exhausted workers.

An external examination is performed, X-rays, tissue, blood and toxicology samples are taken, and the injuries are meticulously photographed by morgue staff to both help determine cause of death and the types of weapons Israeli soldiers are using.

As we talk in Kahlout’s office, there are sounds of a crowd growing in the next room as the family of 25-year-old Mohamed al-Masry come to collect his body.

The dead man’s face is wet with the tears of his loved ones as they cry and bend to kiss him one last time.

A final year geography student at al-Azhar University, Mohamed had hoped to become a teacher when he graduated, his cousin, also Mohamed, said.

He was injured in the Israeli military onslaught on the small neighbourhood of Beit Hanoun on January 25, and died from his wounds on Wednesday.

As the family leaves with Mohamed, three more bodies arrive – one so badly burned and mutilated by the force of an explosion that it defies description. It is still there when I leave four hours later, the only body the morgue has been unable to identify that day.

Recognising the dead
There are seven large silver cold storage units in which the bodies are kept at Shifa Morgue.

Some days – like Wednesday when a UN school housing 3300 displaced people is hit by Israeli-fired artillery – the bodies, particularly if they are children, are piled two or three to a tray.

The families come in waves to find them, sometimes pushing their way through the morgue’s front door and rushing to the fridges, opening one door after another until they find something about a body that is recognisable – a necklace, a T-shirt, the curls of their hair.

They stand and stare for a while, the younger ones stretching onto their tiptoes to peer into the drawer and see the person they cannot believe is gone.

Then another family arrives and the process begins again.Amongst it all, the staff, some paid and some, like nurse Mohamed al-Barbary who has volunteered during every Gaza war, are there providing emotional support for the families, carefully cataloguing the bodies and finding a rare moment for their own quiet grief.

For Kahlout, there is no question of taking the heaviness of his work home to his wife and five precious children.

“I will never tell them what I see every day,” he says. “In 20 years on the job I’ve never spoken about it. Every morning I go to work and I never know if I will see them alive again,” he says.

“They feel the same way about me – every night when I get home it is like a party when they see me … and if they are asleep I wake them up to play with them."

It is not easy working with dead bodies every day, he says, “but when I change my clothes and have a shower at the end of each day, I also change my feelings".

Outside another crowd is building and they are not just grieving, they are angry.

Banging on the metal door, members of the Bakr family – who have already known such grief – were there to collect another of their dead. They had already buried Mohammed Bakr, 9; Ahed Bakr, 10; Zakaria Bakr, 10; and Mohammed Bakr, 11, all killed on July 16 when Israeli gunboats fired on the beach as the four boys tried to run for safety.

This time they are here for Ahmed Bakr, 20, who was badly injured nine days ago and was one of the few patients evacuated to the French Hospital in East Jerusalem for treatment. He died on Tuesday and his body was bought back to Gaza on Wednesday.

“They are not coping,” Kahlout says. “They have lost so much and they are so upset, it is difficult to know what to do.”

The limits of capacity
Many other cases came into the morgue that day.

There were at least five bodies waiting to be collected in the late afternoon before the Israeli attack on the outskirts of Shujaiya in which 17 people died and 160 were wounded.

Throwing already overstretched hospitals further into crisis, badly wounded people, many missing limbs, began arriving at hospitals across the Gaza Strip.

At Shifa, surgeons were operating two-to-a-room on patients, while others were performing surgery on patients lying on the floor in corridors.

Storage rooms – mostly empty of much needed medicines and equipment – have been commandeered as operating theatres, to cope with the demand.

Families say many of the injured are dying because there is simply not enough medical staff, or the capacity in hospitals, to treat people in time.

Already the toll in this 25-day war has surpassed Cast Lead, in which 1400 people were killed in Gaza, according to human rights groups.

In Pillar of Defence, 133 Palestinians were killed.More than 1430 Palestinians have been killed and 8400 wounded since Israel began this operations on July 8.

It is estimated that 80 per cent of those are civilians, including at least 343 children and 186 women, the Gaza-based al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights says.

Despite the high civilian toll and the international condemnation over its attack on the UN school, Israel shows no signs of easing its operations, in which 56 of its own soldiers have died.

Three civilians have also been killed, with more than 2800 rockets fired into Israel the last three weeks, most either falling in empty fields or being intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system.

After Thursday’s cabinet meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the IDF was continuing to act with full force across the Gaza Strip.

“As of now, we have neutralised dozens of terrorist tunnels and we are determined to complete this mission, with or without a ceasefire.”

For the people of Gaza, trapped between the rockets of Hamas and the overwhelming show of force from the Israeli military, it is difficult to see an end in sight, let alone a hint of when any recovery could begin.

And in the meantime, the trauma that hangs over Gaza like a thick cloud is only worsening.

For Hamdi Kahlout, the speed with which his children have adapted to a life lived under war is alarming.

His youngest child, Mohamed, is just 2½ years old, and along with “mama” and “papa” he uses the very grown-up word “qasef”, which means air strike.

“No child should ever know that word,” Kahlout says, as he scrolls though the elaborately decorated photographs of his children that he keeps on his phone. “They are beautiful kids, yes, and I am happy they are still alive."

Australian journalists win prestigious Walkley Awards for their coverage of Gaza and Palestine.

Dear friends,
the winners of the annual Walkley Awards for excellence in journalism - the Australian equivalent of the Pultizer Prize - was announced on 4 December.  The Walkley Awards, which began in 1956, seek to "recognise creative and courageous acts of journalism that seek out the truth and give new insight to an issue".

The awards cover all media, including print (including both newspaper stories and books), television (including news stories and documentaries), radio, photographic, and online media. In 2014, 36 awards were presented for 36 categories, covering various forms of journalism and story telling, from interviews, to scoops, to international reporting, sports journalism, business journalism and investigative journalism and much much more (to view all categories, click here).

This year, a number of journalists won awards for their coverage of stories relating to Palestine:

Ruth Pollard won the Walkley Award for the best Short Feature (under 4000 words) for her story on the Shifa Hospital Morgue in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge.

John Lyons, Janine Cohen, Sylvie Le Clezio and Mary Fallon (from Four Corners/ABC and The Australian) won the Walkley Award for Investigative journalism with their feature documentary, Stone Cold Justice, on Israel's treatment of Palestinian children/child prisoners in the Occupied West Bank.

Matt Brown, Hayden Cooper, Aaron Hollet, Stuart Watt, Michael Carey and the ABC News team won the Walkley Award for "Coverage of A Major News Event or Issue" for their coverage of the "Gaza Conflict" (that is: Israel's 50 day assault on Gaza).

Over the next week, I will be posting up the stories, articles and documentaries on Palestine by these award winning journalists. Some I have posted before, such as John Lyon's Stone Cold Justice but I will post up once again as part of this series of posts. 

in solidarity, Kim

Dear friends,
please find below my latest article published by Red Flag on the ongoing protests in Occupied East Jerusalem, Israel's extrajudicial execution of two Palestinian men and the recent violence by the  Zionist state, which has left two Palestinian children seriously injured.

In solidarity, Kim

***

Israel tries to strangle East Jerusalem protests

17 November 2014 | Kim Bullimore

Young Palestinians use doors as a shield during clashes with Israeli security forces in the Shuafat refugee camp east Jerusalem PHOTO: AFP

Tension continues to rise in occupied East Jerusalem after Israeli occupation forces severely injured two Palestinian children.

On 14 November, 10-year-old Mayar al-Natsheh’s skull was fractured when troops fired on the car she was in at a checkpoint near Shufat refugee camp.

A day earlier, Israeli police shot 11-year-old Saleh Mahmoud in the face, at close range, with a “sponge” bullet – high density plastic with a sponge tip fired from a grenade launcher. He was blinded in his left eye, and the vision in his right eye has been severely impaired.

At the time of the shooting, residents of al-Issawiya were protesting the closure of three of the four entrances to their village for more than 11 days.

East Jerusalem has been a tinderbox since the brutal torture and murder of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir by Israeli settlers on 2 July. Abu Khdeir was forced to drink gasoline before being burnt alive.

Israel’s brutal 50-day bombardment of Gaza only added to the outrage.

The Palestinian Arab residents of East Jerusalem have been staging continuous protests against Israel’s atrocities and the ongoing occupation. Viewed as a fifth column and a “demographic time bomb” – a threat to Jewish dominance in Israel – Palestinians face systemic discrimination on all levels, in both the occupied territories and the Israeli state.

Discontent has been further inflamed as a result of Israel restricting access to the Al-Aqsa mosque and attempts by Israeli settlers to gain control of the Temple Mount, where the mosque is located. The settlers, who have the support of both government officials and Israeli police, have been agitating for the destruction of the mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites.

The rising tensions resulted in an attempt to assassinate dual US-Israel citizen Yehuda Glick, the illegal settler at the forefront of the campaign to destroy the mosque. Israeli police later assassinated a Palestinian man, Moataz Hejazi, who they claimed was responsible for the shooting of Glick.

A week after the extrajudicial execution of Hejazi, Israeli police executed 22-year-old Kheir al-Dein Hamdan in Kafra Kana. The following day, 8 November, a general strike was widely observed throughout Palestinian communities inside Israel, and Palestinian youth took to the streets.

In statement issued on 9 November, Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights, noted that the killing was captured on a nearby CCTV camera and clearly showed an execution. Hamdan “did not pose any immediate threat to the lives of the police officers when they shot him down”, Adalah said, adding that “the police narrative was false and fabricated”.

The centre also noted a direct connection between the execution of Hamdan and the statements made the previous week by public security minister Yitzhak Aharonovich, who had said that anyone attacking Israeli Jewish citizens should be killed.

In response to the escalating protests in East Jerusalem, prime minister Netanyahu’s cabinet approved a law change that would increase the maximum penalty for stone throwing to 20 years in prison. According to the Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu told his cabinet: “Israel is acting firmly against terrorists, rock-throwers, against firebomb throwers and against those who use fireworks.”

Israel’s most read Hebrew daily, Yedioth Ahronoth, on 5 November outlined Netanyahu’s hardline approach to the East Jerusalem protests. The paper quoted Israel Security Agency head Yoram Cohen as saying that Netanyahu is “strongly convinced by the effectiveness of [collective] punishments: the imposition of prison sentences and fines for parents whose children throw stones, the demolition of houses, deportation to the Gaza Strip, the collection of taxes by force”.

All of these measures are breaches of international law.

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West Bank Palestinians breach apartheid wall to march to Jersualem

Dear friends,
an inspiring action on Friday by Palestinian activists, highlighting Israel's ongoing colonial and apartheid regime, in particular the lack of freedom movement imposed on Palestinians.

Please find below a media release issues by the activists about the action and also some photos.

in solidarity, Kim

**  

14 November 2014                   Press Release

Palestinians ‘ On2Jerusalem’

In light of the unprecedented Israeli occupation’s daily attacks and colonial aggression against the Palestinian people, and due to the tightening of the closure around Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine, and its people. In addition to the actions of aggression and violations committed by the illegal colonial settlers who are trying to control Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem through targeting, displacing, killing and arresting Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents. We, Palestinians, decided to rise in our masses to confront the occupation at the points of closure around the city of Jerusalem, against the siege of the holy city and its people. 

Palestinians in the West bank are banned from reaching Jerusalem by the Israeli occupation’s checkpoints and apartheid wall. Our will, determination and in response to the pleas of our people in Jerusalem we decided to resist. Jerusalem is our motivation, its what moves us and motivates our struggle for our just cause. We have committed ourselves to struggle against the occupation and will not remain silent after this day.

‘On to Jerusalem’ is an action that was initiated to resist the occupation and its measures, against its checkpoints, which violate our right to freedom of movement between our cities within the West Bank and to Gaza. The colonial occupation imposes measures that prohibit us from reaching our holy sites. For tens of years, Palestinians Christians and Muslims have been prohibited from reaching and visiting their churches and mosques in Jerusalem.

Today, we Palestinians, in our hundreds, we participate in this action, marching towards Jerusalem from Qalandia refugee camp. This camp where Palestinians who were forced out of their villages and cities by the colonial occupation in 1948 reside. We march towards Jerusalem in spite of the military checkpoints and the illegal apartheid wall. We will reach Jerusalem chanting for Jerusalem and holding the Palestinians flags high. We will chant long live Palestine, down with the occupation and we will pray in Jerusalem.

Tens of Palestinian popular resistance activists have succeeded in breaking through the Israeli apartheid wall around Qalandia airport on the outskirts of Jerusalem. They used metal ladders and bridges that they have prepared especially for the purpose of breaking through the wall. 

Demonstrations heading towards Jerusalem have started this morning from all around the West Bank. Tens of Palestinians marched through the village of Hizmah to enter Jerusalem. They were stopped by illegal colonial settlers and the Israeli occupation army, they attacked the Palestinian activists violently with gas bombs and live bullets. They also attacked journalists. 

In Bethlehem, tens of Palestinian activists succeeded in reaching the southern checkpoint, blocking them from entering Jerusalem. They were attacked violently by the large numbers of soldiers from the Israeli occupation army using gas bombs.

The groups of ‘On to Jerusalem’ are heading towards Jerusalem and we will reach our city in spite of the occupation. This is only one step, a start of a series of actions against the occupation. We have a vision, a free Palestine. Our struggle against the occupation is open and will continue until the occupation ends. Today our struggle is dedicated to Jerusalem and its people.

Popular resistance against the occupation for liberation

UPDATE: Live from Occupied Palestine blogging

Dear friends,
just a short post to let you know I hope to resume posting to Live from Occupied Palestine more regular basis as soon as possible. Due to other commitments over the past month, including study, I have not been able to blog as regularly as I would like. 

I have, however, been continuing to post relevant news updates and articles about Palestine on the corresponding Facebook page for Live from Occupied Palestine, so you can also keep up to date with news from Palestine by liking that page (please click here)

Thank you once again for continuing to support and follow Live from Occupied Palestine.  Regular blogging will resume very soon! :)

in solidarity, Kim

AMIRA HASS to speak in Australia next year @ MARXISM 2015

Dear friends,

I can't express how excited I was to hear last week that Amira Hass will be one of the international speakers at Marxism 2015 being held in Melbourne over the Easter long weekend (2-5 April).

Hass is an exceptional journalist and is one of the few Israeli journalists (who is not an illegal setter) who lives in and reports from the Occupied Palestinian Territories (it should be noted that most Israeli and international journalists reporting on Palestine are based inside Israel and rarely enter the Territories).

So don't miss out on hearing her speak at Marxism 2015 at Easter next year!! Mark your calendar now, by your tix to Marxism and book your flights (if your not in Melbourne).

Please find the announcement from the organisers of the Marxism 2015 conference about her attendance. 

I understand from the conference organisers, they are currently liaising with Palestinian speakers to participate in the conference. Once their participation is confirmed, their participation will be announced. 

In solidarity, Kim
**

Marxism 2015 is excited to announce the participation of world renowned journalist Amira Hass. 

Hass lives in Ramallah in the West Bank, where she covers Palestinian affairs for the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz, making her the only Jewish Israeli correspondent on Palestinian affairs to live among the people about whom she reports. 

Hass writes insightful columns about the daily lives and hardships of Palestinians. The child of Holocaust survivors, Hass was born in Jerusalem in 1956 and studied history in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. 

After working as a teacher, she started her career in journalism in 1989 as a staff editor at Ha’aretz and began writing about the Palestinian Territories in 1991, undaunted by danger and criticism from both Israelis and Palestinians. 

She moved to Gaza in December 1993 after the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian agreements and settled in Ramallah in the West Bank in 1997. 

She is the author of 'Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege and Reporting From Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land.'

To get tickets visit www.marxismconference.org

Photo Essay: Melbourne protest against Israeli war profiteer, Elbit Systems.

Dear friends,
I am a little late in posting this up, but on Monday October 6, Melbourne activists from Students for Palestine and Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid conducted a small action outside of Israeli war profiteer, Elbit Systems.    

Elbit Systems is the Israeli weapons manufacturer whose drones have been used in Gaza to kill hundreds of unarmed and defenseless Palestinian men, women and children.Israel's Occupation Forces have praised Elbit's drones (unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs) "for delivering added operational value in recent combat in Gaza".

According to Bloomberg's financial press, the Israeli based Elbit Systems share price has increase 6.1 percent to $63.01 since Israel began its murderous assault on Gaza, which has resulted in more than 2000 Palestinians killed, the majority (more than 80%) civilians, including almost 470 children. 

In August, activists from the Melbourne Palestine Action Group, which is made up of activists from the Whistleblower, Activist and Citzens Alliance and Renegade Activists also carried out an action against Elbit, successfully locking it down for approximately 5 hours. You can read my earlier post on the August action here.

Please find below details of the October action and some photos below.

in solidarity, Kim

**
Protest Elbit Systems: 6 October, 2014

Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza, which saw 1,951 Palestinians killed and 10,193 injured, has rightly prompted worldwide outrage and protest. One of the targets of these protests has been the Israeli arms companies that produce the weapons that have been used to massacre Palestinians.

Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest military company. It provides a wide range of equipment and services to the Israeli military, including surveillance equipment used in Israel’s illegal Wall and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), known as drones. Elbit Systems armed drones are widely used by the Israeli military.

According to Palestinian human rights organization Al Mezan Center, armed drones killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza in the period 2000-2010. Elbit Systems markets its drone technology across the world as ‘field tested’.

Australia is an important client for Elbit Systems. In 2010 Elbit Systems announced a “significant breakthrough” in Australia when the Australian Army signed a $331 million contract for a battle management and communication systems.

Last year the Australian Federal Police signed a $35 million contract with Elbit Systems for “an Investigation, Intelligence and Incident Management (IIIM) Solution”. This is part of a pattern of technologies of surveillance and repression developed through the Occupation being profitably exported to police and so called “homeland security” services around the world.