From Um Salamuna to Artas- Big demo against the wall this Friday
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
23 May 2007
This coming Friday, May 25th the residents of the south of Bethlehem area will hold a large demonstration against the wall which separates them from Bethlehem and steals their lands.
This week the struggle reached the village of Artas, near Al Hader. It happened when the construction crews reached the fertile lands of the village. The reason for the planned route of the wall is the planned construction of two new neighborhoods in the settlement stretching from it’s current border to the route of the wall.
Early Sunday morning the bulldozers destroyed an entire orchard of apricot trees in spite of attempts by villagers and other activists who slept on the land. Occupation soldiers continued their work and ate sandwiches as farmers wept at the site of their ancestral land being ripped apart.
(Video and photos here: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/05/21/in-the-belly-of-the-wailing-democracy-called-israel/)
The following day, the villagers responded by holding a demonstration on the land where the trees once stood. Private security guards employed at the site by the Ministry of Defense shot live ammunition at demonstrators and journalists. Israeli soldiers arrested 3 Palestinians including the owner of the land on trumped up charges of assault. As of 3pm today (Wednesday), they are still in Israeli custody. Palestinian Minister of Information Dr. Mustafa Barghouti was also attacked during this demonstration.
(Story and photos here: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/05/21/guards-shoot-at-journalists/)
The popular committee against the wall and settlements of the south Bethlehem area invites you to join the protest march against the wall of racist separation and land theft. The demonstration will begin at Um Salamuna around noon, with a soccer game on the path of the wall, and will conclude at the village of Artas, where Palestinians from the village will continue to resist the Apartheid Wall and destruction of their land.
For more information, contact:
ISM Media Office, 0599-943-157, 0542-103-657
On the morning of Tuesday, May 22. two human rights workers (HRWs) witnessed a young Palestinian man being detained at the Israeli soldier post in the Tel Rumeida district of Hebron.
The Israeli soldier at the post started to film the two HRWs with his camera-phone, directly in front of he HRWs’ faces.
One of the two soldiers was very aggressive towards the Palestinian detainee from the beginning. The soldier took the detainee’s ID and made him lift his shirt. After about 20 minutes, one of the HRWs tried to negotiate with the soldiers in order to make the process faster. The soldiers refused to talk. One of them said that he would only talk if the HRWs shut off the camera. About 5 minutes later, two sisters of the detained man came and stood with him. One of the HRWs tried to talk to the soldier but the soldier pushed him with his body and told him to go 5 meters away.
The Palestinian man refused to remain seated on the cold ground, causing the soldier to call for backup. Two more soldiers arrived and began shouting at the Palestinian man, handcuffed him, and took him to the military base in front of the Tel Rumeida settlement. The sisters of the Palestinian man tried to follow them. One of the sisters was pushed by a border policeman. The soldier that initiated the whole incident talked to the regular Israeli police that just arrived and accused one of the HRWs of having disturbed him during the arrest.
The HRWs explained to the police that they had recorded the incident. The policeman asked that if the army or the human rights workers would like to make a complaint they should go to the police station. One of the soldiers that came for backup claimed that, according to the first soldier, the Palestinian man had refused to lift his shirts of his back but this was a false accusation and the video footage proves it.
The two sisters of the detained Palestinian man said his name is Arif Salhap. The human rights workers were told by the Palestinian women that Arif refused to kneel in front of the soldier because Muslims only kneel to Allah.
It is time for our people to once again demand that the silence be broken on the injustices faced by the Palestinian people resulting from the Israeli occupation.
On June 10th, the national coalition known as the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation will be spearheading a march and rally to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
We, the signatories of this appeal, ask that Black America again take a leading role in this effort as well as the broader work to bring attention to this 40 year travesty of justice.
United Nations resolutions have called for the Israeli withdrawal, yet the Israeli government, with the backing of the USA, has ignored them. The Israeli government has appropriated Palestinian land in open defiance of international law and overwhelming international condemnation.
Within the USA anyone who speaks in favor of Palestinian rights and justice is immediately condemned as being allegedly anti-Israel (and frequently allegedly anti-Semitic), shutting down legitimate discussion. A case in point can be seen in the current furor surrounding former President Jimmy Carter who was criticized for his assertion in his best-selling book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, that Israeli obstructionism lies at the root of the failure to achieve a just Palestinian/Israeli settlement.
As Nobel prizewinner Archbishop Desmond Tutu has written, “People are scared in the US, to say ‘wrong is wrong,’ because the pro-Israeli lobby is powerful–very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists.”
Many of those who most outspokenly agree with President Carter and Archbishop Tutu are American Jews. And many American Jews, including the national organization Jewish Voice for Peace, will be among those rallying for Palestinian rights on June 10th – as will many other Americans, including member groups of the leading anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice.
Leaders from Black America have repeatedly and historically been among the most outspoken proponents of justice for the Palestinian people. Our leaders have defended the Palestinian people’s right to full self-determination and an end to the Occupation as central to peace in the region. Our leaders have not criticized the Jewish people but they have expressed outrage at the Israeli government that collaborated with the apartheid South African government (including in the development of weapons of mass destruction) and emulated South Africa’s treatment of its Black majority in its own treatment of the Palestinian people.
As we struggle to build our country’s support for Palestinian human rights, we widen the door for both Arab and Black Americans to deal with the issues that join them together, as well as those that separate them. We will help to energize – and to heal – both communities.
June tenth and Juneteenth: will our struggles lead the way to a new emancipation of others? Our own integrity as a people, let alone our own experience with massive injustice and oppression, demand that we step forward, speak out, and insist on a change in US policy towards the Palestinian people. Since when have an illegally occupied people been wrong in demanding and fighting for their human rights and land? Since when have such people and their cause not been worthy of our support?
* * * * * * *
Signatories:
Salih Booker, former Executive Director of Africa Action
Khephra Burns, author, editor, playwright
Horace G. Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science Dr. Ron Daniels, President, Institute of the Black World 21st Century Bill Fletcher, labor and international activist, and writer George Friday, United for Peace and Justice Co-Chair, National Coordinator, Independent Progressive Politics Network Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, Senior Minister, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ; National President, Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice of the United Church of Christ Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology, Political Science and Public and International Affairs Manning Marable, Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and African-American Studies
George Paz Martin, National Co-Chair of United for Peace and Justice and Green Party U.S. Activist E. Ethelbert Miller, literary activist; board chair, Institute for Policy Studies Prexy Nesbitt, speaker and educator on Africa, foreign policy, and racism Barbara Ransby, Associate Professor of History and African-American Studies Cedric Robinson, Professor, Department of Black Studies The Rev. Canon Edward W. Rodman MDiv.LCH,DD. Professor of Pastoral Theology and Urban Ministry at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Ma. Jamala Rogers, Black Radical Congress Don Rojas, former director of communications for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Zoharah Simmons, human rights activist Chuck Turner, Boston City Councilor Hollis Watkins, Former Freedom Singer and staff member of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; human rights activist (1961 – present) Dr. Cornel West Emira Woods, co-director, Foreign Policy In Focus, Institute for Policy Studies
At 6am on Monday morning, outside the premises of EDO-MBM, Home Farm Road, Brighton, students from Sussex University, including Student Union president Dan Glass, have locked themselves to the Brighton arms factory using D-locks preventing access to the factory.
One man has been arrested for aggravated trespass.
EDO produces weapons components used by the Israeli military and by US and UK forces in Iraq. The students are protesting against EDO’s complicity in the murder of innocent civilians in Iraq and Palestine.
Sussex University has been developing close links with Al Quds Open University in Tubas, Palestine. A delegation from Sussex University recently visited Tubas and heard what conditions are like for students living under occupation. The delegation was told that in 2004 two children were killed close to the university by Israeli forces firing Hellfire missiles from an F16. EDO MBM manufactures components for both the Hellfire missile and the Israeli F16.
Amy Jameson, a History Student at the university said ‘Sussex students have been hearing firsthand accounts of war crimes against students in Tubas and this company is providing equipment that is facilitating these crimes’.
Rose Holland, studying International Relations said ‘The government subsidises the arms trade by up to £900 million per year while they continue to cut funding for higher education. We want books not bombs.’
Brighton-based EDO MBM are a wholly owned subsidiary of EDO Corp, a US-based arms multinational that is currently number 10 on the Forbes 100 list of fastest growing companies.
EDO’s military products include bomb racks, release clips and arming mechanisms for warplanes. They have contracts with the UK Ministry of ‘Defence’ and US arms giant Raytheon relating to the release mechanisms of the Paveway bomb system.
EDO MBM’s supply of weapons systems for the illegal aggression and subesquent war crimes committed in Iraq makes their directors war criminals. International law is very clear on this point, in the 1947 trial of Bruno Tesch, a German industrialist, the court acted
“on the principle that any civilian who is an accessory to a violation of the laws and customs of war is himself also liable as a war criminal”.
On Sunday May 20th, several carloads of non-violent protesters headed to Foxboro to voice their support for Palestinians at the Israeli day celebration taking place at Gillette Stadium.
At 2:30 PM, 40 to 50 protestors in the Field House unraveled two banners.
Palestinian Refugees
1948 – 800,000
2007 – 6 Million +
Right of Return for all Refugees
Video by Mazin Qumsiyeh
The protestors, wearing black tee-shirts, peacefully and silently commemorated the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) and voiced support for those Palestinians who were driven from their homes in 1948 by Zionist forces in order to create the Jewish state. Seventy-eight out of the 531 Palestinian villages that were eliminated were remembered through stickers on the black tee-shirts.
“New England Celebrates Israel” celebrants were not as peaceful and silent. They tried to block the banners with their bodies so that no other celebrants could see the messages. One celebrant attempted to tear a banner. Police prevented the tearing of the banner and escorted the protestors out of the Dana Farber Field Field House for their safety.
Previously dubbed “Boston Celebrates Israel”, the celebration of Israel Independence Day has been taking place in Boston for years. For the past five years, however, Palestinians and their supporters have organized protests to bring attention to the fact that Israel’s celebration is the Palestinian’s Nakba (or catastrophe). These protests have forced the event organizers to downscale the celebration, move it to Foxboro, and rename it “New England Celebrates Israel”. In addition, the organizers forced participants to show ID and register prior to entering.
Three quarters of the Palestinian population was expelled in 1948 and 531 of their villages destroyed. Today, these Palestinian refugees and their descendents number more than six million and are displaced throughout the world while Israel ignores UN resolutions which call for their right of return.
FULL STATEMENT FROM ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
We are here today to commemorate the expulsion and dispossession of the Palestinian people from their homeland and to protest this celebration of Israel’s Independence Day. We stand here to remind those inside and those in our larger New England community that Israeli “independence” equals Palestinian Nakba, or catastrophe.
We are a diverse group of people who support the application of human rights for all people. We are painfully aware that the establishment of a Jewish state in 1948 led to the largest and most persistent refugee problem in the world. In 1948, 800,000 Palestinian people were driven from their homes in a process of ethnic cleansing that continues to this day.
Today, almost 60 years later, more than 6 million Palestinians still wait to return home. Three quarters of the Palestinian population are displaced. One out of every 3 refugees in the world is Palestinian. Many live in refugee camps. All are denied the right to return to their land simply because they are not Jewish.
The right of return for refugees is an international law that applies to all refugee populations in the world. The United Nations has reaffirmed this right specifically for Palestinian people every year since 1948, yet the Israeli government has consistently refused to implement this right. Billions of dollars of US aid give Israel little incentive to conform to international standards of law and justice.
Those of us who are Jewish say, “Not in our name!” The organized Jewish community that has planned this event does not speak for us.
As US taxpayers we say, “Not with our money!” The 15 million dollars PER DAY that the US government gives to Israel does not reflect our desires or our priorities.
As people who care about equality, justice, and human rights, we say, “Not on our watch!” Israel must respect international law, including the right of return for refugees.
We are here today to declare that Palestinian experience cannot be forgotten, that Palestinian history cannot be erased, that Palestinian voices cannot be silenced! Never again should this kind of catastrophe happen to any people in the world.
And we are here to let the organizers of this event know that they will never be able to celebrate the establishment of the state of Israel without protest until the Nakba is acknowledged and reparations are made.
