On February 20th, International Solidarity Movement put out a call for the international community to express their solidarity with the people of Al Khalil (Hebron) and the cause to open Shuhada Street. Individuals from all over the world took part in this symbolic campaign, which came just as locals in Al Khalil launched a week of activities and rallies to invoke the resilience of Palestine and its resistance against apartheid in their communities. Marking the 18th anniversary of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, which claimed the lives of dozens of Palestinians at the hands of extremist Zionists and the Israeli Occupation Forces that protect them, Al Khalil is restless and still marching as Zionism looms in the heart of the city in illegal settlements that house malice and violence.
Photos in Solidarity – Click here for more images
As Palestinians and their supporters marched through Hebron on February 24th under the fire of tear gas and bullets shot by the cowardly Israeli Occupation Forces, which arrested protestors merely for their peaceful defiance of Israeli Occupation, the steadfastness of the people united and their message to Open Shuhada Street, was not only echoed in the ancient roads of Al Khalil, but throughout the world. Thank you for your show of support for the liberation of Shuhada Street. Together may we one day walk the roads of Al Khalil, without fear of harassment by Zionist settlers, without the profiling and discrimination by so called Israeli police, and without the shadow of Israel’s hateful weaponry, staining the old stones of Al Khalil’s soul.
2 March 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Today we went to Bil’in, a small village 17 km from Ramallah. For decades it has been harassed by the Israeli army. When the Apartheid Wall was constructed, it separated the farmers from their land.
Seven years ago, the villagers succeeded in moving the wall a bit towards the settlements again and gained back a few meters of the land where their great grandparents already lived.
Every Friday after that, there where demonstrations organized. For my friend and I, this was our first demonstration in the West Bank.
Luckily we had a bit of an idea about what to expect because the others told us about the situation.
When we arrived in Bil’in we gathered together with the villagers and went together to the place where the demonstration was held. One of the villagers we met there had been already arrested 3 times. Still that doesn’t stop him for going on with fighting for his land and his people.
We drove through the valley, it was all so beautiful, the atmosphere relaxed, and the people loving. I almost forgot that the country is occupied, until we arrived at the Wall, with barbed wire fence to protect it.
Soldiers stood behind it with their “toys,” at least that’s the way it looked.
It all started off really quiet. There was some yelling, some hanging around at the wall but nothing more then that.
The soldiers came and were looking at us from the other side of the wall at what we were doing. A few of the Palestinian boys started throwing rocks, which obviously was purely symbolic. The soldiers were far away and wore protection.
Some of the boys tried to get through the wire to the wall. A few managed to do that and started laughing and slapt the wall a bit. It was still a very friendly protest.
My friend, Mira, and I were taking videos and pictures. At some point the soldiers started shooting teargas directed at us, who were filming. Thick clouds of smoke were surrounding us within seconds. It smelled like fire works, but more sour and very sharp. I couldn’t see anything and breathing was really difficult. My cheeks and nose were burning.
After a few minutes I was fine again. Luckily Mira was able to avoid it a bit more than I did.
After this action from the military, we pulled back and stayed a bit away. After a while we went to the group again. For half an hour the situation was again like before. Hanging out, boys throwing rocks again, and I even heard one of the boys communicating with one of the soldiers.
The short conversation ended in laughter of the soldier and a few minutes after that there came a lot of teargas again, even more than before. This time it was Mira who suffered more from the gas.
When the action ended I heard that they did shoot rubber coated steel bullets at the boys, “But probably it was meant as a warning to not 0come too close to the wall,” another protester said
Even though the whole action looks like a ritual almost, it makes me more angry than I was before. Taking away the land, using weapons towards people, children even, who have absolutely nothing. The soldiers themselves are even kids, like 17 -18 years old. Just boys fighting an old man ‘s war filled with hate already from since they were born.
How crazy is that? By far, i haven’t seen the worst yet..
We will see what the future brings Free Palestine!
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At the end of the United States’ Black History Month, one week after the 47th anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination in New York’s Audubon Ballroom, and another week shy of my first year in Gaza, I attended a talk on X at Gaza’s Centre for Political and Development Studies (CPDS) Tuesday.
My friend Yousef Aljamal, a translator at CPDS, coordinated the event. “We are being subjugated to occupation and racism,” he told me when I asked him why. “I see Malcolm X as a role model. He fought against racism, just as Palestinians are doing today.”
CPDS’s lecture hall held a larger crowd than it has during any other event I have attended there. The speaker, Refaat R. Alareer, is a popular teacher of English at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG). Joining CPDS regulars, dozens of his students had turned out for another opportunity to hear him.
“I don’t claim to be a Malcolm X specialist,” Alareer said. “I’m only a fan.” His interest in X, he said, began twelve years ago. “I was teaching a course, and there was an amazing passage about this man, of whom I had never heard before. The passage was so eloquent, so articulate, so amazing that it pulled me into this personality, this area of knowledge that I, again, never knew before.”
Alareer quickly ordered and read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. “Malcolm X has had, since then, an amazing influence on my life, to the extent that I now name him as my number one role model,” he said.
Alareer’s talk covered the phases and transitions of X’s varied life, with a focus on two main themes: the influence of his childhood, and misconceptions that often cloud modern understandings of him. “If you ask anyone about Malcolm X, he will quote him about violence, and how violence is the most important means to regain and restore rights, dignity, freedom, equality – so many things.”
Mr. Refaat R. Alareer (Photo: Joe Catron)
“By doing this, we are actually not doing justice to this great, amazing man,” Alareer added. “We are zooming in on only one part of his life.”
Alareer quickly sketched key points of X’s Black nationalist upbringing and the racism he and his family faced: the arson of their house as police and firefighters stood by, the former later questioning his father about his permit for the pistol with which he defended his family; the murder of his father; the liquidation of his family by county social workers; his mother’s nervous breakdown; and discouragement by his teachers. “He turned this curse into a bliss,” Alareer said. “This harsh life did not push him, for example, to suicide – to kill himself – or to become a serial killer.” Instead, X’s painful experiences pushed him to establish himself as one of 20th-century America’s foremost leaders.
Alareer also described an aspect of X’s life as the middle of seven children that, he said, explains “how, he, in part, came to be the Malcolm X we know. How he learned that sometimes, you have to make noise. Sometimes, you have to use violence. Sometimes, instead of being gentle, you have to be tough, like Hamlet’s motto of ‘be[ing] cruel to be kind.’” When his exasperated mother asked why X would “cry out and make a fuss until [he] got what [he] wanted,” unlike his eldest brother Wilfred (who later introduced him to the Nation of Islam), X “would think to [him]self that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry … So early in life, [he] had learned that if you wanted something, you had to make some noise.”
As a young gangster, Alareer said, “[X] was nicknamed Satan for his profanity, for his atheism. He hated everything and everybody: gods, laws, etc.” And while the Nation of Islam (NOI) offered him a system of personal discipline and a means of organized struggle, its theology, in Alareer’s eyes, left something to be desired. “Unfortunately, Elijah Muhammed had a special version of Islam, which by no means stands for Islam, or what Islam means,” he said. “Elijah Muhammed claimed, at the end of his life, that he was a prophet of Islam. He claimed that all Muslims are Black, that Islam is the religion of Black people, and that God is black; that the white people are devils; and that they were created, not by God, the Black guy, but by some other guy by the name of Jacob.”
“These ideas are absurd, huh?” he asked. His audience, of which I may have been the only non-Muslim member, murmured its agreement. “What – what the hell?”
But X, Alareer said, “believed in this under the circumstances. It is stupid to think what Elijah Muhammed was preaching, but probably, if you were squeezed into the corner where Malcolm X was, I think you would do the same.”
X’s background in the NOI, Alareer said, prepared him for his 1964 hajj to Mecca and practice of Sunni Islam as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz . “As a criminal, as a prisoner, as a ‘Muslim’ who was not a real Muslim, as a Muslim who was a real Muslim, as a man of peace, as a man of violence, he was a man of all trades, in a sense. As a member of the Nation of Islam, he said that whites are the devil, but as a Sunni Muslim, he embraced all people as brothers.”
X’s famous statements on violence, Alareer said, were also circumstantial. “I think that Malcolm X was complementing the role [of Martin Luther King Jr.] at a time when everybody was calling for nonviolent, peaceful means to find a solution to the Black problem.”
And they were, Alareer emphasized, only a small part of X’s thought. “We always quote Malcolm X talking about violence,” he said. “If you want ideas about prison, Iife in prison, and prison reform, read Malcolm X. If you want ideas about family, about wives, husbands, children, daughters, and sons, read Malcolm X. If you want quotes and ideas about education, this man is amazing in every sense of the word. If you don’t read him, there is a blank area in your mind or heart that needs to be filled.”
“All Palestinians admire him, or should admire him, for many reasons,” Alareer concluded. “He wasn’t ashamed to change when he discovered there was another way he could follow and adopt, another means to improve his status and change his horrible life. As Palestinians, we can use different means and methods to liberate ourselves, to get rid of the occupation and the evils of the occupation, ‘by any means necessary,’ like he said. ” This portion of Alareer’s talk, beginning at 41:25 of the audio file and focusing on X’s implications for Palestinians and their struggle, really deserves to be heard by everyone, even those without the time to listen to the rest.
Afterward, I spoke with Jehan Alfarra, a 21-year old English literature student at IUG. “Malcolm X is a good character to identify with,” she told me. “He was a product of his environment. You can see how his childhood and life influenced his approach to the challenges he faced. In that, he’s like many of the Palestinians here. And I love the transitions in his life. I love his bravery. He was brave enough to admit how he felt, and to admit it when he had met more people, knew more about the world, and changed his mind. Palestinians in Gaza are under a mental siege, as well as a physical siege. Malcolm X shows how to overcome that.”
Joe Catron is an international solidarity activist and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) organizer in Gaza, Palestine
29 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Yesterday, violence erupted close to Joseph’s Tomb when settlers gathered near the site. Youths from Balata refuge camp came out to chase the settlers off but where kept at a distance by the soldiers that accompanied the illegal settlers as usual. This is the second time this month that violence occurred due to settlers visiting Joseph’s Tomb.
In the nearby village of Burin, dozens of settlers from the illegal settlement Yitzhar attacked the house of Umm Ayman Sufan by throwing rocks and bottles. The olive trees surrounding Sufan’s home on the southern edge of the village were also cut down.
Meanwhile, another attack on Burin from the illegal settlement of Bracha was reported by the Palestinian Authorities.
“Recently we have noticed that young settlers are hanging out with soldiers at the checkpoints, and we know that they receive training in handling fire arms from the age of 15 under the cloak of self defense,” says Ghassan Daghlas. “Why do they need to learn about fire arms for self defense when they have an entire occupational army protecting them?”
Yitzhar is considered to be home to some of the most militant Zionist settlers of the West Bank, and Palestinians from nearby villages claim that settlers from Yitzhar coordinate attacks against Palestinian villagers with other settlements. The illegal settlement Yeshiva has been suspected by the Israeli intelligence service Shin Bet to be teaching racist and violent ideologies to their students.
The Yeshiva leaders Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg and Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira have many times been at the center of controversies surrounding their statements about non Jewish people. Shapiras organization Od Yosef Hai, which includes various grades of educational institutions and publishing, up until recently received extensive funding from the Israeli Education Ministry. In November 2011 both Ginzburg’s and Shapira’s institutions were closed down by the Education Ministry due to information about the participation of students and teachers in attacks on Palestinians and Israeli military forces.
Since these institutions were closed the settler violence from Yitzhar has increased according to Ghassan Daghlas. After all, Yitzhar was the settlement to first take the so called “price tag” tactic into practice. The price tag tactic means to target Palestinian civilians or property in order to get revenge for actions from the Israeli military or government to curb settlement activity, perceived as unjust by the illegal settlers.
Generally the settler attacks increase during the summer when the weather is warmer according to Ghassan Douglas. They also change character with the weather
“In the summer everything is dry and they tend to burn crops and trees, when it’s colder and damper they move on to burn mosques and cars,” he says.
Jonas Weber is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
Israeli forces raided two Palestinian television networks early Wednesday in Ramallah and briefly detained four employees, journalists said.Soldiers confiscated computers used by editors and reporters in Watan TV’s newsroom and general offices as well as administrative and financial files, the network said.
Troops also raided Al-Quds Educational TV in Al-Bireh and confiscated its broadcasting equipment, the head of its TV department Haroun Abu Irreh told Ma’an.
“This attack is nothing but piracy under a policy of systematic attack targeting Palestinian media organizations and journalists,” Watan TV said in a statement.
The network “deplores this aggressive behavior against an efficient and effective media organization,” and said it will restore the stolen equipment and transmitters and to try to resume broadcasts.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said soldiers were accompanying an operation by the country’s communications ministry, which had determined that the networks were broadcasting illegally.
They had been asked to cease their broadcasting “which significantly interrupts other legal broadcasting stations,” an army spokeswoman told Ma’an. “During the operation and in accordance with law, the communications ministry confiscated several transmitters.”
“Illegal broadcasting interfered with aircraft communication, which is very, very dangerous.”
Abu Irreh of Al-Quds Educational TV called the events of Wednesday morning “harassment to media and education stations and a way to shut the mouths of media and reporters.”
Palestinian lawmaker Mustafa Barghouti condemned the raids in a statement.
“This act is not only a violation of human rights and humanitarian law,” he said, “but also a breach of the agreements that forbid the Israeli military forces from entering or carrying out operations” in Area A.
“We will campaign worldwide to repel the Israeli aggression,” he said.
Watan TV identified the four employees who were detained as head of production Abdul Rahman Thaher, correspondent Hamza Salaymeh, graphics expert Ibrahim Milhim and broadcaster Ahmad Zaki.
They were released after several hours, the network said.
On February 20th, International Solidarity Movement put out a call for the international community to express their solidarity with the people of Al Khalil (Hebron) and the cause to open Shuhada Street. Individuals from all over the world took part in this symbolic campaign, which came just as locals in Al Khalil launched a week of activities and rallies to invoke the resilience of Palestine and its resistance against apartheid in their communities. Marking the 18th anniversary of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, which claimed the lives of dozens of Palestinians at the hands of extremist Zionists and the Israeli Occupation Forces that protect them, Al Khalil is restless and still marching as Zionism looms in the heart of the city in illegal settlements that house malice and violence.
