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Poster by Melanie Cervantes of Dignidad Rebelde Both Posters remixed by Art And Struggle
 
No Jewish-Only City inside Beit Sahour
Don’t Let the IDF Kidnap Mazin Qumsiyeh
In the 70’s the Israeli army seized land in the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour which is next to Bethlehem and created a military base. According to the land seizure order the land would go back to the Palestinian owners once the army stopped using it. The base was used to shell Palestinian homes, damaging or destroying some 300 over the years.
In 2006 the base was abandoned. The community wanted to build a hospital on the land, and got funding from the U.S. government. A children’s playground was built on part of the land. However, settlers from the far right-wing Women in Green group persuaded the Israeli government to ban the hospital. Settlers have been coming to the area holding religious classes, movies, demonstrations. In the summer of 2008 settlers announced they would build a “Jewish city” on the land. Reports in the Israeli press said the army would build a new “watch tower” on the site.
In January 2010 army bulldozers began working on the land. When local residents objected they were informed the area was a closed military zone. A peaceful protest that was to end with a Christian mass on the land was broken up by tear gas and concussion grenades on February 21. On March 2 at 1:30 in the morning the IDF blockaded roads around the home of Beit Sahour resident Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, one of the leaders of the Popular Committee to Save Ush Ghrab. He had just left to go on speaking tour, but his family was told that the army wanted him to report to a military liason office. We are concerned that Dr. Qumsiyeh will be put into Administrative Detention upon his return to Beit Sahour. Administrative Detention is the notorious practice of putting people in prison without trial. Prisoners are kept for terms of several months and this can be renewed indefinitely. Hundreds are presently in Administrative Detention.
Qumsiyeh and the other members of the Ush Ghrab committee are doing necessary, peaceful and legal work and should not be stopped or intimidated. President Obama has called for a settlement freeze as a way of getting peace talks started. He, members of Congress and the media should focus on Ush Ghrab and demand the IDF and settlers leave the area.
We call for the following:
1) An end to any IDF or settler construction or presence on Ush Ghrab.
2) Free access by Palestinians to the land
3) Permission to build a children’s hospital on the site
4) A public statement by Israeli authorities withdrawing all threats to Dr. Qumsiyeh and other Beit Sahour activists. |
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Mazin Qumsiyeh, one of our speakers at CONNECTICUT The 6th INTERNATIONAL ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK FILM FESTIVAL is now "wanted" by Israeli army for engaging in peaceful protest in Israel. http://artandstruggle.com/ApartheidWeek.php
Israeli army wants me
letter by Mazin Qumsiyeh
The Israeli army invaded our neighborhood at 1:30 AM Tuesday morning waking up my mother, wife and sister. Heavily-armed soldiers blocked roads during "the operation". When my family opened the door, they demanded to see me. They were told I have already left to the US. After many more questions, they left a paper that states I am to appear at the military liaison office next Monday. My sister and wife told them I will not be back by then. Clearly the warning from that military officer at Ush Ghrab that I mentioned in my last email, was based on knowledge of this. I guess I am a wanted man now for engaging in nonviolent protest! Those who were at that event and have video, please contact me. What disturbs me is not the risk to me; any action against oppression is taken knowing there are personal risks. What disturbs me is that this has an effect on my family and thousands of friends around the world who care (and some of it unpredictable). My 76 year old mother asks on the phone that I not go back and that I work in the US for a while, a very painful suggestion for a mother to make about her only remaining son near her! I try to assure her that I have done nothing wrong and will not leave her…but she brings up many examples of people who also did not do any violence and were arrested, imprisoned, and their families had to go through a lot. A friend who heard about this stated I have nothing to worry about, that this was to hassle me to get us to stop being active. Another lost sleep trying to figure out what we can do. I assure her that I will carry on with my speaking tour as planned and that this will blow over one day. (the song “we shall overcome someday” comes to mind).
But I am not different from hundreds of others. Israel is cracking down on all popular/civil resistance activities in Palestine because: 1) there is no armed resistance now, and 2) Civil resistance is escalating and portending a new powerful uprising. Israel’s repression of dissent reinforces in our minds the importance of civil resistance and that there is a price to pay for it. Over 30 activists were arrested in Bilin over the past year, many others in Ni’lin, Al-Ma’sara and elsewhere. The repression reveals the bankruptcy of the Zionist regime and its excessive paranoia that will IMHO eventually lead to its demise. It is paranoia inherent in the philosophical underpinnings of the ideology. That ideology embraced by a subset of Jews (Zionism) simply teaches that “we are God’s chosen people, He gave us this land, we cannot go wrong when behaving against the Goyim especially those who happen to be here when we arrived to reclaim and cleanse our lands, and International law and human rights laws do not apply to us.” It is self-destructive delusions that are inculcated during early education and perpetuate the myths of uniqueness. It leads to the kind of behaviors that are now difficult to hide (the ethnic cleansing of 1948 was only a beginning). But even some Israelis are shedding these mythologies and joining the struggle. In the end, we will live together despite all this repression.
I have to consider various options in terms of responding to this particular event. If you have any advice, I would appreciate it. My initial thought is that we should intensify our work for peace and human rights in this critical and historic period: write to the media, the politicians, neighbors and anyone who would listen. Below is an action call for March 30th (Land Day) which I urge you to heed. We can’t be neutral on a moving train and there are times whether in the US in the 1950s and 1960s or in South Africa under apartheid, when silence was indeed complicity in crime.
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Action: Land Day to be marked with Global BDS Day of Action Statement, Palestinian BDS National Committee, 1 March 2010. The BDS National Committee (BNC) is calling on you to unite in your different capacities and struggles for a Global BDS Day of Action on 30 March 2010 in solidarity with the Palestinian people and for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel…http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11107.shtml
Good and relevant reading: The Goldstone Report and the Israeli "Right of Self-Defense" By Jerome Slater - Professor Emeritus of political science, SUNY Buffalo
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerome-slater/the-goldstone-report-and_b_479945.html
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
A Bedouin in cybersopace, a villager at home
http://qumsiyeh.org
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Things are getting started,
and the number of U.S. cities participating in this year Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) has jumped significantly, with amazing schedules. AND there are more cities that didn't get it together to update their web pages, but are holding events. This is great!
1) The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) has released a statement in support of IAW, and they have asked that it be read at the beginning of events when possible:
BNC Statement in Support of Israeli Apartheid Week
Occupied Palestine, 1 March 2010 - The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) salutes the organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), which will take place in over 40 cities this year.
For the first time, IAW will see activities in Gaza City, where Palestinians continue to resist Israel’s illegal blockade which has transferred the occupied Gaza Strip into the world's largest prison camp. Also for the first time, students in Beirut have organized the first IAW in the Arab world outside Palestine. This in addition to IAW activities undertaken in dozens of cities in South Africa, Europe and North America. IAW has become a sign of the growing solidarity across borders in our global struggle against racism and oppression.
Whereas student and youth movements played a key role in ending Apartheid in South Africa, IAW is currently one of the most important tools to educate people about the nature of Israel as a colonial apartheid system and to build on the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. We hope that your participation in IAW this year will only be a step forward in your concrete and effective campaigns to pressure apartheid Israel to comply with international law.
We also take this opportunity to salute our sisters and brothers from around the world who are also struggling against racism, colonialism and oppression. From the landless peoples' movements of South Africa and Latin America, to the indigenous sovereignty struggles of the original nations of the Americas and Australia, to struggles of racialized and migrant communities the world over: our struggle is one and the same, a struggle for human dignity that will no doubt, one day, be victorious.
In solidarity for freedom, justice, and self-determination
Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)
2) This is a short video documentary about Palestinian prisoners and popular resistance, with Jamal Juma' and Mohammad Othman from the Stop the Wall campaign, who were recently released from detention. Stop the Wall is one of the main groups organizing IAW in Palestine.
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Tales of War Crimes
Thank God, It Was Only Rumors
By STANLEY HELLER (published on Counterpunch.org)
Military Advocate General Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit has instructed the Military Police Investigation unit to close the inquiry into Israeli soldiers' accounts of serious violations of the army's rules of engagement during the Gaza Massacre or as the IDF so winningly calls it: “Operation Cast Lead”. It turns out the General discovered all the charges "were based on hearsay and not first-hand experience." Just a bunch of rumors.
Thank God for that. Those shells were just rumors, the ones that hit the U.N. warehouse and the al-Quds
Hospital. It wasn’t white phosphorus. The jellyfish-like white tentacles that are a signature for a white phosphorus burst were probably a Palestinian fireworks display. The Abu Halima family was wrong. There was no shell that exploded in their house killing four children. Human Right Watch made a mistake. It must have been a sandstorm or a jinn.
Stories that Israeli soldiers wrecked and defiled Palestinian homes were obviously urban legends. After claiming to visit one home near Jabalya camp Israeli newspaper columnist Amira Hass wrote,
“There are houses where excrement was smeared on the walls, or where dry piles of it were found in corners. In many cases, the smells indicated that soldiers had urinated on piles of clothing or inside a washing machine. In all the houses the toilets were overflowing and clogged, and there was filth all around. When the Abu Eidas returned to house No. 5 in Jabalya, they discovered pots of urine and excrement in the refrigerator.”
Where did she come up with this tall tale? The courageous Israelis who commented on her article nailed her good, “What Propaganda”, said Gershon Reed” , “Yes, Amira War is Hell”, said Baruch Gold. “More Hamas Propaganda”, said “Rambo”.
In an effort to clear up confusion Israeli army chief Gabi Ashkenazi announced, "I can say that the IDF is the most moral army in the world." Well there you have it. It comes from the Chief of Staff, himself. The International Red Cross complained that the Israeli army was firing on ambulances. No doubt the charge is a lie. An Israeli handwritten order on a piece of paper that stated: “Rules of Engagement: Open fire also upon rescue’, was obviously just a joke. Have humanitarian organizations no sense of humor?
Amos Harel, the Haaretz military affairs reporter, tells about the testimony given to Danny Zamir who interviewed soldiers who had graduated from his pre-military preparatory program at Oranim
Academic
College and who had fought in Gaza. Zamir claimed that soldiers told him accounts of soldiers killing a woman and two of her children, shooting and killing an elderly Palestinian woman, and destroying property at will. Supposedly a soldier told Zamir, "That what's great in Gaza, you could say - you see someone walking down a track, not necessarily armed, and you can simply shoot them. In our case, it was an elderly woman.” Obviously Harel or Zamir made it all up.
In another article Harel brings up testimonies about the army’s use of the so-called "neighbor procedure". What’s wrong with asking a Palestinian to invite his neighbors to come out for a polite chat with the Israeli army? Harel says Israeli soldiers force Palestinians to do this. Nonsense. Hearsay. Baseless slander. Israelis don’t take human shields. By definition that’s only something Arabs do.
Another Haaetz columnist Gideon Levy wrote, “An army whose armored corps has yet to encounter an enemy tank and whose pilots have yet to face an enemy combat jet in 36 years has been trained to think that the only function of a tank is to crush civilian cars and that a pilot's job is to bomb residential neighborhoods.” What does Levy know? An old woman could be a suicide bomber. A six year old could be a suicide bomber. So the IDF destroyed 20 ambulances. Ambulances could be carrying terrorists. As a U.S. bumper sticker said in Vietnam days, “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.”
Bleeding heart Amnesty International bellyached about the use of flechettes in Gaza. “Flechettes are 4cm long metal darts that are sharply pointed at the front, with four fins at the rear. Between 5,000 and 8,000 are packed into 120mm shells which are generally fired from tanks..” They are “ anti-personnel weapon designed to penetrate dense vegetation”. Well, doesn’t Israel have to fight the terrorists who hide in Gaza’s vast jungles? Amnesty claims Wafa' Nabil Abu Jarad, a 21-year-old pregnant mother of two, was one of those killed by flechettes in Gaza. Where does it come up with this science fiction?
Since the IDF is a most moral army the photos of hateful graffitti soldiers allegedly wrote on houses in Gaza were necessarily faked. Journalist Amira Hass says there were sentences like “We came to annihilate you; Death to the Arabs; Kahane was right; No tolerance, we came to liquidate.” She writes about scribblings cursing the prophet Muhammad. Clearly bogus. So what if the graffiti “appears alongside the names of army units and individual soldiers.” Hasn’t she heard of Photoshop?
And where did the Israeli journalist Uri Blau come up with this dubious report? “Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty.” He claims “A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, 1 shot, 2 kills.’ He even has a photo. Still, he must have made a mistake. The most moral army in the world doesn’t shoot pregnant women. It wouldn’t brag about its cruelty on casual wear. Givati Brigade T-shirts no doubt feature purple bougainvillea flowers blazoned with the slogan “Purity in Arms”.
Middle East Crisis Committee
Founded 1982
www.TheStruggle.org
mail@TheStruggle.org 203-934-2761
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