Events All over the world in Memory of Rachel Corrie -Non-violent Activists Beaten

Today, March 16th, the third anniversary of the murder of Rachel Corrie, events in honor of her memory are taking place in 13 different countries. Nine events are taking place in Palestine and Israel and 41 events are taking place in the US.

For details of events around the world, visit rachelswords.org

AT 14:00 today At the Qalandia checkpoint ISM and Israeli activists from Anarchists Against The Wall, wearing blood (paint) stained T-shirts succeeded in reaching the Caterpillar machine and splattering it with bright red paint and lying down to represent casualties of the occupation. Several Israeli contractors assaulted the journalists activists and wounded a journalist.

Currently (18:00) a film about Rachel’s life that was made by Palestinian director Yahya Barakat is being projected on the annexation wall and her letters read in Arabic.

What I saw in Jericho or Olmert’s Election Campaign

By Neta Golan

British Chris and I beginning our attempted entry. We were stopped minutes later
British Chris and I beginning our attempted entry. We were stopped minutes later.

Jericho Tuesday March 14th
After a four-hour walk around two Israeli checkpoints and an illegal Israeli settlement, we arrived in Jericho to find that the neighborhood around the compound surrounded by Israeli jeeps and Palestinian children throwing stones at them. We asked the kids for directions. After sizing us up for a while a young Palestinian guided us through the side streets to the closest point to the compound as possible where journalists where filming the attack.

As Chris from Britain, C. from IWPS and I were approaching the city we could here shelling and a helicopter from a long way away. When we got to the site of the prison and governmental compound we saw that the it was “U” shaped and the external building that was visible to us was burning and completely destroyed. We were told it had been shelled by a helicopter before we arrived.

Destroyed external building
Destroyed external building

The prisoners and Palestinian prison employees had been cornered into a room inside the middle of the “U” by the Israeli military who were destroying the building around them after the British and American guards abandoned the prison.

While we were getting organized to attempt to join the prisoners that were being attacked, the external building was shelled by a tank at least four times. The military were calling on the prisoners to surrender on an amplifier system.

The sound that worried us the most was a very loud and very low rat-tat-tat-tat that we thought was some kind of heavy machine gun fire. Later we discovered that it was a rock compressor or “congo” machine used to break up rock. Behind the destroyed external building the rock compressor and a similar machine with a shovel on a long arm were being used on the wall of the room where the prisoners were.

We tried in vain to contact the people inside the compound by phone to tell them we were coming in. We knew we were running out of time so despite our tiny number we stocked up with medical equipment and some food, raised our hands to show that we were not armed and walked as quickly as we could in the direction of where the prisoners were. Soldiers screamed at us to stop but we continued. We were directly in front but still hundreds of meters away from where the prisoners were when soldiers that had left their jeeps on foot caught us.

After being caught I lay down to prevent them from easily removing me. Thanks to the nonviolent techniques we teach in training it took three soldiers about ten minutes to handcuff me with plastic handcuffs. They succeeded by one of them pressing his knee down hard against my throat and two other solider grabbing an arm each. I could see Chris on the floor up against a jeep behind me.

When I refused to move the commander left two soldiers to guard me on the spot. He told them in Hebrew “If any one comes out of the building shoot him. Shoot in order to hit. We are not playing games. The games are over.” He repeated: “Any one that comes out of the building shoot to hit!” The fact that they came out of their jeeps to chase us and stood right in front of where the prisoners were for such an extended period indicates that they knew that they were in no danger of getting shot at.

The solider guarding me and I were there at least ten minutes until Border Police came to carry me away. When the Border Police unit commander approached my guard he asked him in Hebrew if the “fat” ones were still in the building. He was told not to talk next to me and he switched to Arabic and asked the same question.

Four border police carried me into a jeep and then brought Chris in with his hands cuffed behind his back. We were sure they were taking us to a police station but they stopped at a checkpoint outside of Jericho and told us we could go.

On the way back to Jerusalem we heard that the prisoners and the rest of the besieged people had all been arrested. What people on the ground said was that the wall of the room that a prisoners and the others were in was demolished leaving them exposed to the Israeli soldiers, who ordered them to walk down one by one. That explained the too-strong machine gun-like sound that we heard: it was a rock compressor against the old stone walls of the building. The prisoners had no weapons. The Palestinians trapped inside the prison did not surrender and walk out of the building. The building including the room they were in was destroyed around them.

The room the prisoners were cornered in and arrested from.
The room the prisoners were cornered in and arrested from.

According to AlJazeera.net, two Palestinian security officers including Ibrahim Abu al-Amin were killed and 23 other people were wounded in the raid. The Palestinian people and the Arab world were humiliated enraged and betrayed. The chances for a viable Palestinian Authority (not to mention state) and the trust in international mediators was destroyed while chances for retaliation attacks increased. The rift between the west and the Arab world has grown wider. All for the sole purpose of Olmert’s election campaign.

Beit Sira March Today

MEDIA ADVISORY

Today, March 14th at 2:00 PM

The villagers of Beit Sira will hold a protest march on their land that is being stolen by the Annexation barrier. They will be joined by Israeli and international supporters.

The path of the wall in Beit Sira is designed to annex the settlement of Macabim together with Beit Sira land to Israel.

On a previous demonstration on Friday, February 24th, a seventeen year old Israeli, Matan Cohen was shot in the eye with a rubber coated bullet and Hussni Rayan had a rubber coated bullet penetrate 8cm into his body.

For more information call the ISM media office
02-2971824

The Ridiculousness of Tel Rumeida

by Katie

Here are a few incidents that happened in Tel Rumeida over the last few weeks. Keep in mind that these anecdotes are only a tiny fraction of the daily insanity happening here.

I don’t even blink…

The other day the soldiers at the IOF post near the Beit Hadassa settlement were detaining every single Palestinian man who walked by for up to 45 minutes for ID checks. Why ? “Security.” This is the generic answer you hear when you inquire about any outrageously unfair practice against Palestinians. Part of our work here is to try and get the men released sooner rather than later because the soldiers usually don’t detain the men for as long when we’re pressuring them. It was out of the ordinary for the soldiers to be detaining everyone who passed so I decided I was going to try to warn people to take a different route around the IOF post so they wouldn’t be detained. From down the street I could see a man I knew pretty well and I motioned for him to come over and talk to me. I told him the soldiers were detaining everyone and that he should go around and tell everyone he knew to avoid that IOF post today. What happened next just totally broke my heart because he replied “no, it’s ok, we’re used to it.” This kind of thing is so normal here that people just accept it as part of their life, but its not normal. It’s racist and unfair and it makes me so crazy to see it happening everyday. Even still, I’m getting resigned to it as well. The first time someone pointed his gun at me and cocked it, I was a little bit freaked out, now it happens so often I don’t even blink. I just laugh.

A baby or a bomb?

There’s a metal detector at the checkpoint going into Tel Rumeida that everyone must pass through. Because pregnant women and teachers don’t pose a security threat, the soldiers have orders to allow them to go through a gate instead of through the metal detector. This is so they don’t get X-rayed everyday which is unhealthy if you are pregnant or trying to become pregnant. There is often a lot of hassle about this policy because soldiers will say they don’t know about the order, or they will make the women wait around for a long time or they just refuse to let them through the gate all together. When the soldiers refuse to let them through, I have seen women leave the checkpoint in order to take another route into Tel Rumeida so they don’t have to pass through the metal detector. This takes them three kilometers out of their way. Recently I saw an obviously pregnant woman waiting at the gate for the soldier on duty to let her through. The soldier was ignoring her and she motioned for me to come over and help her. I asked the soldier if he was aware of the order to allow pregnant women through the gate. He replied he had heard of no such order and that if she wanted to get into Tel Rumeida, she would have to go through the metal detector. He told me he couldn’t be sure if it was a baby under her dress or a bomb (!) This is the kind of insanity that makes me almost freak out, but freaking out at the soldiers doesn’t usually help so I took a few breaths and called the nice lady at Machsom Watch, an Israeli human rights organization that monitors and intervenes in checkpoint harassment. Usually when I call her, whoever is being detained is let go, and sure enough, a few minutes later the soldier got a call and he let her through.

Call the Moussad, they’ve built a house…

Settlers drive cars in Tel Rumeida. Palestinians are not allowed to drive cars in Tel Rumeida. Why ? “Security.” Roadblocks have been set up on roads going into the Palestinian controlled area of Hebron to prevent Palestinian cars from entering or leaving Tel Rumeida. One of our neighbors recently finished building a beautiful house here. When asked how he and his family brought the building materials in to build the house, he explained that they had to bring everything in by wheelbarrow. It took two years. The house is at the bottom of a steep hill and right now the family is building a concrete wall to protect the house from rocks or debris that may fall from the hill in bad weather. They need a car to transport sand and gravel to build the wall. In order to do this, first they must move the concrete roadblocks at the entrance to Tel Rumeida in the middle of the night and second they must distract the soldiers so they do not hear the car. Last night the young men in the neighborhood had to act really loud an obnoxious in front of the soldiers so that they would not hear the car being driven a block away. The next day, the Moussad (secret police) came to ask questions about how the sand and gravel got there. My fellow Americans, your tax dollars go to pay for special missions such as this.

While venting my exasperation about the situation here to F, he told me that compared to the way things were at the beginning of the intifada in 2002, it’s like paradise now. Back then there was a 24 hour curfew that lasted for 100 days. This meant that no one could leave their house unless the army gave them permission. If they were caught in the streets, they would be arrested. I am totally in awe of the restraint and patience demonstrated by the people of Hebron.

We Mourn the Loss of Tom Fox

1-We Mourn the Loss of Tom Fox
2- The Association of Muslim Scholars in Palestine calls for the release of the remaining hostages.
3- Palestinians saddened at Fox’s killing

“Why are we here?”
Reflection written by Tom Fox in Iraq the day before the abduction
2 December 2005
As I survey the landscape here in Iraq, dehumanization seems to be the operative means of relating to each other. U.S. forces in their quest to hunt down and kill “terrorists” are, as a result of this dehumanizing word, not only killing “terrorists,” but also killing innocent Iraqis: men, women and children in the various towns and villages.
It seems as if the first step down the road to violence is taken when I dehumanize a person. That violence might stay within my thoughts or find its way into the outer world and become expressed verbally, psychologically, structurally or physically. As soon as I rob a fellow human being of his or her humanity by sticking a dehumanizing label on them, I begin the process that can have, as an end result, torture, injury and death.

“Why are we here?” We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God’s children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.


The Association of Muslim Scholars in Palestine calls for the release of the remaining hostages

https://palsolidarity.org/wp-content/uploads/legacy/tom2.jpg
English translation of the statement:
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,
The Association of Muslim Scholars in Palestine deeply regrets the killing of the peace activist Tom Fox on Iraqi land.
We were shocked and grieved to receive news of Tom’s death on the morning of the 11th of March 2006. We renew our call to our brothers in the Swords of Justice group to release our brothers that are still in captivity: Norman Kember, James Loney and Harmeet Sooden.
Signed,
Association of Muslim Scholars Palestine

Palestinians saddened at Fox’s killing

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
https://palsolidarity.org/wp-content/uploads/legacy/Satellite.jpg
Palestinians throughout the West Bank expressed sorrow Saturday over the killing of American Tom Fox, 54, who had traveled to the West Bank to protest for their cause before he was taken hostage in Iraq.
Fox’s body was found shot in the head and chest Thursday near a Baghdad railway station. He had worked with Christian Peacemaker Teams in the Palestinian areas before he began work with the group in Iraq.

Fox, from Clear Brook, Virginia, had demonstrated in the West Bank town of Jayyus against the construction of the security fence and he helped Palestinians pick olives, local Palestinians said.
“Tom used to sit in front of the (Israeli) bulldozers to block them,” said Jayyus’ mayor, Shawka Shamha. “Hearing news that he was killed makes me very sad.”
Sharif Omar also from Jayyus said that Fox lived at his brother’s house for three months while local Palestinians and foreign activists protested against the construction of the barrier.
“I’m very sorry to hear that he has been killed,” Omar said.

Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron also remembered Fox. Neither Fox nor the Briton and two Canadians taken hostage with him deserved to die, said Hisham Sharabati, a human rights activist who met Fox.

“I’m calling for the kidnappers to release the other hostages,” Sharabati said. “This killing harmed the Palestinian and Iraqi causes because the hostages were working for peace.”
The two Canadians – James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden – also worked in the Palestinian areas.

When the four were taken hostage in November last year, the Palestinians’ top Muslim clergyman, Mufti Ikrema Sabri, called for their immediate release.