Tag: Tristan Anderson

Palestine’s Holocaust museum

Dania Yousef | Al Jazeera

30 April 2009

Musa says Palestinians feel sorrow for the Holocaust, but question why they are being punished
Musa says Palestinians feel sorrow for the Holocaust, but question why they are being punished

In a small anonymous home in the West Bank, a Palestinian academic has set up a project which is almost unheard of in the Occupied Territories.

Hassan Musa is the curator of a museum exhibition dedicated to the Jewish Holocaust in Europe.

The cracked white walls of this makeshift museum in the village of Ni’lin are covered from floor to ceiling with images of people forced out of their homes, tortured, imprisoned, starved and murdered.

In addition to the pictures depicting the Nazi brutality against Jews in Europe, there are also images of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the violence in Palestine since.

On one wall, there is a picture of a scared Jewish boy holding up his hands as Nazi soldiers look on; the caption reads: “Make your final account with Hitler and the Nazi Germans, not with the Palestinians.”

On an adjacent wall there are photos of dead children, demolished homes and women screaming during the Israeli war on Gaza in January.

Musa, who is also a member of Ni’lin’s Popular Committee Against the Wall, says pictures of the atrocities committed against both peoples were strategically placed side-by-side to not only reflect the suffering of both and help Israelis and Palestinians better understand each other, but also to demonstrate how victims of one conflict can become the harbinger of another.

“The Palestinians have no connection to the Holocaust in Europe, but unfortunately we are paying the price of a misdeed we did not commit,” he said.

‘Paying’ for the holocaust

Pictures of Jewish victims of the Holocaust are on the museum's walls
Pictures of Jewish victims of the Holocaust are on the museum's walls

In the main room, a large banner sends a direct message to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, a message: “Why should we Palestinians continue to pay for the Holocaust?”

Musa believes this question is the impetus behind the exhibit, hoping it will challenge the international community on what is happening between Israelis and Palestinians.

“The world is shamefully silent about what is happening in Palestine as a way of expressing their sorrow for the death of six million Jews, but in the meantime, they are supporting the state of occupation,” he said.

Ni’lin has become synonymous with violent weekly clashes between Israeli soldiers and activists protesting against the construction of the ‘Separation Wall’.

The current path of the Wall will annex 10,000 acres of Ni’lin land to Israel, leaving its residents with 30,000 acres; this is a fraction of the 228,000 acres that constituted the village in 1948.

Since then, Ni’lin residents have lost more than 85 per cent of their land to confiscation and illegal settlement building.

People in the village also accused the Israeli military of killing four Ni’lin residents since protests against land confiscation began in May 2008.

Among those was Musa’s 10-year-old nephew, Ahmad, who died on July 29, 2008 from a bullet wound to the head; a number of residents and activists have also been injured in the protests.

In March, Tristan Anderson, a 38-year-old American activist acting as an observer with the International Solidarity Movement, was shot in the head with a high-velocity tear gas canister, leaving him in critical condition.

Understanding the occupier

There are also pictures depicting the Nakba in 1948 and the violence since
There are also pictures depicting the Nakba in 1948 and the violence since

It is these events that make the location of the museum all the more significant, Musa says.

In a place where Palestinians struggle to fend off occupation, Musa now offers them an opportunity to empathise with and further understand their occupier.

Israeli, Palestinian and international visitors continue to trickle into the museum, though they are fewer in number than the crowds that gather for the protests.

Remaining optimistic, Musa hopes this endeavour will encourage Israelis to pressure their government to halt the occupation.

“Our message to the Jewish people all over the world is that having been victims of such a brutal genocide, we expect you to be messengers of all the principles of justice, mercy and humanity,” he told Al Jazeera.

According to Musa, reaction from Palestinians, especially those in the village, has been positive; the exhibits are, in many instances, the first images they have ever seen of the Holocaust.

Musa says some Palestinian visitors leave the exhibit feeling sorrow for the Jewish people, but also with the same question posed in the messages plastered across the walls: “Why are they punishing us?”

“I lost my nephew and I know how painful it is for me,” Musa says, “that’s why I don’t want anyone else living on this land to lose their loved ones.”

Boycott this Israeli settlement builder

Abe Hayeem | The Guardian

28 April 2009

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office must be commended for its decision to cancel renting premises for the UK embassy in Tel Aviv from the company Africa-Israel, owned by Israeli businessman and settlement builder Lev Leviev. This is an encouraging step that should now be backed by stronger sanctions against the building of the separation wall and the building of illegal settlements by Israel. Furthermore, the governments of Norway and Dubai should emulate the example set by the UK and sever their relationships with Leviev’s companies.

The Israeli paper Ha’aretz reported on 3 March 2009 that “Due to the public pressure” several months ago in a special debate in parliament, Kim Howells of the Foreign Office was asked to explain plans to rent the embassy from Leviev.

This pressure, by a letters campaign to the FCO, was initiated by Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine with human rights organisation Adalah-New York, followed by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, former BBC correspondent Tim Llewellyn and hundreds of others.

Further voices included Daniel Machover of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, Palestinian notables including Hanan Ashrawi, Mustafa Barghouti and Luisa Morgantini, vice president of the European parliament.

The move was frozen after ambassador Tom Phillips requested details from Africa-Israel about its activities in the settlements.

Subsequently, on 5 March, the BBC reported the FCO’s Karen Kaufman saying that: “We looked into the issue of Africa-Israel and settlements and settlement holdings and we asked for clarification …. The UK government has always regarded settlements as illegal, but what has happened in recent months is that we are looking for ways to make a difference on this issue.”

Still, despite the FCO decision, Leviev’s companies persist in their goal, backed by the Land Redemption Fund to which Leviev is one the largest donors, of “blurring the Green Line” and connecting the illegally built Zufim settlement with Israeli communities inside the Green Line, retaining 6,000 dunams of the village Jayyous’s land sequestered by the wall. This land grab is being facilitated by the enforced construction of the apartheid wall, which the International Court of Justice firmly judged to be illegal under international law in 2004, and demanded its removal.

There are weekly non-violent protests by the Jayyous villagers, Israeli and international peace groups, together with Bil’in to stop their precious land from being taken to expand settlements and build the wall. These are being suppressed by Israeli forces on a terror rampage with live fire, beatings, tear gassings, mass arrests, house occupations and, more recently, threats of home demolitions, and pogroms.

Following an Israeli supreme court ruling that the route of the wall in Jayyous should be moved slightly, Israeli authorities are trying to blackmail Jayyous’s mayor, saying if he doesn’t accept the new wall route, there will be no gates in it for the village’s farmers to access their lands. The mayor has refused to sign. Without international intervention, Jayyous will not be able to hold on to its lands behind the wall, which contain their four vital agricultural wells and most of their greenhouses. Leviev will then be able to freely expand Zufim on to Jayyous’s stolen lands. Currently, Leviev is building 35 new housing units in Zufim.

At Bil’in, where Leviev companies are also building settlements, mainstream media failed to cover the 17 April murder of Bil’in non-violent protester Bassem Abu Rahmeh, 29, by Israeli forces. A soldier shot him with the same new type of “rocket” tear gas round, as fast and lethal as live ammunition that left US activist Tristan Anderson in critical condition.

The brutal crackdown in Bil’in continues despite three Israeli supreme court orders to move the wall in Bil’in closer to the Matityahu East settlement “outpost” where Leviev’s Danya Cebus built about 30% of the units. Israel’s court has shown itself to be the accessory of this land grab. Israel’s architects, designing these settlements, are also in breach of professional ethics, and will be held to account by their international peers.

While the US, UK and the EU seem to be keen to join Israel, the perpetrator of war crimes, in boycotting the Palestinians who are the victims of crippling sieges, deadly incursions and a prison-like occupation, they are reluctant to take any positive action to stop Israel’s breaches of international law. For instance, the Norwegian government has invested €875m in 2008 in Africa-Israel. By investing its populace’s pension fund in a company at the heart of illegal Israeli settlement building, the country that sponsored the Oslo accords violates its spirit. Norway should follow the precedent set by the UK’s FCO, in one of the latter’s few bold moves, and divest from this company.

The United Arab Emirates is also shamefully equivocating after a year-long campaign against Leviev selling his diamonds in the emirate of Dubai. Dubai’s government, despite repeated assurances that Leviev would not be allowed to open two diamond boutiques in the emirate, has allowed Leviev to open stores under another name while his website advertises a Leviev store-in-store at one of the “Levant” shops of his Dubai partner, Arif bin Khadra. A second Levant store in Dubai’s Atlantis hotel boldly touts the Leviev brand.

If Dubai does not wish to be become known as the “emirate that supports settlements”, it should take immediate action, and follow the UK’s lead and demonstrate it will not allow Leviev to profit from this indirect funding of his settlement building, that steals the future of Jayyous’s children who are growing up in the shadow of Leviev’s ever-expanding Zufim settlement.

While the new Netanyahu/Leiberman government is doing all it can to obfuscate the issue of a proper peace settlement to establish a viable Palestinian state, a clear message must be sent to Israel. The sanctions against Leviev should be the start of a wider boycott of all who profit from the enforced acquisition of Palestinian land.

Non-violent protests against West Bank barrier turn increasingly dangerous

Rory McCarthy | The Guardian

Palestinians and international protesters try to escape from teargas shot by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Bil'in. Photograph: Atef Safadi/EPA
Palestinians and international protesters try to escape from teargas shot by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Bil’in. Photograph: Atef Safadi/EPA

27 April 2009

It began calmly enough with a march down the high street after midday prayers at the mosque. Palestinian villagers were surrounded by dozens of foreigners singing and waving flags. They turned and headed out to the olive-tree fields and up towards the broad path of Israel’s West Bank barrier. There, behind a concrete hilltop bunker, the Israeli soldiers looked down on them.

The crowd approached the barrier, still singing. One man flew a paper kite shaped as a plane. “This land is a closed military zone,” an Israeli soldier shouted in flawless Arabic over a loudspeaker. “You are not allowed near the wall.” Then the soldiers fired a barrage of teargas.

It has been like this every Friday in the village of Bil’in for more than four years – the most persistent popular demonstration against Israel’s vast steel and concrete barrier. It is a protest founded on non-violence that is spreading to other West Bank villages. But it has become increasingly dangerous.

On April 17, on the hillside at Bil’in, a Palestinian named Basem Abu Rahmeh, 31, was shot with a high-velocity Israeli teargas canister that sliced a hole into his chest, caused massive internal bleeding and quickly killed him. Video footage shot by another demonstrator shows he was unarmed, many metres from the barrier and posing no threat to the soldiers.

The Israeli military said it faced a “violent and illegal riot” and is investigating. On Friday the demonstrators at Bil’in wore Rameh’s image on T-shirts and carried it on posters.

Last month another demonstrator, an American named Tristan Anderson, 38, was hit in the head by an identical high-velocity teargas canister in a protest against the barrier at the nearby village of Na’alin. He was severely injured, losing the sight in his right eye and suffering brain damage. “To shoot peaceful demonstrators is really horrifying to us,” said his mother, Nancy.

Friday’s demonstration lasted around three hours. The crowd repeatedly surged towards the fence, then retreated under clouds of teargas. The military sounded a constant, high-pitched siren, interspersed with warnings in Arabic and Hebrew: “Go back. You with the flag, go back” and, incongruously, in English: “You are entering a naval vessel exclusion zone. Reverse course immediately.”

The Bil’in demonstration was always intended to be non-violent, although on Friday, as is often the case, there were half a dozen younger, angrier men lobbing stones at the soldiers with slingshots. The Israeli military, for its part, fires teargas, stun grenades, rubber-coated bullets and sometimes live ammunition at the crowd.

There have long been Palestinian advocates of non-violence, but they were drowned out by the militancy of the second intifada, the uprising that began in late 2000 and erupted into waves of appalling suicide bombings.

Eyad Burnat, 36, has spent long hours in discussions with the young men of Bil’in, a small village of fewer than 2,000, convincing them of the merits of “civil grassroots resistance”.

“Of course it gets more difficult when someone is killed,” said Burnat, who heads the demonstration. “But we’ve faced these problems in the past. We’ve had more than 60 people arrested and still they go back to non-violence. We’ve made a strategic decision.”

Some, like the moderate Palestinian MP Mustafa Barghouti, hope this might be the start of a broader movement throughout Palestinian society. “It is a spark that is spreading,” he said in Bil’in. “It gives an alternative to the useless negotiations and to those who say only violence can help.”

But it is not so much that all the young men of the village are converted to the peaceful cause, rather that they respect and follow their elders. “I personally don’t believe in non-violent resistance,” said Nayef al-Khatib, 21, an accountancy student. “They’ve taken our land by force so we should take it back from them by force.”

The barrier at Bil’in cuts off the village from more than half its agricultural land and has allowed the continuing expansion of Jewish settlements, including the vast, ultra-Orthodox settlement of Modiin Illit, even though all settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.

The international court of justice said in a 2004 advisory opinion that the barrier was illegal where it crossed into the West Bank, and even Israel’s supreme court ruled nearly two years ago that the route at Bil’in did not conform to any “security-military reasons” and must be changed. But it has not been moved.

Like most of the men in the village, Nayef al-Khatib has spent time in jail. He was arrested aged 17 for demonstrating and spent a year behind bars, taking his final year of high school from his prison cell. That jail term means he cannot now obtain a permit to travel to Jerusalem or across to Jordan and is often held for hours at Israeli military checkpoints inside the West Bank. “But it was an honour for me. Now I’m like the older men,” he said.

Some of those older men are influential. Ahmad al-Khatib, 32, was once a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, a prominent militant group, and was jailed for a year for transporting weapons. Now he is committed to non-violence, even objecting to the stone throwers.

“I don’t apologise for what I did, but I’m not going back to it,” he said. “We are an occupied nation according to international law and we have the right to resist, though that doesn’t mean I support suicide bombers. But I don’t want to resist all my life.”

He argues that a non-violent strategy brings fewer Palestinian casualties. “I have no problem dying to get back my land, but I’d say to hell with my land if it just brought back our martyr who died last week. The life of a human being is more important than the land itself.”

Often the most sensitive issue for the villagers has not been whether to take up arms, but whether to accept in their midst so many foreigners, and in particular so many Israeli demonstrators. Ahmad al-Khatib said it was the “most disputed question” and that many feared the Israelis were spying on them until they saw they, too, were being injured and arrested.

One of the first Israelis to join the Bil’in protest in its earliest days was Jonathan Pollack, 27, an activist and member of Anarchists Against the Wall who lives in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv. Although they warmly welcome him now, it was tense at first. “I’m still not one of their own and I don’t pretend to be,” he said.

Unlike most other joint peace initiatives, in this case the Israelis are in the minority and in the background. “I think it is very important that the struggle is Palestinian-led and that the colonial power relations are knowingly reversed,” said Pollack.

Heed voices calling for justice for Palestinians

Huwaida Arraf | The Seattle Times

24 April 2009

We Palestinians are often asked where the Palestinian Gandhi is and urged to adopt nonviolent methods in our struggle for freedom from Israeli military rule. On April 18, an Israeli soldier killed my good friend Bassem Abu Rahme at a nonviolent demonstration against Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land. Bassem was one of many Palestinian Gandhis.

One month prior, at another demonstration against land confiscation, Israeli soldiers fired a tear-gas canister at the head of nonviolent American peace activist Tristan Anderson from California. Tristan underwent surgery to remove part of his frontal lobe and is still lying unconscious in an Israeli hospital. In 2003, the Israeli military plowed down American peace activist Rachel Corrie with a Caterpillar bulldozer as she tried to protect a civilian home from demolition in Gaza. Shortly thereafter, an Israeli sniper shot British peace activist Tom Hurndall as he rescued Palestinian children from Israeli gunfire. He lay in a coma for nine months before he died.

Despite the killing of these unarmed civilians and documented evidence of systematic human-rights abuses, the U.S. continues to supply Israel with approximately $3 billion in military aid annually, allowing Israel to continue abusing Palestinians and preventing any meaningful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The Israeli government orders the confiscation of Palestinian land for one of two main purposes: to build or expand illegal colonies or to construct the Wall that the International Court of Justice ruled illegal in 2004. In the case of Bassem’s village of Bil’in, even the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the Israeli government to change the route of the Wall, though Israel has yet to comply. Consequently, Palestinian farmers cannot reach their crops and they are devastated economically. Israel’s policy is intended to force Palestinians to give up and leave in order to survive.

When village residents gather weekly to protest, they use various creative methods of nonviolent resistance, including carrying mirrors up to the soldiers to show them “the face of occupation” or dressing as various politicians and wearing blindfolds to symbolize the world’s blind eye to their struggle. The Israeli military meets them and their Israeli and international supporters with tear gas, grenades, and bullets.

Eyewitness accounts and a YouTube video of Bassem’s killing attest to the fact that Bassem was not engaged in any kind of violent action when a soldier decided to fire a high-velocity tear gas canister — designed to be shot in the air or from a great distance — directly at his chest, fatally wounding him. In fact, just before he was shot, Bassem is heard calling to soldiers to stop shooting as a woman had been injured. Far too often, Israel tries to silence dissent by using disproportionate and sometimes lethal force against demonstrators.

In February, I led a delegation of American lawyers to the Gaza Strip to investigate Israel’s conduct in its 22-day military offensive during which more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed and more than 5,300 injured, most of them civilians — a rate of more than 60 killed per day. We found disturbing evidence of willful killing of civilians, wanton damage to civilian property and deliberate blocking of humanitarian aid. These are violations of international law that may constitute war crimes. During the offensive, Israel attempted to avert international outrage by refusing to let foreign journalists enter Gaza.

The United Nations has appointed a team of experts, led by a renowned human-rights advocate — Richard Goldstone, a Jewish, South African judge — to investigate the conduct of both Israel and Hamas. Hamas has agreed to cooperate, but Israel has indicated an intention to block the investigation. Israel tries to silence the human-rights community by preventing access to the occupied territory and refusing to cooperate with U.N.-mandated inquiries.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman claimed recently, “Believe me, America accepts all our decisions.” I do not believe, however, that the United States condones the killing of my friend Bassem. But if President Obama is serious about true peace in the Middle East, he must demonstrate that Lieberman is wrong, break the American silence, and heed the voices of those calling for justice.

Huwaida Arraf, J.D., specializes in international human rights and humanitarian law. In 2001 she co-founded the International Solidarity Movement.

B’Tselem to Judge Advocate General – order security forces to stop firing tear-gas grenades directly at people

B’Tselem

22 April 2009

Last Friday, 17 April, during a demonstration in Bi’lin, in the Ramallah District, a soldier fired a tear-gas grenade from an increased distance at Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahma, 30. The grenade left a hole in his chest, causing massive internal bleeding, which led to his death. Two video clips filmed at the site prove that Abu Rahma was standing on the eastern side of the fence, about thirty meters from the soldiers, when he was hit. The video clips also show that during the incident, he did not throw stones, did not damage the fence, and did not endanger soldiers in any way whatsoever.

http://blip.tv/play/gukm+6pshKtR
Footage of the shooting of Bassem Abu Rahmah

B’Tselem wrote to the Judge Advocate General (JAG), Brig. Gen. Avichai Mandelblit on 21 April 2009, demanding that he immediately order a Military Police investigation into the circumstances of Abu Rahma’s death, and that he make it clear to security forces that it is absolutely forbidden to fire tear-gas grenades directly at people. In a previous letter that B’Tselem sent to the JAG on this matter last month, following the severe injuries sustained by the American, Tristan Anderson, when he was struck in the forhead by a tear-gas grenade fired from an increased distance, no response has been received.

http://blip.tv/play/gukm97tThKtR
Video footage documenting the shooting of tear-gas canisters directly at people

In its letter of last week, B’Tselem attached video clips of demonstrations in Ni’lin, Bi’lin, and Jayyus filmed in recent months. The clips document repeated firing of tear-gas grenades directly at demonstrators, proving that, contrary to the army’s contentions, security forces in the West Bank have commonly practiced this unlawful act.

B’Tselem also noted that, at the location of the demonstrations in Bi’lin and Ni’lin, senior army and border patrol officers are always present. Whether they turn a blind eye to the extensive breach of the Open-Fire Regulations or give express orders to security forces to violate regulations, they bear responsibility for the lethal consequences of this forbidden practice. Furthermore, for some time, and at least since the extensive media coverage of the serious head injury to Tristan Anderson, on 13 March 2009, mentioned above, senior officers of the army and border police have known about direct firing of grenades at demonstrators. Since they were in a position to end this practice, they too bear responsibility for the lethal shooting.