27 August 2010
The West Bank village of Bil’in has become a symbol of the wider popular resistance movement in Palestine. Abdallah Abu Rahmah, head of Bi’in’s Popular Committee, is one of many key organizers of peaceful resistance that Israel has used legal means to persecute. He was convicted on Tuesday of two out of four charges in an Israeli military court and faces up to ten years in jail. The facts of his case – … Continue reading
30 July 2010 | Ha’aretz
South African Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu issues statement of support for boycott announced by food co-op in Rachel Corrie’s hometown of Olympia, Washington
South African Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on Wednesday that he supports the Olympia Food Co-op’s boycott of Israeli products…. Continue reading
Majida Abu Rahmah | Huffington Post
4 January 2010
On International Human Rights Day in last year, my husband Abdallah Abu Rahmah was in Berlin receiving a medal from the World Association for Human Rights. This year on the same day, December 10th, Abdallah was taken away at 2am by Israeli soldiers who broke into our West Bank home. Abdallah was arrested for the same reasons he received the prize – his nonviolent struggle for justice, equality and peace in Israel/Palestine.
My husband is a school teacher and farmer from the Palestinian village of Bil’in. When Israel built its apartheid wall here, … Continue reading
24 December 2009
Elders’ chair, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has expressed his deep concern about the arrest and indictment of Abdallah Abu Rahmah of Bil’in and has called for his unconditional release.
Abu Rahmah is a school teacher and coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements, which has carried out a five year campaign of non-violent protest and legal challenge against the wall that separates Israel from the West Bank.
“My fellow Elders and I met Abu Rahmah and his colleague Mohammad Khatib in August when we visited Bil’in,” said Desmond Tutu. “We were impressed by their commitment to peaceful … Continue reading
Amira Hass | Haaretz
24 December 2009
The Israel Defense Forces consider it a crime punishable by imprisonment for a Palestinian to possess used IDF weapons, according to an indictment filed by the military prosecutor against Abdullah Abu Rahma of the West Bank town of Bil’in.
Abu Rahma, 39, is coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, which has been holding demonstrations against construction of the separation fence on the village’s land. A teacher by profession, he was arrested by IDF troops on December 10 and indicted in a military court last Tuesday.
In addition to charges of incitement and throwing … Continue reading
Ethan Bronner | The New York Times
27 August 2009
Every Friday for the past four and a half years, several hundred demonstrators — Palestinian villagers, foreign volunteers and Israeli activists — have walked in unison to the Israeli barrier separating this tiny village from the burgeoning settlement of Modiin Illit, part of which is built on the village’s land. One hundred feet away, Israeli soldiers watch and wait.
The protesters chant and shout and, inevitably, a few throw stones. Then just as inevitably, the soldiers open fire with tear gas and water jets, lately including a putrid oil-based liquid that makes … Continue reading
Akiva Eldar | Ha’aretz
28 August 2009
“The lesson that Israel must learn from the Holocaust is that it can never get security through fences, walls and guns,” Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa told Haaretz Thursday.
Commenting on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in Germany Thursday that the lesson of the Holocaust is that Israel should always defend itself, Tutu noted that “in South Africa, they tried to get security from the barrel of a gun. They never got it. They got security when the human rights of all were recognized and respected.”
The Nobel Prize laureate spoke to Haaretz in … Continue reading
27 August 2009
Bil’in village, West Bank: Former US president Jimmy Carter, Mrs. Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa visited the site of the Apartheid Wall on the land of the village of Bil’in.
The Carters and Archbishop Tutu came to Bil’in together with their colleagues from The “Elders” delegation, former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former Norwegian prime minister Gro Brundtland, former Irish president and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, Indian human rights activist Ela Bhatt, and renowned businessmen Richard Branson and Jeff Skoll.
Former president Carter pointed to the land on the other … Continue reading
