EUROPEAN CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE SIEGE OF GAZA: International Action in Solidarity with Gaza
UPDATE: The demonstration was stopped in the Sinai by Egyptian authorities. As protesters attempted to ‘Walk to Gaza’, they were threatened with arrest before eventually turning back to Cairo. There will be a press conference in Cairo tonight (31st March).
Original press release: End the siege of Gaza!
End the world complicity to the Israeli occupation and crimes against the Palestinian people!
A group of international participants decided to act against our countries’ complicity to the inhumane and devastating siege of the Gaza Strip.
A delegation including participants from the Basque country, Austria, Scotland, Norway, Italy, Netherlands, France, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Palestine, Jordan, America and India intend to reach the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza in order to deliver a truckload of food and medicine and
in protest against the inhuman siege imposed on the people of Gaza, with the complicity of our own governments.
We protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people and condemn the hypocrisy of European and other governments who blatantly violate the democratic will of the Palestinian people and have taken positions in the interest of the Israeli and US agenda of occupation and domination.
We strongly condemn the European Union for backtracking on their responsibility, as stipulated in past agreements, to facilitate and oversee the flow of people through the Rafah border crossing. The European governments are therefore directly complicit in the Israeli-imposed siege of the Palestinian population of Gaza, their confinement to an open air prison and denial of access to the most basic goods and services, resulting in massive suffering and a humanitarian disaster.
Our protest must also be seen in the light of the 60th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba -the massive expulsion and forced flight of the Palestinian people as a result of the Zionist aggression which paved the way for the creation of the state of Israel- as well as the on-going Nakba and Israeli occupation, marked by expansion policies, expropriation and bloodshed.
We emphasize the urgent need to enforce and broaden the global campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli Apartheid State and its policies of occupation and oppression.
Solidarity with the people of Palestine!!!
We call on everyone wishing to participate to join the delegation to Rafah!!!
New York, NY, March 29 – Forty New Yorkers commemorated the Palestinian national holiday Land Day Saturday with the eighth protest at the Madison Avenue jewelry store of Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev.
The protest included songs, theater and testimonials from villages threatened by Leviev’s settlements. Land Day marks Palestinians’ ties to their land, in defiance of Israeli efforts to displace them.
“We targeted Leviev’s New York store on Land Day because his companies have recently built Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in at least four different locations in the Israeli-occupied West Bank,” said Issa Mikel, a spokesperson for Adalah-NY. “He has also financed the Land Redemption Fund, a settler organization accused of using fraud to secure Palestinian land for settlement construction.”
Land Day protests are being held in Palestinian towns throughout Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories this weekend. Land Day has been commemorated annually on March 30 since 1976, marking the day when six Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in their villages in the Galilee in northern Israel during protests against the confiscation of their land for Jewish settlements.
New York protesters sang a parody version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” entitled, “This Land’s not Lev’s Land”, with lyrics including:
“On this year’s Land Day, we want Lev to pay, For all he’s stolen, to make his millions,
From Angola’s miners, to Bil’in and Jayous, We won’t stop ’til everyone is free!”
The protest featured theater depicting Israeli soldiers attempting to force peaceful Palestinian protesters off their land. The Palestinian villagers ultimately marched through the soldiers’ lines, and broke through the wall, reclaiming their land. The theater was accompanied by Palestinian testimonies from 1948 to present, emphasizing the continuity of Israeli efforts to displace Palestinians. The narratives tied the Nakbah, or Catastrophe, in 1948, when 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their villages, to Land Day, and to the present settlements built by Leviev’s companies that are destroying Palestinian villages.
In one excerpt, Sharif Omar, from the West Bank village of Jayyous where Leviev’s company Leader is building a settlement on village farmland, explained, “Last September I was working in my olive grove near the wall, when I came across uprooted olive trees coming out of the bulldozed ground. These green young branches are soft and beautiful, deeply rooted in the ground and stronger than the wall and bulldozers. These trees refuse to die or to surrender, and send a message to all farmers and people who love the land. ‘Do not give up, and keep struggling and one day you will touch the sun.’ We have been here longer than these trees, and we will stay here longer than the stones.”
Leviev’s company Africa-Israel was established in 1934 as Africa Palestine Investments Ltd. by a group of Jewish investors from South Africa to acquire and develop real estate for Jewish settlement in Israel. Its name was changed to Africa-Israel in 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip. “It’s important to see current illegal land theft by Israel, of which Leviev is a profiteer and ideological supporter, as part of a historical policy stretching back decades,” explained Ethan Heitner, a spokesperson for Adalah-NY. “That’s the point we wanted to convey today.”
In Angola, Leviev works closely with the repressive Dos Santos regime to mine and sell the country’s diamonds, and he employs the private security firm K&P Mineira, which has been accused of torturing, sexually abusing and even murdering Angolans. In New York, Leviev and his former partner Shaya Boymelgreen came under fire for employing underpaid, non-union workers in hazardous conditions in their development schemes. This month, the New York City Department of Buildings issued a stop-work order at the Leviev-owned Met Life Clocktower, allegedly for building without permits.
TO: The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York, NY (sent by fax)
SUBJ: Cancel March 18 “Friends of IDF Fundraiser” over Israeli human rights violations
DATE: March 11, 2008
As thirteen organizations working for human rights, social justice, and peace, we demand that The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan rescind its agreement to host the March 18 fundraiser for “Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.” The Israeli military has been historically a flagrant violator of human rights and international law as demonstrated by last week’s attack on Gaza which killed over 100 Palestinians, the 2006 attack on Lebanon, and the 60-year assault on and dispossession of the Palestinian people.
We call on The Waldorf-Astoria to adhere to standards of corporate social responsibility that prohibit support for violators of laws and human rights. Among other activities, “Friends of the Israel Defense Forces” explains on its website that it helps to establish and renovate facilities on Israeli army bases. We are shocked that a respected institution like The Waldorf-Astoria would host a fundraiser benefiting a foreign armed group, especially one guilty of egregious human rights violations. We question if The Waldorf-Astoria would facilitate fundraising for armed groups from other foreign countries.
The human rights violations committed by the Israeli military over the past 60 years are severe. Last week the respected Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reported that, “From 27 February to the afternoon of 3 March, 106 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip. Contrary to the [Israeli] Chief of Staff’s contention that ninety percent were armed, at least fifty-four of the dead (twenty-five of them minors) did not take part in the hostilities. In addition, at least forty-six minors were wounded.” Furthermore, during last week’s fighting, Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai threatened Gaza’s people with “a bigger holocaust.”
As Human Rights Watch noted in a detailed 2005 report, “Promoting Impunity,” “The Israeli military has fostered a climate of impunity in its ranks by failing to thoroughly investigate whether soldiers have killed and injured Palestinian civilians unlawfully or failed to protect them from harm… Israeli forces have killed or seriously injured thousands of Palestinians who were not taking part in the hostilities. However, the Israeli authorities have investigated fewer than five percent of the fatal incidents to determine whether soldiers were responsible for using force unlawfully. The investigations they did conduct fell far short of international standards for independent and impartial inquiries.”
While we grieve for all the Israeli military’s recent Palestinian and Lebanese victims, we note with sadness that the Waldorf-Astoria event falls days after the fifth anniversary, on March 16th, of the army’s killing of US civilian Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli-army-operated Caterpillar bulldozer while blocking the demolition of the home of a Palestinian family in Gaza.
The March 18 fundraiser praising a military that has conducted a 41-year occupation also falls a few hours before the fifth anniversary of the attack and occupation of Iraq by the United States, Israel’s closest ally and provider of military aid. Israel and the US’ military occupations of Palestine and Iraq and their accompanying human rights abuses are not causes to celebrate. We must pressure these governments to end both military occupations.
The Israeli military also enforces a discriminatory, apartheid system. For example, in the West Bank the army is directly involved in the seizure of Palestinian land to build colonial settlements for Jews only as well as Israel’s wall, all in violation of international law. Palestinian communities which have conducted long nonviolent campaigns to prevent the seizure of their land like Bil’in, Budrus, Biddu, Beit Liqya, Al Zawiyya, Jayyous and Um Salomona, have suffered ten deaths and hundreds of injuries at the hands of the military. Since 1948, in violation of international laws guaranteeing refugee rights, Israel’s military has prevented the return of the over 800,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants, now numbering in the millions, who were driven from their homes by Jewish militias and the Israeli army.
In Lebanon, Human Rights watch reported in September, 2007 that “Israel’s indiscriminate airstrikes… caused most of the approximately 900 civilian deaths in Lebanon during the July-August 2006 war.” A February, 2008 report by Human Rights Watch “found that Israel violated international humanitarian law in its indiscriminate and disproportionate cluster munition attacks on Lebanon.” Israel dropped “as many as 4.6 million submunitions across southern Lebanon… the vast majority over the final three days of the war when Israel knew a settlement was imminent… causing long-term and large-scale disruption of the largely agricultural economy,” and “about 200 civilian casualties since the war’s end.”
Finally, as many of our groups have recently affirmed, Israel’s ongoing use of U.S. weapons to enforce an illegal military occupation and to commit human rights abuses places it in violation of US law, specifically the Arms Export Control Act and Foreign Assistance Act.
Corporations have a responsibility to uphold human rights and international law. In light of the Israeli military’s longstanding and repeated failure to respect accepted laws and norms, we call on The Waldorf-Astoria to rescind its decision to host the March 18 fundraiser for “Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.”
Signed by,
Adalah-NY: The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East (www.mideastjustice.org)
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee-New York (www.adcnewyork.org/)
Arab Muslim American Federation
Combatants for Peace (www.combatantsforpeace.org)
Jews Against the Occupation-NYC (www.jato.nyc.org)
Jewish Voice for Peace (www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org)
National Council of Arab-Americans – Metropolitan New York Chapter
Palestinian American Congress – New York
Rachel’s Words (www.rachelswords.org)
Troops Out Now Coalition (www.troopsoutnow.org)
United for Peace and Justice (www.unitedforpeace.org)
US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (www.endtheoccupation.org)
New York, NY, March 7 – In a rare interview in the March 7 English edition of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz Daily, Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev responded to questions about recent protests and calls for a boycott of his companies in response to their settlement construction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Issa Mikel, a spokesperson for Adalah-NY – the group that has organized eight protests outside Leviev’s Manhattan jewelry store since it opened last November – commented, “Leviev’s responses were disingenuous and troubling. Leviev neglected to mention that his company Leader is building the settlement of Zufim, that he is a major donor to a company that acquires Palestinian land for settlements, and that all Israeli settlements violate international law. Leviev also portrayed his company’s monopoly over Gaza’s fuel supply as somehow charitable. Finally, as independent human rights activists, we challenge Leviev to provide evidence to support the completely false accusation he made that we have any relationship with or are “funded by business competitors.”
In the Ha’aretz interview by Anshel Pfeffer titled “We need Judaization” (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/961664.html), Leviev responded to Pfeffer’s question, “Do you have a problem with building in the territories?” by saying, “Not if the State of Israel grants permits legally. But Danya Sibus is only a subcontractor; I didn’t even know it was building there.” Yet Danya Cebus’ construction in Maale Adumim and Har Homa was highlighted in multiple newspapers due to possible losses to Leviev’s Africa Israel, Danya Cebus’ parent company. Furthermore, in an August 24, 2004 interview in Globes, when asked about neglecting Israel, Africa Israel CEO Pinchas Cohen responded, “Heaven forbid! Our subsidiary, Danya Cebus, recently signed a very large contract to build 2,500 apartments in Matityahu Mizrach (Upper Modi’in), for a $130 million investment.” It seems unlikely that Leviev was unaware of all this construction.
Leviev also co-owns the company Leader Management and Development which is building the settlement of Zufim on the village of Jayyous’ land. Due to the strangulation of Jayyous caused by the construction of Zufim and Israel’s wall, more than 50% of families from this once prosperous farming village are now receiving food aid. The secretive, right-wing settler company the Land Redemption Fund, which Leviev funds according to a 2005 article in Yedioth Ahronoth, used fraud and deceit to secure Palestinian land from Jayyous and Bil’in for eventual settlement construction by Leader and Danya Cebus.
While Leviev uses Israeli law to justify his companies’ settlement construction, all Israeli settlements are judged to violate international law according to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Israeli organization B’Tselem, the International Court of Justice, the United Nations, and every government in the world besides Israel.
Leviev asked Pfeffer, “If they want to demonstrate, why against us? After all Dor Alon, in which Africa-Israel owns 26 percent, is the only company that sells fuel to the Palestinians.” Yet, as the monopoly fuel supplier to Gaza, Dor Alon has profited for years from Israeli occupation by benefitting from non-competitive fuel provision to a “captive” market. Though a major offshore natural gas field with an estimated 1.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lies twenty miles from Gaza’s coast, for nearly a decade Israel has blocked the development of that resource, which could provide the foundation for sustainable economic growth and Palestinian fuel self-sufficiency.
Responding to Leviev’s professsed incomprehension of why groups are demonstrating against him, Adalah-NY spokesperson Ethan Heitner summarized, “Leviev has invested heavily in New York real estate. He and his former partner Shaya Boymelgreen have been singled out for their mistreatment of workers, their shoddy construction and their displacement of communities here. We also have close ties with Palestinian and Israeli activists working to save villages like Jayyous and Bil’in from Leviev’s settlements. Finally, when Leviev opened a swanky jewelry store here and we learned of his companies’ role in exploiting and abusing poor communities in Angola through his diamond mining, we said, enough. We must hold Leviev accountable for his business practices.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/961664.html
We need Judaization, Anshel Pfeffer, Ha’aretz Daily, March 7, 2008
(Excerpt)
“In recent weeks there have been pro-Palestinian demonstrations in New York and London, calling to boycott Leviev’s jewelry stores because of the construction being done on the other side of the Green Line by the Danya Sibus firm, which is owned by Africa-Israel. Leviev suspects that financial interests are behind the demonstrations. ‘I don’t know what this is – after all, if they want to demonstrate, why against us? After all Dor Alon, in which Africa-Israel owns 26 percent, is the only company that sells fuel to the Palestinians. I think that it’s more groups that are funded by business competitors.’
Do you have a problem with building in the territories?
‘Not if the State of Israel grants permits legally. But Danya Sibus is only a subcontractor; I didn’t even know it was building there.’
Palestinian Youth Network (PYN), Paz Ahora, and ISM Spain
March 5, 2008
Breaking the Siege of Gaza, Taking to the Streets
After three and a half weeks of waiting at Rafah with much needed medicines for Gaza, on the evening of Wednesday, March 5, Saif Abu Keshek, General Coordinator of the Palestinian Youth Network (PYN) managed to enter the besieged Gaza Strip. Carrying 50,000 euros worth of medicines unavailable or in very short supply in Gaza, Saif has been at Rafah since February 12, 2008, waiting for permission to enter, each day told to wait a little longer. “I finally made it in,” said Saif, “but there are tons more aid for Gaza in dozens of trucks, still held up at the border.”
Last week’s Israeli military onslaught on Gaza, which killed over 120 Palestinians, many of them women and children, was met with deafening silence from government leaders and international agencies. This reality should not only sadden and enrage us, but also make us realize how important it is that civil society steps up to defend human rights in the face of organized impotence. Saif’s entry into Gaza shows that the siege can be broken, but it needs pressure and persistence and pressure, which governments and the United Nations are not willing to exert. Currently that is not happening, and as the situation worsens, foreign journalists are being told to leave the Strip.
On the evening of Sunday, March 2, Palestinians young and old took to the streets of Ramallah banging loudly on pots and pans, blowing whistles, and screaming for people to wake up! Wake up we must. We must wake up and believe that we indeed have the power to effect change; then we must organize to show our representatives and decision-makers our strength.
Things that you can do:
U.S. citizens — President Bush’s FY2009 budget request to Congress includes $2.55 billion in military aid to Israel, a 9% increase over actual spending in FY2007. This increase in military aid is the first installment of a ten-year plan, signed by Israel and the United States in August 2007, to increase military aid to Israel by 25%, totaling $30 billion over the next decade. Organize delegations to go meet with your congressional representative. Send your congressperson a letter here:
Everyone – If the United Nations is not willing to hold Israel accountable for Palestinian lives, we can, by working on a grassroots level to isolate Israel. Please step up the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) Campaign. Work on getting your schools, unions, places of worship, etc. to condemn Israeli atrocities, boycott Israel, and divest from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. Latest statement from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU): http://www.cosatu.org.za/press/2008/mar/press1.htm
Below is an email sent from Saif on March 3, two days before entering Gaza, describing the scene on the border. You can contact Saif in Gaza at: +970-599-963-273.
————–
Escaping Death
March 3, 2008
The sound of ambulance sirens all over the place; wounded people here and there… This one is shouting and the other almost dying; and its red… everywhere is filled with blood. “Run fast,” I heard them shouting. “We need an ambulance, now, now, now… This guy is dying. Please help him, please bring a doctor, give him pain killers… Do anything, just help him.”
The medical response is much slower than his painful cries. The medical workers must check every one. They must decide who is more critical to move first, taking the risk that someone may die before being checked. Hundreds of people are waiting on the other side. Some people have been waiting for a month to go back to Egypt; Palestinians who entered to visit their families and now have no exit. Others, Egyptians who went to visit Gaza and are now stuck. But the most compelling are the Palestinian mothers and other family members who are watching the ambulances depart with their loved ones, praying that they will see them again, but not knowing. They cannot know. Maybe they will die along the way? Or perhaps they will receive the needed treatment but then get stuck in a detention center before being allowed to go back home. You can never know. In this place every thing is luck, or casualty.
I told them we have medicine to take to Gaza; this medicine is needed for urgent operations. They answered, “well, many wounded people are now in Egypt, why you don’t give your medicine to an Egyptian hospital?” Did they really open the border? Who is going to be with the wounded ones? They will see no family before going back to Gaza. Visits are very restricted, and you can talk to no one.
These people are escaping death, but to an unknown destiny. They hope to find some mercy away from the Israeli killing machine. They are in an ambulance taking them to a hospital, and they don’t know when they will return home, if they will. How painful it is to be wounded, almost dying, with no family around you, with no visitors. And how painful it is for any family not to be with their loved ones while they are being treated, or maybe living their last moments in this life. For some these last moments can be the only peaceful moments in their life, what an irony, you escape death to live your last moments dying away from your family.
The brutality of this occupation, that it is living in us, it is living everywhere, hunting us wherever we go. Perhaps some managed to escape death today, but death is still hunting the rest in Gaza.
Isn’t it time to reclaim the streets? Isn’t it the time to force change?
How many more must die before we realize that our silence is just part of the story; that one protest is not the answer; that the life of many
Palestinians depends on what the civil society may or may not do? Maybe it is time to get more radical. Maybe the Palestinians will help us to escape death, a different kind of death — the death of our humanity!
