At the end of this month, my brother Bassam Aramin, the persistent Combatant for Peace, was meant to … go with his family to Bradford University in the UK, to complete his masters in Conflict Resolution. … Unfortunately, there is still £20,000 needed, despite considerable efforts.
Activism
A Palestinian music video.
This week we will join with other groups using the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign to pressure the Israeli government to respect human rights & international law, and to raise money for an important documentary film about Operation Cast Lead, the assault on Gaza.
A number of prominent Israeli jurists, intellectuals, writers and leftist public figures co-sign letter that charges Jerusalem police with ‘illegal and inequitable’ conduct towards Sheikh Jarrah protesters.
Stuart Henochowicz: “I certainly don’t think Emily is a self-hating Jew … I think she is an ethical Jew of the highest order. I think she is what Jewish people should be about. I don’t think Emily should be a poster person for anyone … Emily is her own person … The Palestinians have been living in a cage for 43 years, so my heart goes out to them. … This is what Emily saw.”
IOA Editor: Emily surely isn’t a (self) hating person. The term “self-hating Jew” is a trick as old as the Occupation itself. Some of us continue to be subjected to it — for decades now — simply because we challenge the legitimacy of the Occupation. The same people using such name-calling also try twisting our criticism of the Occupation, calling us “delegitimizers.”
More on Emily and her artwork:
Images: Art – Emily Henochowicz
[B]anking sanctions impact quickly upon financial elites who have the clout to pressure governments to concede political change. Trade sanctions, by contrast, impact hardest on the poor or lower-paid workers, who have virtually no political influence. SWIFT will, however, only take action against Israeli banks if ordered to do so by a Belgian court, and then only in very exceptional circumstances. Such very exceptional circumstances are now well-documented by the UN-commissioned Goldstone report.
Five activists who caused £180,000 damage to an arms factory were acquitted after they argued they were seeking to prevent Israeli war crimes… The five admitted they had broken in and sabotaged the factory, but argued they were legally justified in doing so.
A new “anti-boycott bill”, the third in a series of proposed laws that aim to curtail the ability of civil society to criticise Israeli government policy, will punish Israelis or foreign nationals who initiate or promote a boycott of Israel.
Israeli and Polish activists met in the ruins of Warsaw’s old Jewish Ghetto; they sprayed ‘Liberate All Ghettos’ in Hebrew, followed by ‘Free Gaza and Palestine’ in English on a wall of an original block in the ghetto…
The continuing struggles against the occupation, on the ground in the territories, take their usual grim course, but inside Israel hardly a day passes without some new and sickening jolt. The country is in the grip of violent nationalist paranoia spiked with inventive forms of wickedness and active hatred for Palestinians, of an intensity I’ve never seen before.
The bill was introduced by 25 Knesset members, of both coalition and opposition parties. The bill would outlaw a wide range of BDS activities, both inside and outside of Israel and in the Occupied Territories, heavily penalize participants, and be applied one year retroactive to its effective date. Also, this proposed law would require the state of Israel to monitor the views and actions of activists abroad.
Each of us, each of you, can draw the line through BDS and act as a caring, responsible citizen of the world. To end Israel’s 43-year-old occupation. To end the unacceptable, criminal siege of Gaza. To end racist laws and policies inside Israel, openly targeting the Palestinian citizens of Israel. To end more than sixty years of ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns aggressive measures taken by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in East Jerusalem, which are part of a series of measures aimed at ethnic cleansing and creating a Jewish majority in the city.
A Swedish Dock-workers union week-long blockade of goods to and from Israel is underway. The ongoing nation-wide blockade in Swedish harbors, based on the request of the united Palestinian union-movement, is the Swedish Dockworkers Union’s attempt to contribute to pressuring Israel on: Lifting the blockade on Gaza, and allowing an independent, international investigation of the Israeli boarding of the Freedom Flotilla.
Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement launched the first computer game of its kind in Israel: “Safe Passage” allows the user to experience interactively the restrictions on movement between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank through innovative use of animation, flash documents, video clips and a blog. The game includes an archive of dozens of legal documents.
A new bill, the third in a series of proposed laws seeking to restrict the activities of peace activists and human rights organizations in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), has been proposed by a group of Members of the Israeli parliament.
“The Coalition of Women for Peace declares its support for Italian supermarket chains COOP and Nordiconad’s decision to suspend sales of Agrexco produce in their stores, and hopes that more supermarket chains will follow in their footsteps.”
Those who demand that I prepare students for [military] recruitment should know that my duty is also to tell them that they would enter a territory which was occupied 43 years ago, in which human rights are being shamefully violated on a daily basis by means of our military superiority. In [the] future, these children will have to account for themselves, and they will ask if their school has revealed to them the terrible secret called occupation. Yes, occupation. An occupation, not a liberation, not a return to an ancestral land.
Joe Sacco: “A singular achievement – both a stunning photographic essay of how Israel’s concrete wall has cut into Palestinian land and strangled whole communities and a powerful visual record of how local and international graffiti artists have battered it with their only weapons, paint and spray cans.”
In France, the campaign to boycott Ahava Dead Sea cosmetics has entered a new phase with boycott, divestment and sanctions advocates taking legal action against the Sephora cosmetics retail chain’s contract with the company.
Israeli troops have been accused of stealing from activists arrested in the assault on the Gaza flotilla after confiscated debit cards belonging to activists were subsequently used… Activists say Israel still has possession of at least £1m of goods and cash… Some passports, three of them belonging to British citizens, have still not been returned.
IOA Editor: Loot is traditionally shared by pirates – clearly, also those belonging to the Most Moral Army in the World, to cite General Barak. One can reasonably expect that the passports, confiscated by the State of Israel, are destined for a much more sinister use.
Divestment is a nonviolent form of economic protest long-used… to encourage companies to end unjust practices. By selling its investments in Caterpillar, General Electric, and Terex, the NIC expresses its commitment to do no harm with its investments and affirms the call of the UMC Book of Discipline to “avoid investments that appear likely, directly or indirectly, to support violation of human rights.”
The internationally agreed means to ensure ‘never again’ are the Geneva Conventions and Universal Declaration on Human Rights. These are the principles built by survivors of crimes against humanity, following the massacre, resistance and sacrifice of millions. These are principles that protect people from state violence. These are principles that are deliberately universal and not beholden to political party or ideological doctrine.
Amnesty International has accused the Israeli authorities of subjecting jailed nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by holding him in solitary confinement.
International statement concerning the legal consequences of the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla on 31 May 2010, with a special focus on the war crime of extensive appropriation of property.
BDS initiative is a moral strategy which has demonstrated its potential for success. Most recently, German Deutsche Bank became the latest of several European institutions to divest from Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems; two main Italian supermarket chains announced a boycott of produce from illegal Israeli settlements; performers Elvis Costello and Gil Scott-Heron cancelled appearances in Israel.
IWPS is currently inviting applications from women who would like to join our team of long-term volunteers. Successful applicants will be invited to a 9 day training program in Portugal (Sept 11-19, 2010) and will serve a minimum of one 3 month term in the West Bank, Palestine, as well as supporting our work outside of Palestine. Application Deadline: 31 July 2010.
While pro-Palestinian activists and supporters of Israel lined opposite sides of South LaSalle Street outside the Northern Trust Building in Chicago on 9 June, James Owens, the outgoing CEO and Chairman of Caterpillar Inc., told a room full of shareholders the company was not responsible for the way Israel uses the bulldozers the company manufactures in the United States.
A number of local supermarket chains are taking a political stand: They have decided to boycott products manufactured in Turkey.
IOA Editor: Israel can boycott the world, but won’t tolerate the world boycotting it.
If a people who so recently experienced such unspeakable inhumanities cannot understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions are inflicting, what hope is there for the rest of us?
IOA Editor: While Israel’s morality (inherent, past, other?) is a figment of Siegman’s imagination, this is an important article in that it makes a powerful connection between the Holocaust and Israel’s Occupation and Gaza crimes.
Mainstream politicians, civic leaders, university presidents and others in this country routinely express their support for Israel as a Jewish state, despite the fact that such a state only could have been created in a multicultural land by ethnically cleansing it of as many non-Jews as possible. Today, Israel is only able to maintain its Jewish identity because it has established an apartheid regime, both in the occupied territories and within its own borders, and because it continues to reject the Palestinian right of return.
The very idea that pacifist, feminist, Jewish, and Christian organizations like CODEPINK, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the American Friends Service Committee would ally with a violent, misogynist, Islamic group like Hamas — much less any group that engages in terrorism — should be recognized as absurd on face value. When prominent Democrats — including the head of the House subcommittee on terrorism — imply that leading American and Israeli peace groups are linked to terrorism, it is no longer simply heated rhetoric in defense of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, but a dangerous attack on civil liberties.
[Emily] Henochowicz became critical of Israel in the spring, after accompanying a friend to a demonstration in East Jerusalem against the eviction of Palestinian families. Very quickly, she began participating regularly in protests against Israeli policies, especially the expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. … The dangers caught up with her on May 31. During a demonstration at the West Bank checkpoint at Qalandia, Henochowicz was struck in the face by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli security forces. She lost her left eye, and her jaw and cheekbone were fractured.
Will Palestinian soon pay price for boycott? A new bill submitted by 25 Knesset members Wednesday would see money slated for transfer to the Palestinian Authority used to compensate Israelis hurt by the PA’s settlement boycott… According to the bill, Israeli citizens must not initiate, encourage, or aid a boycott against the State of Israel. Anyone who violates the order will be forced to pay compensation to those undermined by the embargo.
MK Haneen Zoabi (BALAD) faces death threats as the Israeli Knesset House Committee votes to revoke her parliamentary privileges for participating in the Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla and protesting against the blockade.
