NOVANEWS
Posted by; Sammi Ibrahem
Chair of West Midland PSC
Dear Friends,
Today is one of those days when there is much to report. Consequently, 9 items below, and that without saying a word about Libya. These are all about Israel and Palestine.
The first item is the IWPS report on the Open Shuhada St. demo. This is the one in which a young woman, Sahar Vardi, was hit in the face, just below the eye, with the butt of a rifle. She is still a bit swollen, but is ok. However, it could have ended a tragedy. Sahar says that she didn’t see the soldier and has no idea why he hit her. That’s the way things are sometimes. I wonder if the soldier knows why he bashed his rifle into a young attractive woman’s face.
Item 2 reports on Israel’s home grown KKK or neo-Nazi or just plain fascist (which ever you prefer) group, the same one that marched through Um l-Fahm about 6 months or so ago. This time they marched through Jaffa, in which Muslims and Jews live side by side in neighborliness. They offered Israeli flags to the Arabs to hang from windows of their homes. Jaffa has its own special atmosphere. No one need fear walking in Jaffa even late at night. The several churches there testify to the past presence of many Christians. Jaffa was an Arab town, one of the largest, and prosperous. Muslims and Christians lived side by side in peace. Today less than half the population is Arab. But where peace reigns, that’s where you are sure to find the Marzels and their ilk. Today Arabs and Jews alike shouted down Marzel and friends.
As for item 3, my spouse was sure that Obama did not veto the resolution in the Security Council without demanding a price from Israel, namely no more building in East Jerusalem. Sounds good, but item 3 informs us that construction for Jews in East Jerusalem is continuing.
Item 4 is about Al Araqib—more accurately, it is about the refusal of the inhabitants to give up their land. This time the report is not by Israeli activists or by the Bedouin, but is in the Guardian. May the world read and do something about the situation! May the world read and bds Israel until it becomes a humane and decent entity.
Item 5 is in a more positive vein: the court has told Israel that profiling all Israeli Arabs is unacceptable. One would think that this would be self-evident without necessitating a court verdict.
In item 6 the Refuser Solidarity Network tells about the organizations that it supports (including New Profile) and about its work.
Item 7 contains several items sent by Mary Rizzo. One of these is a petition in solidarity with Mohammed Bakri. He is a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, and is an actor and director. One of his films, ‘Jenin Jenin’ deals with the aftermath of a vicious week-long attack on the refugee camp in Jenin in April 2002. The film does not deal with the attack, but rather with its impact on the lives of individuals who experienced it. I was in Jenin a week after the army left. I saw what it had done. For me it was a tremendously traumatic experience. I did not believe then (today I know better) that the Israeli military could so thoroughly demolish and kill civilians, including children—some 60 were killed, 40% of the buildings were smashed into rubble. In short, the camp was turned into a waste land. One old man, a refugee the 2nd time over, said ‘it took me 50 years to build a home for my family, and 2 minutes to destroy it. Bakri’s movie focuses on the people who experienced all this, not on the soldiers who did it. But he is being accused of telling lies, of misrepresenting the facts. The film does not tell lies. It tells what the Palestinians who experienced the air raids, the bulldozers, the shooting, who lost loved ones, who lost their homes and everything in them—it tells their story, and does it well. I signed the petition in solidarity with Bakri, and hope that you will consider doing so too.
Item 8 is a brief notice of an arrest and detention of a Palestinian activist and a reporter.
Item 9 is an update about residency rights for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and Israel. Please distribute it widely, if possible.
Thanks,
Dorothy
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1.International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS)
DeirIstiya, Salfit
Telephone: 09 251 46 44
Website: http://www.iwps-pal.org
Human Rights Report No. 429
Human Rights Summary: Open Shuhada Street Demonstration
Date of incidents: Saturday 26 February 2011
Place: Hebron
Witnesses: IWPS volunteers, EAPPI, ISM, Israeli activists, Palestinian activists
Contact details: IWPS withholds this information as a courtesy to those
involved. However, we will do our best to furnish you with the information you may require, on request.
Description of Incidents:
On Saturday 26 February 2011, the anniversary of the 1994 Baruch Goldstein massacre, the IWPS team attended the Open Shuhada Street Demonstration in Hebron.
There were approximately 1000 demonstrators, including Israeli activists, Internationals and Palestinians. Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, also attended.
The non-violent protestors were met with tear gas, sound grenades, and rubber bullets from the Israeli army. The army illegally fired tear gas canisters directly at the protestors. Following the protest, organisers reported that 30 people were taken to hospital – around half for bullet wounds and many to be treated for tear gas inhalation. One Israeli activist was hit in the face with a soldier’s rifle butt and one Palestinian suffered three rubber bullets to his leg.
One Israeli, two Palestinians, and three internationals were detained. A Palestinian reporter from Al Jazeera was arrested and charged with stone throwing.
The demonstrations began from several locations throughout the city following midday prayers, and met in Shuhada Street. The clashes with the Israeli army continued for several hours, and the Palestinian Authority police were also present, supporting the soldiers in quashing the protest and preventing more Palestinians from joining.
Background:
Shuhada Street, one of Hebron’s main streets, was forced to close following the Baruch Goldstein massacre of 1994, in which a Jewish extremist murdered 29 Muslims at prayer in the Ibrahim mosque and wounded a further 125.
Hebron is home to around 600 Jewish settlers living in illegal settlements. In 2003, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the settlers be evicted from the area and that al-Shuhada Street should be reopened. However no action has been taken against the settlers and the street remains closed.
Report written by:Lena and Mary
Report edited by: Gill
Date of report: Tuesday 01 March 2011
The International Women’s Peace Service, Deir Istiya, Salfit, Palestine.
Email: iwps@palnet.com Website: www.iwps-pal.org
Operating out of Deir Istiya, International Women’s Peace Service monitors and responds to Human Rights Abuses in the area.
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2. Ynet Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Latest Update: 11:40 , 03.02.11
Protest March
Rightists march in Jaffa
Hundreds of officers, police chopper secure march against ‘Islamic takeover of Jaffa’. Residents take to streets to protest, holding signs saying ‘Extreme Right’s racism equals neo-Nazism in blue and white’; 16 leftists arrested
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4036528,00.html
Yoav Zitun
Traffic was halted on one of Jaffa’s main streets Wednesday morning as 60 right-wing activists prepared to march in protest against “the Islamic Movement’s operations in the city” and “the Islamic takeover”. Large police forces were deployed to prevent clashes with residents.
As the marchers proceeded down the street residents called out, “racists go home” and some clashes broke out. Police detained 16 left-wing activists for questioning after an officer was lightly injured in the clashes.
Rightists march: ‘Jaffa is Jewish’ (Photo: Yaron Brener)
Hundreds of Border Guard and special forces officers secured the route of the march, and a police chopper was also mobilized.
Among participants in the march are MK Michael Ben-Ari and extreme right-wing activists Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir. They marched with Israeli flags and signs that said “Jaffa for the Jews”.
Residents of Jaffa soon appeared on the street to protest against the march. Residents of the city called marchers “fascists and racists”, and held up signs saying, “Extreme rightist racism equals neo-Nazism in blue and white”. Many claim that the marchers are trying to destroy the city’s coexistence.
Marzel: Leaders say Jaffa is Palestine (Photo: Yaron Brener)
Marzel, who organized the march, said in response to this, “We heard the leaders of the Islamic Movement say last month that Jaffa is Palestine. We say to them, Go to Libya, to Gaddafi. It’s time Jews stopped being afraid to wander about Jaffa during all hours.”
The former deputy mayor of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Michael Roeh of Meretz, was forcefully removed from the scene by police early on for trying to stop activists from beginning the march.
His girlfriend, Revital Lampert, said they had come to express their contempt for the march. “I don’t understand why Michael was taken forcefully,” she said after her partner was placed in a police cruiser and driven off.
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai inveighed against the march, telling Police Commander Shahar Ayalon that it was “a serious provocation”.
But the High Court of Justice approved the march after requiring that its organizers, who wanted to pass through the famous Arab neighborhood of Ajami, change the route to a less provocative location.
Arab institutions located in Jaffa have announced that they will ask residents to refrain from being “dragged into” riots, but a high-ranking official in the Arab community told Ynet that many may refuse to be reined in.
Kamal Agbaria, chairman of Ajami’s neighborhood committee, threatened revenge. “At the end of the month, on our Land Day, we will pay them back and march in Kiryat Arba,” he said.
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3. Haaretz Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Latest update 00:41 02.03.11
Jerusalem panel approves 14 new Jewish homes in Arab neighborhood
Construction to take place in former police compound located in the neighborhood of Ras al-Amud.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/jerusalem-panel-approves-14-new-jewish-homes-in-arab-neighborhood-1.346558
By Nir Hasson
The Jerusalem licensing committee issued a permit yesterday for construction of 14 apartments in a former police compound in East Jerusalem.
The compound, located in the neighborhood of Ras al-Amud, was once the headquarters of the police’s Shai (Samaria and Judea ) Division, which is responsible for the West Bank.
Three years ago, however, Shai’s headquarters were moved to E-1 (between Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim ) and its former home was transferred to a religious trust set up by immigrants from Bukhara, which managed to prove its ownership of the site. The building is now slated to house 14 families.
Ma’aleh Zeitim, the largest of the Jewish enclaves located inside the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, lies just across the road. Set up with help from American Jewish businessman Irving Moskowitz, a long-time patron of Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, it is currently home to over 100 families.
The Bukharan trust also wants to set up a neighborhood of 104 apartments around the police compound. That plan was submitted to the municipality two and a half years ago, and the trust’s attorney, Avner Salem, said it was working its way through the city’s planning institutions.
The larger plan also calls for a swimming pool, synagogue, kindergartens, and an overpass linking the compound to Ma’aleh Zeitim across the road. That would essentially create one Jewish enclave of over 200 families in Ras al-Amud.
Opposition city councilman Yosef “Pepe” Alalu (Meretz ) was furious over the decision to approve the first 14 houses.
“Here we finally had a large public building that could have provided an answer to the problems of the eastern part of the city – for instance, as a school. Instead, they’re giving another 14 apartments to the settlers in order to Judaize Ras al-Amud,” he said.
The Ir Amim organization, which opposes Jewish construction in East Jerusalem, accused the city of “playing with fire in the service of extremist settlers. This decision is just one on a list of dangerous plans the municipality has been advancing, while irresponsibly harming vital public interests.”
The Jerusalem municipality said the plan was submitted by private entrepreneurs in December 2009 and had received all the necessary approvals. It was discussed twice by the local planning and building committee, which approved it subject to certain conditions, and no actual building permits will be issued until those conditions are met, the city added.
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4. [forwarded by Paula]
The Israelis keep bulldozing their village, but still the Bedouin will not give up their land
The tiny village of al-Arakib has been torn down by the Israeli authorities 18 times in seven months, but each time the Bedouin rebuild their homes
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Harriet Sherwood
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The Guardian, Tuesday 1 March 2011
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/01/israelis-demolish-bedouin-village
A Bedouin woman among the ruins of her home in al-Arakib after it was torn down by the Israeli authorities. Photograph: AFP
The rutted track to al-Arakib leaves the desert highway at a sharp right angle through an unmarked gap in the roadside barrier. It’s easy to miss, to be swept past with the stream of traffic heading through the sun-hardened and windswept landscape of the Negev.
About a kilometre from the main road, you come first to the village cemetery, where the oldest grave dates from 1914, and a corrugated iron barn that serves as the mosque and now a communal kitchen and shelter. Then, across a trough in the land, you see the remnants of the Bedouin village: four simple wooden frames whose tarpaulin covers are continually thrashed by the relentless wind. This is all that’s left of a once-thriving community after a seven-month war of attrition that has pitted the Bedouin villagers against the Israeli army, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and a Christian evangelical television channel called God TV. And the struggle is not over.
Since 27 July, the village has been demolished at least 18 times, most recently last Thursday. Each time the bulldozers and soldiers come at dawn to tear down the makeshift structures that have replaced the 40 concrete buildings that used to house the villagers, the men of al-Arakib rebuild them. Each time their footprint gets a little smaller.
Although the villagers say they have deeds to the land proving ownership since 1906, al-Arakib is “unrecognised” – meaning the state of Israel regards its very existence as illegitimate. Israel declared the land state property shortly after the 1948 war, and in recent years has accelerated efforts to drive the Bedouin into designated townships.
The villagers stand in the way of a government-backed JNF project to encourage Jewish settlement in the sparsely populated Negev and create a forest by planting half a million trees paid for by God TV. Launched in the UK in 1995 but now broadcasting globally from Jerusalem, God TV is part of a Christian Zionist movement that believes the Jews must return to the Holy Land as a pre-requisite of the Second Coming of Christ. In videos posted on its website, founder Rory Alec speaks of an “instruction from God” to “prepare the land for return of my Son”. He takes supporters to the Negev to plant saplings and urges others to make donations to fund the trees the TV channel has pledged to supply.
Afforestation has become a tool of the Judaisation of the Negev, says Oren Yiftachel, professor of political geography at the nearby Ben-Gurion University. The authorities have uprooted thousands of olive trees to replace them with “Jewish trees”. It’s only our trees that matter, he says wryly.
The new saplings, struggling to take root in the arid soil, are visible from the tent where Aziz Sayah Abu Mdagem sips sweet tea brewed in a blackened kettle over a kindling fire. This is our land, he says; we will not give it up. He describes the first demolition as a scene from a battlefield: hundreds of soldiers dragging screaming women and children from their homes before the bulldozers crushed the buildings. Special forces troops on horseback and on motorbikes surrounded the area as helicopters clattered overhead.
A shed housing the village’s chickens was flattened, killing all the birds inside. Trees – olive, citrus and almond – were uprooted. He shows us a collection of rubber bullets, tear gas canisters and spent stun grenades collected from successive demolitions.
Some of the traumatised children have been unable to speak since, he says. They wet their beds, they call out in their sleep. He shows a picture from an album of a pile of rubble. This, he says, is the children’s playground now. Later, he points to fresh furrows ploughed in the baked ground in preparation for tree-planting. “Every day they dig the land closer,” he says.
The JNF says its afforestation plan in the Negev is for the benefit of all inhabitants, but Abu Mdagem finds it hard to see how the destruction of their homes is a positive move for the Bedouin villagers. The JNF acknowledges the donation of trees from God TV but is reluctant to discuss the partnership.
God TV did not respond to a request for comment, but recently posted a message on its website, saying that claims that the evangelical channel is responsible for the displacement of the Bedouin people are false. It says its tree-planting endeavours, which are an “apostolic, prophetic act”, are simply part of “an effort to restore the desert places to the lush green land it once was, preparing the Holy Land for the return of the King of Kings”.
The struggle to save the village has won support from Jewish activists and intellectuals, including the celebrated Israeli novelist Amos Oz. Al-Arakib was, he said, a ticking time-bomb.
In the now near-deserted village, Abu Mdagem shows us the mosque, where mattresses are piled against one wall and cooking utensils line another. This is where the women and children of the village sleep at night, he says. He weaves through the stone-covered mounds in the adjacent cemetery to take us to the oldest grave, which, he says, proves their connection with the land.
During demolitions, the villagers seek refuge among the dead, believing the soldiers will not pursue them on to sacred ground. But recently even that has not proved safe, with shots and tear gas being fired into the cemetery.
“This is our life now,” Abu Mdagem says, threading prayer beads through his fingers. “We live together with the dead people in the cemetery.”
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5. Haaretz Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Latest update 18:31 02.03.11
Court: Profiling all Israeli Arabs as a ‘security risk’ is unacceptable
High Court has yet to rule on petition filed by the Union for Civil Rights demanding state alter its procedure of security checks at airports.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/court-profiling-all-israeli-arabs-as-a-security-risk-is-unacceptable-1.346730
By Zohar Blumenkrantz
The High Court of Justice on Wednesday slammed the state for tagging Israeli Arabs as a “security risk”, in response to a petition filed by a human rights group that claimed such citizens were being subjected to racial profiling at Israel’s airports.
As senior justices debated the matter for a third session on Wednesday, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch told her colleagues that there was no doubt that the humiliation experienced by Israeli Arab citizens during airport security checks was unacceptable.
Beinisch also accepted the prosecution’s request to present security procedures without cross-examination and behind closed doors.
Attorney Auni Bana, representing petitioner Union for Civil Rights, hailed the court’s criticism of the matter.
“After the prosecution’s repeated attempts to create a smoke screen and draw the debate into irrelevant corners, finally, in this third session on the petition, we have reached the most significant issue: is it permissible to declare, in such a sweeping fashion, that a minority group of Israeli citizens is a security risk?” said Bana.
Co-defense attorney Dan Yakir concurred, adding that Israeli authorities have within their means multiple methods for conducting security checks. “A democratic state cannot accept the degradation of 20% of its citizens,” said Yakir, who serves as the legal consultant for the Union for Civil Rights.
The court has yet to rule on the union’s request to issue a temporary injunction ordering the state to alter its security check procedures.
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GREETINGS FROM THE REFUSER SOLIDARITY NETWORK!WHO WE ARE: The Refuser Solidarity Network (RSN)was formed in April of 2002 to provide support for the growing Refuser Movement in Israel. The initial impetus for the establishment of the RSN was the publication in January 2002 of the Combatants Letter by a group of 52 reserve officers, which later became Ometz Le’sarev or Courage to Refuse. RSN now supports Combatants for Peace, Yesh G’vul, the Shiministim, New Profile and other Israeli organizations advocating peaceful conflict resolution in Israel/Palestine and working to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories seized in 1967. A 501(c)3 charitable organization, RSN makes grants to refuser groups to support their work financially. RSN is funded entirely by contributions from individuals in the U.S. and around the world. Our mission statement is as follows: Combatants for Peace Receives Jerusalem Prize Money‘The British author Ian McEwan, who received the Jerusalem Prize at this year’s International Book Fair, said he will be donating the $10,000 award to Combatants for Peace….The novelist arrived in Israel to accept the prize on Sunday, despite calls to boycott the event. During his acceptance speech for the award, given every two years to a writer whose work deals with the “freedom of the individual in society,” McEwan spoke out against Israeli policy regarding the Israel-Palestinian conflict. A representative of Combatants for Peace said the group pledges ‘to use the contribution to further our activities against injustice, oppression and denial of liberties – in the spirit of McEwan’s remarks at the ceremony.’ New law in Israel: Groups must report on fundingFor several months, right-wing parties in the Knesset attempted to push through a law that would have targeted human rights and anti-occupation groups for investigations into funding sources. This was widely seen by groups like New Profile, Yesh Gvul and others as a transparent attempt to shut them down. Fortunately, this law did not pass. Instead… Groups Supported by RSNISRAEL’S YOUNG CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS: THE SHMINISTIM Recent Films about the Occupation“BUDRUS: It takes a village to unite the most divided people on earth.” RSN NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT!You can help the efforts of refusers and peace activists in Israel/Palestine!
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