Author: ISM Media Group - Page 309 - International Solidarity Movement

Showered with tear gas on Nakba day

from A-Infos, 19 May 2007

This Friday the theme of the demonstration in Bil’in was the Nakba. This week marked 59 years from the formal robbery of most of the Palestinian lands by the Israeli settler colonialists with blessing of the United Nation and the big imperial powers. We marched at noon on the road leading to the route of the separation fence – Palestinians from the village and the region; international activists; Israelis organized by the anarchists against the wall (AATW) initiative; and media workers of all kinds. Among the participants from Ramallah, were people of the Popular Democratic Front (of Naif Hawatme). One of them was old enough to remember the exchanging of texts between their journals and the Israeli anti-authoritarian anti capitalist (anti Zionist) journal Matspen….

Most of the marchers carried small placards – each with the name of one of the about 500 villages destroyed in 1948 by the Israeli expansionist forces.

When we arrived at the foot of the hill on its top is located the gate to the robed lands on the other side of the separation fence, we encountered a line of barbed wire and lot of soldiers half the way up the hill. Their commander declared with the loudspeaker that there is a military closed space just behind the barbed wire. He warned with retaliation and arrest people who will cross the line.

The people at the head moved aside the barbed wire spool and continued to advance – and got immediately a shower of tear gas canisters.

The tear gas detered most of the people who retreated a hundred meters and dispersed among the olive trees on the side of the road. A small group of comrades who succeeded to march up the hill got a special shower of tear gas and was forced to join the rest of us.

For more than two hours there were waves of people regrouping and advancing a bit, and showers of tear gas forcing us to retreat. At some point, olive trees in the groove were set on fire by the shooting of tear gas grenades, and demonstrators worked to extinguish the fire in spite of the tear gas.

In their efforts to disperse the demonstration soldiers even invaded the fringe of the built area of the village.

After the fires were extinguished the demonstration was ended. I could see one comrade carrying a 20 liter bucket full of tear gas canisters as a kind of trophy – a small part of the hundreds fired on us this day.

Newsweek: A Grittier Trip to the Holy Land

A Grittier Trip to the Holy Land,
Sarina Rosenberg, May 21 issue

The Israel that 18,000 young Jewish Americans will see this summer on the free, 10-day trip offered by Taglit-birthright Israel is a land of ancient religious sites, sandy beaches and buff young soldiers. “It’s a Jewish identity trip,” says Wayne L. Firestone, president of Hillel, which runs one of the largest Birthright tours. But according to Dunya Alwan and Hannah Mermelstein, two Boston-based activists, the Birthright-sanctioned trips don’t give a true picture of Israel because they minimize the experience of the Palestinian people. (Mermelstein is Jewish; Alwan, the child of a Muslim-Jewish marriage, calls herself a “secular Muslim-Jew.”) In 2005, the pair launched Birthright Unplugged, an “alternative” tour of the West Bank in which the Palestinian narrative takes center stage. This Israel is a land of refugee camps, military checkpoints and security fences. “We want to put people that would otherwise not have the access in direct contact with the Palestinian people,” Mermelstein says.

The Unplugged tours are relatively tiny, with just 60 travelers in two years, compared with Birthright’s 125,000 in seven years, but applications are increasing. The six-day trip costs $350 and stops at Hebron, Ramallah and Dheisheh, a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem. (Birthright avoids areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority.) Accommodations reflect Palestinian living conditions, Mermelstein says—the group rides in local buses and opts for home stays over hotels. Nova McGiffert, 24, an Austin, Texas, social worker who traveled on both Birthright and Birthright Unplugged last winter, says the latter drove home what she called the devastating results of an Israeli occupation. “During Unplugged, all of my nightmares came true about the realities of the situation,” she says.

Unplugged travelers have angered the larger Birthright operation by using the latter to get to Israel free of charge, then extending their stay to experience Unplugged. “Showing the Palestinian side is not the mandate we receive from our donors,” Taglit-birthright Israel spokesman Gidi Mark says. “It’s abusing their generosity.”

IWPS: Family home in Al Funduq to be demolished in three days

by Sue, IWPS, 16 May 2007

A family in Al Funduq had a demolition order delivered to their home while both were at work yesterday, 16th May. The paper was left on the door. It was the third final order and it left them three days to leave before destruction of their home.

The man, 29 years old is a worker for the Red Crescent Society. The woman, 25 years old, is a school-teacher. They have two children, four years and 8 months old. The house, which had been built for them to move in after their wedding, is 150 square meters and an approximate value of NIS 180,000 or USD $45,350.

The International Women’s Peace Service, Haris, Salfit, Palestine.

Tel:- (09)-2516-644

The house has been under threat of demolition since February 2006, when the first demolition order was delivered. The second demolition order followed in May 2006. Each time, the family has retained an attorney in an attempt to appeal against the demolition. They paid out approximately NIS 12,000 or USD $3020 USD to the lawyers and nothing was achieved. The order which had been left by Israeli soldiers on the door of their house yesterday, the family retained a third lawyer for NIS 7,940 or USD $2000.

Last year, one of the man’s brothers had his home demolished (see IWPS HR Report No. 279) nearby to this house. The reason given then was lack of a permit to build. Reasons given for this year’s slated demolition is also lack of a permit to build. The family has a deed to the property dated from 1964.

Please don’t shit on the apricots

by: Yifat Appelbaum

this is an infographic

Today I feel frustrated. I sat in a cute little apricot orchard in a village near Beit Lahem as the army watched us through binoculars from the hill, a menacing bulldozer in the background. They’re going to ‘doze this orchard to make way for sewage pipes from the Efrata settlement. New sections of Efrata are being built on the hill above the orchard. I was imagining all the problems that are going to happen once the settlers move in; villagers will need special permits to access their land. These permits will be difficult to obtain. Even if they do get permits, they will still be subject to the whims of the army who can either let them work the land or not, depending on their mood or the mood of the settlers controlling them. It will become like a hell, like so much of the west bank is already becoming. This has happened hundreds of times already.

this is the army

The only way to look at this is warfare. Land is stolen, no one in compensated. If some kid so much as throws a pebble in the direction of the invading army he’s going to get shot or arrested. People whose families have supported themselves for generations off this land are suddenly without a source of income and forced to rely on handouts from various NGOs since, as we know, foreign aid is no longer coming into Palestine because of the international boycott of the Hamas government. Does Ismail Haniyeh look like he’s starving yet ?

this is ismail haniyeh who is not worried about where his next meal is coming from

It’s starting to feel ineffective to sit around for a few hours here and there and block a bulldozer while the army is patiently waiting for you to get bored and leave, and they know you will. So we save an orchard for one more day. Maybe a few extra hours here and there.

But I do know something. There is absolutely no way to justify this in the name of security for Israelis. No way at all.

Israeli police to human rights workers: “Don’t do anything stupid!”

Tel Rumeida Report
by ISM Hebron, 17 May 2007

A Palestinian got arrested and brought into the Israeli settlement of Tel Rumeida between 7 and 8 o’clock this morning. Three human rights workers (HRWs) started to film the incident and the Israeli border police from a distance.

Israeli soldiers at the Tel Rumeida army post told the HRWs to leave the street.

Two Israeli settlers, the local settler bus driver and Yifrad Al Kobi, came down to where the HRWs were standing and blocked them from filming and began to shoot photos of the HRWs. The driver claimed to have orders from the army to tell the HRWs to move back.

The HRWs refused to move and after a while the police showed up. The officer whose name is Avi Dubour was very upset and did not give the HRWs any chance to explain themselves, their reasons for not moving and so on.

The Israeli officer ordered the one who was filming to give him the camera and when another HRW attempted to take the camera away to copy the tape, the officer arrested both of the HRWs. The HRWs, along with the Palestinian, were driven to Kiryat Arba Police Station and detained there for between 3-4 hours. They were not told why they were being arrested.

In the end, the HRWs were warned “not to do anything stupid and released without an interrogation” and driven back to Tel Rumeida.