Category: Press Releases - Page 109 - International Solidarity Movement

Bradford Palestine Solidarity Group hosts Palestine Awareness Week

21 January 2010

As Palestinians continue to suffer in occupied Palestine, actions and events are being held in the UK and Europe. The University of Bradford Union (UBU), Palestine Return Centre and Let Palestinians Study are organizing Palestine Awareness Week (PAW) and remembrance in Bradford city. The week of actions coincides with the 1st Anniversary of Gaza War which has been commemorated worldwide. Events will run from 1st February to 5th February.

Palestine Awareness Week starts Monday 1st February with a live graffiti about Palestine. At 5pm there will be a film screening of Occupation 101 open to students and members of public.

The second day will be a day of cultural festivities where Palestinian food, traditional items, and free literature will be provided for people to take away. There will also be presentations of Palestinian cultural history and if possible a performance during lunch. A number of information stalls will be available featuring Interpal, PRC, PSC, United 4 Palestine, Viva Palestina Bradford, Friends of Al-Aqsa, FOSIS – Palestine, Ceasefire, NUS Black Students Campaign, CND, Amnesty International, UBU Peace Society and My Deen Today.

In the evening, we will be setting up a video link with Gaza and Viva Palestina members to talk about their experience while visiting Gaza. They are expected to provide a detailed description of the disastrous humanitarian conditions there.

On Wednesday, the event will start with a video link with IUG students from Gaza to celebrate and announce the twinning with Bradford University. This will be followed by speakers including Professor Paul Rogers and Dr. Mandy Turner from the Bradford Peace Studies department, Anas Altikriti, and other speakers. Their talks will be broken into different topics focusing on the history of the conflict and how it is affecting Palestinians lives and communities. It will end with a question and answer session.

In the evening of Thursday 4th February, an speak-out will be held where participants will be able to share poems and songs about Palestine.

On the last day of PAW we will be hosting a Friday prayer at the University Great hall followed by a fundraiser for Palestine.

Three more arrested in Ni’ilin night raid

21 January 2010

Three residents of Ni’ilin were arrested in a pre-dawn imilitary incursion into the village of Ni’ilin today. This is the 15th time such a raid was conducted in the past month in order to apprehend Palestinian anti-Wall activists. Today’s arrests are a continuation of a concerted assault on the popular struggle movement and its leadership.

Shortly after 3 am tonight, dozens of Israeli soldiers participated in a night-time incursion on the Wes Bank village of Ni’ilin as part of a prolonged arrest campaign against the village held by the army in the past month. Among those arrested was also Mustafa Amirah, a man in his 50s, who was only arrested because his son was not at home when the soldiers arrived to arrest him, and in an illegitimate and illegal attempt to apply pressure on him. During the raid soldiers broke into five additional houses, but carried no arrests in them.

Tonight’s raid is the 15th one to be held in Ni’ilin alone since 16 December. During this period the army had arrested twenty of the village’s residents in connection to anti-Wall protest. The past month’s arrestees include Ibrahim Amirah, Hassan Mousa and Zaydoun Srour, members of the village’s popular committees (the body that organizes the demonstrations), who were arrested last week. Since demonstrations began in Ni’ilin, in May of 2008, 109 of the villages residents were arrested for their involvement in anti-Wall protests.

For more details: Jonathan Pollak 0546327736

The arrests tonight are an escalation of an ongoing and extensive Israeli attempt to suppress the Palestinian popular resistance. Similar raids to the ones conducted in Ni’ilin have also been conducted in the village of alMaasara, south of Bethlehem and in the village of Bil’in – where 34 residents have been arrested in the past six months, as well as in the cities of Nablus, Ramallah and East Jerusalem.

The recent wave of arrests is also an assault on the members of the Popular Committees – the leadership of the popular struggle – who are charged with incitement when arrested. The charge of incitement, defined in military law as “an attempt, whether verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the Area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order”, is a cynic attempt to equate grassroots organizing with a hefty charge and lengthy imprisonments. Such indictments are part of the army’s strategy to use legal measures as a means of quashing the popular movement.

Among those arrested in the recent campaign are also five members of the Bil’in Popular Committee, all suspected of incitement, and include Adeeb Abu Rahmah – who is already held in detention for over six months, and Abdallah Abu Rahmah – the Bil’in Popular Committee coordinator.

Prominent grassroots activists Jamal Jum’a (East Jerusalem) and Mohammed Othman (Jayyous) of the Stop the Wall NGO, involved in anti-Wall and boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigning, have recently been released from detention after being incarcerated for long periods based on secret evidence and with no charges brought against them.

Tree-planting action to be held in At-Tuwani

Christian Peacemaker Team

23 January 2010

On Saturday 23 January Palestinians will demonstrate against the recent destruction of a grove of olive trees and plant new trees, in order to show their determination to continue accessing and cultivating their land. On the afternoon of 14 January Palestinians discovered that a family-owned olive grove in Khoruba valley had been destroyed. Twenty mature olive trees were broken at their trunks. The family believes that Israeli settlers from the Ma’on settlement and Havot Ma’on outpost are responsible for the vandalism. This is the fifth time since 1997 that settlers have destroyed the olive trees in this grove. This most recent attack on Palestinian agriculture follows a month of Israeli settler violence and harassment aimed at preventing Palestinian farmers from plowing their fields and thus earning their livelihoods.

Demonstrators will gather in At-Tuwani village and walk together to the nearby olive grove at 9:30am.

Don’t be complicit in Israel’s apartheid: boycott the 2010 Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival

A Joint Statement by PACBI and PSCABI

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the Palestinian Students‘ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI) call on students, lecturers and film-makers to boycott the 13th International Student Film Festival, scheduled for June 2010 in the city of Tel Aviv. PACBI and PSCABI believe that this festival, as with similar cultural initiatives supported by the Israeli government, is openly designed to whitewash the crimes of Israeli apartheid.

Festival organizers have highlighted the aim of the festival, noting that it is “a unique cultural and social means to presenting a different Israel to the world, [an] Israel which supports and invests in pluralism, culture and equal opportunity.” This language reveals – as did similar endeavors by the South African Apartheid regime – a cynical and systematic attempt at manipulating world opinion. It aims to obfuscate the real nature of Israeli military occupation and apartheid, and to divert attention from its ongoing war crimes by portraying Israel as a vibrant, cultural and artistic hub. It is for this reason that the festival is heavily funded and supported by the Israeli government.

In 2009, this policy of using culture to whitewash Israeli violations of international law was openly confirmed by the Israeli government with the launch of a global ‘Brand Israel’ campaign. According to an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson, the objective of this rebranding campaign, which “could include organizing film festivals” is to convey the message that “a better image for Israel and a better performance of that image is part and parcel [of] Israel‘s national security. Contrary to popular belief, national security is not just based on military power, it‘s also a strong economy and a strong image.”

This attempt to create a ‘better image for Israel’ through film, dance, music and literary events is all the more horrendous given the bloody military assault conducted in 2009 against the occupied Gaza Strip which left over 1,440 Palestinians dead, of whom 431 were children, and 5380 injured. The 1.5 million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, the overwhelming majority of whom are refugees who were expelled from their homes by Zionist forces in 1948, were subjected to three weeks of relentless Israeli state terror, whereby Israeli warplanes systematically targeted civilian areas, reducing whole neighborhoods and vital civilian infrastructure to rubble and partially destroying Gaza’s leading university and scores of schools, including several run by the UN, where civilians were taking shelter. A UN Fact Finding Mission headed by the prominent South African judge, Richard Goldstone, accused Israel of deliberately and indiscriminately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure and committing war crimes in this war of aggression.

The orders for this assault came from Tel Aviv, a place the festival organizers hope to honour as “the city that never sleeps – an even more turbulent, energetic and lively place. Could we ask for a warmer home for a Festival dedicated to young artists, to young art?” Moreover, this offensive hubris ignores the fact that the city itself is built on the remains of the homes of Palestinian refugees expelled in 1948, and to which any Palestinian ‘young artist’ from Gaza or the West Bank, let alone from the large Palestinian refugee community in exile, is barred from visiting.

Today, the siege on Gaza continues, and the festival organizers are apparently oblivious to these war crimes – preferring to pretend that a festival supported by the Israeli government can “bridg[e] cultural gaps and develop tolerance through cinema”.

It should be noted that in the lead up to the previous Tel Aviv festival in 2008, the renowned French film-maker Jean-Luc Godard canceled his participation following PACBI’s request to boycott the event. He had been due to participate as an honorary guest and to hold master classes with Israeli film students.[vi]

Because of the Festival’s open ties with the Israeli state, and its clear aim to normalize Israeli apartheid and whitewash Israel‘s persistent violations of international law and human rights in the minds of filmmakers, students and other cultural workers, PACBI and PSCABI view any participation in this event as a form of immoral complicity and call for a its complete boycott. We urge filmmakers, lectures and students to heed the Palestinian civil society call for a boycott of Israel and its complicit institutions, as they did in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. This is the bare minimal form of solidarity that we expect from any people of conscience around the world to support our struggle for freedom, justice and a meaningful peace in our region.

Eight arrested following a night raid in Ni’lin

18 January 2010

Four residents of Ni’ilin have been arrested last night during a military incursion into the West Bank village. Four others, who were not home at the time of the raid surrendered themselves in the morning. These recent arrests are a part of a concerted assault on the popular movement and the arrest of three prominent organizers from the village last Wednesday.

At around 3:00am tonight, a large military force invaded the village of Ni’ilin to stage mass arrests of residents suspected of participating in demonstrations against the Wall. During the incursion, over ten houses were raided and ransacked.

Tonight’s raid is the 13th staged in the village since 16 December. In this period alone, 16 of the village’s residents have been detained on various charges relating to anti-Wall protests, including three prominent organizers last Wednesday. Since May 2008, when demonstrations in the village began, 106 arrests of Palestinian anti-Wall activists have been made in Ni’ilin.

The arrests today are an escalation of an ongoing and extensive Israeli attempt to suppress the Palestinian popular resistance. Similar raids to the ones conducted in Ni’ilin have also been conducted in the village of Bil’in – where 34 residents have been arrested in the past six months, and the cities of Nablus, Ramallah and East Jerusalem.

Mohammed Khatib, coordinator of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee said that “The arrests and persecution will not break our spirit. They are afraid because our movement of simple, unarmed civilians sheds light on their violence, on the injustice of the occupation. No prison wall could hide this truth”