Category: In the Media - Page 75 - International Solidarity Movement

Before and after September: The struggle for Palestinian rights must intensify

1 June 2011 | Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC)

Occupied Palestine, 1 June 2011 – The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) warmly salutes the Nakba commemoration mass Palestinian marches on 15 May which rekindled a unique spirit of resistance, real hope and heroic initiative in the struggle for the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people. These marches, led mostly by young Palestinian refugees, gave new impetus to the Palestinian struggle for self determination, justice, and return of the refugees ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias and later Israel during the 1948 Nakba.

The Arab Spring of freedom, democracy and social justice that is blossoming across the region was itself largely inspired by decades of Palestinian popular resistance against Israel’s settler colonialism, occupation and apartheid. This Arab Spring is today, in turn, inspiring Palestinian mass peaceful protests, after demonstrating that when the threshold of fear is crossed by enough committed activists and when there is a clear vision of a future free of oppression and subjugation any seemingly invincible oppressor can be overcome.

The large non-violent marches by Palestinian youth in the West Bank, Gaza, Damoun, Jaffa, Maroun er-Ras (Lebanon) and Majdal Shams (Syria) have put the refugees’ right of return back at the core of the question of Palestine. By crossing hitherto impenetrable Israeli lines, real and imagined, into the occupied Golan Heights young Palestinian refugees from Syria, in particular, were able to demonstrate to the world, like their brethren in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere had done, that the will to restore rights is mightier than all the swords, including Israel’s futile nuclear arsenal and other weapons of mass destruction.

Aside from the spreading Arab peoples’ revolutions and their ability to topple some of the most brutal dictatorships anywhere, these Nakba Day return marches were buoyed by the ongoing popular resistance to Israel’s illegal wall and colonies built on occupied Palestinian territory and the fast growing global, Palestinian-led BDS movement that is scoring victories surpassing the most optimistic predictions.

The recent establishment on the May Day anniversary of the Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS (PTUC-BDS), by far the largest alliance of Palestinian workers’ and professionals’ unions is but the latest sign that beyond a near consensus in supporting BDS, Palestinian society is gradually implementing BDS tactics in all sectors as part of an effective popular and civic resistance strategy. BDS has also grown at an unparalleled rate lately. Most recently, Stop the JNF, a BDS campaign coordinated with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK, and other partners, played a key role in pressuring British Premier David Cameron to drop his honorary patron status in the racist organization.

The withdrawal of the German state-run Deutsche Bahn rail company from Israel’s illegal A1 railway project connecting Tel Aviv with Jerusalem has also set a precedent whose impact cannot be overestimated.

The continued loss of billion-dollar contracts by Veolia, the French company implicated in the illegal tram project connecting Israel’s colonies around Jerusalem with the city, is also a fresh reminder to international corporations that partnership in and profiting from Israel’s violations of international law is not only unethical and socially irresponsible; it may also cost them dearly, financially speaking.

The University of Johannesburg’s severance of ties with Israel’s Ben Gurion University over the latter’s complicity in human rights violations also broke a taboo and gave the BDS movement its most concrete academic boycott victory to date.

The growing ranks of artists and music groups boycotting Israel has also been quite heartening for the movement. In short, BDS is reaching new horizons and causing serious alarm among Israel’s establishment, as manifested in Israeli minister Ehud Barak’s warning that pressure against Israel threatens to hit “like a glacier, from all corners.”

This September will mark the 20th anniversary of the start of the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” that is widely recognized as a total failure, by any objective standard. This sham process has served as a cover for Israel’s intensive colonization of Palestinian lands, continued denial of Palestinian basic rights, and gradual ethnic cleaning of Palestinians, while simultaneously giving a false impression of peacemaking. In this context, the BNC welcomes the recognition of a great majority of states around the world that the Palestinian right to statehood and freedom from Israeli occupation are long overdue and should no longer to be held hostage to fanatically biased US “diplomacy” in defense of Israeli expansionism. However, recognition of Palestinian statehood is clearly insufficient, on its own, in bringing about a real end to Israel’s occupation and colonial rule. Neither will it end Israel’s decades-old system of legalized racial discrimination, which fits the UN definition of apartheid, or allow the millions of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin from which they were violently uprooted and exiled.

Diplomatic recognition must result in protection of the inalienable right to self-determination of the entire Palestinian people represented by a democratized and inclusive PLO that represents not just Palestinians under occupation, but also the the exiled refugees, the majority of the Palestinian people, as well as the discriminated citizens of Israel.. For it to go beyond symbolism, this recognition must be a prelude to effective and sustained sanctions against Israel aimed at bringing about its full compliance with its obligations under international law. As shown in the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, as well as in the current struggles for freedom and justice in the Arab region, world governments do not turn against a patently illegal and immoral regime of oppression simply on ethical grounds; economic interests and hegemonic power dynamics are far weightier in their considerations. In fact, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s militant and war-mongering speech before the US Congress, coupled with US President Barack Obama’s latest humiliating submission to Israel’s will, shows beyond doubt that anyone still holding on to the hope that Washington is capable or willing to contribute to building a just peace in our region is delusional.

The key lesson learned from South Africa is that, in order for world governments to end their complicity with Israel’s grave and persistent violations of human rights and international law, they must be compelled to do so through mass, well organized grassroots pressure by social movements and other components of civil society. In this context, BDS has proven to be the most potent and promising strategy of international solidarity with the Palestinian people in our struggle for self determination, freedom, justice and equality.

In light of the above, and inspired by the will and the power of the people which have given rise to the Arab spring, the BNC calls upon people of conscience and international solidarity groups to proceed with building a mass BDS movement in the US and elsewhere in the world’s most powerful countries before and after September. Only such a mass movement can ensure that whatever diplomatic recognition transpires at the UN in September on Palestinian statehood will advance the rights of the Palestinian people and raise the price of Israel’s occupation, colonialism and apartheid by further isolating it and those complicit in its crimes. A mass solidarity movement that can hold elected officials, especially in the US, accountable to the people, rather than to a Zionist lobby serving Israel’s colonial and belligerent agenda that directly conflicts with the interests of the American and other peoples, is the only hope for a comprehensive and sustainable peace based on justice.

Why June 5 matters

30 May 2011 | Palestine News Network – Joe Catron

I gasped as the first bullet struck a young man standing a few paces ahead of me. Watching him crumple to the ground, I struggled for breath and fought my natural urge to run. “Allahu Akbar!”, the crowd roared around me. “Yalla, Shebab!” A half-dozen other men – none of whom could have been older than twenty, and most of whom looked much younger – rushed forward, retrieving their fallen compatriot and carrying him quickly to a waiting ambulance. A thin trail of blood marked their path, ending in a small, dark puddle where the first of the day’s many gunshot victims had fallen.

Thousands of refugees and other Palestinians had gathered at the Erez Crossing in the northern Gaza Strip. An imposing military structure of massive concrete barriers and machine gunners’ towers, the border wall separates Gaza Strip residents from the 78% of Palestine seized by the State of Israel in 1948. For the two-thirds of residents who are refugees, it also prevents their return to the homes from which they and their families were forcibly expelled that year. Palestinians throughout the world remember this Nakba, or catastrophe, every May 15 with gatherings, demonstrations, and resolutions to someday return.

But this year would be different. Inspired by the popular uprisings against dictatorships across the Arab region, Palestinians were resolved to commemorate the 63rd anniversary of the ethnic cleansing of 711,000 people from their country by making history, rather than remembering it.

On the morning of May 15, Nakba Day, tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered around the borders of Israel and its occupied territories, determined to march to the homes and homeland denied to them for generations. In Beit Hanoun, they walked from buses forced to stop kilometers from the crossing by the sheer numbers of the crowd. Many remained at checkpoints preceding the crossing. Others pressed forward, their eyes fixed on the distant gate.

The Israeli response came quickly. Bullet after bullet penetrated the crowd of unarmed demonstrators, each one finding its target. Artillery shells pounded the sandy dunes around us, and after several hours, tear gas canisters hissed through the air. Over a hundred people were hospitalized with serious injuries, while elsewhere on the border, a 17-year old boy was killed by artillery fire. The rest of us escaped with tear gas inhalation, cuts from exploding concrete and shrapnel, and bloodstains from the limbs, torsos, and faces shattering around us.

Yet the demonstrators kept coming. After every retreat from gas, gunfire, or the thunderous boom of artillery, there was another surge. Only when the sheer brutality of the Israeli forces had sufficiently depleted the number of those capable of pressing forward did the strength of the crowd begin to wane.

And somehow, the overall mood remained one of measured, but tangible joy. The victory sign was everywhere, and smiles were common not only on the runners ferrying injured marchers to medical attention, but also on the young men and women they carried. Everyone seemed to intuitively sense that they were doing something historic, closing one chapter in the long, painful struggle for Palestinian freedom and opening another one that offered more hope for a happy ending.

Elsewhere, the state violence inflicted upon peaceful marchers was even worse. At the border between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights, Israeli gunfire killed four of them, while in Lebanon, ten suffered the same fate. Hundreds, if not thousands, were seriously injured.

But like the returnees in Beit Hanoun, those from Lebanon and Syria refused to be dissuaded by military repression. Dozens of the latter poured through Israeli barriers, spending hours in the welcoming villages of the occupied Golan Heights before leaving under the protection of their Syrian hosts. One, Hassan Hijazi, made it all the way to the Jaffa home from which his family was exiled in 1948. Before surrendering to Israeli police, the 28-year old told journalists, “I wasn’t afraid and I’m not afraid. On the bus to Jaffa, I sat next to Israeli soldiers. I realized that they were more afraid than I was.”

Hijazi’s seven million fellow Palestinian refugees aren’t afraid either. On Sunday, June 6, they will return to the borders created to exclude them, and perhaps beyond. Like the 63rd Nakba Day, this 44th anniversary of the Naksa, or setback – Israel’s 1967 occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and subsequent expulsion of 300,000 additional refugees – promises a commemoration like none before it.

June 5 will not determine the outcome of the Palestinian movement for return. That outcome was already determined by the decades of grassroots organizing and popular struggle that culminated in the historic mobilization of May 15.

Its finality can be glimpsed in grievances by Western media like Reuters that “[t]he Palestinians who forced their way across Israel’s border on Sunday turned back the clock on the Middle East conflict, putting centre stage the refugee question that many believed would be negotiated away,” and confirmed by the sweaty, stammered insistence of Zionists like Benjamin Netanyahu that “it’s not going to happen. Everybody knows it’s not going to happen.”

Those suddenly forced to defend not only the brutal excesses of their system, but the very racism of ethnic cleansing, exclusion, and apartheid upon which its existence relies, find themselves in a situation both uncomfortable and unprecedented. They have no reason to expect it to become easier in the coming months, as further waves of returning refugees push their fight for justice closer to the center of the world’s attention.

But June 5 will shape the outline of this next chapter in the Palestinian saga: its intensity, its length, and what follows it. Was May 15 a singular moment, or perhaps one suited for occasional repetition? Or was it the harbinger of a sustained, consistent struggle to come, a Third Intifada simultaneously challenging Israel from within, on every border, and across the globe?

Palestinians have amply demonstrated their ability to resist occupation over the long haul, while the global solidarity network supporting them has reacted capably to atrocities like the slaughters of 1,400 Palestinians during Operation Cast Lead and nine passengers on the first Freedom Flotilla. If these two movements can organize and mobilize as effectively now, seizing a unique opportunity to take the offensive and keep it, the Palestinian freedom struggle could prove a quicker and more decisive one than many of us had dared to hope.

Meeting senseless aggression face-to-face

25 May 2011 | Gershon Baskin, The Jerusalem Post

A recent trip to the weekly demonstration in Nabi Saleh shed a new light on the IDF and its operations.

For months I have been hearing about disproportionate use of force by the army against weekly demonstrations in Nabi Saleh – a small pastoral Palestinian village northwest of Ramallah. Last week, I watched several YouTube videos filmed by activists in the village, providing vivid visual images of the forceful arrests of protesters by the army. I was disturbed because all of the clips showed how the demonstrations ended; none showed how they began. I was convinced that there must have been stone-throwing by the shabab in the village which provoked the violent army responses. So I decided I had to see for myself.

When I contacted the Israeli activists who regularly participate in the Nabi Saleh demonstrations, I was warned that it was dangerous and that there was no way to know in advance when we would get home. They also warned that there was a high possibility we would be arrested. I am 55 years old, and have been demonstrating since the age of 12. I have been in dangerous situations before, and was prepared for another one.

On Friday morning I was picked up from French Hill at 10:30. We drove on 443 until the Shilat junction, and turned toward the West Bank. We drove off the beaten settlers’ track through the Palestinian villages in the area. We then turned off the road and parked in an olive grove. From there, we began a trek of about an hour through the hills, finally arriving, after a steep climb, at the edge of the village. Every Friday morning the army seals off the area and prevents entry and exit for all.

The 500 residents of Nabi Saleh, all from the Tamimi family, are demonstrating against the continuous encroachment of the Helamish settlement on their land. Since 2009, Nabi Saleh has been demonstrating every Friday.

In that time, some 200 villagers have been injured, more than 40 percent of them children.

More than 15% of the villagers have been jailed, and about 10 homes face demolition orders by the IDF; the village is located in Area “C,” which, according to Oslo, is under full Israeli control (62% of the West Bank is in Area C). Nabi Saleh has not received the same fame as Bil’in, whose six-year weekly struggle continues with a great deal of international attention.

We arrived in the center of the village and were greeted warmly by the residents. In all, there were about 20 Israelis and 20 internationals, along with some 60 locals – boys and girls, men and women. When the noon prayers ended, everyone assembled in the village square. Carrying flags and chanting of freedom, we marched toward the main road, some 800 meters from the village entrance. After less than 100 meters, the army launched its first barrage of tear gas. Fired at the crowd from at least three points, dozens of canisters exploded all around us. I have experienced tear gas, but this was more potent than anything I had known. It lingers in the air, burns the skin, and stings your eyes so sharply that it’s impossible to open them; it penetrates your lungs and makes it hard to breathe. I ran as far away as I could, only to face another gas canister exploding next to me.

For eight hours, this went on. The army surrounded the village and gradually moved in toward the center. The crowd would reassemble in the central square next to the grocery store.

There they would hand out pieces of onion to breathe in and alcohol pads to combat the effects of the gas. Palestinian Red Crescent volunteers were there to help all who needed medical care.

At one stage the gas got into my eyes, and the pain was excruciating. I was brought into someone’s house, where I was fanned with a piece of cardboard. The owner of the house, Abed, a man of about 40 who used to work in construction in Tel Aviv, gently wiped my face and around my eyes with an alcohol pad. His wife then came and applied a slice of cold raw potato to my eye, which relieved the pain. They have certainly become experts in dealing with this.

Eventually the troops, which comprised about 50 soldiers, command cars, and jeeps from the Border Police and the paratroopers, took over the center of the village. Taking command of several houses around the main square, they set up command positions on the rooftops.

At this point, the demonstrators were sitting next to the grocery store occasionally chanting songs and slogans against the occupation.

Many of the chants were Palestinian versions of the chants from Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Not a stone was thrown at the soldiers, although some had been thrown from a distance earlier as the army entered the village; an act of anger more than any real aggression. The villagers are committed to and largely stick to a strategy of non-violence, even in the face of horrible aggression from the soldiers.

As someone who served in the army and was involved for years in the education of officers, I was amazed at the abuse of power, the lack of any real purpose, and the pure show of force for force’s sake demonstrated by our soldiers. There is absolutely no purpose to this aggression, and nothing to be gained by it.

At about 5 p.m. the brigade commander, with the rank of colonel in the paratroopers, and his counterpart from the Border Police decided they would declare the village a closed military area and announced that all had to disperse. I approached him at that point and appealed to his rationality – what is the point of arresting everyone, I argued? The answer I got was an order to move away.

Ten minutes later, they threw some 50 percussion grenades at the dispersing crowd, which stun your senses and your ears. I made a strategic decision to take out my Government Press Office-issued press card so that I could continue to document what I witnessed. I filmed throughout the day and posted segments of what I saw on my Facebook site. After the arrests of 11 Israelis and one foreigner, the army vehicles left the village once again, leaving about a dozen Border Police and paratroopers in charge. Standing under a mulberry tree, three paratroopers began picking the ripe berries and eating them. I approached them with the film running and asked who had given them permission to eat from that tree. Do you open refrigerators and eat the food when you enter the Palestinians’ homes uninvited, I wanted to know? Clearly embarrassed, they turned away in shame.

The residents of Nabi Saleh treated us to remarkable hospitality. Although exhausted from the Friday ritual of military attack every week for two years, they welcomed us into their homes.

A final show of force from the army came in the form of the “skunk.” After all had ended, the army came back into the center of the village and sprayed a ton of the most putrid-smelling liquid that any genius Israeli chemist could concoct.

They completely doused one of the houses that had offered us refuge, food and drink, and poured the remaining liquid on the village square. The odor was the worst I have ever smelled. In a sign of solidarity, villagers, Israelis and foreigners spent the next hour washing the entire house and the village square.

Filled with a spirit of solidarity, morality and justice, the 60 remaining demonstrators were invited to another villager’s home for a latenight dinner. The host family laid out salads, vegetables and rice. The villagers told us how much they appreciated our presence because, as they said, when Israeli activists are not there, the brutality of the army is far worse. What I had witnessed was more than enough to make me feel ashamed and angry, and committed more than ever to ending this occupation, which forces our children to run away to India and other countries in order to forget what they did during their army service.

The writer is the co-CEO of IPCRI, the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information and founder of the Center for Israeli Progress.

Historian writes of ‘pleasure’ at murder of pro-Palestinian activist

18 May 2011 | Harriet Sherman Guardian

I was sent a link this week to a piece published in the Jewish Chronicle by historian Geoffrey Alderman, the opening sentence of which I found pretty shocking.

Under the headline This Was No Peace Activist, Alderman wrote:

“Few events – not even the execution of Osama bin Laden – have caused me greater pleasure in recent weeks than news of the death of the Italian so-called ‘peace activist’ Vittorio Arrigoni.”

Arrigoni, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, was murdered in Gaza last month after being abducted by Islamic extremists. He was strangled with a plastic cord. Hamas subsequently killed those responsible for Arrigoni’s death.

His murder, wrote Alderman, “was immediately pounced upon by the western media as an affront to the civilised world”. This is indeed the case; many newspapers – including the Guardian – ran stories and profiles describing Arrigoni’s commitment to the Palestinian cause and the extremist stance of those who killed him.

But, wrote Alderman, “the truth is very different. Vittorio Arrigoni, a disciple of the International Solidarity Movement, had travelled to Gaza to assist in the breaking of the Israeli naval blockade. As a supporter of Hamas he was a consummate Jew-hater.”

He said Arrigoni’s Facebook page – in Italian – contained “explicit anti-Jewish imagery”.

I asked Alderman – who has occasionally contributed to the Guardian – whether he regretted recording his “pleasure” at Arrigoni’s death. “It’s still my view,” he told me on the phone from London. “He was a Jew-hater like Adolf Hitler. Yes, he deserved to die for being a Jew-hater. I rejoiced in the death of a Jew-hater. I have no regrets.”

Jeff Halper, an Israeli activist and academic, who knew Arrigoni well, said Alderman’s charges against him were “outrageous”.

“Sometimes things are so outrageous there simply isn’t a response. Vik [Arrigoni] was unique. He was political and he had strong opinions. But the idea that he would differentiate between someone Jewish and someone non-Jewish – there has never been a hint of that.”

Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, told me he had no qualms about publishing the piece. “I have no problem at all with publishing it. I don’t agree with [Alderman], it’s not my view – it’s his.”

He rejected the description of Arrigoni as a “peace activist”. “He was a member of the ISM, for God’s sake. That’s not peace activism, that’s hard core Palestinian terror.”

Neta Golan, an Israeli founder of the ISM, denied the organisation supported terror attacks or backed Hamas. “The ISM supports the avenue of non-violent and popular resistance,” she told me. “It is a grassroots group, and we will work with anyone who wants to organise non-violent resistance. The ISM does not have a position on internal Palestinian politics.”

She also rejected suggestions that Arrigoni was anti-Semitic. “It was so obvious he wasn’t a racist. Absolutely he was not anti-Semitic.”

I never met Arrigoni and I don’t know what his views (if any) on Jews, as opposed to his views on Israel, were. Attempts to conflate opposition to Israeli policies with anti-Semitism are not new.

Scenes of Palestinian militants handing out sweets to celebrate suicide bombings or other deadly attacks are familiar – and sickening.

Now Alderman’s rejoicing in the death of a pro-Palestinian activist seems to me a new and repugnant development.

Bloody Nakba Day; 16 killed, 400 injured as Israeli troops attack protesters

16 May 2011 | Palestine News Network

As protests commemorating Nakba ended on Sunday night sources confirmed that Israeli military attacks on those protests left 16 killed and 400 injured. Israeli troops attacked Nakba protests in several parts of the West Bank, Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, in addition to the Lebanese and Syrian borders.

Maroun al-Ras:
10 Palestinian refugees were killed and some 80 others injured when Israeli soldiers opened fire at protesters at the border fence near Maroun al-Ras at the Lebanese borders. The Lebanese army intervened after Israeli soldiers approached the borders with tanks, witnesses said that Lebanese soldiers convinced people to go back for fear from of more casualties. Lebanon filed a complaint to the UN because Israeli soldiers and tanks entered the Lebanese side of the borders violating the truce after the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon.

Majdal Shams :
Five civilians were killed and At least 30 more were injured when Israeli troops stationed at the Syrian borders opened fire at protesters form the Syrian border village of Majdal Shams. Israeli sources said that protesters tried to destroy the border fence and soldiers opened fire at them. The army announced the area a closed military zone.

Sources talked about four killed during the clashes between protesters and troops. Israeli sources said that the protesters managed to go through the border fence into the occupied Golan heights.

Ramallah:
In Ramallah city central West Bank, 160 people were injured among them two in critical conditions when soldiers fired live rounds and tear gas at protesters who gathered at the Qalandiya checkpoint separating Ramallah from East Jerusalem. Witnesses told PNN that soldiers were targeting the peaceful protesters by shooting directly at them.

Later troops and undercover soldiers managed to arrest five Palestinians during the clashes between local youth and soldiers who attacked today protest.

The Gaza Strip:
One civilian were reported killed by Israeli fire in addition 86 were injured among them children and one journalist in critical conditions, when Israeli tanks and troops shelled a protest organized to commemorate the Nakaba in Beit Hannon in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

Bethlehem:
Six civilians were arrested, one them injured, when troops attacked Nakba protest in the village of al-Walajeh, between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The protest started near the UNRWA school in the village where people set fire to a tent symbolizing that this is the last year they stay as refugees.

Later the protesters marched towards the old village of al-Walajeh which was destroyed in 1948 to make way for the creation of Israel. Troops attacked protesters as they reached the green line beat up one man and arrested him in addition to three others. Those arrested were identified as Ahmad Abu Khyara, Ahamd al-A’raj, Baseil al=A’raj, and Mazin Qumsyia. Later troops invaded the village and searched homes then arrested one American and one German journalist.

Hebron/Jerusalem
Clashes were reported between local youth and Israeli soldiers who attacked Nakba protests in Hebron, southern West Bank and East Jerusalem. PNN sources reported clashes in the old city of Jerusalem, Sho’fat refugee camp and Sliwan near the old city. Meanwhile Israeli police and troops did not allow Palestinians from 1948 areas to enter Jerusalem fearing Nakba protests.