Israel’s War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands

Activism

You can argue all you want that there are differences between America and Israel as far as racism goes, just as there are differences between Israel and South Africa when it comes to Apartheid. But the reality remains the same in all places: Palestinians living on the same land as Jewish Israelis are denied the dignity and equal rights they deserve because of the dominant ethnic group.

We are all part of the same old story, nothing has changed since the bad old days of apartheid South Africa and Segregated America. We must stand united with all our brothers and sisters against racism, colonialism, segregation and apartheid.

This is actually a wonderful opportunity for you to learn about something sorrowful, and amazing: that our government (Obama in particular) supports a system that is cruel, unjust, and unbelievably evil. You can spend months, and years, as I have, pondering this situation. Layer upon layer of lies, misinformation, fear, cowardice and complicity. Greed. It is a vast eye-opener into the causes of much of the affliction in our suffering world.

The performance, developed by students as part of a course on Theater and Social Change and members of the organization Justice for Palestine, was broken up by campus public safety. “This is not theater; we can tell it is political,” one officer voiced. “Everything that is political has to be approved by the college.”

Australia’s coalition government would block all federal funds to individuals and institutions who speak out in favour of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

In a society where graduates fresh out of high school are required to participate directly in military occupation at an early age, saying no can be a way of showing another path is possible, and retrieving one’s humanity in the process.

Two confidential Anti-Defamation League memos from the 1970s show that the pro-Israel “civil rights” group sent spies to report on talks by Noam Chomsky, a noted critic of Israel. “Chomsky is an Arab apoligist, [sic] pure and simple,” one reads, addressed to Irwin Suall, then national director of “fact-finding.”

This is an appeal for you to follow the recommendations of the International Court of Justice regarding the building of the Separation Wall and all of the Israel settlements in the occupied West Bank. They are totally illegal under international law, the 4th Geneva Convention, and the UN Charter of Human Rights which gives indigenous people, in this case the Bedouin of Susya and surrounding areas of the Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley, the right to practice their traditional way of life, and the right to a home on their own land.

According to Article 90 of the Turkish Constitution, international agreements prevail over domestic laws if there is a conflict between them and no appeal can be made to the Constitutional Court claiming the former are unconstitutional.

The following letter was sent to Stephen Hawking by 20 scientists urging him to reconsider his participation, as a keynote speaker, at Israel’s Presidential Conference, a major public event attracting world figures such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Professor Hawking has since declined the invitation to attend.

In our letter to you we make reference to a range of aspects of Israel’s treatment of Palestine and the Palestinians. Our descriptions there are necessarily abbreviated, and this note provides a little more detail.

Chomsky, a US professor and well-known supporter of the Palestinian cause, joined British academics from the universities of Cambridge, London, Leeds, Southampton, Warwick, Newcastle, York and the Open University to tell Hawking they were “surprised and deeply disappointed” that he had accepted the invitation to speak at next month’s presidential conference in Jerusalem, which will chaired by Shimon Peres and attended by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.

Akiva Orr was a larger than life character. He was a natural communicator, a performer and a raconteur in search of an audience… From the outset, his trajectory would lead him to critically engage Zionism as a movement laying claim to a libratory essence. Ultimately in the years following Matzpen’s establishment, Aki broke completely with Zionism’s tenets.

Zionism is viewed [by Moshé Machover] as a colonial-settler project, not a national liberation movement. Its particular aims, “based not on exploiting the labor of the indigenous people but aiming to exclude and expel them,” are more characteristic of the U.S. model than the South African one. The fact that the Israeli state is not only a product of this settler project, but a force for its extension and expansion, produces the ever-present danger of new ethnic cleansing.

When the government tries to silence a history, a light is shed on the nation’s biggest taboo. This is the story of those who fought to erase Palestine and created an Israeli landscape of denial.

A major milestone has been reached in the struggle for Lynne Stewart’s freedom. Lynne Stewart wrote on April 26 to confirm that the Warden at FMC Carswell has recommended Compassionate Release to the Bureau of Prisons.

Israel’s increasing integration into European competitions, despite its refusal to revive peace talks with the Palestinians, respect human rights and halt illegal settlement, is, according to critics, contrary to sporting values and should be met with international opposition of the kind faced by apartheid South Africa.

Malaga Statement

26 April 2013

Statement of representatives of 13 Palestinian, Israeli, and international organisations, and a number of international lawyers and legal experts, who held a meeting in Malaga, Spain, to discuss the critical situation facing Palestinian victims who attempt to seek compensation for death, injury, and destruction of property.

Israeli security officials given approval to search email accounts of ‘suspicious’ travellers despite petition over invasion of privacy.

Lynne Stewart, in the vindictive and hysterical world of the war on terror, is one of its martyrs. A 73-year-old lawyer who spent her life defending the poor, the marginalized and the despised, including blind cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, she fell afoul of the state apparatus because she dared to demand justice rather than acquiesce to state sponsored witch hunts. And now, with stage 4 cancer that has metastasized, spreading to her lymph nodes, shoulder, bones and lungs, creating a grave threat to her life, she sits in a prison cell at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, where she is serving a 10-year sentence.