| IOP Report {5} - January 2013 |
|
| Thursday, 24 January 2013 | |
|
While Occupation and blockade are business as usual for Israel, there should be no business with Israel In Occupied Palestine Zionism in practice Israel’s Daily Toll on Palestinian Life, Limb, Liberty and Property (Compiled by Leslie Bravery, Palestine Human Rights Campaign POB 56150, Dominion Rd, Auckland, New Zealand www.palestine.org.nz) Recent news updates: Martyred in Gaza – documentary: At 7pm on 7 February, at the Auckland University Library Lecture Room B28, UK documentary maker and activist, Harry Fear, and Roger Fowler will give a talk on their experiences in Gaza up to the start of Israel's Operation Pillar of Cloud at the end of last year. Harry's visit will be a great start to building up awareness and solidarity for Palestine in New Zealand in 2013. See Harry Fear's documentary: http://www.deliberation.info/martyred-in-gaza-a-documentary-by-harry-fear/ Brief Al Jazeera commentary on Israeli elections. Video Petition: Stop EU funding of Israeli settlements and arms companies. http://psc.iparl.com/lobby/96 Area C Special UN report. (http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_area_c_factsheet_January_2013_english.pdf) The people speak – and act! ‘This is an act of refusal, a democratic rebellion’: 2000 Israelis offer their vote to Palestinians living under occupation. Israeli and Palestinian activists have used Facebook to organise a creative campaign where Israeli citizens could offer their vote in today's election to Palestinians living under occupation. The project's Facebook page describes the effort as a "Palestinian-Israeli electoral rebellion" and says: http://mondoweiss.net/2013/01/democratic-palestinians-occupation.html. This is an act of refusal, a democratic rebellion. We are Palestinians and Israelis who refuse to participate in the illusion of democracy any more. In the upcoming Israeli elections we, citizens of Palestine, will exercise our civic right to vote. We, Israeli citizens, will give up our own votes and instead vote as our Palestinian counterparts tell us to. We believe that all people are born equal. This is supposedly a universal value. Yet the current Israeli and international law do not treat the citizens of Palestine and the citizens of Israel equally. Without a ‘one person-one vote’ system, Israel cannot be democratic. Without equality between citizens, the UN and other global institutions cannot be democratic. Either the Israeli occupation stops or all Palestinians must be allowed to vote in the Israeli elections. To leave Palestinians subjects of a state in which they are not full citizens is in contradiction of the basic principles of democracy. We know that to some, this is a provocative act. We hope to provoke thought, dialogue and a political change. What we want is equality between people – in Palestine, Israel and the world. We are not alone. The world-wide struggle for institutions that reflect equality between people is a long and difficult one. In a similar campaign in 2010, citizens of the UK gave their votes to people from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana. Another campaign will take place in Germany in 2013. We are inspired by our sisters and brothers in squares in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Mexico, Spain, the US and Britain, inspired by the movements for women's suffrage, the Indian resistance to the British occupation, the struggle for democracy in South Africa and the American civil rights movement. Their victories give us hope. We too shall overcome. Generation Palestine: Voices from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. Edited by Rich Wiles – foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. This is a book worth getting for anyone wanting to gain an understanding of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel’s apartheid policies and practices. Its editor, Rich Wiles has gathered contributions from a diverse group of activists, writers, lawyers, artists and academics who have all encountered the usual arguments against boycotts and have answers to counter them based on international law and simply a people’s human right to resist their oppressors. Whether you are strongly for or against the rights of Palestinians, or even ambivalent about them, you owe it to yourself to become more informed about one of the burning issues of our times from a side that is rarely heard in our mainstream media or from our political leaders. These are human issues that affect us all. You may also wish to watch Rich Wiles’ latest documentary film The villagers on the line: http://www.ongoingnakba.org/en/west-bank/jerusalem-district-wb/battir/battir-v1.html It is heartbreaking to see ordinary people face such a hopeless future for themselves and their families. – Sonja Karkar, Editor http://australiansforpalestine.com Best article on USA/Israeli/Middle east policies. Lobe Log 17 January 2013 / "Amb. Chas Freeman (ret.) spoke to a Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) forum on US Grand Strategy — or, in his words 'Grand Waffle' — in the Middle East on Capitol Hill yesterday and has graciously agreed to have the text posted on Lobe Log. Readers of the blog are already well acquainted with Freeman, a victim for four years, when he was appointed to chair the National Intelligence Council (NIC), of a McCarthyite-like campaign driven by many of the same neo-conservatives and Israel lobby activists opposed to Chuck Hagel’s nomination." Grand Waffle in the Middle East by Chas Freeman: http://www.lobelog.com/grand-waffle-in-the-middle-east/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Free the human rights defender and Stop the Wall activist, Hassan Karahaj! In the early hours of this morning, 23 January 2013, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) arrested Hassan Yasser Karajeh, a 29-year-old youth activist in the Stop the Wall Campaign, violently breaking into his home in the West Bank village of Safa, west of Ramallah. This new arrest of Stop the Wall staff comes as Palestinian popular resistance against increasing Israeli settlement construction and forcible expulsion of Palestinian communities is gathering pace. Armed IOF soldiers stormed the home of Hassan Karajeh at 2:30am, and, gathering the family together in one room, separated the men and women from each other. The soldiers started to search the family members and ordered them to strip naked for the search. However, the men and women refused and defied this order. Muhammad Karajeh, Hassan's brother and a lawyer, reported that special units of the Israeli army stormed the house and carried out an extensive search, in the process breaking furniture, scattering the contents of the house and taking three personal computers, three mobile phones, and five bags of private documents belonging to the family. Muhammad further described how the Israeli soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded his brother, Hassan, as they arresting him and took him to an undisclosed location, and refused to tell the family where he is being held. The Karajeh family denounces Hassan's arrest and the way in which it was carried out by the Israeli Occupation forces and condemns the theft of their property and the destruction and smashing of the contents of their house. The family calls upon international human rights organisations to demand that the Israeli Occupation forces immediately release Hassan and all others they took prisoner. Hassan Karajeh is the youth co-ordinator of Stop the Wall. He is a young human rights defender, well known at the local level and across the Arab world. He was youth ambassador for Palestine at the Arab Thought Forum and has represented various Palestinian organisations in many international conferences and seminars. His arrest comes as part of the continued Israeli repression of Palestinian human rights defenders involved in popular action against Israeli occupation, including construction of the illegal Wall and settlements. Stop the Wall has repeatedly been the target of arrest campaigns and office raids aimed at stopping its activism in support of Palestinian rights and international law. Governments across the globe have overwhelmingly condemned the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise and in particular the latest expansion of the E1 settlement bloc. If governments don´t want to accept Israel ridiculing their condemnations and international law, the least the international community should do is to stand up for the right to protest against Israeli settlement construction. The latest Israeli elections have yet again confirmed that Israel will only respect Palestinian rights and international law and start considering a just peace once heavy international pressure takes effect. Until then, Israel will continue to expand settlements and to implement its August 2011 announcement to UN agencies that it plans to forcibly expel Palestinian communities in Area C (over 60 per cent of the West Bank). The movement of a new generation of active, creative and determined youth activists is galvanising popular resistance. Hassan is only one of many that face a heavy toll of Israel repression. Stop the Wall therefore calls on all human rights organisations, Arab and international solidarity movements and human rights defenders, to support us in mounting a powerful and effective campaign for the release of Hassan Karajah. We are preparing an activist kit for you to join in the campaign to free Hassan. Updates will follow soon. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Profiting from segregated buses is not OK This week, people all across the United States commemorated Martin Luther King Jr Day. We want to share with you one way in which we honoured his memory in Palestine and ask you to join us in our struggle for freedom, equality and justice. Last November, we tried in vain to ride a bus from the West Bank to Jerusalem. You can see some of us in the picture. Israeli police violently dragged us off the bus and arrested us simply for being on that bus. Some people in the US have compared us to Rosa Parks. We are not [the same]. We were not relegated to the back of the bus; we had no place in the bus at all. And while Rosa Parks was an American demanding an end to segregation in her own country, we represent an occupied people demanding an end to the Israeli occupation. But let us ask you this, if you knew you were making a profit off the segregationist Montgomery bus company, would you? This is exactly what retirement giant TIAA-CREF is doing when it invests in Veolia Environment, a French multinational profiting from the operation of buses in segregated roads in the occupied West Bank. TIAA-CREF is now receiving shareholder proposals. We Divest has prepared a shareholder resolution calling upon TIAA-CREF to divest from Veolia and other companies that profit from human rights violations. All filings must be in TIAA-CREF’s hands by February 8. The more people that file, the better! Thanks for your help! Bassil Al-Araj Huwaida Arraf Badia Dwaik Mazin Qumsiyeh Fadi Quran Nadim Sharabati On behalf of Palestinian Freedom Riders PS. Activists in the US are already taking a public stand against Veolia. Click here to see details from protests in St Louis last week!
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=P6kTk%2FozCwPfa2MzBMsuZ6%2FE20RBMGvp ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Further news sources Ali Kazak's newsletter Today in Palestine contains many news summaries that include both armed and non-violent methods of resistance to the Occupation. The newsletter also contains much other useful reporting. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it For more news see: Today in Palestine! www.groups.yahoo.com/group/f_shadi ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Behind the Wall Rich Wiles is a photographic artist who has been living and working in Palestine for some years. His photographic work has been shown around Europe, the US, Australia and in Palestine itself. Since 2006 he has been writing from Occupied Palestine under the title Behind the Wall. Much of this work is based in and around the refugee camps in Palestine, highlighting daily life and memories of refugees who still live in forced exile for over 60 years since Al Nakba (The Catastrophe). www.richwiles.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ See this In Occupied Palestine Report at: the PHRC website: www.palestine.org.nz - and you can check out previous editions by clicking on In Occupied Palestine listed under Contents ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Stop the Violence Coalition Stop the Violence is a coalition aimed at fighting against Israeli violence and crimes all over the world. The purpose of the coalition is to co-ordinate the efforts of groups and individuals working to protest against the historic and continuing oppression of Palestinian people by the Israeli regime. Our coalition is an independent and non-profit organisation, based in Europe, which was formed as part of a global movement against Israeli apartheid. We can also provide the latest news, articles, photos, events and petitions. Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you have friends who would also like to receive these newsletters, please ask them to contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |
