The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court sentenced left-wing activist Ezra Nawi to one month in prison, after convicting him of assaulting police officers and rioting during the demolition of illegal structures near South Mount Hebron in July 2007.
Nawi was also ordered to pay a fine of NIS 750 (roughly $202), and an additional NIS 500 ($135) compensation to each officer he assaulted.
Judge Eilata Ziskind wrote in her ruling that “even if there is a supreme goal, it cannot be used as an excuse to commit offenses.” Nawi said in response that “the court has been permitting the occupation. The punishment doesn’t scare me, and neither does the judge.”
Ziskind’s verdict read, “Freedom of expression is not the freedom to incite and take actions that prevent or disrupt police work…Freedom of expression does not allow for riots, incitement or violence. Democracy cannot allow this, for if the law enforcement system collapses, anarchy will reign and democracy and freedom of expression will be no more.”
The judge added, “The fact that a person is acting in the name of one ideology or another, as justified as it may be, is no excuse to commit offenses in the name of that ideology, and in this matter there is no difference between left-wing activists, right-wing activists, religious, seculars, or other groups in conflict.”
After the sentencing Nawi told Ynet, “The judge would rather take the word of two Border Guard officers who lied and coordinated their testimonies. The entire system wants to see me in jail.
“The court has been permitting the occupation for years, they are trying to stop me at all costs. The judge doesn’t scare me, and neither does the 30-day sentence. This is testimonium paupertatis to the court, I tried to stop criminal activity, and I ended up having to pay two officers who acted brutally. This is the Israeli reality.”
Nawi, a leftist and member of the Ta’ayush organization, was arrested after he objected to the demolition of illegal structures and tin huts of Bedouin residents of Umm al-Kher and was convicted of inciting the residents of the area and causing riots.
In his verdict, the judge accepts the officer’s claims and ruled that Nawi hit one of them in the face.
The Yesha Human Rights Organization in response criticized the one-month prison sentence.
“One month in jail is like mocking the poor and emphasizes the selectivity of the law enforcement system in Judea and Samaria. (The system) allows Nawi to run wild, cooperate with Hamas members and hurt settlers, and remembers to enforce the law only when he hurts policemen,” the organization said in a statement.
Two Jerusalem leaders were harassed and interrogated by Israeli forces Tuesday, marking a steep increase in targeted detentions and raids of organizers involved in the Al-Aqsa Mosque sit-ins and demonstrations during the Jewish holidays earlier this month.
In the latest incident, Israeli police released senior Fatah official and Jerusalem affairs official Hatem Abdul Qader after detaining him for hours at the Allenby Bridge as he returned to Palestine from Jordan on Tuesday.
Abdul-Qader said authorities on the bridge handed him an order to submit to further interrogation by Israel’s intelligence unit at 12pm on Wednesday, an order he said he intended to refuse.
On Thursday Abdul Qader was taken from his car along with Islamic Movement leader Ali Sheikha. The two reported they had been taken by undercover Israeli agents at the Qalandiya military checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah. He said officers disguised as motorists disabled his car and “kidnapped” the two officials. They were taken to Israel’s Russian Compound prison in West Jerusalem.
At that time he was also given an order to appear in front of Israeli intelligence at 10am the following Wednesday.
Abdul Qader called the latest detention “provocative,” since he was on a “semi-official” visit to Jordan in the capacity of a Palestinian Authority representative.
The official has been interrogated four times in the last two weeks, following the Palestinian protest of Israeli extremist action around the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Jewish holidays earlier this month.
Israeli forces target home of Al-Quds Capital of Arab Culture organizer, seize documents
Prior to Abdul Qader’s detention and interrogation, Israeli Special Forces stormed the home of Al-Quds Capital of Culture organizer and architect Ihab Al-Jallad early Tuesday morning, sources reported.
Al-Jallad was questioned about the Al-Aqsa Mosque sit in that took place more than one week ago, while other masked soldiers ransacked his home and terrified his children, he said. The soldiers took three computers from the home, as well as digital memory devices, CDs and several paper files.
According to Al-Jallad, the Israeli officer questioning him said he and dozens of other Jerusalem leaders were being observed, that all activities in Jerusalem were being monitored – particularly those in the Al-Aqsa Mosque – and that no political or cultural activities would be permitted to go ahead without express permission from Israeli police.
“The officer even mocked our slogan, ‘Al-Aqsa in Danger,’” Al-Jallad said, referring to the campaign launched by Jerusalem religious and community leaders encouraging Palestinians to visit Jerusalem and particularly to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosue in the Old City.
Earlier that morning Israeli forces raided a warehouse used by Jerusalem community groups and event organizers. According to Al-Jallah, Israeli forces vandalized material used for cultural events and seized some goods.
“Israeli forces cannot terrify our children and cannot prevent us from doing our duty for Jerusalem…We will continue our program and activities by God’s will,” Al-Jallal said.
This is the second time in as many months that Israeli forces have broken into Al-Jallad’s home.
The following is Palestinian nonviolent resistance activist Ahmed A. Khatib’s story as told to The Electronic Intifada contributor Jody McIntyre:
Palestinians take part in one of the nonviolent demonstrations against Israel's wall in Bilin, September 2006. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
My name is Ahmed A. Khatib, I am 32 years old, and married with four children. I live in the village of Bilin, where I work on our family’s farm.
When Israel started building the wall here in 2005, I was working with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades military, the armed wing of the Fatah party. But at first, the villagers went to our land not to “resist,” but simply to see what the Israeli soldiers were doing. There was no planning, no such things as “demonstrations,” and no organization. We were just curious as to why these strangers were stealing our olive groves. So, in effect, our popular struggle was initiated through ordinary people walking to their land.
However, as the Israelis’ intentions became evident, the people of the village agreed that the formation of a local popular committee would be the best way forward.
After a couple of initial meetings, it was decided that we would embark on a campaign of nonviolent resistance, drawing inspiration from the struggle in Budrus village, where they had actually succeeded in moving the route of the wall. At first, I thought the suggestion was a joke — I had friends who had been killed, friends locked up in prison. I worked with guns to fight against the occupation, so it was difficult for me to believe that we could ever return to our land through nonviolent means.
But we are farmers from a small village, simple people, fighting against the fourth largest military in the world. If you think about it, Bilin is home to around 1,500 inhabitants; half of those are women, plus a few hundred children, and maybe 50 elderly men. You aren’t left with many people to take up an armed struggle against the Israeli army.
At the first demonstration, the army really didn’t have a clue how to deal with us! Because we came to them as unarmed citizens, they were left with no pretext to shoot at us. Instead, they started beating us with their weapons. Before, I didn’t believe that Israeli and international activists would be able to help, but then I saw them becoming human shields, taking the soldiers’ blows for us Palestinians. When we returned to the village, everyone had an injury to show. It was a great feeling to see that kind of solidarity, although I still remained skeptical about the concept of nonviolent resistance.
However, we started to see the name of our village and our photos all over the media, and people from around the world were saying that these simple farmers really could challenge this brutal army.
Demonstration after demonstration, I started to believe in the nonviolent struggle. However, this put a strain on my relationships with my al-Aqsa friends, whom I tried to convince of the benefits of these new methods. Some were willing to listen; this was at a time when Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president) had won the presidential election and made a temporary truce with Israel, so people were looking for a new way forward.
When our struggle first started in Bilin, the al-Aqsa military declared that they would come to the village and kill the army. But I went to them and told them not to interfere — this was our decision, our struggle, and we went to our demonstrations with women and children — and they listened to me.
After a few demonstrations had passed, the Israeli occupation forces arrested someone from the al-Aqsa military, and they told the Shabak (Israel’s internal security service, also known as the Shin Bet) that I had helped with transporting weapons. The army raided the village on 29 October 2006, four days after Hamas had taken an Israeli soldier hostage in Gaza.
That day, an Israeli taxi driver had been kidnapped and gone missing, so when I saw soldiers outside my home, I presumed it was an arbitrary search for him. I didn’t for one second think they had come to arrest me, because I had stopped working with al-Aqsa some time before. Once they were sitting in my front room, I even offered them some tea, but they said they didn’t drink on the job.
They let me smoke a cigarette, and said that they were searching many houses, so I relaxed. But after ten minutes, the soldiers told me to be ready, because the Shabak were coming to arrest me.
I stayed in jail for 13 months, but the experience didn’t change anything in me. I had changed my ideas well before I was arrested.
I spent the first month in Ramle prison, where I was joined by 20 Hamas politicians, whom I later found out had been arrested on the same night as me. So every day, although we stayed in different rooms, I came face-to-face with them. When they heard I was from Bilin, they asked me about our struggle — I knew that Hamas had refused to join our struggle at first, so I started to explain how we practiced nonviolent resistance, and how the Israelis and internationals were helping and could use their experience in Bilin to pressure their own governments into taking action against the occupation. By the time I had finished, they promised that once they were released, they would join us in Bilin.
For me, it was a great personal victory to see that I could convince these important leaders, so I started to talk to all my friends in jail about the nonviolent struggle. Every Saturday they brought the newspapers to the prison, and it was always understood that Ahmed Khatib could read the first copy, so that I could see the report from the Friday demonstration in my village. I also saw Bilin live on Al-Jazeera; I couldn’t believe I was seeing my friends on the prison’s television! All this strengthened my beliefs; sometimes I asked myself, there are 2,000 Palestinian prisoners here — maybe the nonviolent struggle could release us one day?
They had sentenced me to 28 months in prison, but it was my fate to be released after 13, along with 250 other Palestinians, when Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made their prisoner release deal.
A short time after I was released, the Israeli high court gave an order to change the route of the wall in Bilin. When I heard the news, I was filled with a happiness that I had only felt twice before — when my first child was born, and when I heard my name being read out on the list of those to be released on a secret radio while still in jail. I was so overjoyed that I ran to the local mosque and announced the victory on the loudspeaker! We got music and started dancing on the streets, calling all our friends to let them know what had happened.
Without a moment of planning, we took an impromptu demonstration to the wall, and started throwing sweets at the Israeli army. The soldiers were looking pretty nervous.
I felt like I was on top of the world — we had won, and this was a victory not only for us, but for every person who had visited Bilin. I truly believed that our experience would inspire other villages, and that we would become a symbol — a spark for a world struggle for freedom.
But slowly, I began to wake up from the dream. Two years later, our situation hasn’t changed. For me, I will never return to armed resistance, now that I have a family to look after. But I see the entire village as my family, and I really want to see something good for them — for the wall to be destroyed, and for the people of Bilin to return to our lands. I am still waiting for that moment.
Unfortunately, the tactics of Israel seem to promote armed resistance. They refuse to release just one of the 11,000 Palestinian prisoners currently rotting away in Israeli jails, but when an Israeli soldier is taken hostage, they are willing to negotiate. How can I convince the mothers of those martyred and those imprisoned that nonviolent resistance is the way forward?
But in my heart, I know that nonviolent resistance is the path to freedom for our nation. From my small village of Bilin, I hope our actions can set an example for others to follow.
The plight of Palestinian activist Mohammad Othman has dominated the agendas of NGOs in the region ever since his detention in late September. However, while his case is at the forefront of their minds, Othman is just one of 11,000 Palestinian prisoners currently held in Israeli jails, 800 of whom are incarcerated under the terms of administrative detention – meaning that they are imprisoned indefinitely without any charges brought against them.
As things stand, Othman appears to be heading for the murky world of administrative detention, given the treatment handed out to him thus far by the military courts. Othman was arrested by soldiers at the Allenby Bridge crossing on 22 September as he tried to return home to the West Bank town of Jayyous following an advocacy trip to Norway. Despite a lack of evidence presented against him in court, judges in subsequent hearings have extended his remand, leading to his having spent almost a month in solitary confinement.
According to Addameer, a local prisoners’ support group, Othman’s captors will soon have to decide whether to issue an administrative detention order against him or release him without charge. However, given that today Othman found his remand extended by 11 days, it appears he’ll be kept in limbo.
Arresting Othman is a coup for the Israeli authorities, sending a strong message to his compatriots that dissent against the occupation will not be taken lightly. For years, Othman has been at the vanguard of the anti-wall campaign, an issue close to his heart given the devastation wreaked on his hometown by the erection of the barrier.
During his visit to Norway, he met the Norwegian finance minister Kristen Halvorsen, and their meeting was seen as pivotal in shaping the decision by Norway’s national pension fund to divest from Israeli electronics firm Elbit, whose products are used in the construction and maintenance of the illegal separation wall.
While Israeli officials claim that Othman is being held for belonging to an unnamed terrorist group, Othman’s supporters point out that it is too much of a coincidence that he was arrested just after his high-profile trip to Scandinavia. Furthermore, they say, he has been interrogated for up to 16 hours a day ever since being detained, and given Shin Bet’s notoriously tough methods of extracting information, if he had anything to hide it would have been long ago discovered by his jailers.
Othman’s nightmare is only the latest in a long line of suspiciously timed arrests by the Israeli authorities. According to Adalah, one of the principal NGOs campaigning for Othman’s release:
The villages of Jayyous and Bil’in have both been targeted with arrests and repression due to their multi-year nonviolent protest campaigns. Twenty-eight Bil’in activists have been arrested by Israel since June when Bil’in’s lawsuit against settlement construction on village land was heard in a Canadian court.
Just weeks after he testified in Canada, Bil’in activist Mohammed Khatib was jailed by Israeli forces for 15 days and then released on bail. Bil’in protester Adeeb Abu Rahme and 17 others are still being held in Israeli jails, and Bil’in protest organiser Abdullah Abu Rahme is ‘wanted’ by the Israeli army for his nonviolent organising.
However, instead of silencing the anti-occupation protests, Israel’s treatment of Othman, Khatib and Abu Rahme appears to be backfiring: demonstrations are taking place around the world on the campaigners’ behalf, along with well-organised publicity campaigns aimed at highlighting the dire situation for those trapped behind the separation wall.
Naomi Klein has taken up the cause as well, noting:
As we see with Mohammad Othman’s arrest, Palestinians are still treated as the enemy, even when they embrace this non-violent tactic. It is clear that for the supposedly democratic Israeli state, no tactic – no matter how peaceful – is an acceptable way for Palestinians to resist an illegal occupation.
Whatever happens in Othman’s case, the signs are clear that the Israeli authorities will continue to stifle legitimate protest at every opportunity, and the omens look bleak for any change to their repressive policies as long as the cabinet remains in place. Led by the hyper-defensive Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman, Israeli officials give short shrift to anyone calling for boycotts or sanctions against the state, and individuals such as Othman are easy prey for those looking to make an example of anyone deemed an enemy of the state.
Daniel Seaman, director of Israel’s government press office, summed up the prevailing attitude when questioned about Othman’s arrest. Scoffing at the idea that Othman was detained for his pro-boycott activities, he went on to declare:
Boycotts are a joke … [They] are an old weapon used against Jews and the state of Israel for generations, so those invoking the boycott should not act so disingenuous as if they are doing this for some noble reason. It is as old as hatred for the Jews.
Israel has done everything for the peace process and taken risks for peace: relinquishing territory, giving up settlements. Instead of bringing us closer to peace it has resulted in more Israeli deaths. What have the Palestinians done to increase the prospects for peace? Palestinians have contributed nothing to the world except violence and terrorism.
Against such a caustic backdrop, it is clear that even once Othman is finally released, there will be plenty more like him filling up cells in Israeli jails. With senior Israeli spokesmen making such proclamations against the entire Palestinian people, there seems little room for manoeuvre for the activists fighting desperately for their nation’s freedom – and the prospects for peaceful resolution continue to diminish.
The Ministry of Education has taken the unusual step of collecting all copies of the history textbook, “Nationalism: Building a State in the Middle East” which was published about two months ago by the Zalman Shazar Center. They will be returned to the shelves only after corrections are made to the text, particularly with reference to the War of Independence.
The book had already been approved by the ministry.
“Collecting the books from the shops is an unnecessary [form of] censorship,” said Dr. Tsafrir Goldberg, who wrote the controversial chapter on the war. “The process of approving the text was completed in serious fashion from both the pedagogic and the historic points of view. The fact that the education minister changed does not mean that it is possible to bypass this procedure.”
On September 22, Haaretz reported that the textbook, which is meant for 11th and 12th-grades, for the first time presented the Palestinian claim that there had been ethnic cleansing in 1948.
“The Palestinians and the Arab countries contended that most of the refugees were civilians who were attacked and expelled from their homes by armed Jewish forces, which instituted a policy of ethnic cleansing, contrary to the proclamations of peace in the Declaration of Independence,” states the text, which presented the Palestinian and the Israeli-Jewish versions side by side.
Criticism about the book was voiced by history teachers.
“Presenting Israel’s claims as being equal to those of Arab propagandists is exactly like presenting the claims of the Nazis alongside those of the Jews,” one of them said.
On the other hand, another teacher noted that the most important component in studying history is to introduce as many points of view as possible.
Following the newspaper report, Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar instructed the ministry’s director general, Shimshon Shoshani, to examine the book and look into the process of approving texts in general.
Officials in the ministry said Sunday that an examination carried out by Michael Yaron, who is in charge of history studies, found “a great many mistakes, some of them serious. As a result of this examination it was decided that the original version of the textbook must be withdrawn and returned to the stores only after being corrected.”
Among other things, the Shazar Center was asked to exchange the original Palestinian text that appears in the book, written by Walid Khalidi, for another that is closer to reality, said Goldberg, who finished making the changes recently.
Another demand was that the term “ethnic cleansing” be redacted. Goldberg says that he changed the phrase and spoke instead of an organized policy of expulsion.
When the corrections have been completed, the book will be reviewed again at the publishers and in the ministry, before it is given final approval.
“The state has the right to determine the contents of textbooks but this is not supposed to be done by the education minister,” Goldberg said.
He noted, though, that some of the remarks were merely cosmetic and did not pose any problem. “The publishing house decided to make the corrections as a form of self censorship,” Goldberg said.
Zvi Yekutiel, the executive director of the Shazar Center, said that “the book has to be aimed at the widest possible consensus and not at the fringes on the left or the right. We made a mistake and we are correcting it.”
Last month, Yekutiel said that there had been no remarks about the chapter on the War of Independence during the process of approving the book.
He added that “the explicit instruction from the ministry was to include controversial points of view so that the students can confront them and make up their own minds.”
Yekutiel said the ministry would pay for the collection of the books from the stores.
The ministry approved the textbook for use in the schools on July 26, after it had been sent to two external assessors – an academic and a teacher.
It was granted approval after an examination of its suitability for the curriculum and its scientific reliability.
The ministry spokesman said last week that, “from the start the book was intended to go into use as a textbook only from this coming January, so the students were not yet exposed to the relevant material. It was decided as well that the director general’s circular should be corrected to make it clear that the responsibility and authority for approving textbooks is on the inspectors and coordinators who are responsible for the various subjects taught and who have to examine the books before they are approved and pass on their remarks and instructions.”
