Boycott Jericho! Boycott Max Brenner! Don't Buy Israeli Apartheid!

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/

Stolen Children, Stolen Lives

Dear friends, please find below a very powerful short film, in two parts, on the appalling abuse of Palestinian children by Israeli Occupation Forces.

In solidarity, Kim


Part 1


Part 2

Israel Occupation Forces arrest Bassem Tamimi, leader of non-violent struggle in An Nabi Saleh

Dear friends,

at around 12 noon Palestinian time (9pm Australian time) on 24 March, my friend Bassem Tamimi was arrested by the Israeli military when they invaded his home in the village of An Nabi Saleh, arresting him and assaulting his wife and young daughter. Bassem is a key leader of the An Nabi Saleh Popular Committee against the Occupation.

Bassem's arrest comes just under three weeks after the arrest of another dear friend and leader of the An Nabi Saleh non-violent popular resistance, Naji Tamimi, on March 6. Naji was arrested after his home was raided at 1.30am by the Israeli military.

For many months now, An Nabi Saleh has been facing numerious raids and their non-violent demonstrations have been brutally repressed by the Israeli Occupation Forces. At least 10% of the village has been arrested for participating in the non-violent demonstrations. Both Bassem and Naji were aware that they would most likely targeted for arrest for their non-violent resistance against Israel's occupation.

I was in the process of finalising the production of a short 15 minute film/video about An Nabi Saleh and their struggle, when the news of Bassem's arrest came. It has now been completed and the video has now been uploaded on to youtube.

Please feel free to distribute the video to your networks and post to your websites or blogs, as we hope to use it to raise awareness about Naji and Bassem's arrests and the situation in Nabi Saleh, as well as the situation faced by Palestinian people living under Israel's occupation.

As the video notes at the end, one of the ways you can support the people of An Nabi Saleh is by becoming active in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. To find out more about the campaign visit. www.bdsmovement.net

Please find below a media release from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee on Bassem's arrest. The release also gives an update on Naji's situation.

In solidarity, Kim



An Nabi Saleh and the non-violent struggle against Israel's occupation


Press release - Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
Thursday, 24 March 2011

Israeli Soldiers Arrest Bassem Tamimi, Head of Nabi Saleh Popular Committee

Bassem Tamimi, coordinator of the Nabi Saleh popular committee, was arrested when dozens of soldiers raided his house at noon today beating his wife and daughter in the process. Only yesterday the military court had ordered the indefinite remand of Naji Tamimi, another member of the Nabi Saleh population committee.

Minutes after Bassem Tamimi entered his home to prepare for a meeting with foreign diplomats, dozens of Israeli soldiers stormed his house at the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh and arrested him. The soldiers tried to prevent Tamimi's wife, Nariman Tamimi, from filming the arrest, hitting her and trying to grab the camera from her. When she passed the camera to her 10 year-old daughter, the soldiers grabbed it from her using violence and threw it outside in the mud.

Tamimi is one of the prominent figures of the Palestinian popular struggle in the West Bank and considered by many as the engine behind Nabi Saleh's grassroots mobilization against the occupation and for the protection of the village's lands from settler take over.

Just yesterday, another leading protest organizer from Nabi Saleh, Naji Tamimi, was indicted on charges of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations. The court extended his arrest until the end of legal proceedings. Bassem Tamimi is expected to face the same charges.

For more information: Jonathan Pollak +972-54-632-7736

Over the past two months, the army has arrested eighteen of Nabi Saleh's residents on protests related suspicions. Half of those arrested are minors, the youngest of whom merely eleven.

The majority of recent Nabi Saleh arrested are made based on incriminations extracted from a fourteen year-old boy from the village, recently arrested at gun-point during a military night raid. The boy was then subjected to verbal and emotional pressure during his interrogation, denied his fundamental right to legal consul and interrogated in absence of his parents, albeit obliged by law. The interrogators have also never bothered informing the boy of his right to remain silent.

Ever since the beginning of the village's struggle against settler takeover of their lands, in December of 2009, the army has conducted 64 arrests related to protest in the village. As the entire village numbers just over 500 residents, the number constitutes a gross 10% of its population.

Tamimi's arrest last night corresponds to the systematic arrest of protest leaders all around the West Bank, as in the case of the villages of 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 last week.

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.

Israel's out of control hasbara and replusive youtube "spoof" of Gaza Flotilla

Dear friends,
if you have been following the Israeli government and Israeli Occupation Force's hasbara (propaganda) since the attack on the Gaza flotilla, you will have noticed each day an even more hystical and ridiculous claim has been made in order to try and justify the attack on the flotilla and the murder of the 9 activists.

The Guardian article below higlights not only Israel's forced retreat from a replusive youtube video making fun of the Gaza flotilla and the murder of the 9 activists, but also a number of other forced retreats by the Israel state and Israeli Occupation Forces from some of their more hysterical and absurd claims, including retreats on the accusations of activists supposedly linked to al Qaida and retreat around doctored footage, which supposedly showed an activist telling a soldier to "go back to Auschwitz"

in solidarity,
Kim

***
Israel forced to apologise for YouTube spoof of Gaza flotilla

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/06/israel-youtube-gaza-flotilla

Israeli government press office distributed video link featuring Arabs and activists singing


* Rachel Shabi in Jerusalem
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 6 June 2010 22.44 BST

The Israeli government has been forced to apologise for circulating a spoof video mocking activists aboard the Gaza flotilla, nine of who were shot dead by Israeli forces last week.

The YouTube clip, set to the tune of the 1985 charity single We Are the World, features Israelis dressed as Arabs and activists, waving weapons while singing: "We con the world, we con the people. We'll make them all believe the IDF (Israel Defence Force) is Jack the Ripper."

It continues: "There's no people dying, so the best that we can do is create the biggest bluff of all."

The Israeli government press office distributed the video link to foreign journalists at the weekend, but within hours emailed them an apology, saying it had been an error. Press office director Danny Seaman said the video did not reflect official state opinion, but in his personal capacity he thought it was "fantastic".

Government spokesman Mark Regev said the video reflected how Israelis felt about the incident. "I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny," he said. "It is what Israelis feel. But the government has nothing to do with it."

The clip features a group led by the Jerusalem Post's deputy managing editor Caroline Glick, wearing keffiyehs and calling themselves the Flotilla Choir. The footage is interspersed with clips from the recent Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound aid ship, the Mavi Marmara.

The clip has been praised in Israel, where the mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot said the singers "defended Israel better than any of the experts".

But Didi Remez, an Israeli who runs the liberal-left news analysis blog Coteret, said the clip was "repulsive" and reflected how out of touch Israeli opinion was with the rest of the world. "It shows a complete lack of understanding of how the incident is being perceived abroad," he said. Award-winning Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport said the clip demonstrated prejudice against Muslims. "It's roughly done, not very sophisticated, anti-Muslim – and childish for the government to be behind such a clip," he said.

A similar press office email was sent to foreign journalists two weeks ago, recommending a gourmet restaurant and Olympic-sized swimming pool in Gaza to highlight Israel's claim there is no humanitarian crisis there. Journalists who complained the email was in poor taste were told they had "no sense of humour".

Last week, the Israel Defence Force had to issue a retraction over an audio clip it had claimed was a conversation between Israeli naval officials and people on the Mavi Marmara, in which an activist told soldiers to "go back to Auschwitz". The clip was carried by Israeli and international press, but today the army released a "clarification/correction", explaining that it had edited the footage and that it was not clear who had made the comment.

The Israeli army also backed down last week from an earlier claim that soldiers were attacked by al-Qaida "mercenaries" aboard the Gaza flotilla. An article appearing on the IDF spokesperson's website with the headline: "Attackers of the IDF soldiers found to be al-Qaida mercenaries", was later changed to "Attackers of the IDF Soldiers found without identification papers," with the information about al-Qaida removed from the main article. An army spokesperson told the Guardian there was no evidence proving such a link to the terror organisation.

While the debate over accounts of the flotilla raid continues, Israel is facing more boycotting. In the past week, three international acts, including the US rock band the Pixies, have cancelled concerts in Tel Aviv.

Best-settling authors Alice Walker and Iain Banks have backed the boycott campaign, with Banks announcing his books won't be translated into Hebrew. Dockworker unions in Sweden and South Africa have refused to handle Israeli ships, while the UK's Unite union just passed a motion to boycott Israeli companies.

• This article was amended on 7 June 2010. The original referred to Didi Remez as a female. This has been corrected.