Category: Press Releases - Page 124 - International Solidarity Movement

Qaryut residents successfully remove a roadblock

5 November 2009

The villagers of Qaryut are facing a new weekend tradition: the Friday removing of a roadblock, repeatedly re-instated by the Israeli army upon every attempt to clear the road connecting the village with Ramallah and Nablus.

The morning of Friday, 5 November, saw approximately 200 villagers join forces in clearing a large earth mound that blocks Qaryut’s passage to Road 60, the route for travelling between Ramallah and Nablus. Although 15 soldiers, 2 Israeli police vehicles and one car of settlers (who halted to observe from Road 60) were awaiting the villagers’ arrival when they marched down to the roadblock, the action remained peaceful to the end. The soldiers and border guards had initially taken up position to defend the block, however they had no choice but to move back in the face of the large and determined crowd.

While a group of mostly adult males remained at the road block, clearing it with spades, pick-axes and other basic tools, the rest converged between the roadblock and route 60 where a collective prayer was held, in which some 100 participated. Following this, the boys of the village played music and danced the Dabke, a traditional Palestinian dance.

The road block had been created 2 days earlier, by Israeli forces armed with heavy machinery, after the village had already removed it once. It was about 4 meters tall and consisted of mammoth amounts of earth in addition to several huge boulders, strategically placed on a small dirt road where the mountains that frame Qaryut come to their nearest.

Blocking off the direct access to route 60 meant that travel times were increased by approximately 30 minutes going to or from Ramallah or Nablus, heavily infringing on the daily lives of commuting workers and students attending schools and universities in either of those cities. Despite the lack of proper equipment, the villagers of Qaryut managed to overcome this monumental task by coming together as a community and using their collective strength.

After some four hours of hard work, the first car passed through the narrow gap to wild cheers and applause from villagers and internationals alike. Fridays successful protest in Qaryut demonstrates once more that despite the overwhelming might of the illegal Israeli occupation, the people of Palestine can stand up to their oppressors when they take collective action against the injustices bestowed upon them.

The action was accompanied by members of ISM, CPT, IWPS and Project Hope as well as Israeli anti-apartheid activists. Unsurprisingly, the Israeli Occupation Force returned later the same day to re-establish the roadblock, but the village of Qaryut is determined to stand up for its rights and plans to return next Friday to once again take down this illegal structure.

Action Alert: Write the LA Times in support of Bil’in

4 November 2009

The LA Times has published a great article (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-nonviolence4-2009nov04,0,226753.story?page=1&track=rss) about Bil’in and the popular struggle in today’s edition (November 4th).

As past experience teach us, an assault by Israel’s supporter is sure to follow immediately, and be directed at both the paper itself, its editors and the reporter.

These attacks are beyond mere nuisance – they apply real pressure on those targeted, and often dissuade major media from covering Palestinian issues in an objective and truthful manner.

Media coverage generally and articles such as this are of great importance for us here on the ground, and we would like to do everything within our power to counter the attacks that threaten them.

I urge you to dedicate just a few minutes of your time and send a supportive letter to the LA Times and to the reporter, Richard Boudreaux.

The emails to send letters to are, respectively:
letters@latimes.com and boudreaux@latimes.com

Original letters are of course better, but also feel free to use or model yours after the sample letter attached below.

Please bear in mind that letters to the editor in the LA Times have a word limit of 150, and must include your full name, mailing address, daytime phone number, and e-mail address. This information is seen only by the letters editors and is not used for any commercial purpose.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear LA Times,

I was very pleased to see Richard Boudreaux’s article “Palestinians who see nonviolence as their weapon” in your November 4th edition.

As readers, we have gotten so used to seeing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict solely through the perspective of the barrel of a gun, that any civic engagement in it erroneously appears marginal and unimportant to most audiences.

This misguided view of the Palestinian struggle is too often the one that dominates the media’s discourse. Most Palestinians, like most people everywhere else, are not gun-toting fanatics hell bent on violence, but rather are ordinary people determined to attain freedom and justice from under an unbearable military occupation. Articles like Boudreax’s, which depicts Palestinian resistance, as it is – multifaceted and diverse – are as important as they are rare.

I hope the LA Times will continue to defy the governing notions in the media about Israel-Palestine, and publish articles true to the reality on the ground.

Yours,

Eleven organizations demand that Mets cancel Citi Field fundraiser for Israeli settlers

Adalah NY

4 November 2009

Eleven organizations from the US, Palestine and Israel have called on baseball’s New York Mets to cancel a November 21st dinner at the Caesars Club at Citi Field for the Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund. The dinner is a fundraiser for Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank City of Hebron. In a letter sent to the Mets on November 3rd, the groups said, “The New York Mets will be facilitating activities that directly violate international law and the Obama administration’s call for a freeze in settlement construction, and that actively promote racial discrimination, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes in Hebron.” Seven hundred Israeli settlers, living amidst 150,000 Palestinians in Hebron, are expanding their hold on the historic old city by driving out the Palestinian residents.

The groups added that “It would be a tragic irony for an event funding Israeli settlers’ violent actions and discriminatory policies against Palestinians to be held at Caesars Club which, according to the Mets, “sits directly on top of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda,” which was named “in honor of Jackie Robinson, the… great American who broke baseball’s color barrier.” The Mets and Major League Baseball promote Robinson’s legacy, including Robinson’s value of “Justice: Treating all people fairly, no matter who they are.” Mets owner Fred Wilpon has explained in the past that, as a 16 year-old, meeting Jackie Robinson was an experience that never left him. “As a kid, a nothing, he treated me with all of that dignity that he treated everyone else in his life.”

On the Hebron Fund webpage, clicking on the symbol which says “Give to Hebron” leads to a donations page on the website for the Jewish Community of Hebron which says, among other things, “keep Hebron Jewish for the Jewish people.” In a report on Hebron, the Israeli human rights organizations B’Tselem and ACRI have labeled the demands of Hebron’s settlers as “racist.” Hebron settlement leader Moshe Levinger, praised in a Hebron Fund dinner video, has been quoted saying,“The Arabs know to behave like good boys around us.” Hebron Fund Executive Director Yossi Baumol also made very derogatory comments about Arabs in a 2007 interview.

The signers of the letter include Adalah-NY, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Brooklyn For Peace, Coalition of Women for Peace (Israel), CODEPINK Women for Peace, Gush Shalom (Israel), Jews Against the Occupation-NYC, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (Palestine), US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and WESPAC Foundation. The letter was cced and sent to Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Middle East Envoy George Mitchell, who has a history of involvement with Major League Baseball, and Rachel Robinson, Jackie Robinson’s wife.

The letter explains that reviewing last year’s and this year’s Hebron Fund dinner shows that some dinner honorees support violence and terrorizing Palestinians. In 1990, Noam Arnon, who is to be honored at the dinner, called three Israelis who were convicted of killing three Arabs and maiming two Palestinian mayors in car bombings “heroes.” In a video on the Hebron Fund website, 2008 dinner honoree Myrna Zisman pays tribute to Hebron settler Yifat Alkoby. Alkoby became famous worldwide in 2006 when she was videotaped in Hebron terrorizing and calling a Palestinian woman and girl “whores” who were caged inside their own home as protection from settler attacks. In another video featuring 2008 dinner honorees, three children who appear to be the honorees’ children are briefly shown holding guns and smiling.

All Israeli settlements violate international law, according to a broad international consensus. The Hebron Fund’s dinner invitation says, “Join us in support of Hebron and in protest of today’s building freeze in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].” In a September, 2008 radio interview, the Hebron Fund’s Yossi Baumol explained, “There are real facts on the ground that are created by people helping the Hebron Fund and coming to our dinners.”

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius recently highlighted the Hebron Fund and noted that, “critics of Israeli settlements question why American taxpayers are supporting indirectly, through the exempt contributions, a process that the government condemns. A search of IRS records identified 28 U.S. charitable groups that made a total of $33.4 million in tax-exempt contributions to settlements and related organizations between 2004 and 2007.” The Hebron Fund has been the subject of complaints to the I.R.S. regarding its tax-exempt status. The complaints request investigations of allegations that it raises funds for the development of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli organization Gush Shalom recently urged the National Lawyers Guild, an American organization, to encourage American tax authorities to strip US non-profits that support Israeli settlements of their tax-exempt status.

A protest vigil will be held in Sheikh Jarrah following a settler takeover of a Palestinian home

For Immediate Release:

Settlers occupy the al-Kurd home in Sheikh Jarrah

Wednesday, 4 November 2009 at 7pm: A protest vigil will be held outside the al-Kurd home in Sheikh Jarrah.

Following a settler takeover of a Palestinian home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, the al-Kurd family and international and Israeli solidarity groups will hold a vigil.

Israeli settlers take over Palestinian home

Tuesday morning at around 9.30am, a group of settlers took over a portion of the al-Kurd family home. The 40 settlers, accompanied by private armed security and Israeli police forces, entered a section of the home, threw out the family’s belongings and locked themselves in.

The take-over came after an appeal submitted by the family’s lawyer was rejected by the District Court this morning. In their appeal, the Palestinian family was challenging an earlier court decision that deemed a section of the house illegal and ordered that the keys be given to settlers. The settlers proceeded to enter the house, while the court did not grant them the right to enter the property.

The al-Kurd home was built in 1956. An addition to the house was built 10 years ago, but the family was not allowed to inhabit the section because the municipality refused to grant them a building permit.

The al-Kurds have become the fourth Sheikh Jarrah family whose house (or part of it) has been occupied by settlers in the last year. So far, 60 people have been left homeless. In total, 28 families living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located directly north of the Old City, face imminent eviction from their homes.

In a strategic plan, settlers have been utilizing discriminatory laws to expand their presence in Occupied East Jerusalem. Palestinians, who face difficulties in acquiring building permits from the municipality, are often left with no legal recourse for extending their homes to accompany their growing families. The Israeli authorities exercise their abilities to demolish and evict Palestinian residents, while ignoring building violations from the Israeli population in East Jerusalem. Visibly unequal practices make it possible for settlers to move into a home where it was declared illegal for Palestinian residents to inhabit.

Israeli military stops work to bring electricity to At-Tuwani; confiscates building materials

Christian Peacemaker Team

30 October 2009

At-Tuwani – On Friday 30 October, the Israeli army forcibly stopped the electrical work of the village of At-Tuwani, located in the South Hebron hills. Officers from the Israeli District Coordinating Office (DCO), the branch of the Israeli army responsible for the administration of Palestinian civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, detained Mohammed Awayesa, a Palestinian worker from Ad-Dhahiriya and confiscated materials and tools being used for the electrical work. The items confiscated included a truck, a mechanized lift, and a large spool of electrical wire. No written orders were produced for the detention, confiscations, or work stoppage.

Even though the army has given verbal permission to the community leaders to carry on the work, the DCO told the Palestinian workers and villagers that continued work on the electrical lines was illegal without a written permission from the DCO. The DCO took Awayesa and the materials to an Israeli DCO office near Al Fahs, south of Hebron. The DCO released the man but is still holding the confiscated material. .

Despite a recent visit by Tony Blair, special middle east envoy of the Quartet, where the former Prime Minister assured villagers from At-Tuwani that the DCO gave oral permission to carry out the electricity construction work , the community struggle to bring electricity to the area has been met with ongoing interruptions by the DCO. (see AT-TUWANI: At-Tuwani hosts former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair to address Israeli occupation and violence in the southern West Bank)

On 28 July 2009, members of the DCO issued a demolition order for six newly constructed electricity pylons in the village of At-Tuwani (see AT-TUWANI URGENT ACTION: Demand that Quartet pressure Israel to revoke demolition order for electricity pylons).

On 25 May 2009, the DCO entered the village of At-Tuwani and ordered villagers to halt construction work on new electricity pylons in the village. No written orders were delivered. (see AT-TUWANI URGENT ACTION: Demand that Israeli occupying forces allow At-Tuwani to bring electricity into their village).