Category: In the Media

Israeli Navy takes control of aid boat headed for Gaza

Ali Waked & Anat Shalev | YNet News

30 June 2009

At around noon Tuesday the Israeli Navy intercepted and took control of a boat that had set sail for the Gaza Strip with three tons of medical supplies, Palestinian sources said, adding that the Navy jammed the boat’s radio signals.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Office confirmed the report. Israeli military sources said there was no violence after the small ferry, sailing from Cyprus with activists from the US-based Free Gaza Movement, was intercepted off Gaza.

Earlier Tuesday, “Free Gaza” founder Greta Berlin told Ynet that at around 11:00 am six Navy vessels approached the boat and ordered it to stop some 50 kilometers off Gaza’s coastline. Despite the order, the boat continued to sail towards the Hamas-ruled territory, said Berlin, who is currently in Cyprus.

Berlin said that the communication with the boat had been disrupted from 1:40-6:00 am, adding that its GPS and navigation systems had been blocked by the Navy, forcing the crew to navigate with the use of a compass alone.

The boat is also carrying 21 peace activists, including former US Congresswoman Cynthia Ann McKinney (D-GA) and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire.

Activist Luvana Masarwa, a 30-year-old east Jerusalem resident, said Monday that passengers “are excited about the possibility of contributing to breaking the siege.”

“We want to show the Palestinian people in Gaza that they are not alone, and call on the international community to take a more active role in resolving the situation,” she said.

YNet News: ‘Palestinians: IDF sanctions land theft’

Aviad Glickman | YNet News

30 June 2009

Two residents of the West Bank Palestinian village of Qadum filed a High Court petition against the Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday asking that it overturn a military appellate board decision and order a Kedumim settler who they claim invaded their land to return it to them.

The petition was filed with the assistance of the Yesh Din human rights organization. According to the brief, the two realized the settler invaded their property in May 2007, fencing off some of their agricultural land as his own, planting hundreds of plants and setting up irrigation devices.

In letter to defense administration heads Yesh Din reports of alarming increase in number of attempts to uproot or damage Palestinian farmers’ trees as part of settlers’ efforts to ‘achieve political goals through terrorists acts’

In August 2007, the Civil Administration issued an eviction order against the man, who, in turn, asked the military appellate board to override the decision, claiming he had been working the land for 10 years. His motion was granted in March 2009.

The plaintiffs claim that the land in question was private Palestinian property, which is outside of Kedumim’s municipal jurisdiction, and that the board’s decision did not take into account the fact that the settler could not substantiate his claim of proprietary.

“The board’s decision backs systematic and aggressive land theft,” said Yesh Din Attorney Michael Sfard. “Letting the decision stand is equal to giving out the death sentence for the rule of law in the West Bank.

“The Court has an opportunity through this case to enforce the rule of law against settlers who bar Palestinians access to their lands through cultivation.”

Israel demolishes Palestinian house on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives

Ma’an News

30 June 2009

Two women were hospitalized after Israel’s Jerusalem Municipality demolished a house on the Mount of Olives in occupied East Jerusalem on Monday morning.

During the demolition Israeli police clashed with inhabitants of the house, bruising nine of them.

The destruction came a day after the municipality declared that it would freeze 70% of demolition orders.

Owner of the house Samir Jum’a said the home was 150 square meters in size and housed 15 people.

Israeli police who came to protect bulldozers during the demolition attacked the family and as a result nine people, including four women, were bruised, Jum’a said . Two women were evacuated to the nearby Al-Maqasid Hospital.

The injured family members were identified as 61-year-old Jamila Abu Jum’a, 65-year-old Huda Abu Jum’a, 38-year-old Ikhlas Abu Jum’a, 29-year-old Rwan Abu Jum’a, 27-year-old Hanadi Abu Jum’a, 32-year-old Samir Abu Jum’a (owner of the house), 42-year-old Khalid Abu Jum’a, 30-year-old ‘Amir Abu Jum’a, and 30-year-old Suheil Abu Jum’a.

The owner said the demolition came without any warning.

The West Jerusalem Municipality, which also governs occupied East Jerusalem, demolishes Palestinian houses on the grounds that they are built without construction permits, which are nearly impossible to obtain.

According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Yakir Segev, revealed that in 2008 only 18 permits were issued for building in the Palestinian parts of the city, home to some 270,000 Palestinians.

It is the municipality’s policy of granting so few permits that is driving Palestinians to construct illegally, ICAHD said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

“To get a construction permit in East Jerusalem you have to be more than a saint,” Segev was quoted as saying.

ICAHD reports that in 2008 the Municipality demolished 87 Palestinian homes, issued 959 demolition orders and collected 3.6 million US dollars in fines from Palestinians, 70% of whom live below the poverty line.

UN assesses trauma of Gaza conflict

Al Jazeera

29 June 2009

A UN human rights mission on the Gaza conflict is hearing from a range of experts on the social and the psychological effect of Israel’s 22-day war on Gaza.

On the second of the two-day inquiry on Monday, a child psychologist told the panel that an estimated 20 per cent of children in Gaza suffer post-traumatic stress syndrome as a result of witnessing violence.

Dr Iyad Sarraj said: “The amount of killing and blood that they have seen or that their relatives have suffered from … is a huge amount, and this leads to negative psychological feelings, to radicalism and a cycle of violence.”

Lost livelihoods

Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros in Gaza, where more than half of the population of 1.5 million people is under 18-years of age, said Sarraj told the panel that six months after the war the trauma is still present among children.

“During the war we spent the night with a family and we saw first hand the kind of trauma that Dr Sarraj was talking about in terms of the children and how frightened they were when the bombs were going off,” she said.

The panel also heard from the head of a women’s group in Gaza City, who said that most of those who died in the conflict were men, leaving behind the women they provided a livelihood for, Tadros said.

“Even months after the war the women are still suffering because they have lost their livelihood and have to go out and work,” she said, adding that this was flagged up as a “major problem”.

The hearing, which is being broadcast live for the public, will also include testimony from experts on the military operation on the Palestinian enclave.

The panel is to hold a second round of public hearings on July 6 and 7 in Geneva where it will hear from the victims of alleged violations in Israel and the West Bank.

The UN chose the Swiss city as the venue of the second round of hearings because the fact-finding mission did not receive permission to enter Israel.

The public hearings were called for by Richard Goldstone, the head of the 15-member team and previously a member of the South African constitutional court.

The mission is due to complete a report with its findings in August.

Israeli offensive

Israel launched its offensive against Gaza on December 27, citing rocket attacks from the enclave that caused injuries to residents and damage to property in Sderot and other towns.

The military operation killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 900 civilians, among them scores of children, according to Palestinian officials and human rights groups.

It also destroyed thousands of homes and heavily damaged Gaza’s infrastructure.

Israel says the death toll was lower and most of the dead were Hamas fighters.

Thirteen Israelis were also killed during the fighting.

Gaza’s reconstruction is being hampered by Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which dates back to June 2007 when Hamas took control of the territory.

Since then, Israel and Egypt, which control Gaza’s only border crossing that bypasses Israel, have kept the territory of 1.5 million aid-dependent people sealed to all but essential humanitarian supplies.

Israel has insisted that the blockade is necessary to prevent Hamas from arming itself. Human-rights groups say it is a “collective punishment” that wrongly hurts ordinary civilians.

The fact-finding mission is mandated by the UN to investigate all violations of international human rights and humanitarian laws that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations conducted in Gaza.

The Nation: ‘Israel’s man of conscience ‘

Ezra Nawi | The Nation

29 June 2009

My name is Ezra Nawi. I am a Jewish citizen of Israel.

I will be sentenced on the first of July after being found guilty of assaulting two police officers in 2007 while struggling against the demolition of a Palestinian house in Um El Hir, located in the southern part of the West Bank.

Of course the policemen who accused me of assaulting them are lying. Indeed, lying has become common within the Israeli police force, military and among the Jewish settlers.

After close to 140,000 letters were sent to Israeli officials in support of my activities in the occupied West Bank, the Ministry of Justice responded that I “provoke local residents.”

This response reflects the culture of deceit that has taken over all official discourse relating to the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

After all, was I the one who poisoned and destroyed Palestinian water wells?

Was I the one who beat young Palestinian children?

Did I hit the elderly?

Did I poison the Palestinian residents’ sheep?

Did I demolish homes and destroy tractors?

Did I block roads and restrict movement?

Was I the one who prevented people from connecting their homes to running water and electricity?

Did I forbid Palestinians from building homes?

Over the past eight years, I have seen with my own two eyes hundreds of abuses such as these and exposed them to the public–therefore I am considered a provocateur. I can only say that I am proud to be a provoker.

Because I am a provoker, the police together with their allies have threatened me, beaten me and arrested me on numerous occasions. And when I continued to “provoke” them, they did not hesitate to out me as a gay man; indeed, they spread rumors among the Palestinians with whom I work that I have AIDS.

One of the reasons I have been singled out has to do with who I am. It is difficult to explain, but as a Mizrahi Jew (descended from Jewish communities in the Arab and Muslim world), a gay man and a plumber, I do not belong to the elite of Israeli society and do not fit the stereotype of the Israeli peacenik–namely, an intellectual Jew of Ashkenazi decent. Actually, the police officers who constantly arrest me and I are part of the same social strata. I was programmed like them, have a similar accent, know their jargon and our historical background is comparable. And yet, in their eyes I am on and for the other side, the Palestinian side.

This simple fact seems to disturb them so much that they have to vilify me; that is the only way their worldview will continue making sense. I threaten them precisely because I undermine the categories and stereotypes through which they understand the world.

But the policemen are only actors on this stage. The military, civil administration and the judicial system are all working with the police, and all of them together follow the commands of their masters, the Jewish settlers.

This unholy alliance is extremely dangerous, because for them the end–gaining full control of the Land of Israel–justifies the means. In order to advance this end they dehumanize the Palestinians; and because the Palestinians in their eyes are not human, everything is permitted. They can steal their land, demolish their homes, steal their water, imprison them for no reason and at times even kill them. In Hebrew we say damam mutar, taking their blood is permissible.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that the evil I confront every day in the West Bank could not have been carried out without the Israeli court system. Judge Eilata Ziskind not only mistakenly found me guilty but she instructed the court to invite a translator for the sentencing, as if I do not speak Hebrew; in her mind I, a Mizrahi Jew, am a Palestinian Arab–and Arabs are, almost by definition, guilty. My case is merely part of a pattern. All the crimes committed by the state and its proxies in the territories over the past four decades were made kosher by the Israeli courts. Therefore, the courts are just as much to blame for the ongoing cruelty.

Because I am a provoker the state subjects me to continuing harassment, and yet I have remained persistent. What strengthens me and gives me energy is the widespread and constant support I have always received from political allies. When I was beaten by settlers, when my car was stolen, when I was arrested, I never felt alone. I know that thousands of people, both in Israel and abroad, support what we in Ta’ayush (Jewish-Arab Partnership) are doing against the occupation.

“Ezra” in Hebrew means help, and I know that in times of trouble I can rely on my friends for help.