Susan Barclay says thank you to supporters

Susan issued the following statement today:

I just wanted to write a very quick note to let people know that I am indeed fre’ and beyond happy. I just wanted to say an immediat’ incredibly sincere THANK YOU to all the people who worked so very hard to support me. I can not tell you how much it means. I have been very busy and will be meeting with my lawyer tomorrow to discuss various legal possibilities and then I hope to find the time to write an account of exactly what happened. THANK YOU AGAIN.

Salaam,
Susan

At the time of writing, Susan’s story still has been conspicuous by its absence in the American press although other media concerns in the US have taken up her story. The British press has not overlooked her case as you can see if you read the following story in ISM in the Press: Foreigners bring in the harvest and the wounded

Please e-mail any American newspapers that you know of and ask them why this story is not of any interest to them? Do they wish to be complicit in human rights abuses of their own citizens? It is particularly surprising that the press in Washington state has been very quiet on the fate of one of its citizens.

Guardian: Foreigners bring in the harvest and the wounded

by Chris McGreal
Originally published in The Gaurdian

Among the most active groups organising foreign volunteers in the Palestinian territories is the International Solidarity Movement, which brings hundreds to the region every year.

They have worked alongside Palestinians harvesting olives under attack from Jewish settlers, and joined sit-down protests to block construction of the 250-mile “security fence” along the West Bank which separates Palestinian villages from their land and virtually encircles whole towns.

Israel is deeply suspicious, often stopping its volunteers entering the country, or deporting them. The latest to run foul of the authorities, Susan Barclay, was arrested at a Nablus checkpoint last week and told to leave on “security grounds”.

She is on bail after lodging an appeal.

Volunteer groups say the presence of foreigners can calm things down, and encourage Israeli solders to moderate their behaviour.

Last year, during the Israeli reoccupation of West Bank cities, Shane Dabrowski, a 30-year-old paramedic from Alberta, volunteered to help the Palestinian Red Crescent Society rescue people from Jenin.

“I wouldn’t say I was scared, I was just overtly aware of my chances of being whacked,” he said.

Volunteers with medical experience often go to the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, which offers healthcare to those prevented by checkpoints from leaving their villages, and takes the wounded and sick to hospital.

The union says that simply having international volunteers on its ambulances and mobile clinics often enables their emergency teams to get into areas otherwise impossible to enter.

This weekend a ship carrying food, medical supplies and clothing provided by British volunteers for for Palestinians in Gaza is expected to dock at Ashdod.

A Devon couple, David and Sue Halpin, put up £95,000 for the mission, although donations have offset some of it.

Human Rights Abuses & Looting in Nablus

David Watson

Two ISM activists from the USA heard horrifying reports from residents regarding human rights abuses in Nablus as Israeli Occupying Forces continued their offensive on the old city.

The house of Mr. Ayman Badia Abdul Hadi received a visit from the military at 4.00 am Monday morning. He and his family were reportedly made to stand in the street without any food, water or access to a toilet for the next sixteen hours. No exception was made for any of the family’s children, the youngest of whom has a baby which was held by Mr. Abdul Hadi and his wife throughout the ordeal. The soldiers gave no reason for the family’s harassment merely asking, “Where are the terrorists?”

When the family was unable to give a response the soldiers proceeded to ransack the family house.

The two ISM activists had come to pay a visit to the family in the morning but had been sent away by the military presence.

In a separate incident a deaf man’s house in Qarayoun Square was visited by Israeli soldiers on Monday morning. Mr Auni Mansour has six children, three of whom are also deaf. After making a search of the house the soldiers focused their attention on a locked cabinet holding family valuables. They blew the lock off the door and stole the money and gold possessions lying inside.

However they wanted to leave the family with a reminder of their visit. In a final act of petty spite they found four hearing aids belonging to Mr. Mansour and his three deaf children and laughed while they stamped them into pieces.

Ministry of the Interior appeals Susan Barclay’s release

by Michael, ISM Media Office

Today Susan Barclay telephoned the ISM Media Office from Mikhal Detention Center where she has been held by the Israeli authorities since her arrest at Howarra Checkpoint last Thursday. She informed me that the Israeli Ministry of the Interior had appealed against her release so she was not going to be free any time soon.

Despite her ordeal she said she was OK but would appreciate some books, phone cards and cigarettes (which the ISM has had delivered to her by an Israeli volunteer).

I told her of all the messages I’d received enquiring as to how people could help her and asked her what she wanted her supporters do regarding legal representation, publicity and lobbying for her release and she said she intended to fight her deportation every step of the way. She wanted to return to work in Nablus if at all possible and wanted those who expressed their support for her to raise as big a storm as possible not for her sake but for the sake of the Free Palestine for which she was being imprisoned.

Bethlehem nabbing

by Kristin Ess

Yesterday Israeli soldiers were standing in the middle of baba skak (the main intersection in Bethlehem) pointing guns at school children and screaming at them to go home. All the little kids here wear uniforms to school, and all the kids are just so short in these little dresses and sweaters. A foreigner who lives in Hebron told me he asked Israeli soldiers why they were pointing guns at school girls the other day, preventing them from going to their elementary school. They answered him, “because they’re terrorists.”

A young women named Neda wrote “Midnight Victim” after talking to her friend just now, the girl in Beit Sahour who just got out of Israeli jail. Israeli soldiers abducted 3 young women from Bethlehem – one from Deheisha Camp, one from Beit Jala, and one from Beit Sahour – two nights ago.