Demolitons

Demolition in Al Aqaba, 08.04.11, photo by Keren Manor/Activestills.org

In the small village of Al Aqaba in the North of Jordan valley, the Israeli authorities demolished two homes and two animal shelters, as well as the tarmac on two roads on 07.04.2011. The village of Al Aaqaba has been targeted for years by the Israeli military, all the structures except 7 homes have demolition order.
Photo by: Keren Manor/Activestills.org

How we treat educated people and Bethlehem greeting cards

Archive photo of Abdallah Abu Rahmah, Bilin, Palestine, 17.5.2005.

In This archive photo taken on the 17/5/2005 in the village of Bilin, Abdallah Abu Rahmah is seen during a demo against the apartheid wall, while Israeli soldiers try to arrest him.

At exactly 2 AM last night (10/12/2009), seven Israeli military jeeps pulled over at Abdallah Abu Rahmah's residence in the city of Ramallah. Soldiers raided the house and arrested Abu Rahmah from his bed in the presence of his wife and children. Abu Rahmah is a high school teacher in the Latin Patriarchate school in Birzeit near Ramallah and is the coordinator of the Bil'in Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements.Photo by : Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org

Not too late if you are in Australia to buy these Christmas cards. If you are a Christian, well, you're supporting your fellow Christians. If you are a Christian and a humanitarian, you are supporting your fellow Christians who are also human, and humans who may not be Christian. If you are a humanitarian, but not Christian, well, you'll be supporting humans no matter their religion, so all is good, even when it's not.

nightly occurence

A night demonstration

Over 100 Palestinians, international and Israeli activists attended a night demonstration in bilin protesting ongoing recently nightly invasions to the village by the Israeli army. photo by oren ziv/activestills.org [my emphasis].

why is this okay?

From ISM and Mondoweiss. Why do we think that the kidnapping of 70 men and boys by Israeli forces, since 2008, for protesting the building of a wall which will, for all intents and purposes, jail them in the oft-quoted open-air prison, and which will block and blocks them off from the land they have lived on all their lives and for many generations - why do we think this kidnapping, and the building of the wall is okay? The occupation, even?



Why do we think it is okay to herd people into queues like sheep waiting for a dip? Think it is okay to limit their movement? Why do we think it is okay to deny people medication and goods? Why do we think it is okay deny people their land and livelihoods?

PHOTO: Rina Castelnuovo, New York Times
Article found here.

surely god is a book lover, or the security threat that is michael palin

Books or soldiers? The closure of Palfest literary festival 2009 by Israeli soldiers.
Surely God is a Lover is a Paul Kelly song. You can have a listen if you go to his homepage and register for the A-Z songs (free), then go to 'S' and download from there. The 'S' songs will only be up for a month. Thereafter you can download them from Robin Bell Books.

There would be others who would argue that Surely God is a Book Lover. I know there are many out there who love books more than life itself, figuratively speaking, whether they love or believe in God or not. Therefore, the following report even though a little old, should be as distressing to them as it is to me.

Walking miles in Palestinian feet
By Claire Messud June 29, 2009

I RECENTLY returned from a literary festival that was to have opened and closed in Jerusalem; but which, to our surprise, opened in France and closed in the United Kingdom.

Some 20-odd writers from the world over - including the popular British travel writer and comedian Michael Palin; Sweden’s preeminent thriller writer Henning Mankell; and Canada’s Giller Prize-winning M.G. Vassanji - found our events at Jerusalem’s Palestine National Theater shut down by machine-gun toting Israeli soldiers in flak jackets. On the first evening, with a Gallic flourish, Jean-Paul Ghoneim of the French Consulate opened the French Cultural Center impromptu, and hosted our event on nominally French soil: we paraded through the streets in our party clothes, bearing trays of canapés and looking, I’m sure, very threatening indeed.

By the festival’s closing night, the British Consul General Richard Makepeace had made plans to welcome us at the British Council - which was fitting because the British Council was the festival’s primary sponsor.

Closing night at the British Council
You might well ask how a bunch of novelists and nonfiction writers could be so dangerous as to require a military-ordained ban in a democratic country. I can’t tell you; except that our literary festival had the word “Palestine’’ in its title, and the use of this word in Jerusalem apparently constitutes a security threat. The city has been declared the Capital of Arab Culture for 2009, and according to Palestinians we met, the Jerusalem police have shut down more cultural events than they have permitted - including the timed release, by schoolchildren, of colored balloons in celebration of Al-Quds. Balloons are also a security risk.

During the week of the Palestine Festival of Literature (Palfest for short), we gave readings in Ramallah and Bethlehem as well as in Jerusalem, and taught workshops at universities in Ramallah, Jenin, and Hebron.

Panel in Bethlehem
We lumbered about in a great tour bus, repeatedly grateful for our foreign passports (nowhere have I been more conscious of the liberating power of my US citizenship); but still, privileged as we were, we waited interminably at borders and checkpoints, in the shadow of the vast, ugly hopelessness that is the Wall, under the panopticon scrutiny of the watchtowers. We answered questions barked by teenagers at the point of their guns. We got a very small taste of what it’s like to be Palestinian. Members of our group likened it to living under apartheid; to Orwell’s “1984’’; to Kafka. But none of these allusions fully conveys the disturbing psychological experiment currently perpetrated on Palestinians in the West Bank. Read more

Sonja Karkar from Australian Women for Palestine and Australians for Palestine, which first drew my attention to this article here (the photos in this article are from the AFP article) points out the following:

The closure occurred - according to an Israeli police spokesman and reported by The Guardian’s Micky Rosenfeld - because Israel believed it was organised or funded by the Palestinian Authority (PA), despite being supported by UNESCO and the British Council. Now, if Israel thought it was organised and funded by Hamas, it would have made more sense, but the PA, the governing body of the Palestinian state that US President Obama and other world leaders are so committed to seeing emerge? The PA that has just been offered $10 million in aid by our deputy prime Minister Julia Gillard? So much for that “shining light on the hill” democracy that journalists and politicians are all too eager to laud without questioning how that phrase ever came to be coined.

Similar news here of the prevention of a folklore and creative dance evening from convening in East Jerusalem.

El Funoun dance company
Sonja Karkar also points out that Israel has a cultural partnership with the Melbourne International Film Festival being held from 24 July – 9 August and is asking anyone who wants to help protest such a partnership to please contact AFP. Contact details can be found on their website, here. http://www.australiansforpalestine.com

There are many writers, performers, commenters, activists and so on who protest Israel's actions in the occupied Palestinian territories, despite the blanket support their governments seem to provide for all Israeli actions. Alice Walker, Adrienne Rich, Haruki Murakami and Naomi Klein are among them. There are many Israelis, themselves, who are not happy with the state sponsored terrorism, as it has been so eloquently put, since at least the seventies, regarding the well-detailed Israeli encroachment on Palestinian lands and lives every day, in every way.

mud bricks mixed with straw and resilience

Photo by Eva Bartlett
Which century do we live in? Why is it that one of the most advanced nations in the world, in terms of education, health, gross national profit, military, the arts and a slew of other ways in which we measure our life is given the support to make sure that another group of people live in third world conditions? This is a deliberate policy. This poverty and lack of quality of life is not due to natural disaster or the misfortune of being born in an area devoid of fertile ground and fishing seas.

Israel is still not allowing concrete into Gaza. As Israel bombed and shelled Gaza during its war on the same, houses and infrastructure, including schools, universities, mosques, United Nations compounds, have been destroyed. The international community (people from everywhere) and the governments of countries pledged aid, delivered aid, but what is the good if the aid cannot be let in?

Well, the Palestinians are very resilient, and they are building their houses from water and mud. With our energy resources rapidly dwindling, maybe the last laugh will ultimately rest with them as they retain the skills needed to live in a world without modern conveniences. I really don't think we should be putting it to the test, though.

The story is here, from In Gaza. The picture is lifted from the blog, too, and there are many more wonderful pictures.

Jihad el-Shaar is pleased with his mud-brick house in the Moraj district of Gaza. The 80-square metre home is a basic one-storey, two-bedroom design, with a small kitchen, bathroom and sitting room, made mostly with mud and straw.

“My wife and our four daughters and I were living with family, but it was overcrowded, impossible. We knew we had to build a home of our own,” Shaar said. “We waited over two years for cement but because of the siege there is none available. What could we do, wait forever?”

So he decided to do it with mud.


Building earthen structures like bread ovens and small animal pens is a technique many Palestinians are familiar with, but extending the method to houses isn’t a notion that has taken hold in Gaza.

Jihad el-Shaar got the idea from his travels in Asia and the Middle East. “I travelled in Bangladesh, India, Yemen, Turkey…they all use some similar technique of building houses from earth. All you need is clay, sand and some straw.” These he mixed with water, and poured into brick moulds that were left in the sun to dry for three days. Good enough to build a fine house with.

While some Gaza residents speak of shame at the way life has ‘gone backwards’ with the siege – using cooking oil in cars, wood fires for cooking, and horse and donkey carts for transportation – Shaar is proud of his clay home.

“In the winter it is warm, and in the summer it will be cool. There’s no problem with leaking, and this type of house will last a lifetime,” he says. “And it was cheap to build. A house this size made of cement would cost around 16,000 dollars at least. This one, because it was made with simple, local materials cost just 3,000 dollars.”

Prior to Israel’s crippling siege on Gaza cement would have cost 20 shekels (about five dollars) a bag. Now, with cement among the many banned items, what does make it into Gaza through tunnels under the Egypt border costs ten times as much.Read more.

___________________________________________________________________
I keep posting the pictures of these non-violent protests in the West Bank. They are against the apartheid wall, and the settlements which keep encroaching on Palestinian land. They're very inventive and deserve far more attention. Even if the wider world may not know very much about this situation, I think it should pique the curiosity as to why so many Israelis and internationals join Palestinians in protest.

A group of Palestinians, Israelis and internationals build a shack on the lands of the Jabari family in protest of the illegal building of settlements, next to a shack that was put by the settlers a few weeks ago, close to the settlement of Kyriat Arba, in Hebron, on 8.05.2009. The settlers tried to destroy the shack and put it on fire but they did not manage. They also repeatedly attacked and provoked the group.The Israeli soldiers and police arrived at the scene and violently pushed the group away while the settlers were allowed to stay. 8 Israelis, 2 Palestinians were detained. Photo by: Anne Paq/Activestills.org

A Palestinian throws away a torch that was sent by some settlers who attempted to set h[sic] [fire to] the protest Palestinian shack on fire during an action against the settlements in Hebron on 8.05.2009...The settlers tried to destroy the shack and put it on fire but they did not manage... Photo by: Anne Paq/Activestills.org

An Israeli activist argues with an Israeli settler during an action against the settlements in Hebron on 8.05.2009... Photo by: Anne Paq/Activestills.org

it's a shame these slugs ain't real

On the left photo, taken on the 25/7/2008, Bassam Ibrahim Abu Rahme is seen during a protest in Bilin, flying his kite between two sections of the apartheid fence.
On the right photo, taken on the 24/4/2008, Mohamed Khatib flies the kite of Bassen after he was killed one week before, in front of the apartheid fence in Bilin.
Bassen was murdered by Israeli soliders on the 17/4/2009, during the weekly protest in Bilin.
Photo by: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org

I wrote about Bassem here and here and here. I'm fairly sure Mohamed Khatib was the man trying to negotiate with the Israeli soldiers to stop shooting in the video in this post after Bassem had been critically wounded by a teargas canister shot directly at him from a distance of 30 metres. As for the caption above, it is a bit confusing. I think the 'after he was killed one week before' should maybe be omitted. Visit the active stills photo stream. There are some quite amazing photos such as the ones below. All of the protests against the wall in Bilin that active stills documents are non-violent.

Demonstrators run avoid tear gas shot by the Israeli army, during a protest against the apartheid wall in the west Bank village of Bilin, on the 24/4/2009.
Hundreds of Palestinian, Israelis and internationals protested the murder of Bassam Ibrahim Abu Rahme, which was shot by an Israeli solider on the Friday demonstration last week in Bilin. Photo by: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org

Demonstrators hold shields to protect themselves from tear gas canisters and rubber coated bullets shot by the Israeli army, during a protest against the apartheid wall in the west Bank village of Bilin, on the 24/4/2009.
Hundreds of Palestinian, Israelis and internationals protested the murder of Bassam Ibrahim Abu Rahme, which was shot by an Israeli solider on the Friday demonstration last week in Bilin. Photo by: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org

It's nothing to worry about, really. I know that the Australian and western governments use similar techniques to disperse all those people who protest against the Iraq war

Iraq War protest, Los Angeles, 2007
Wait, no tear gas or rubber bullets (remember to check out the size of those tear gas canisters) how about here?

Policeman stands over a white student (an onlooker or protest supporter), while tear gas hangs in the air during the Afro-American Society takeover of Duke University 's Allen Administration Building.[Durham, North Carolina] (photograph by Harold Moore, courtesy of the Herald-Sun).

or

here:
1976, Soweto Uprising, South Africa
That's more like it. We support this type of suppression of protest in the West, don't we? We have never condemned it, have never supported civil rights, or thought that apartheid was wrong?

I know so much of it is about media coverage. Without media coverage, the hearts of the general populous cannot be won. So I was pleased to see that the following got blanket reportage:

Fourth Bil’in International Conference on Popular Nonviolent Resistance, Bilin, Palestine, 22/4/2009.

A member of “Anarchist against the wall” speaks during the opening of the Fourth Bil’in International Conference on Popular Nonviolent Resistance, on the 22/4/2009.Photo by: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org

Here a member of Anarchists against the wall speaks out at the Fourth Bil'in International Conference on Popular Nonviolent Resistance. Read that word, Nonviolent. I've written it a few times so that it doesn't get lost in the typeset. As said before, I'm glad that it got blanket coverage in the mainstream presses, because nonviolent protest is what it's all about.
Oh, it didn't. . ?
. . . the speaker is a terrorist, or oppressed. That must be the reason. She looks pretty threatening, I must admit. She is probably Israeli, too. There are plenty of Israelis who join in the nonviolent protests. But we all know about that, too, don't we?

And who said Palestinians didn't have a sense of humour?

Fourth Bil’in International Conference on Popular Nonviolent Resistance, Bilin, Palestine, 22/4/2009.

Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad (center), holds an art work made from rubber coated bullets, shot by the Israeli army towards protestors against the wall in the west bank village of Bilin.
The gift was given to him by the people of the village of Bilin, during the opening of the Fourth Bilin International Conference on Popular Nonviolent Resistance, on the 22/4/2009.Photo by: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org

it's life, bibi, but not as we know it

"If Israelis can’t build homes in the West Bank

then Palestinians shouldn’t be allowed to either."

Let's try paraphrasing that:

"If Americans can't build homes in Canada,

then Canadians shouldn't be allowed to either."

Israel's Prime Minister, Netanyahu. And people wonder why the peace process is stalled. Actually, the peace process is all about stalling, and Israel and the United States (and other western powers) know it well enough.

Nice commentary on Ben White's blog.

I am eight months pregnant

Being pregnant, I couldn’t run fast. After about one hundred meters, the settlers caught me. One of them hit me in my right arm and left leg with his stick. The other settler threw a stone at me, which hit me in the left leg. Then one of them pushed me, and I fell onto some thorns. My arm and leg hurt a lot. When I fell, the two settlers left me and ran toward the farmers and other shepherds. I remained there, crying. I was in terrible pain.

After a few minutes, Amneh and Khadrah ran over to me and helped me get up. They lifted me up with the help of the children and laid me on the donkey that we had brought with us, and returned me to the village. I was in such great pain that I thought my arm has been broken. I was still crying when we reached the village. An Israeli ambulance came and the medical team gave me first-aid. Then the Israeli police and two army jeeps of the Civil Administration arrived. I told them what happened. Around 11:00 A.M., a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance came and took me to ‘Aliyah Government Hospital, in Hebron.

At the hospital, they examined me and X-rayed me. They found that my arm was not broken. I was very lucky, and the fetus was not harmed. I remained in the hospital for two or three hours, and then went home. My arm swelled up and I am still in pain, a week after the incident.
A Palestinian policeman at the hospital took my complaint. I did not go to the Israeli police because I don’t feel well enough, and because I need somebody to accompany me to Kiryat Arba to do that.(Continue reading)

the longest letter

Art. This is a great story. I read the whole text somewhere else on these endless trawling days of the web... ahh, here we go. The whole letter is 1,968 words, which is not too much for a computer to handle, but is a substantial piece of text when it is being painted on the apartheid wall. The text is an open letter from Farid Esack (1959), who

is a writer, Muslim, scholar and human rights activist, well known for his opposition to apartheid and his appointment by Nelson Mandela as a gender equity commissioner. Esack has also been involved with the organisation Positive Muslims, which is dedicated to helping HIV-positive Muslims in Africa. He has been teaching at many universities, including Harvard University and Xavier University in the United States of America, the University of the Western Cape in South Africa and the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Farid Esack is mawlana, a religious scholar. At the age of 15 he went to Karachi, Pakistan where he studied in a madrassah for eight years. Esack's mission is to create tolerance and understanding between ethnic and religious groups. In Pakistan he was shocked by the discrimination of Christians and the hate against Jews. In Palestine he saw the devastating effect of a new apartheid. On the request of the Sendamessage Foundation, Holland, Farid Esack wrote a letter, which will be sprayed on the wall at Ram (near Ramallah) of 2,625 metres.

The following is the beginning of the letter. Sendamessage has a wonderful website. Please visit, especially as each word of the letter, or so many characters, is being paid for via donation. The begininning of the letter is below, and the painting has begun. Non-violent resistance, again. It is a joint project between the Dutch group and one in Palestine. There is plenty of transparency on their website.

On the Wall near Ramallah.
Minimal length: 2,625 metres.

The full letter by Farid Esack comprises 1,998 words or 11,643 characters. Each 1.5-metre section of standard concrete wall segment will hold seven characters or spaces. This means that the full letter will stretch over 1,662 segments of wall, giving it total length of 2,493 metres. If you now add 88 empty segments to separate the 89 sentences, the total length will be 2,625 metres. At the end of the letter there will be plenty of room for extra signatures. With those we expect to surpass the 3,000 metres. However, we are not after a world record. This is about justice for the Palestinians. After 61 years of neglect, oppression and dispossession they deserve a message the world will not readily forget. This message, put into words by Farid Esack, deserves all the public and media attention it can get. [My emphasis].

This is a preview of what the letter will look like, and work on it has started as evidenced by the photo in this blog, courtesy of artists against apartheid.

My dear Palestinian brothers and sisters, I have come to your land and I have recognized shades of my own. My land was once one where some people imagined that they could build their security on the insecurity of others. They claimed that their lighter skin and European origins gave them the right to dispossess those of a darker skin who lived in the land for thousands of years. I come from a land where a group of people, the Afrikaners, were genuinely hurt by the British. The British despised them and placed many of them into concentration camps. Nearly a sixth of their population perished.

Then the Afrikaners said, ‘Never again!’. And they meant that never again will harm come unto them with no regard to how their own humanity was tied to that of others. In their hurt they developed an understanding of being’s God chosen people destined to inhabit a Promised Land. And thus they occupied the land, other people’s land, and they built their security on the insecurity of black people. Later they united with the children of their former enemies – now called “the English”. The new allies, known simply as ‘whites’, pitted themselves against the blacks who were forced to pay the terrible price of dispossession, exploitation and marginalization as a result of a combination of white racism, Afrikaner fears and ideas of chosenness. And, of course, there was the ancient crime of simple greed.

I come from Apartheid South Africa.

Arriving in your land, the land of Palestine, the sense of deja vu is inescapable. I am struck by the similarities. In some ways, all of us are the children of our histories. Yet, we may also choose to be struck by the stories of others. Perhaps this ability is what is called morality. We cannot always act upon what we see but we always have the freedom to see and to be moved. Continue reading.

they could not stand silent

Kind of wish we were still clutching Mummy Britain's apron strings, rather than sucking on Daddy America's pacifier at times (ooh, I know it sounds a little rude). This is from Jews sans frontieres.

UK considers arms embargo against Israel

Britain says it will review all weapons exports to Israel following the country's recent war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The move comes amid pressure from British lawmakers who had demanded that the government ensure U.K. weapon parts were not used against Palestinians.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Parliament Tuesday that all export licenses would be reviewed "in light of recent events in Gaza." Israel's three-week offensive ended in mid-January.

He says all future applications to export arms to Israel will also be assessed with the Gaza conflict in mind.

Miliband says Britain supplies less than 1 percent of Israel's military imports.

That's not really the point though, is it?

That last bit was written by the original poster. And, this is one I've been meaning to post for a while Veolia loses another contract in Bordeaux. That's April 16, so again, a little slow. I'll let you read the article, but being terribly lazy, will pop in this paragraph, so you get some idea of why it is a big deal:

The Greater Bordeaux local government give a contract for the management of the biggest urban network in France to Keolis, a subsidiary of SNCF over Veolia. Veolia has been involved in the construction of a tramway in Jerusalem, designed to link West Jerusalem with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Veolia has now lost contracts that are worth more than $7.5 Billion in Stockholm, West Midlands (UK) and Bordeaux.

See, the thing is, though, despite the very good bloggers and human rights groups that come out of the U.S., considering that Catholic universities in that country have not hosted Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the past due to his humanitarian views, and that certain church groups rallied against him speaking with other church members about his views, it is highly unlikely that any great change will come from the U.S. This of course, is the biggest problem, because the U.S. grants Israel virtual diplomatic immunity in everything it does, and also funds it with foreign and military aid. Ah well. Maybe all the little bits from the rest of the world will ultimately, one day, add up to something called justice.


Ooh, and how about this one?: Finally on the same page as the date for once, and I am going to lift the picture: Norwegian lawyers charge top Israeli officials with war crimes

A group of lawyers in Norway have filed charges with the nation's top prosecutor against former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, accusing them of war crimes...

The lawyers said they could not stand silent in the face of what they termed Israel's 'war crimes' in Gaza. They said in their statement, "There can be no doubt that these subjects knew about, ordered or approved the actions in Gaza and that they had considered the consequences of these actions."[My emphasis]

Similar charges filed in Spain last month were later revoked after pressure from the Israeli government and lobbyists threatened to change the very nature of the Spanish judiciary. Lawyers backed down from the charges after the campaign, saying that the 'universal jurisdiction' in that country did not apply if an investigation is ongoing within the offending country. Although Israel has claimed that their military conducted 'investigations' into the military's actions in Gaza, but no on-the-ground evidence was actually gathered during, leading many observers worldwide to question its legitimacy.

The Norwegian lawyers said that the potential for diplomatic problems between their government and Israel was outweighed by the severity of the crimes in the case.[My emphasis].

I seem to recall a time when a lot of western countries were concerned with the above. Okay, so Spain did not go through with their charges, huh? Now, the news from this article explains why Dershowitz is saying that Norway is "one of the biggest offenders against Israel", along with the 'racist' Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Let's hope that their humanitarian resolve is strong. And let's hope that some of Norway's western neighbours, friends and allies (or all neighbours, friends and allies) rally around and support its just and moral decision in the face of the smear campaign and tactics that are sure to follow.

Update, April 24: Well, The Greater Bordeaux local government may not be dealing with Veolia. But, Iran is, though I thought the sanctions against Iran would have prevented even this.

here are your Gandhis

For Durban, visit Antony Loewenstein, he has a lot, and Mondoweiss. Visit the blogroll.

The video halfway down this post is old in the current affairs scale of things, it being shot on April 17, but it is a video of Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahme who died last week after being hit in the stomach by a teargas canister. I blogged about it here and here.
The Israeli news, Ynet, reports Bassem's relative, Abdullah, who was near Bassem when he was fatally wounded, as saying (my emphasis):

"I can say for certain that there was no violence or provocation on the part of the protestors... The casualty's last words were to the soldiers and police officers: 'Stop firing, stop firing.' And then the grenade hit him and he was critically injured."

Bassem was wearing a bright green shirt and was shot directly by a soldier from some thirty metres away. The teargas canisters are huge.
Abdullah follows up his above statements with the words below, which should be given close attention by all the people who are crying out for the Palestinians to get themselves a Gandhi (my emphasis):

Abdullah claims that the increasing incidents of firing on demonstrators in recent weeks, and the growing number of protestors injured and killed in anti-fence rallies, show that the Israelis don't know how to handle the non-violent protests.

"When the struggle is armed, the Israelis like it," he says. "They know that with their weapon, with one aircraft, one bombing, they can handle the struggle. But when the struggle is non-violent, and when peace activists from Israel and the entire world are taking part in the demonstrations, it's harder to conceal the truth, to hide the robbery and violence.

"We're noticing that they're losing their senses, and this why, over time, they run wilder and become more violent."

According to Abdullah, "We know that what worries the Israelis more is that this style of a non-violent struggle might spread from Bilin, Naalin and other numbered centers and become a wide model. So they are seeking to suppress this model before it spreads even more, because they know our struggle is justified and that they are losing.

"Moreover, Bassem was killed when we were trying to enter land which an Israeli court ruled we are allowed to enter."

I have blogged a little about this fear of non-violent protest in this post where the Israeli forces have described peaceful protest as being "...a smart way to trigger Israeli violence and thus incite the uprising''

Apparently the soldiers asked the Palestinians who were protesting against the apartheid wall if they wanted more 'gas' (read the Mondoweiss article below). As this 'incident' was actually filmed, it made the news in Israel, and there will be a self-investigation and so on and so on.

This text is from Mondoweiss. The shorter video he refers to has been removed due to violating terms of use... whatever that means...considering it was apparently distributed by Reuters.

This is a fuller video than the short, shocking video we posted last night depicting the killing of Bassem Ibrahim Abu Ramah yesterday at the weekly protest of the confiscatory wall in the West Bank village of Bil'in. The video shows plainly that the demonstrators were not violent. Here is a rough translation of the words on the video, supplied by an anonymous friend:

The demonstrators are telling the soldiers in Hebrew that there are children and Israelis present and they are asking them not to shoot. Bassem is shouting "listen, wait a minute, wait a minute" before he falls to the ground. The soldiers then fire another round of tear gas as the demonstrators yell that he is injured and needs an ambulance.

In the longer video, as [Mohammed] Khatib is arguing with the soldier, I can't make out all of it because they're talking over each other, but you can clearly hear the soldier say, "do you want more gas?" They can see someone is on the ground and bleeding and because they know it's a Palestinian, they don't care.

And the soldier is telling Khatib "Are you going to shut up?" as Khatib pleads with him to stop shooting. The Israeli who's next to Bassem right after the shooting is just saying, there's an injured man, bring an ambulance quickly. He asks Bassem where he was hit. The demonstrators also repeat throughout, this is a non-violent demonstration. The soldiers merely respond with teargas.

This is what Bassem looked like not even one year ago:


From the active stills group.

An archive photo, taken on 25/7/2008, shows Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahme (ElFeel) during a protest against the wall in the village of Bilin.

And also, thanks to Mondoweiss, this is the Full Text of President Ahmadinejad’s Remarks at U.N. Conference on Racism for anyone who is interested.

monkey brain sushi

There is serious stuff to write, and hopefully I'll get around to it. Unfortunately, the world does not stand still while I'm nursing a hangover. Monkey Brain Sushi was a great book of Japanese short stories that I read in the early nineties. It's how my head feels, too, and my general being. Kind of raw and slithery. Still, I will go to the castle in a few hours with a friend, and enjoy some of the remaining cherry blossoms. Hopefully the weather is not too chilly. Oh, okay, I'll get a little serious. A follow-up to yesterday's story.

In these two photos, an Israeli protestor [sic] is seen in two different demonstrations, both held in front of the Ministry of Defense in Tel aviv, holding a sign with the same slogan: “Also I am an un-armed protestor- shot [sic] me!”

The first photo was taken on the 19/5/2004 during a demonstration after the Israeli army attacked a protest in the Gaza strip, kilning many Palestinians, and the second one, was taken on the 18/4/2009 during a demonstration after the Israeli army murdered Bassam Ibrahim Abu Rahme during a protest in Bilin.

Photos by: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org

A Palestinian man holds the tear gas canister that killed Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahme (ElFeel), at a hospital in the West Bank city of Ramallah on the 17/4/2009.
Bassem was murdered by the Israeli army, during a protest against the apartheid wall in Bilin. A soldier shot him with an extended range tear-gas projectile that was aimed directly at him from a distance of 30 meters. Bassem was critically injured in the chest and died shortly after arriving at a hospital in Ramallah.

Photo by: oren Ziv/ Activestills.org

flying kites

From the active stills group.

An archive photo, taken on 25/7/2008, shows Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahme (ElFeel) during a protest against the wall in the village of Bilin.

Bassam was murdered by the Israeli army [17 April, 2009], during a protest against the apartheid wall in Bilin. He was shot with an extended range teargas projectile directly at him from a distance of 30 meters. Bassem was critically injured in the stomach and died not long after in a hospital in Ramallah.

That is a similar teargas projectile, and a similar way of targeting, that caused American, Tristan Anderson's, criticial condition.

*Note: I see that Israeli Uri Avnery at Gush Salom has commented on this. His post is short. It follows in full (my emphasis, apart from the title):

Bil'in demonstrator Bassam Abu Rahme killed – soldiers' trigger-happiness inspired from higher up
Already for four years, demonstrations are taking place at the village of Bil'in, to protest the "Separation Fence" which robs the villagers of much of their land, and whose route is in blatant violation of the Supreme Court ruling. Also before, the army used violence to disperse the Palestinian, Israeli and international demonstrators. But, until this morning no one got killed. The killing of Bassam Abu Rahme today, a Bil'in resident, follows upon the severe head wounding of American peace activist Tristan Anderson a month ago, and constitutes a grave escalation.

This escalation was not caused by the demonstrators' behavior, in which there had been no change, but to new instructions given to the military forces on the ground. Whether by explicit instructions or by a tacit nod and a new "spirit of the commander", the finger on the trigger was loosed and authorization given for the tear gas containers as lethal missiles.

This is the harsh heritage of the Gaza War and the mass killings which it entailed. To this is added the odious spirit of the new government, which confronts the entire world and places a racist provocateur in charge of its foreign affairs - not to speak of the new-old Defence Minster Ehud Barak, who is responsible for a lot of bloodshed.

water tanks

Read the story here, and if you want to learn more about the restrictions Palestinians face when trying to access and store water, read here

Also, the latest from Tales to Tell. The writer was assisting medics during the war on Gaza. She is talking about the lives of some of the people she worked with and knows.

We have very much enjoyed our course and our teachers, who have found time for us in amongst their long hours and low pay (if any, many medics are volunteers) and Red Crescent job cuts (it hardly seems the time, does it.) Two out of three of our teachers have been in Israeli prison, but then what Palestinian man hasn’t. One told us of coming back via Egypt, having gone outside with his wife to get medical treatment for his small son who has cerebral palsy, and being arrested as he entered Gaza, back when the border was more directly controlled by Israel and not ostensibly by Egypt.

He then spent 3 years in prison, a lot of it sharing a small room with ten people; their sentences 25 years, 99 years. While he was in there, his father died, and his fourth child was born.

“What were you in prison for?” I asked.
“I don’t know exactly,” he said. “I think it was because we picked up a dead fighter in the ambulance, and I locked his gun temporarily in my office because the only other option was to leave it lying where we found him, which would have been irresponsible. Somehow they turned that into the accusation that I was selling weapons.”

Another teacher, when he was a teenager, was doing very well in high school and planned to study medicine in Turkey, but then was picked up for throwing stones at soldiers (in David-and-Goliath tradition, except for stones thrown by lads other than David usually being completely ineffective, since soldiers wear body armour). He was imprisoned as punishment, and banned from leaving Gaza. So he never did become a doctor.

I went to visit the Jordanian Field Hospital yesterday, in my quest to find some help for two children C met during the war, who need kidney transplants. Everything was set up for them to travel to France, back in January, but Egypt wouldn’t let them out. Kidney transplants can’t be done in Gaza, and infuriatingly, neither can tissue typing, from what I’ve found out so far. That’s how you find out who your donors can be. Even if we get permission for the kids and their donors to go out for surgery, how do they know who to take with them to be the donors, without knowing who is medically compatible? Anyway, further communication with the Jordanian folks might allow us to make some progress. Read more.

internationals arrested

Keeping in mind the ongoing settler violence, over which the Israeli army rarely does anything except make sure that the settlers do not get injured,and the ongoing shooting at farmers trying to tend to their fields, or in fact the obstruction of them even getting there in the first place, there is this rather disturbing news release from ISM:

A German national and an Italian national were taken by Israeli forces while accompanying farmers at 11am. Both individuals have been taken to the police station at Kyrat Arba. Palestinian farmers in At-Tuwani rely on the presence of International and Israeli human rights workers to mitigate violence from settlers.

As soldiers in the area frequently ignore settler violence and rarely interfere to protect the farmers, international volunteers provide support for the Palestinians. The grazing action began around 8.30 am, and the German and Italian nationals were arrested at 11am.

At-Tuwani is a village of 300 Palestinians located in South Hebron Hills. Residents make their living through farming, primarily wheat, barley, olives and grazing sheep. At-Tuwani is also one of several villages under daily threat from extremist settlers living in the area. Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills are daily nonviolently resisting settlement expansion and violence at the hands of settlers and soldiers.

Internationals accompany Palestinians as they perform agricultural work on their land and in other nonviolent demonstrations. Internationals accompany Palestinians as they work their land, use video to document settlers, soldiers, and police, and intervene as Palestinians request.

Palestinians have always been vulnerable under the occupation, and the crimes committed against them are far greater in number, and usually, in viciousness, than those committed against internationals. However, considering reports about American volunteer Tristan Anderson, who was critically injured when a tear gas canister was fired into his forehead, state that he was deliberately targeted, it seems that it may be getting just as dangerous for all internationals. I think that after Gaza, and now that Lieberman is just another further extreme face to an already extreme government, and the world's democratic governments have no problem with what Israel is doing, and in fact, provide the aid and arms for them to continue, peace in our time will not be a possibility for either territory, I'm afraid, and maybe not for the whole world.

There have been horrendous crimes on both sides, one cannot deny it, however, the longer people are treated like animals and their plight, and the reasons for their plight, is ignored by the people who could make a difference, the worse the problem will grow. How can it possibly get any better?

Below are some images from some of the peaceful demonstrations that have been held. There are many peaceful demonstrations, but that does not mean that they are not dispersed with violence. It would be good if our media could show some of these images, too. Rocks and stones get thrown at the Israeli military, but I contend that rocks are not much of a match for the Israeli rubber bullets, sound bombs, tear gas, and live ammunition, which is often used.

Photographas are taken from the active stills flickr page, and information on them can be found here


and here.

false claims

An update on the story featured in this post, Turkey allows access to its archives.

Officials in Turkey traced the documents the lawyers requested and provided affidavits that the settlers' land claims were forged. The search of the Ottoman archives, Mr Abu Ahmad said, had failed to locate any title deeds belonging to a Jewish group for the land in Sheikh Jarrah.

The settlers who wish to build apartments on the land, claim that it was bought by Sephardi Jews in the nineteenth century. Let's see what happens now. Mrs Kurd (63) who is living in a tent on wasteland near her former home (a tent which, incidentally has been torn down six times) to protest the evictions, will never get back her husband, who was chronically ill, and died shortly after eviction. 500 residents face eviction and demolition of their homes in the Sheik Jarrah area, which is close to the old city and Palestinian (and Jewish) holy places. The U.S., unusually, has protested the proposed evictions (and I guess, actual, if we take the case of Mrs. Kurd).
Related.
*Note: April 1, useful information: A layman's guide to home demolitions in East Jerusalem

the world's greatest lover

This one is doing the rounds, and it's too good not to re-post it. A letter from the Independent (U.K.)

Following Israel's self-appointment as the world's most moral army, may I appoint myself as the world's greatest lover. When after five minutes this claim is questioned and then ridiculed, I will aggressively question your editorial standards and bias.

Especially keeping in mind reports such as this incursion into a West Bank town, where over 150 minors and youths [were] arrested and questioned in the grounds of a school. A man was injured also. The Palestinian paramedics were called and nearby, but not allowed to enter. The Israeli forces saying they would deal with it, but they didn't. Journalists and a television crew were either denied entry, or escorted from the grounds. You might want to read this report on incarceration in Israeli prisons, too. I thought democracy was meant to be opposed to these kinds of actions.

A boycott call has gone out to Australian academics.

complaints

Israel has received four official complaints from members of the new administration regarding various issues linked to West Bank settlements.

The new administration means Obama's administration. Previous governments have also complained, and have sometimes backed up those complaints by pseudo-withdrawal of the various ways that Israel receives U.S. funding, but those measures of withdrawal have never stayed in place for long. The complaints are usually about the settlements, which of course, are a very serious matter. They are rarely about human rights abuse, even so, I hope it indicates a shift in the U.S. policy whereby under Bush, and many previous governments, Israel was provided with weapons, funding and policy to do whatever it wanted.

Brighton Students support Jayyous

A bulldozer entering Jayyous. Photo courtesy of ISM.

The U.K., including and especially its students, seems to be active in protesting the human rights abuse that Israel systematically inflicts on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, or far more active than groups in Australia and the U.S. Here is a report from the International Solidarity Movement website.

At around 6:30 this morning a group of students from Brighton locked themselves to Carmel Agrexco, the Israeli state owned export company, to protest against their complicity in the illegal annexation of the West Bank and the repression of students in the Palestinian village of Jayyous.

This action has been done in response to a callout for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, after the events of 18th February and onwards in Jayyous. On this day, occupying Israeli Defence Force soldiers invaded the town of Jayyous, where regular protests have been held against the building of the apartheid wall, which will annex 5,585 dunums (558.5 hectares) of land from the town, much of which is to be used for the expansion of the illegal settlement, Zufim.

75 soldiers and 25 army jeeps invaded the town in the early hours of the morning, conducting house to house raids: throwing sound-bombs at houses before forcing families out at gunpoint and ransacking their houses. At least 75 people were arrested, the vast majority students, including the entire student Stop the Wall Committee. Those arrested were taken to a school that the army had turned into a detention centre. Most of the people were blindfolded and handcuffed and all were forced to sit in stress positions. They were not allowed to eat, drink or talk to each other as they were taken in for interrogation one by one. They were held for as much as 19 hours and 15 young men were taken to Huwarra military base on unknown charges. Bulldozers were then brought in which created blockades at the entrances to the town and the population were put under curfew for 18 hours.

Since then, the village has been invaded two further times, on the second time a half-day curfew was imposed on the town. Residents have also been threatened with home demolitions. Read more.

In the meantime, Obama talks about the possibility of negotiating with the moderate arm of the Taliban (something that ex-CIA operative, Robert Baer, suggested when I saw him speak). Hamas has a moderate arm, too, and is democratically elected, maybe Obama could try talking to them, too. Despite this olive branch, it seems that he might send forces into Sri Lanka. Why? Who knows. Because he can? If it is for humanitarian reasons, as claimed, surely they could have sent forces in to Gaza to evacuate the women and children, and civilians in general, who had nowhere to flee. Some are saying it will be tantamount to an invasion, if the LITE forces are still fighting.