Israeli bloggers have recently released a new Android application that informs users whether their potential purchases were manufactured in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Activism
October 2, march on DC with One Nation: March to Rebuild America and End War!
Do you love The Daily Show as much as we do? Maybe like a lot of us, you go to bed with Jon Stewart four nights a week, and find him a fun, smart companion at the end of the day… he included CODEPINK among the “loud folks” getting in the way of civil rhetoric. He also equated progressives calling George Bush a war criminal with right-wingers calling Obama Hitler! Jon, seriously??
A report by the Electronic Intifada covering the most recent BDS activities against Israel’s settlement program.
The BDS campaign continues to pick up steam.
The National Lawyers Guild, in coordination with other legal and grassroots human rights organizations, addressed this letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, calling upon the State Department to act on the case of Ameer Makhoul, Palestinian human rights advocate and leader.
I want [Abdallah Abu Rahma] and other Palestinian grass-roots nonviolent organizers to be free to carry on their political struggle together with Israeli partners and supporters. For the past nine months … Abdallah Abu Rahma has been in detention … because Israel has apparently decided that civic activism, nonviolent protest or any kind of dissidence in Palestine is illegal.
A vague security offence of “contact with a foreign agent” is being used by Israel’s secret police, the Shin Bet, to lock up Arab political activists in Israel without evidence that a crime has been committed, human rights lawyers alleged this week.
Zak Ebrahim: “I came from an extremist background … I was exposed to the things Americans fear most about Islam. But I promote peace. I am not a fanatic. We must embrace tolerance and nonviolence. Who knows this better than the son of a terrorist?”
World-renowned architect Frank Gehry and the legendary pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim joined the international campaign in support of the Israeli actors’ refusal to perform in the new cultural center of Ariel, according to the website of Jewish Voices for Peace.
Peace Now’s interactive West Bank settlement activity map and database. Now available also as an iPhone/iPad app.
“The Local Councils are led by mayors from all over the political spectrum for Israel’s citizens. These kinds of actions only hurt the cause of advancing peace…”
IOA Editor: This would be accurate if you substituted the word “colonization” for the word “peace.”
The Israel Defense Forces continues using the Ruger 10/22 rifle to disperse protests even though it has been prohibited by the military advocate general, a hearing at a military court revealed last week. A brigade’s former operations officer told the court he wasn’t even aware of the prohibition.
Please join us for the launch of the Haymarket Books edition of Midnight on the Mavi Marmara. Panel Discussion with editor Moustafa Bayoumi and contributors Max Blumenthal, Arun Gupta, Adam Horowitz, Rashid Khalidi, Alia Malek and Phil Weiss on the Impact of Gaza Freedom Flotilla Attack.
28 Sept 2010, 7:00pm; Alwan for the Arts – 16 Beaver St. NYC
Sheikh Jarrah Jewish protest organizer: It is designed to produce “a transition from protest to struggle…. We are there to struggle in a subversive way.” The protest organizers are consciously striving to create a conflict between the many “left Zionists” among whom it has become fashionable to attend the weekly demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah … and the Israeli state apparatus.
Israeli Foreign Ministry: “We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits… This way you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.” While efforts to promote a positive image of Israel abroad persist, Palestinians continue to suffer from Israeli state policies.
The motion called for the General Council to work closely with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to actively encourage affiliates, employers and pension funds to disinvest from, and boycott the goods of, companies who profit from illegal settlements, the Occupation and construction of the Apartheid Wall.
In a recent, quietly circulated letter from the desk of Yaacov Ellis, CEO of Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories—a company at the center of a growing international boycott campaign—and directed at the company’s retail partners, Ellis deploys specious information about his own company’s business practices, contradictory claims about Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, and unfounded innuendo about boycott campaign supporters.
Folk music icon Pete Seeger has been urged by over 40 organizations, along with musicians close to him, to cancel his participation in a November internet event organized by Israeli groups, including the Jewish National Fund.
Zionism in its present meaning, in its common meaning, is contradictory to human rights, to equality, to democracy, and [Zionist leftists] don’t recognise it. It’s too hard for them to recognise it, to realise it. And therefore their position is an impossible position, because they want everything: they want Zionism, they want democracy, they want a Jewish state, but they want also rights for the Palestinians… it’s very nice to want everything, but you have to make your choice and they are not courageous enough to make the choice.
I have often spoken out in opposition to cultural boycotts … but in the political arena, artists make a statement by their presence or their absence.
It’s thrilling to think that these Israeli theatre artists have refused to allow their work to be used to normalize a cruel occupation which they know to be wrong, which violates international law and which is impeding the hope for a just and lasting peace for Israelis an Palestinians alike. They’ve made a wonderful decision, and they deserve the respect of people everywhere who dream of justice. We stand with them.
More than 150 American actors, writers, directors and other artists signed a letter of support for the Israeli actors who declared they would not perform in the West Bank.
IOA Editor: Read letter and view list of signatories HERE.
Imprisoned Palestinian leader Ahmad Sa’adat will be returning to court in
mid-October 2010 challenging his isolation and the isolation of Palestinian
political prisoners in Israeli prisons. Write letters today and take action
from October 5-15, 2010 in support of Palestinian prisoners’ struggle for
freedom – demand an end to isolation!
27-28 Sept 2010 Conference on the geographies of aid intervention in Palestine – Birzeit University. The aim of the conference is to critically explore the ways in which aid intervention reshapes the socio-political, spatial, economic, and environmental relations, in addition to thinking about alternatives forms of aid that respond to Palestinians needs and rights not only in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but also elsewhere.
I am doing a lot of efforts to bring hope and steadfastness to freedom prisoners. It is one of my missions inside prison. I have to keep in contact with Ittijah and the community and all solidarity movements, groups and persons, but most of all I have to correspond intensively as much as possible with my daughters Hind and Huda, who have become mature fighters for freedom, justice and dignity and mostly bringing back the happiness of life which was hijacked on 6 May at 2:30am. My wife Janan is leading in a heroic way the whole campaign as well as facing huge tasks at home.
The time has come for those planning the red-roofed facts on the ground to refuse to design any more buildings in the settlements.
Israeli academe, which was once considered a bastion of free speech, has become the testing ground for the success of the assault on liberal values. And although it is still extremely difficult to hurt those who have managed to enter the academic gates, those who have not yet passed the threshold are clearly being monitored.
We will know the answer in the coming weeks: Is there genuine theater in Israel, or is it just puppet theater? Are our theater artists really actors, playwrights and directors, or are they marionettes? Israeli theater presents “Moral Blindness” – a play with infinite acts.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized on Sunday the theater figures’ boycott of a new theater in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, saying that the government doesn’t need to fund a group promoting a boycott of Israel from within.
Fifty-three Israeli theater professionals, including performers, playwrights and directors, have signed a petition stating they would not appear in the West Bank settlement Ariel… Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat said Saturday that the actors’ protest was a serious matter, and was causing a rift in Israeli society.
“There is no doubt that the occupation is the biggest festering sore in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Futile negotiations over the last two decades have led to its intensification rather than mitigation. The only way forward is an ongoing campaign to put an end to it, without having anything to do with the diplomatic process or with the one-state, two-states, debate.”
Is Israel an apartheid state? The notion of apartheid may be applicable in different ways to different components of the system. While Israel clearly is different from South African historical apartheid, in crucial respects it has affinities with apartheid in its generic sense.
Part II of a two-part essay. Read Part I HERE
Lady Ashton:“The EU considers Abdallah Abu Rahmah to be a human rights defender committed to non-violent protest against the route of the Israeli separation barrier … The EU considers the route of the barrier where it is built on Palestinian land to be illegal. The high representative is deeply concerned that the possible imprisonment of Mr Abu Rahmah is intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the existence of the separation barriers in a non-violent manner.”
Non-violent protest organizer Abdallah Abu Rhamah from Bil’in was convicted of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations today, after an eight months long military trial, during which he was kept behind bars. He was acquitted of a stone-throwing charge and a vindictive arms-possession charge.
Israeli anti-Occupation activist: “We want to overturn this immoral law that gives rights to Jews to move freely around while keeping Palestinians imprisoned in their towns and villages,” referring to regulations that bar most Palestinians in the occupied territories from entering Israel, and Israelis from assisting them.
It was a single word scrawled on a wall at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that unlocked something deep inside … two years after she had completed compulsory military service in the IDF. The word was “occupation”. “I really felt like someone was speaking the unspoken… It was really shocking to me. There was graffiti saying, ‘end the occupation’. And I felt like, OK, now I can talk about what I saw.”
“There is no doubt that the occupation is the biggest festering sore in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Futile negotiations over the last two decades have led to its intensification rather than mitigation. The only way forward is an ongoing campaign to put an end to it, without having anything to do with the diplomatic process or with the one-state, two-states, debate.”
Is Israel an apartheid state? The notion of apartheid may be applicable in different ways to different components of the system. While Israel clearly is different from South African historical apartheid, in crucial respects it has affinities with apartheid in its generic sense. (Part I of a two-part essay.)
