As mentioned in my introduction to Michael Brull's article in my previous post, Brull's article is the first article to appear in the Australian “mainstream” media which has actively challenged the demonization of the BDS campaign and the Max Brenner protests in Melbourne. Brull, while being publicly on the record as not being a supporter of BDS, correctly points out that there is a concerted and undemocratic attempt to not only crush the Melbourne Max Brenner BDS protests but also that this attempted to forcibly crush the protests has been aided by the Murdoch Press in their relentless promotion/accusation that BDS and the protests are equivalent to Nazism.
Yesterday on the New Matilda webjournal, another well-known Australian Jewish blogger and author, Antony Loewenstein published an article addressing head-on use of the Nazi slurs being thrown around in an attempt to discredit BDS and the Max Brenner protests in Melbourne. Loewenstein, who is a non-Zionist and a supporter of the Palestinian BDS campaign, notes that not only are the Nazi accusations false but that Australian Zionists have cheered and supported the accusations in order to distract from Israel’s anti-democratic behaviour. Loewenstein points out that falsely accusations are not only offensive but also have the effect of undermining the ability to challenge real anti-Semitism when it does occur.
Please find below Loewenstein's New Matilda article (Loewenstein's article, like Brull's has a number of links in it. For some reason, however, the links did not automatically transfer when I posted the article here, so I have included a link to the New Matilda website and the original article, so you can check out the links)
In solidarity, Kim
***
Enough With The Nazi Slurs
By Antony Loewenstein, New Matilda, 25 August 2011
Equating the BDS movement with Nazism is both offensive and outrageous. So why aren't members of the Jewish community speaking out on this, asks Antony Loewenstein
Joseph Stalin changed his name and so did New South Wales Federal Greens MP Lee Rhiannon.
Stalin, writes Alan Howe, executive editor and columnist with Rupert Murdoch’s Herald Sun, was "perhaps the 20th century’s greatest murderer".
Rhiannon backs the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and, argues Howe, people should know about "the 1930s where violent protests against Jewish traders may end. It was a colourful time of brownshirts, blackshirts and yellow Stars of David".
In this fashion, Rhiannon is likened to a supporter of fascism and remains "against the only democracy in the Middle East and the one country in which the region’s Arabs are guaranteed safety".
Welcome to the level of debate in Australia over the Israel/Palestine conflict. The last months have seen a litany of public figures that should know better accusing anybody associated with the BDS movement of embracing Nazism, anti-Semitism and outright Jew-hatred.
It shames the Australian Jewish establishment that no leading voices have challenged this odious and absurd comparison. Instead, they’ve cheered it on, coordinating nationally, with the support of an Israeli government desperate to distract from its own anti-democratic practices.
The Australian Jewish News has editorialised that boycotting Jewish businesses here will remind Jews of similar Nazi tactics in Germany and Austria in the 1930s. How on earth will the paper cover real anti-Semitism when they so casually compare today’s behaviour to Hitler’s Third Reich?
Back in early July, 19 pro-Palestinian activists were arrested and charged for protesting in front of a Max Brenner chocolate shop in Melbourne. Max Brenner was targeted because its parent company Strauss Group supports elements of the IDF accused of war crimes in both the West Bank and Gaza.
This campaign has continued globally for years. For example, a reader of my website in 2009 sent me a copy of a letter they sent to Max Brenner outlining the reasons the company was a legitimate target for boycott.
The Victorian Government recently continued to threaten the activists with further legal punishment, imprisonment and fines.
Max Brenner’s parent company Strauss Group is an openly political business that proudly states on its Hebrew website that "We see a mission and need to continue to provide our soldiers with support, to enhance their quality of life and service conditions, and sweeten their special moments". Some of these soldiers were directly implicated in war crimes allegations during incursions into the West Bank and the invasion of Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.
In late July, The Australian reported the campaign against the BDS movement in Australia with a story called, "Anti-Jew protest condemned". Federal Labor MP Michael Danby, journalist Jana Wendt and union head Paul Howes met for a hot chocolate inside a Max Brenner shop in Melbourne, condemned the "violent" protest against the shop and again talked about Nazi Germany. Former Labor Party president Warren Mundine was quoted by journalist Leo Shanahan as saying BDS was not "not anti-Israel but anti-Jewish".
Howes said the protesters were "mimicking the behaviour of the Nazi thugs" and it was necessary to "nip this in the bud". Howes said most people who voted for the Greens had no idea how "xenophobic" its policies were. Not one journalist asked him whether he truly believed waving placards outside a shop in Melbourne is akin to the Gestapo arresting and murdering millions of Jews in the gas chambers. And no Jewish leaders took him to task for the comparison.
Last weekend’s article by The Australian’s Cameron Stewart allowed this misperception to perpetuate. Like Shanahan, Stewart quoted Wendt as saying that, "As the daughter of refugees whose lives were critically affected by both fascism and communism, I’m grateful for what Australia has to offer".
A week later, the Victorian Government announced that it was investigating "anti-Israel activists" — by asking the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) if the BDS-ers were breaking federal law by "threatening" Israeli stores.
The state’s Consumer Affairs Minister Michael O’Brien raised the spectre of 20th century attacks on Jewish businesses and claimed BDS was a threat to democratic order. Bizarrely, he singled out the Maritime Union Of Australia, Geelong Trades Hall Council, the Green Left Weekly magazine, Australians for Palestine and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. For the record, Australians for Palestine had nothing to do with the BDS protest against Max Brenner, though they do back BDS.
The Australian followed up with a story recently headlined, "Targeted chocolatier ‘a man of peace’". "Max Brenner says he is a man of peace who hates all forms of violence," the article says. Reporter Cameron Stewart doesn’t mention the serious allegations against the IDF soldiers supported by Max Brenner. (And besides, Max Brenner is the name of the business — not of the company owner. Actually, it’s an amalgam of two names.)
One of the activists interviewed by Stewart, Kim Bullimore, spokesperson for Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, told me that little of what she said to the journalist ended up in the article.
The Australian editorialised further on the matter last week by arguing "for any student of 20th-century history there is something deeply offensive about targeting a Jewish-owned business".
And the Jewish establishment said nothing.
BDS is a peaceful, non-violent movement, like that which campaigned against apartheid South Africa. It aims to put pressure on a state that refuses to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
What Australian politicians will not acknowledge is the real face of modern Israel. Calling for BDS inside Israel is now illegal. As an Arab member of parliament recently told the New York Times, a member of the Knesset wanted to sue him for simply calling for a boycott against the illegal settlement of Ariel. This is in "democratic" Israel.
With Israel announcing yet more illegal colonies in the West Bank, the international community has a clear choice: engage in empty rhetoric about "democratic" Israel or find alternative ways to target a state with one of the most unequal class systems in the developed world.
Australian politicians and all public figures should be strongly challenged on comparing BDS to fascist hoodlums, and rejected.
Showing posts with label palestine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label palestine. Show all posts
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
UNIFIED STATEMENT: Human Rights and Community Organisations condemn attempts to silence BDS movement
13 August 2011
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)
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)
Monday, May 23, 2011
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/
Monday, May 16, 2011
Silencing Rudd is Silencing the Palestinian People
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.
In solidarity, Kim
Silencing Rudd is Silencing the Palestinian People
Pop goes the system by Van Thanh Rudd
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
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.
In solidarity, Kim
Silencing Rudd is Silencing the Palestinian People
Pop goes the system by Van Thanh Rudd
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
Van Rudd’s Pro-Palestine/BDS"Justin Bieber" Artwork banned by Human Rights Festival
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.
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.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Israeli military exceed even their normal excessive violence against unarmed non-violent protestors in An Nabi Saleh
Nabi Saleh is a regular target for Israeli military aggression. This week, the Israeli military exceeded even their normal excessive violence violently beating and attacking unarmed demonstrators at the weekly non-violent demonstration (which this http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifweek marked Al Nakba).
At least 25 unarmed non-violent protestors were injured. One Palestinian women in her 50s who was beaten up so badly, she was evacuated from the Salfeet Hospital to the bigger and more advanced Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus. A 25 year-old American demonstrator suffered a serious head injury and an Israeli activist was diagnosed with two open fractures in his hand. Both were injured by tear-gas projectiles shot directly at them from short range, in violation of the Israeli Army’s open fire regulations. Four protesters were arrested in Nabi Saleh, including two Palestinian women.
You can follow and support the non-violent struggle being carried by the people of An Nabi Saleh by joining their solidarity page on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nabi-Saleh-Solidarity/177013109017209
Or visit the Nabi Saleh Solidarity blog at: http://nabisalehsolidarity.wordpress.com/
At least 25 unarmed non-violent protestors were injured. One Palestinian women in her 50s who was beaten up so badly, she was evacuated from the Salfeet Hospital to the bigger and more advanced Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus. A 25 year-old American demonstrator suffered a serious head injury and an Israeli activist was diagnosed with two open fractures in his hand. Both were injured by tear-gas projectiles shot directly at them from short range, in violation of the Israeli Army’s open fire regulations. Four protesters were arrested in Nabi Saleh, including two Palestinian women.
You can follow and support the non-violent struggle being carried by the people of An Nabi Saleh by joining their solidarity page on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nabi-Saleh-Solidarity/177013109017209
Or visit the Nabi Saleh Solidarity blog at: http://nabisalehsolidarity.wordpress.com/
Teen Critically Injured as Israel Cracks Down on Nakba Demos in Silwan, Ma'asara and Nabi Saleh
by Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
http://www.popularstruggle.org/content/teen-critically-injured-israel-cracks-down-nakba-demos
17 year-old was critically injured from live fire in East Jerusalem. An American protester suffered serious head injury after being hit by a tear-gas projectile shot directly at him from close range.
Israeli military and police forces responded heavy handedly to demonstrations commemorating 63 years to the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 today all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Morad Ayyash, a 17 year old from the Ras el-Amud neighborhood was shot in the stomach with live ammunition. He has reached the Muqassed hospital with no pulse and the doctors are now fighting for his life.
Tension also rose in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, where 19 protesters have been injured and 11 were arrested. During the evening hours, large police forces raided houses in Silwan and carried out additional arrests.
In the village of Ma'asara, south of Bethlehem, two protesters were arrested during a peaceful demonstration that was attacked with tear-gas for no apparent reason. One of those arrested is a member of the village's popular committee. In Nabi Saleh - a regular target for military aggression recently - soldiers and Border Police officers injured no less than 25 protesters, including a Palestinian women in her 50s who was beaten up so badly that her wounds required her removal from the Salfeet Hospital to the bigger and more advanced Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus. A 25 year-old American demonstrator suffered a serious head injury and an Israeli activist was diagnosed with two open fractures in his hand. Both were injured by tear-gas projectiles shot directly at them from short range, in violation of the Israeli Army's open fire regulations. Four protesters were arrested in Nabi Saleh, including two Palestinian women.
Violence in Nabi Saleh started today after Israeli Border Police officers took over the village's main junction and tried to disperse the demonstration while it was still well inside the village, The officers began charging the peaceful protesters with batons, shooting large amounts of tear-gas - partly shot directly at the demonstrators - and carrying out arrests.
The Israeli military and police's violent and hysteric reaction to the Nakba day demonstrations today is an example to the fact that Israel cannot conceive handling Palestinian civil resistance to the Occupation in any means but military means. As September looms, it seems as if Israel chooses to tread not the path of democracy, but rather that of neighboring regimes like Egypt and Syria, and shoot at unarmed demonstrators.
http://www.popularstruggle.org/content/teen-critically-injured-israel-cracks-down-nakba-demos
17 year-old was critically injured from live fire in East Jerusalem. An American protester suffered serious head injury after being hit by a tear-gas projectile shot directly at him from close range.
Israeli military and police forces responded heavy handedly to demonstrations commemorating 63 years to the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 today all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Morad Ayyash, a 17 year old from the Ras el-Amud neighborhood was shot in the stomach with live ammunition. He has reached the Muqassed hospital with no pulse and the doctors are now fighting for his life.
Tension also rose in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, where 19 protesters have been injured and 11 were arrested. During the evening hours, large police forces raided houses in Silwan and carried out additional arrests.
In the village of Ma'asara, south of Bethlehem, two protesters were arrested during a peaceful demonstration that was attacked with tear-gas for no apparent reason. One of those arrested is a member of the village's popular committee. In Nabi Saleh - a regular target for military aggression recently - soldiers and Border Police officers injured no less than 25 protesters, including a Palestinian women in her 50s who was beaten up so badly that her wounds required her removal from the Salfeet Hospital to the bigger and more advanced Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus. A 25 year-old American demonstrator suffered a serious head injury and an Israeli activist was diagnosed with two open fractures in his hand. Both were injured by tear-gas projectiles shot directly at them from short range, in violation of the Israeli Army's open fire regulations. Four protesters were arrested in Nabi Saleh, including two Palestinian women.
Violence in Nabi Saleh started today after Israeli Border Police officers took over the village's main junction and tried to disperse the demonstration while it was still well inside the village, The officers began charging the peaceful protesters with batons, shooting large amounts of tear-gas - partly shot directly at the demonstrators - and carrying out arrests.
The Israeli military and police's violent and hysteric reaction to the Nakba day demonstrations today is an example to the fact that Israel cannot conceive handling Palestinian civil resistance to the Occupation in any means but military means. As September looms, it seems as if Israel chooses to tread not the path of democracy, but rather that of neighboring regimes like Egypt and Syria, and shoot at unarmed demonstrators.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Video: The use and abuse of Palestinian political prisoners
Dear friends,
Israel's Channel 2 TV aired a story a few days back on the appallilng treatment and abuse of Palestinian political prisoners by the Israeli military, police and prison guards. The Channel 2 story on the Uvda program (a sort of 60 minutes style program) revolves around footage shot three years ago of a Israel combat raid on unarmed sleeping Palestinian prisoners in Ktziot prison, located near the Egyptian border. The specific goal of the raid was to raise the morale of the prison guards. The raid resulted in a Palestinian prisoner being killed and many injured. The footage from the raid was kept hidden for three years.
There are currently over 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israel's jails. Since 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have been jailed by Israel. This equates to approximately 40% of the male population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Many of the prisoners have been held under administrative detention ie. without charge or trail (with this lasting from 3 months to 8 years in some cases).
The footage is quite sickening to watch but it is important story which needs to be shared. Please distribute to your networks.
For english subtitles, press "cc" in the bottom panel of the youtube link.
Israel's Channel 2 TV aired a story a few days back on the appallilng treatment and abuse of Palestinian political prisoners by the Israeli military, police and prison guards. The Channel 2 story on the Uvda program (a sort of 60 minutes style program) revolves around footage shot three years ago of a Israel combat raid on unarmed sleeping Palestinian prisoners in Ktziot prison, located near the Egyptian border. The specific goal of the raid was to raise the morale of the prison guards. The raid resulted in a Palestinian prisoner being killed and many injured. The footage from the raid was kept hidden for three years.
There are currently over 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israel's jails. Since 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have been jailed by Israel. This equates to approximately 40% of the male population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Many of the prisoners have been held under administrative detention ie. without charge or trail (with this lasting from 3 months to 8 years in some cases).
The footage is quite sickening to watch but it is important story which needs to be shared. Please distribute to your networks.
For english subtitles, press "cc" in the bottom panel of the youtube link.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Vale Vittorio Arrigoni - a Palestinian freedom fighter 1975 - 2011
Brazilian cartoonist, Carlos Latuff's tribute to Vittorio
Dear friends,
so soon after losing Juliano Mer Khamis, Palestinians and Palestine solidarity activists around the world have been shock to hear about the brutal kidnapping and killing of Palestine solidarity activist, Vittorio Arrogoni.
Vik, who was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), had been active in the Palestine cause for almost 10 years. He was one of the siege breakers on the first Free Gaza boats and for the last two and half years had been working in Gaza with the ISM.
I first heard the news of Vik's kidnap when one of my IWPS team mates, who had worked on the ground in Gaza for many months and who was friends with Vik, notified the IWPS team about it. She told us she could not get the video of Vik made by his kidnappers (which I have not include) out of her mind. Before we heard the news of Vik's death, our team mate told us that she had been in contact with other friends and activists in Gaza and that protests events were being organised to demand his release and that the Palestinians were shocked and appalled at Vik's kidnapping.
Part of me doesn't really know what to say or do hearing this news. All I can think of is to tell people about this remarkable human being who gave himself so selflessly to the struggle of an oppressed people.
Vale Vittario, you will be missed by those who knew and loved you and all of us struggling for a better world.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Palestinians rally for unity
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.
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.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Vale Juliano Mer Khamis - a Palestinian freedom fighter
Dear friends,
its taken me almost a week to post this, as like many others, I have been shocked by the murder of Juliano Mer Khamis in Jenin refugee camp. Juliano, the son of a Jewish mother and a Palestinian father, believed that culture and art would help bring liberation to the Palestinian people. For the last 5 years, he ran the Freedom Theatre in Jenin in the hope of contributing to the liberation of his people. His death is a great loss to not only his family and the Palestinian people but all of us who believe in the struggle for a better world. Vale Juliano. Rest in Peace. You will be sorely missed.
its taken me almost a week to post this, as like many others, I have been shocked by the murder of Juliano Mer Khamis in Jenin refugee camp. Juliano, the son of a Jewish mother and a Palestinian father, believed that culture and art would help bring liberation to the Palestinian people. For the last 5 years, he ran the Freedom Theatre in Jenin in the hope of contributing to the liberation of his people. His death is a great loss to not only his family and the Palestinian people but all of us who believe in the struggle for a better world. Vale Juliano. Rest in Peace. You will be sorely missed.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Reality vs Propaganda: the truth about the An Nabi Saleh protests
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
***
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
[1] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4047503,00.html
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FnaYdG2MJU
[3] http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?ID=208786&R=R1?
[4] http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/30781
[5] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/mighty-israel-and-its-quest-to-quash-palestinian-popular-protest-1.352248
[6] http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/report-of-special-rapporteur-to-the-un-human-rights-council-on-occupied-palestinian-territories/
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
***
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
[1] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4047503,00.html
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FnaYdG2MJU
[3] http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?ID=208786&R=R1?
[4] http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/30781
[5] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/mighty-israel-and-its-quest-to-quash-palestinian-popular-protest-1.352248
[6] http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/report-of-special-rapporteur-to-the-un-human-rights-council-on-occupied-palestinian-territories/
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Boycotting Israel from within: Israelis explain why they have joined the BDS campaign
Dear friends,
please find below a very good article, which includes interviews with Israeli activists explaining why they have joined the Palestinian initiated BDS campaign.
In solidarity,Kim
***
Boycotting Israel ... from within
Israelis explain why they joined the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement.
Mya Guarnieri Last Modified: 26 Mar 2011 14:56
Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/03/2011318171822514245.html
It was Egypt that got me thinking about the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement in a serious way. I was already conducting a quiet targeted boycott of settlement goods - silently reading labels at the grocery store to make sure I was not buying anything that came from over the Green Line.
I had been doing this for a long time. But, at some point, I realised that my private targeted boycott was a bit naïve. And I understood that it was not enough.
It is not just the settlements and the occupation, two sides of the same coin, which pose a serious obstacle to peace and infringe on the Palestinians' human rights. It is everything that supports them - the government and its institutions. It is the bubble that many Israelis live in, the illusion of normality. It is the Israeli feeling that the status quo is sustainable.
And the settlements are a bit of a red herring, a convenient target for anger. Israelis must also face one of the major injustices that have resulted from their state - the nakba, the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
While BDS addresses that, among other concerns - the three principles of the movement are respect for the Palestinians' right of return, as outlined in UN resolution 194, an end to the occupation and equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel - I remained reluctant to get involved.
I have to admit that I was frightened by the movement. I did not think it would help. I was sure that BDS would only encourage Israel to dig its heels in deeper. It will only make things worse for everyone, I reasoned.
Egypt was the tipping point for me. I was exhilarated by the images of people taking to the streets to demand change. And while the Palestine Papers prove that the government seems intent on maintaining the status quo, I know plenty of Israelis who are fed up with it.
There are mothers who do not want to send their children to the army; soldiers who resent guarding settlers. I recently spoke with a 44-year-old man - a normal guy, a father of two - who told me he wants to burn something he is so frustrated with the government and so worried about the future.
And Egypt is on many Israeli lips right now. So, what can be done to help bring it to Israeli feet? What can be done to encourage Israelis to fight for change, to fight for peace, to liberate themselves from a conflict that undermines their self-determination, their freedom?
BDS has stacked up a number of successes, which is one reason the Israeli Knesset is trying to pass a bill, known as the Boycott Law, that would effectively criminalise Israelis who join the movement, subjecting them to huge fines.
And some of those involved with BDS are already feeling an immense amount of pressure from the state.
'Israel's mask of democracy'
Leehee Rothschild, 26, is one of the scores of Israelis who have answered the 2005 Palestinian call for BDS. Recently her Tel Aviv apartment was raided. While the police did this under the pretense of searching for drugs, she was taken to the station for a brief interrogation that focused entirely on politics.
"The person who came to release me [from interrogation] was an intelligence officer who said that he is in charge of monitoring political activity in the Tel Aviv area," Rothschild says. It was this officer who had requested the search warrant.
Since Operation Cast Lead, Israeli activists have reported increasing pressure from the police as well as General Security Services - known by their Hebrew acronym, Shabak.
The latter's mandate includes, among other things, the goal of maintaining Israel as a Jewish state, making those who advocate for democracy a target.
House raids, such as the one Rothschild was subjected to, are not uncommon, nor are phone calls from the Shabak.
"Obviously [the pressure] is nothing compared to what Palestinians are going through," Rothschild says. "But I think we're touching a nerve."
When asked about the proposed Boycott Law, Rothschild comments: "If the bill goes through, it will peel off, a little more, Israel's mask of democracy."
Tough love
As for her involvement in BDS, Rothschild remarks that she was not aware of the movement until it became a serious topic of discussion within Israel's radical left, which she was already active in. And even after she heard about it, she did not jump onboard right away.
"I had reservations about [BDS]," Rothschild recalls. "I thought about it for a very long time and I debated it with myself and my friends.
"The main reservation I had was that the economic [aspects] would first harm the weak people in the society - the poor people - the people who have the least effect on what's going on. But I think that the occupation is harming these people much more than the divestments can."
Rothschild points out that state funds that are poured into "security and defence and oppressing the Palestinian people" could be better used in Israel to help those in the low socioeconomic strata.
"Another reservation I have had is that it might make the Israeli public more extremist, more fundamentalist," Rothschild adds. "But I have to say that the road it has to go to be more extreme is very short right now."
As an Israeli, Rothschild considers joining the BDS movement to be an act of caring. It is tough love for the country she was born and raised in.
"I hope that, for some people, it will be a slap in their face and they will wake up and see what's going on," Rothschild says, adding that the oppressor is oppressed, as well.
"The Israeli people are also oppressed by the occupation - they are living inside a society that is militant; that is violent; that is racist."
'Renouncing my privileges'
Ronnie Barkan, 34, explains that he took his first step towards the boycott 15 years ago, when he refused to complete his mandatory military service.
"There's a lot of social pressure [in Israel]," Barkan says. "We're raised to be soldiers from kindergarten. We're taught that it's our duty [to serve in the army] and you're a parasite or traitor if you don't want to serve."
"What is even worse is that people are raised to be deeply racist," he adds. "Everything is targeted at supporting [Jewish] privilege as the masters of the land. Supporting BDS means renouncing my privileges in this land and insisting on equality for all."
Barkan likens his joining of the boycott movement to the "whites who denounced their apartheid privileges and joined the black struggle in South Africa".
When I cringe at the "a-word," apartheid, Barkan counters: "Israel clearly falls under the legal definition of the 'crime of apartheid' as defined in the Rome Statute."
'Never again to anybody'
Some oppose BDS because it includes recognition of the Palestinian right of return. These critics say that the demographic shift would impinge on Jewish self-determination. But Barkan argues that "the underlying foundation [of the movement] is universally recognised human rights and international law".
He emphasises that BDS respects human rights for both Palestinians and Jews and includes proponents of a bi-national, democratic state as well as those who believe a two-state solution is the best answer to the conflict.
He also stresses that BDS is not anti-Semitic. Nor is it anti-Israeli.
"The boycott campaign is not targeting Israelis; it is targeting the criminal policies of Israel and the institutions that are complicit, not individuals," he says.
"So let's say an Israeli academic or musician goes abroad and he is turned away from a conference or a venue just because he's Israeli ... " I begin to ask.
"No, no, this doesn't fall under the [boycott guidelines]," Barkan says.
"Because that's not a boycott. It's racism," I say.
"Exactly," Barkan responds, adding that the Palestinian call for BDS is "a very responsible call" that "makes a differentiation between institutions and individuals and it is clearly a boycott of criminal institutions and their representatives".
"Whenever there is a grey area," he adds, "we take the gentler approach."
Still, Barkan has faced criticism for his role in the boycott movement.
"My grandmother who went to Auschwitz tells me, 'You can think whatever you want but don't speak up about your politics because it's not nice,' I tell her, 'You know who didn't speak up 70 years ago.'"
Barkan adds: "I think that the main lesson to be learned from the Holocaust is 'never again to anybody' not 'never again to the Jews.'"
Mya Guarnieri is a Tel Aviv-based journalist and writer.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
please find below a very good article, which includes interviews with Israeli activists explaining why they have joined the Palestinian initiated BDS campaign.
In solidarity,Kim
***
Boycotting Israel ... from within
Israelis explain why they joined the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement.
Mya Guarnieri Last Modified: 26 Mar 2011 14:56
Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/03/2011318171822514245.html
It was Egypt that got me thinking about the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement in a serious way. I was already conducting a quiet targeted boycott of settlement goods - silently reading labels at the grocery store to make sure I was not buying anything that came from over the Green Line.
I had been doing this for a long time. But, at some point, I realised that my private targeted boycott was a bit naïve. And I understood that it was not enough.
It is not just the settlements and the occupation, two sides of the same coin, which pose a serious obstacle to peace and infringe on the Palestinians' human rights. It is everything that supports them - the government and its institutions. It is the bubble that many Israelis live in, the illusion of normality. It is the Israeli feeling that the status quo is sustainable.
And the settlements are a bit of a red herring, a convenient target for anger. Israelis must also face one of the major injustices that have resulted from their state - the nakba, the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
While BDS addresses that, among other concerns - the three principles of the movement are respect for the Palestinians' right of return, as outlined in UN resolution 194, an end to the occupation and equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel - I remained reluctant to get involved.
I have to admit that I was frightened by the movement. I did not think it would help. I was sure that BDS would only encourage Israel to dig its heels in deeper. It will only make things worse for everyone, I reasoned.
Egypt was the tipping point for me. I was exhilarated by the images of people taking to the streets to demand change. And while the Palestine Papers prove that the government seems intent on maintaining the status quo, I know plenty of Israelis who are fed up with it.
There are mothers who do not want to send their children to the army; soldiers who resent guarding settlers. I recently spoke with a 44-year-old man - a normal guy, a father of two - who told me he wants to burn something he is so frustrated with the government and so worried about the future.
And Egypt is on many Israeli lips right now. So, what can be done to help bring it to Israeli feet? What can be done to encourage Israelis to fight for change, to fight for peace, to liberate themselves from a conflict that undermines their self-determination, their freedom?
BDS has stacked up a number of successes, which is one reason the Israeli Knesset is trying to pass a bill, known as the Boycott Law, that would effectively criminalise Israelis who join the movement, subjecting them to huge fines.
And some of those involved with BDS are already feeling an immense amount of pressure from the state.
'Israel's mask of democracy'
Leehee Rothschild, 26, is one of the scores of Israelis who have answered the 2005 Palestinian call for BDS. Recently her Tel Aviv apartment was raided. While the police did this under the pretense of searching for drugs, she was taken to the station for a brief interrogation that focused entirely on politics.
"The person who came to release me [from interrogation] was an intelligence officer who said that he is in charge of monitoring political activity in the Tel Aviv area," Rothschild says. It was this officer who had requested the search warrant.
Since Operation Cast Lead, Israeli activists have reported increasing pressure from the police as well as General Security Services - known by their Hebrew acronym, Shabak.
The latter's mandate includes, among other things, the goal of maintaining Israel as a Jewish state, making those who advocate for democracy a target.
House raids, such as the one Rothschild was subjected to, are not uncommon, nor are phone calls from the Shabak.
"Obviously [the pressure] is nothing compared to what Palestinians are going through," Rothschild says. "But I think we're touching a nerve."
When asked about the proposed Boycott Law, Rothschild comments: "If the bill goes through, it will peel off, a little more, Israel's mask of democracy."
Tough love
As for her involvement in BDS, Rothschild remarks that she was not aware of the movement until it became a serious topic of discussion within Israel's radical left, which she was already active in. And even after she heard about it, she did not jump onboard right away.
"I had reservations about [BDS]," Rothschild recalls. "I thought about it for a very long time and I debated it with myself and my friends.
"The main reservation I had was that the economic [aspects] would first harm the weak people in the society - the poor people - the people who have the least effect on what's going on. But I think that the occupation is harming these people much more than the divestments can."
Rothschild points out that state funds that are poured into "security and defence and oppressing the Palestinian people" could be better used in Israel to help those in the low socioeconomic strata.
"Another reservation I have had is that it might make the Israeli public more extremist, more fundamentalist," Rothschild adds. "But I have to say that the road it has to go to be more extreme is very short right now."
As an Israeli, Rothschild considers joining the BDS movement to be an act of caring. It is tough love for the country she was born and raised in.
"I hope that, for some people, it will be a slap in their face and they will wake up and see what's going on," Rothschild says, adding that the oppressor is oppressed, as well.
"The Israeli people are also oppressed by the occupation - they are living inside a society that is militant; that is violent; that is racist."
'Renouncing my privileges'
Ronnie Barkan, 34, explains that he took his first step towards the boycott 15 years ago, when he refused to complete his mandatory military service.
"There's a lot of social pressure [in Israel]," Barkan says. "We're raised to be soldiers from kindergarten. We're taught that it's our duty [to serve in the army] and you're a parasite or traitor if you don't want to serve."
"What is even worse is that people are raised to be deeply racist," he adds. "Everything is targeted at supporting [Jewish] privilege as the masters of the land. Supporting BDS means renouncing my privileges in this land and insisting on equality for all."
Barkan likens his joining of the boycott movement to the "whites who denounced their apartheid privileges and joined the black struggle in South Africa".
When I cringe at the "a-word," apartheid, Barkan counters: "Israel clearly falls under the legal definition of the 'crime of apartheid' as defined in the Rome Statute."
'Never again to anybody'
Some oppose BDS because it includes recognition of the Palestinian right of return. These critics say that the demographic shift would impinge on Jewish self-determination. But Barkan argues that "the underlying foundation [of the movement] is universally recognised human rights and international law".
He emphasises that BDS respects human rights for both Palestinians and Jews and includes proponents of a bi-national, democratic state as well as those who believe a two-state solution is the best answer to the conflict.
He also stresses that BDS is not anti-Semitic. Nor is it anti-Israeli.
"The boycott campaign is not targeting Israelis; it is targeting the criminal policies of Israel and the institutions that are complicit, not individuals," he says.
"So let's say an Israeli academic or musician goes abroad and he is turned away from a conference or a venue just because he's Israeli ... " I begin to ask.
"No, no, this doesn't fall under the [boycott guidelines]," Barkan says.
"Because that's not a boycott. It's racism," I say.
"Exactly," Barkan responds, adding that the Palestinian call for BDS is "a very responsible call" that "makes a differentiation between institutions and individuals and it is clearly a boycott of criminal institutions and their representatives".
"Whenever there is a grey area," he adds, "we take the gentler approach."
Still, Barkan has faced criticism for his role in the boycott movement.
"My grandmother who went to Auschwitz tells me, 'You can think whatever you want but don't speak up about your politics because it's not nice,' I tell her, 'You know who didn't speak up 70 years ago.'"
Barkan adds: "I think that the main lesson to be learned from the Holocaust is 'never again to anybody' not 'never again to the Jews.'"
Mya Guarnieri is a Tel Aviv-based journalist and writer.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Support Marrickville Council and BDS!!
Dear friends,
Marrickville Council in Sydney, recently became the first municipality in Australia to support the Palestinian initiated BDS campaign. They have since become of the target of a harassment campaign by groups pressuring the councillors to change their conscientious decision.
PLEASE SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR MARRICKVILLE COUNCIL!
in solidarity, Kim
****
Marrickville BDS is seeking support of organisations and individuals to do one or several of these things:
1. Encourage the councillors to stay strong by sending a personal email of support to Fiona Byrne, Mayor of Marrickville fbyrne@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
Copy the addresses of the other councillors into the cc field of your email: etsardoulias@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, mhanna@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, mosullivan@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, polive@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, siskandar@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, mphillips@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, vmacri@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, cpeters@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, lwright@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, mkontellis@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, dthanos@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
Include your name, city and country.
2. Endorse the letter (view here: http://marrickvillebds.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/open-letter.pdf) supporting the right of Marrickville Council to endorse Palestinian BDS call as part of its ethical investment and purchasing strategy.
To add your or your organization’s name to the list of endorsers, email marrickvillebds@y7mail.com with your name and either your suburb or any title/position you would like to include.
3. Please forward this information to others, asking them to add their voice!
4. Post the action alert to Facebook. Suggested thing to post:
ACTION ALERT! Counter the harassment campaign trying to reverse Marrickville’s support for BDS! marrickvillebds.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/hello-world/
5. Tweet. Here’s a suggestion:
ACTION ALERT! A harassment campaign is trying to reverse Marrickville’s BDS victory! marrickvillebds.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/hello-world/ (Savvier tweeters may do better.)
Please email your endorsement to marrickvillebds@y7mail.com as soon as possible, no later than Friday 11 March, 2011.
The open letter will be presented to Marrickville Council at the next meeting. Marrickville BDS will be providing a copy of the letter and a list of signatories to all Councillors. The motion to support the worldwide BDS campaign was supported by 10 councillors; ALP, Green and Independent.
Background Info & Resolution:
In December, 2010, the local council of Marrickville, which is a Sister City to Bethlehem, decided as part of its ethical investment and purchasing strategy, to endorse the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel until that country complies with international humanitarian law. More information is available at http://coalitionforpalestine.org/bds/local-government/marrickvillebds or, for links to media articles, http://coalitionforpalestine.org/bds/media-links. Here is the resolution:
That:
1. In particular recognition of its sister city relationship with Bethlehem and the strong support for this relationship from local progressive faith communities and other community members, Marrickville Council support the principles of the BDS global campaign and report back on any links the Council has with organisations or companies that support or profit from the Israeli military occupation of Palestine with a view to the Council divesting from such links and imposing a boycott on any future such links or goods purchases.
2. Marrickville Council boycott all goods made in Israel and any sporting, institutional academic, government or institutional cultural exchanges.
3. Marrickville Council write to the local State and Federal ministers (Carmel Tebbutt and Anthony Albanese) informing them of Council’s position and seeking their support at the State and Federal level for the global BDS movement.
Marrickville Council in Sydney, recently became the first municipality in Australia to support the Palestinian initiated BDS campaign. They have since become of the target of a harassment campaign by groups pressuring the councillors to change their conscientious decision.
PLEASE SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR MARRICKVILLE COUNCIL!
in solidarity, Kim
****
Marrickville BDS is seeking support of organisations and individuals to do one or several of these things:
1. Encourage the councillors to stay strong by sending a personal email of support to Fiona Byrne, Mayor of Marrickville fbyrne@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
Copy the addresses of the other councillors into the cc field of your email: etsardoulias@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, mhanna@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, mosullivan@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, polive@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, siskandar@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, mphillips@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, vmacri@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, cpeters@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, lwright@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, mkontellis@marrickville.nsw.gov.au, dthanos@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
Include your name, city and country.
2. Endorse the letter (view here: http://marrickvillebds.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/open-letter.pdf) supporting the right of Marrickville Council to endorse Palestinian BDS call as part of its ethical investment and purchasing strategy.
To add your or your organization’s name to the list of endorsers, email marrickvillebds@y7mail.com with your name and either your suburb or any title/position you would like to include.
3. Please forward this information to others, asking them to add their voice!
4. Post the action alert to Facebook. Suggested thing to post:
ACTION ALERT! Counter the harassment campaign trying to reverse Marrickville’s support for BDS! marrickvillebds.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/hello-world/
5. Tweet. Here’s a suggestion:
ACTION ALERT! A harassment campaign is trying to reverse Marrickville’s BDS victory! marrickvillebds.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/hello-world/ (Savvier tweeters may do better.)
Please email your endorsement to marrickvillebds@y7mail.com as soon as possible, no later than Friday 11 March, 2011.
The open letter will be presented to Marrickville Council at the next meeting. Marrickville BDS will be providing a copy of the letter and a list of signatories to all Councillors. The motion to support the worldwide BDS campaign was supported by 10 councillors; ALP, Green and Independent.
Background Info & Resolution:
In December, 2010, the local council of Marrickville, which is a Sister City to Bethlehem, decided as part of its ethical investment and purchasing strategy, to endorse the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel until that country complies with international humanitarian law. More information is available at http://coalitionforpalestine.org/bds/local-government/marrickvillebds or, for links to media articles, http://coalitionforpalestine.org/bds/media-links. Here is the resolution:
That:
1. In particular recognition of its sister city relationship with Bethlehem and the strong support for this relationship from local progressive faith communities and other community members, Marrickville Council support the principles of the BDS global campaign and report back on any links the Council has with organisations or companies that support or profit from the Israeli military occupation of Palestine with a view to the Council divesting from such links and imposing a boycott on any future such links or goods purchases.
2. Marrickville Council boycott all goods made in Israel and any sporting, institutional academic, government or institutional cultural exchanges.
3. Marrickville Council write to the local State and Federal ministers (Carmel Tebbutt and Anthony Albanese) informing them of Council’s position and seeking their support at the State and Federal level for the global BDS movement.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Video: Interview with Omar Barghouti and Hind Awwad on the Palestinian BDS campaign
Dear friends,
here is the video version of the interview with Omar Barghouti and Hind Awwad on the Palestinian BDS campaign.
In solidarity, Kim
here is the video version of the interview with Omar Barghouti and Hind Awwad on the Palestinian BDS campaign.
In solidarity, Kim
Thursday, January 27, 2011
The Price of Dignity
Currently there are more than 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners locked up in Israel's jails. This week, I found out that my friend Hasan* (*not his real name) is one of them. When in Ramallah, I mentioned to a mutual friend that I had planned to ring him to let him know I was in Palestine. Our mutual friend informed me that Hasan was being held under “Administration Detention” and had been in prison for three months.
I last saw Hasan more than a year ago, when I was last in Palestine. A year previous to this last meeting, he had emailed me to apologise for not answering my phone calls and emails when I had tried to contact him when I was in Palestine. Unfortunately, he apologised, he had been in prison for seven months held without charge or trial by the Israeli military under an Administrative Detention order.
When I met him last year in a local Ramallah coffee shop, he looked the same but different. In his early to mid-twenties, Hasan, who I had met him several years before, had always had a lean but strong build, but now he was more thinner than I remembered him. He was also smoking more and his demeanour was different. He was still as politically sharp as I remembered him, but his youthful, upbeat enthusiasm had been tempered and he was much more cynical and world-weary than before. I could see that the seven months he spent in Israel’s prisons had taken a definite toll on him. Hasan told me that he had been repeatedly tortured while in prison but it had made him stronger and more committed to his people’s struggle.
Hasan with wry humour, also recounted the toll his imprisonment had also had on his family, particularly his mother. An atheist himself, Hasan, comes from a Christian Palestinian family and upon his release from Administrative Detention; he came home to find that his mother, a believer, had hung a crucifix on his bedroom wall and left a small crucifix on his study table. For the first few weeks, he told me, he out of love and deference for his mother he allowed the Cross on the wall to remain but would put the small one on his table away. However, every time he returned home from being out, he again would find the small cross had reappeared on his table, placed there by his concerned mother. Our mutual friend, when she told me of Hasan’s re-incarceration, also recounted to me that his mother after his release from his first imprisonment woke at 3 am every morning, the time the Israeli military had raid the family’s home to kidnap Hasan. His mother, terrified that the Israeli military would again raid her home and take either one or both of her sons, woke at this time each morning to check they were safely in their beds.
Hasan’s imprisonment, our mutual friend informed me, came at a time when he was finally getting over the horrors of his first imprisonment and torture and was much more like his “old-self”. As I write this article, I worry that my friend is being tortured and that his family is suffering, like so many other Palestinian families who are experiencing the same horrendous situation.
Since 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians or twenty percent of Palestinian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories have been detained by Israel [1]. According to the Palestinian prisoner's support and human rights association, Addameer, most of those detained are male. Addameer notes that this translates to more forty percent of the total male Palestinian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories being incarcerated since 1967.
Since 1967, when Israel illegal seized and occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, more than 1500 military regulations have been issued by Israel’s military to “govern” the West Bank, while more than 1400 have been issued to “govern” the besieged Gaza Strip[2]. These military orders can be issued on the whim of an Israeli military commander and do not need to be publicised. As a result, the Palestinians and the wider public, including the media and legal services, only become aware of the existence of such orders when they are implemented. In 1970, Israel issued Military Order 378, which authorised the military commanders of regions to issue “Administrative Detention” orders [3]. These orders allow Israeli occupying forces to detain and arrest large numbers of Palestinian civilians without charge or trail. In 1988, Military Order 378 was amended by Military Order 1229 in the Occupied West Bank and Military Order 941 in the Gaza Strip, with these amendments allowing military orders to be issued for Administrative Detention without designating a maximum period of time for incarceration without charge or trail [4]
According to the first paragraph of Military Order 1229: “If a Military Commander deems the detention of a person necessary for security reasons he may do so for a period not in excess of 6 months, after which he has the right to extend the detention period for a further six months according to the original order. The detention order can be passed without the presence of the detainee...” [5]
Under this regime, 22% of persons held under administrative detention are held for less than 6 months, while 37% have been held between 6 months to 1 year. Another eight percent have been held for 2-5 years. The longest period an individual has been held under administrative detention without then being charged is 8 years [6].
Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem notes that the highest number of Palestinians held under administrative detention was during the First Intifada, with almost 1800 Palestinians detain in November 1989 [7]. During the early to mid 1990s, between 100-350 Palestinian political prisoners were detained under administrative detention at any given moment. By the second year of the Second Palestinian Intifada, approximately 1000 Palestinians were detained under Israel's regime. B'Tselem notes that as of August of 2010, 189 Palestinians were being held under administrative detention.
B’Tselm points out that while administrative detention is allowed under international law, it “can only be used only in the most exceptional cases, as the last means available for preventing danger that cannot be thwarted by less harmful means” [8]. B’Tselem notes, however, that Israel uses administrative detention in an arbitrary and regular manner in order to detain Palestinian civilians, denying them proper legal recourse, which is in violation of international law. Not only are Palestinians, who are detained under Administrative Detention orders, not charged with anything and denied the right to a trial, both the detainee and their legal council are denied the right to even know what the detainee is accused of. The detainee’s lawyers are also denied the right to access the military ‘evidence’ against those detained under the Administrative Detention regime. Addameer notes that the use of administrative detention by Israel is such a manner is in contravention of Fourth Geneva Convention, as well as other international and human rights law.
Nearly all Palestinian political prisoners, both male and female, as well as adults and minors, have suffered torture at the hands of their Israeli captors. According to Addameer, “Physical and psychological torture against Palestinian and Arab prisoners has been a distinguishing factor of Israeli occupation since 1967”, noting that “torture has taken different shapes throughout the period of occupation” [9]. According to Addameer since the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada in 1987, at least 30,000 Palestinians have been tortured by Israel.
Many of the Palestinian political prisoners detained under the Administrative Detention regime are minors. In the last week, the village of An Nabi Saleh, has been raided almost nightly and at least four Palestinian minors have been kidnapped by the Israeli military, including an 11 year old off the streets of the village. Under Israeli military law, Palestinian children age 14 years and over are tried as an adult in Israel’s military courts [10]. In practice, however, children as young as 11 and 12 have been brought before these courts and held under Administrative Detention. According to Defense for Children International, 213 Palestinian children are currently being held in Israeli prisons as of December 2010 [11]. The majority of Palestinian child political prisoners report that they have also been tortured by the Israeli military.
The children kidnapped and detained in An Nabi Saleh are now being imprisoned under the same barbaric and illegal regime that my friend Hasan is imprisoned under. Their freedom is denied and the Israeli military will attempt to break their spirits and their resistance to the brutal military occupation which Israel is intent on perpetuating. While the Israeli state and its military machine may break the bones and tear the flesh of its captives, it will fail to break their resistance because these young boys, men and women understand the struggle in which they are engaged is not just a struggle for a homeland, but a struggle for human dignity, equality and freedom. And no man or woman or child, no matter how hard pressed by their oppressor, will ever give up the struggle for such basic and inalienable human rights.
[1] http://www.addameer.org/index_eng.html
[2] http://www.addameer.org/detention/admin_deten.html
[3] http://www.addameer.org/detention/admin_deten.html
[4] http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article9
[5] http://www.addameer.org/detention/admin_deten.html
[6] http://www.poica.org/editor/case_studies/view.php?recordID=2218
[7] http://www.btselem.org/english/Administrative_Detention/
[8] http://www.btselem.org/english/Administrative_Detention/
[9] http://www.addameer.org/detention/admin_deten.html
[10] http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article9
[11] http://www.dci-pal.org/english/Display.cfm?DocId=902&CategoryId=11
Monday, January 17, 2011
To Exist is To Resist
Dear friends,
please find below my first "on-the-ground" report from Palestine. Since arriving in Palestine things have been extremely busy, so please accept my apologies for not sending any reports through earlier. I hope to make up for this in the next week and write up much more from my experiences here this time around.
Upon arriving after being away for sometime, it is clear to me that Israel's illegal occupation continues to deepen. While there is some economic prosperity evident in cities like Ramallah, it is clear that there is a growing class divide, with the disparity particularly noticeable between the rural areas of the Occupied West Bank and cities like Ramallah. At the same time, however, it is clear to me that the Palestinian people continue to resist.
Meeting with old friends and new acquaintances and contacts over the last little while, it is very evident that the Palestinian initiated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign enjoys a lot of support amongst ordinary Palestinians, with many of the families and friends I know actively engaging in or supporting the campaign. When discussing BDS with my Palestinian friends and acquaintances here, they have been heartened to hear about the support for the campaign in Australia.
Please feel free to distribute the reports to your networks.
Wishing you all the best,
In solidarity,
Kim
****
TO EXIST IS TO RESIST
by Kim Bullimore -16.01.2011
On Tuesday, the Israeli military demolished the dreams of a family of five in the Palestinian village of Azzoun Atma. At 8.30am, on January 11, more than 100 Israeli soldiers surrounded their home, forced them onto the street and then locked them in the neighouring house for the next three and half hours. As “the most moral army in the world” stood guard around the neighbouring house, ensuring the family could do nothing to stop what was about to happen, a heavily armoured Caterpillar bulldozer smashed down the walls of the home they had lived in for more than 8 years. The Israeli occupation forces then made their way to the other side of the village and demolished a farm house belonging to another family, along with their agricultural pens.
First home demolished by Israeli Occupation Forces
First home demolished by Israeli Occupation Forces
The day after the demolition of their dreams, myself and my team mates from the International Women's Peace Service visited the family to take a report. As we walked around what was once the home of the family we could see, even among the destruction and rubble which lay before us, the loving care they had put into their home. The trees in front of their home were pruned, shaped and manicured. Stepping through the rubble, their garden which was located at the back of their small home, was neat, green and well cared for. In the drive way of the neighbouring house, where they were locked and which belonged to the parents of the husband of the family, there was well-worn, but well-cared for modern style furniture which has subsequently been rescued from the demolished wreckage nearby.
The family’s “crime” was that they built their home on their own land without the permit of the Israeli military occupation administration, which is known in the Orwellian parlance of the Israeli state and its occupation forces, as the “Israeli Civil Administration”.
The administration which was established by the Israeli military to administer the Palestinian territories that Israel illegal seized in 1967 claims to administer the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the interests of the Palestinian population. According to Israeli Military decree 947 which established the administration: “We hereby establish a Civil Administration in the region [West Bank and Gaza]. The Civil Administration shall run all regional civil matters, correspondingly to this [military] degree, for the wellbeing and for the sake of [the local] population and with the purpose of providing and operating the public services, considering the need to maintain a proper governance and public order”. [1]
However, rather caring for the “well being” of the Palestinian population or governing in their interest, the Israel military occupation administration has actively enacted policies which seeks to ethnic cleanse the people they are occupying, an act which is illegal under international law. Not only has Israel, as an “Occupying Power”, violated the Fourth Geneva Convention (which outlines the role and responsibilities of an occupying power) by engaging in illegal detentions, extra-judicial killings, the transfer of settler populations in to an Occupied Territory and the transfer of the resident indigenous population out of the Occupied Territory, it has also systematically violated Article 53 of the Convention, which prohibits an “occupying power” from destroying the personal property of the people they occupy [2]
First home demolished by Israeli Occupation Forces
First home demolished by Israeli Occupation Forces
Since its 1967 seizure of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, Israel has systematically demolished between 18,000 and 24,000 Palestinian homes [3 & 4]. The majority of these homes have been destroyed under the guise of an Orwellian system of “building permits”, which seeks to establish a faux legal system which prevents the Palestinian population from building homes and infrastructure. This system allows the Israeli military occupation administration to establish a “legal” precedent to demolish any Palestinian house and infrastructure built without its permission, in order to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population.
In the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war, the Zionist state demolished more than 600 Palestinian homes in the Mughrabi Quarter in order to build a plaza in front of the Western (Wailing) Wall in Occupied East Jerusalem. The Israeli state went onto demolish more than 6,000 other homes, including four entire villages in the Latrun area, which is now known as “Canada” Park [5]. The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) note that in 1971, another 2000 homes were demolished in Gaza under the instructions of Ariel Sharon, who was at the time, the Commander of the South Command. The houses, which were located in the different refugee camps in Gaza were demolished to enable military control of the region. According to ICAHD, Israel destroyed another 2000 homes during the first intifada (1987 – 1993) and another 1700 during the Oslo Peace process between 1993 and 2000.
Since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, ICAHD documents that Israel has carried out numerous military operations which have destroyed Palestinian residential homes. This has resulted in up to 5000 Palestinian homes being destroyed in Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron and other cities, while at least 2500 were destroyed in Gaza. According to a 2010 survey done by the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (UN OCHA oPt) between January and July 2010, 199 Palestinian structures, including 59 homes were demolished, leaving 242 people homeless [6]. UNOCHA notes that in 2009 the demolition of homes by the Israeli military left 891 Palestinians homeless, including 499 children. In 2004, international human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 50,000 Palestinians have been made homeless by military home demolitions since 1967.
Since 1967, Israel and its military occupation administration have made it almost impossible for Palestinian families to obtain building permits to build or extend their homes. This has been particularly noticeable in Area C, where Azzoun Atma is located.
Azzoun Atma is a “seamline” village located in “Area C” between the 1967 Green Line and Israel’s Apartheid Wall. Under the terms of the Oslo Accords “Area C”, which covers 62 percent of the Occupied West Bank, is under full Israeli control. Area C is home to up to 150,000 Palestinians and contains not only the area necessary for the expansion of Palestinian population centres (more than 270 communities) but also contains the bulk of Palestinian agricultural and grazing land. However, according to UNOCHA oPt, the Israeli Civil Administration (ie. The Israeli Military Occupation Administration) have continually refused to allow Palestinians to build in 99 percent of region covered by Area C, only allowing construction in only 1 percent of the region.
Similarly, according to a 2008 study by Israeli group, Peace Now, between 2000 and 2007, 94% of all Palestinian permit applications for Area C were rejected by the Israeli “Civil Administration”. [7]. During this period only 91 permits were granted. However, Peace Now noted that during that same time the number of building permits granted to settlers in illegal Jewish settlements located in Area C totalled 18, 472. According to Peace Now, during this period, the Israeli occupation forces demolished 33 percent of almost 5000 supposedly “illegal” Palestinians houses and structures, while in contrast only 7 percent of the 2,900 cases of illegal settler construction which had been place under demolition orders were torn down.
Second house demolition by Israeli occupation forces
The demolition of the home belonging to the family in Azzoun Atma on January 11 had nothing to do with the lack of a “legal” building permit. Instead, it was the act of settler-colonial state which seeks to permanently cleanse the land they have occupied of its indigenous inhabitants. Not only did Israel, in the words of one member of the family, seek to “destroy our dreams” by demolishing the houses in Azzoun Atma, the Zionist state also sought to destroy the dreams of an entire people by systematically restricting their right to decent housing with the aim of pushing them of their land permanently
However, despite, the hardships faced under Israel’s brutal military occupation, the Palestinian people living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories have continued to remain “sumoud” (steadfast) in the face of the human rights violations visited upon them. In Palestine, resistance comes in many forms. Not only will the family in Azzoun Atma rebuild the home of their dreams, so will thousands of other Palestinian families who have also experienced the same devastating destruction. As the slogans of resistance scrawled on Israel’s apartheid wall testify: “to exist is to resist”.
-Kim Bullimore is currently living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where she is a human rights volunteer with the International Women's Peace Service (www.iwps.info). She writes regularly on the Palestine-Israel conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action (www.directaction.org.au) and has a blog at www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com.
[1] http://www.israellawresourcecenter.org/israelmilitaryorders/fulltext/mo0947.htm
[2]http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/385ec082b509e76c41256739003e636d/6756482d86146898c125641e004aa3c5
[3] http://www.icahd.org/?page_id=313
[4]http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_area_c_humanitarian_response_plan_fact_sheet_2010_09_03_english.pdf
[5] http://www.icahd.org/?page_id=313
[6]http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_area_c_humanitarian_response_plan_fact_sheet_2010_09_03_english.pdf
[7] http://peacenow.org/entries/archive4606
please find below my first "on-the-ground" report from Palestine. Since arriving in Palestine things have been extremely busy, so please accept my apologies for not sending any reports through earlier. I hope to make up for this in the next week and write up much more from my experiences here this time around.
Upon arriving after being away for sometime, it is clear to me that Israel's illegal occupation continues to deepen. While there is some economic prosperity evident in cities like Ramallah, it is clear that there is a growing class divide, with the disparity particularly noticeable between the rural areas of the Occupied West Bank and cities like Ramallah. At the same time, however, it is clear to me that the Palestinian people continue to resist.
Meeting with old friends and new acquaintances and contacts over the last little while, it is very evident that the Palestinian initiated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign enjoys a lot of support amongst ordinary Palestinians, with many of the families and friends I know actively engaging in or supporting the campaign. When discussing BDS with my Palestinian friends and acquaintances here, they have been heartened to hear about the support for the campaign in Australia.
Please feel free to distribute the reports to your networks.
Wishing you all the best,
In solidarity,
Kim
****
TO EXIST IS TO RESIST
by Kim Bullimore -16.01.2011
On Tuesday, the Israeli military demolished the dreams of a family of five in the Palestinian village of Azzoun Atma. At 8.30am, on January 11, more than 100 Israeli soldiers surrounded their home, forced them onto the street and then locked them in the neighouring house for the next three and half hours. As “the most moral army in the world” stood guard around the neighbouring house, ensuring the family could do nothing to stop what was about to happen, a heavily armoured Caterpillar bulldozer smashed down the walls of the home they had lived in for more than 8 years. The Israeli occupation forces then made their way to the other side of the village and demolished a farm house belonging to another family, along with their agricultural pens.
First home demolished by Israeli Occupation Forces
First home demolished by Israeli Occupation Forces
The day after the demolition of their dreams, myself and my team mates from the International Women's Peace Service visited the family to take a report. As we walked around what was once the home of the family we could see, even among the destruction and rubble which lay before us, the loving care they had put into their home. The trees in front of their home were pruned, shaped and manicured. Stepping through the rubble, their garden which was located at the back of their small home, was neat, green and well cared for. In the drive way of the neighbouring house, where they were locked and which belonged to the parents of the husband of the family, there was well-worn, but well-cared for modern style furniture which has subsequently been rescued from the demolished wreckage nearby.
The family’s “crime” was that they built their home on their own land without the permit of the Israeli military occupation administration, which is known in the Orwellian parlance of the Israeli state and its occupation forces, as the “Israeli Civil Administration”.
The administration which was established by the Israeli military to administer the Palestinian territories that Israel illegal seized in 1967 claims to administer the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the interests of the Palestinian population. According to Israeli Military decree 947 which established the administration: “We hereby establish a Civil Administration in the region [West Bank and Gaza]. The Civil Administration shall run all regional civil matters, correspondingly to this [military] degree, for the wellbeing and for the sake of [the local] population and with the purpose of providing and operating the public services, considering the need to maintain a proper governance and public order”. [1]
However, rather caring for the “well being” of the Palestinian population or governing in their interest, the Israel military occupation administration has actively enacted policies which seeks to ethnic cleanse the people they are occupying, an act which is illegal under international law. Not only has Israel, as an “Occupying Power”, violated the Fourth Geneva Convention (which outlines the role and responsibilities of an occupying power) by engaging in illegal detentions, extra-judicial killings, the transfer of settler populations in to an Occupied Territory and the transfer of the resident indigenous population out of the Occupied Territory, it has also systematically violated Article 53 of the Convention, which prohibits an “occupying power” from destroying the personal property of the people they occupy [2]
First home demolished by Israeli Occupation Forces
First home demolished by Israeli Occupation Forces
Since its 1967 seizure of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, Israel has systematically demolished between 18,000 and 24,000 Palestinian homes [3 & 4]. The majority of these homes have been destroyed under the guise of an Orwellian system of “building permits”, which seeks to establish a faux legal system which prevents the Palestinian population from building homes and infrastructure. This system allows the Israeli military occupation administration to establish a “legal” precedent to demolish any Palestinian house and infrastructure built without its permission, in order to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population.
In the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war, the Zionist state demolished more than 600 Palestinian homes in the Mughrabi Quarter in order to build a plaza in front of the Western (Wailing) Wall in Occupied East Jerusalem. The Israeli state went onto demolish more than 6,000 other homes, including four entire villages in the Latrun area, which is now known as “Canada” Park [5]. The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) note that in 1971, another 2000 homes were demolished in Gaza under the instructions of Ariel Sharon, who was at the time, the Commander of the South Command. The houses, which were located in the different refugee camps in Gaza were demolished to enable military control of the region. According to ICAHD, Israel destroyed another 2000 homes during the first intifada (1987 – 1993) and another 1700 during the Oslo Peace process between 1993 and 2000.
Since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, ICAHD documents that Israel has carried out numerous military operations which have destroyed Palestinian residential homes. This has resulted in up to 5000 Palestinian homes being destroyed in Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron and other cities, while at least 2500 were destroyed in Gaza. According to a 2010 survey done by the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (UN OCHA oPt) between January and July 2010, 199 Palestinian structures, including 59 homes were demolished, leaving 242 people homeless [6]. UNOCHA notes that in 2009 the demolition of homes by the Israeli military left 891 Palestinians homeless, including 499 children. In 2004, international human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 50,000 Palestinians have been made homeless by military home demolitions since 1967.
Since 1967, Israel and its military occupation administration have made it almost impossible for Palestinian families to obtain building permits to build or extend their homes. This has been particularly noticeable in Area C, where Azzoun Atma is located.
Azzoun Atma is a “seamline” village located in “Area C” between the 1967 Green Line and Israel’s Apartheid Wall. Under the terms of the Oslo Accords “Area C”, which covers 62 percent of the Occupied West Bank, is under full Israeli control. Area C is home to up to 150,000 Palestinians and contains not only the area necessary for the expansion of Palestinian population centres (more than 270 communities) but also contains the bulk of Palestinian agricultural and grazing land. However, according to UNOCHA oPt, the Israeli Civil Administration (ie. The Israeli Military Occupation Administration) have continually refused to allow Palestinians to build in 99 percent of region covered by Area C, only allowing construction in only 1 percent of the region.
Similarly, according to a 2008 study by Israeli group, Peace Now, between 2000 and 2007, 94% of all Palestinian permit applications for Area C were rejected by the Israeli “Civil Administration”. [7]. During this period only 91 permits were granted. However, Peace Now noted that during that same time the number of building permits granted to settlers in illegal Jewish settlements located in Area C totalled 18, 472. According to Peace Now, during this period, the Israeli occupation forces demolished 33 percent of almost 5000 supposedly “illegal” Palestinians houses and structures, while in contrast only 7 percent of the 2,900 cases of illegal settler construction which had been place under demolition orders were torn down.
Second house demolition by Israeli occupation forces
The demolition of the home belonging to the family in Azzoun Atma on January 11 had nothing to do with the lack of a “legal” building permit. Instead, it was the act of settler-colonial state which seeks to permanently cleanse the land they have occupied of its indigenous inhabitants. Not only did Israel, in the words of one member of the family, seek to “destroy our dreams” by demolishing the houses in Azzoun Atma, the Zionist state also sought to destroy the dreams of an entire people by systematically restricting their right to decent housing with the aim of pushing them of their land permanently
However, despite, the hardships faced under Israel’s brutal military occupation, the Palestinian people living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories have continued to remain “sumoud” (steadfast) in the face of the human rights violations visited upon them. In Palestine, resistance comes in many forms. Not only will the family in Azzoun Atma rebuild the home of their dreams, so will thousands of other Palestinian families who have also experienced the same devastating destruction. As the slogans of resistance scrawled on Israel’s apartheid wall testify: “to exist is to resist”.
-Kim Bullimore is currently living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where she is a human rights volunteer with the International Women's Peace Service (www.iwps.info). She writes regularly on the Palestine-Israel conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action (www.directaction.org.au) and has a blog at www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com.
[1] http://www.israellawresourcecenter.org/israelmilitaryorders/fulltext/mo0947.htm
[2]http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/385ec082b509e76c41256739003e636d/6756482d86146898c125641e004aa3c5
[3] http://www.icahd.org/?page_id=313
[4]http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_area_c_humanitarian_response_plan_fact_sheet_2010_09_03_english.pdf
[5] http://www.icahd.org/?page_id=313
[6]http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_area_c_humanitarian_response_plan_fact_sheet_2010_09_03_english.pdf
[7] http://peacenow.org/entries/archive4606
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