US peace activists preparing to set sail on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, The Audacity of Hope, expressed profound disappointment over a statement issued by the U.S. State Department on Wednesday, June 22, 2011. Instead of calling on the Israeli government to let a flotilla of unarmed civilians sail to Gaza, the United States government is pressuring its own citizens to refrain from legal acts.
Activism
Why am I going on the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza? I ask myself this, even though the answer is: what else would I do? I am in my 67th year, having lived already a long and fruitful life, one with which I am content. It seems to me that during this period of eldering it is good to reap the harvest of one’s understanding of what is important, and to share this, especially with the young. How are they to learn, otherwise?
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy is gathering signatures for the following statement about the continuing repression in Bahrain. To date, the statement has been signed by more than 1,500 people, including hundreds of courageous Bahrainis.
U.S. Boat to Gaza passengers recorded short personal statements on who they are and why they chose to participate in the upcoming Freedom Flotilla 2. Israel has described Gaza Flotilla participants as terrorists and is preparing its mighty naval, air, and ground forces to deal with them as such. Based on the experience of the first Freedom Flotilla, we already know what to expect and who is going to do the terrorizing. Watch these brief personal statements to see who the participants really are, and just what a threat they pose to the only nuclear superpower in the Middle East.
Both Bush and Obama are terrified of the Arab spring. And there is a very sensible reason for that. They don’t want democracies in the Arab world. If Arab public opinion had any influence on policy, the US and Britain had been tossed out of the Middle East. That’s why they are terrified of democracies in the region.
RELATED Repression in Bahrain
The Freedom Flotilla 2, with 12+ boats carrying humanitarian aid and 1000+ peace activists, is sailing to Gaza in late June. Alice Walker, who’s sailing with us, calls this the Freedom Ride of our generation. We want to help open this Palestinian port and end the illegal Israeli blockade, which has caused so much suffering. Meanwhile, the global BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) movement is calling on Paul Simon, Laurie Anderson and Kiri Te Kanawa to cancel their 2011 Israel concerts and get on the boat!
In late June, a US flagged ship called The Audacity of Hope will join the 2nd Freedom Flotilla – Stay Human as people from 22 nations set sail to Gaza challenging the Israeli naval blockade. Though the flotilla has the right under international law to do exactly what it is doing and has made abundantly clear its commitment to nonviolence, the government of Israel has publicly stated that they are prepared to act illegally and violently and take severe, even potentially life-threatening, action against the boats and their passengers. The US Boat to Gaza organizing committee urges people throughout this country to plan now for Emergency Response actions.
On June 27, 2011, the Knesset’s Law, Constitution, and Justice Committee will deliberate the Boycott Bill, in preparation for second and third reading in the Knesset plenum. As part of our ongoing campaign against this anti-democratic legislation, we are now launching the second phase of our “Right to Resist” campaign. The campaign consists of four videos stared by some of Israel’s popular artists and cultural figures: singer-songwriter Rona Kenan, filmmakers Eitan Fox and Gal Ochovsky, the poet Meit Wizeltir, actress Einat Weizman, and cultural figure Muhammed Jabali.
“My understanding of the Jewish ethical tradition comes primarily from my knowledge of the Jewish historical experience… I feel they are the principal determining factors: our ethical tradition, our struggles for justice, going back to the 19th-century shtetl, where my great-grandmother was hunted by the Cossacks, in pogroms.”
The Israeli Defense Forces held a large drill Wednesday in preparation of the flotilla that intends to set sail to the Gaza Strip later this month. The drill focused on different scenarios that might occur at sea and methods to deal with them.
The 2006 Edward Said Memorial lecture of Adelaide University,Australia, delivered by Tanya Reinhart on 7 October 2006. Tanya Reinhart covers important issues in this lecture: the Nakba in the history of the occupied and the occupier, the choice of armed- vs. unarmed struggle, Israel and South-Africa, the role of international activism, and what can be learned from both Edward Said and Nelson Mandela.
The kit called ‘How do you say Nakba in Hebrew?’ did not receive Israel’s Education Ministry’s approval and most of the teachers using it conceal their source.
Bassem Tamimi of Nabi Saleh delivered a court statement at the start of his trial last Sunday saying ‘I reject [these laws] and cannot recognize their validity.’
“Israel is occupying the Palestinian people in my name, in the name of world Jewry,” Lucas, clutching his American passport, tells the camera. “And I myself, an American Jew, is here to say that is completely unjustified and ethically reprehensible.”
IOA Editor: This news story finally made it to Haaretz, and got distorted along the way. The group of Israelis marching through East Jerusalem chanting “death to the Arabs” was not “small,” as several video reports have clearly shown.
Scene: an elevator, downstage right. Stuck inside are ROY Cohn and Ethel Rosenberg, characters in Tony Kushner’s landmark play, Angels in America. McCarthyite lawyer, Roy prosecuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were accused of spying for the USSR and executed in 1953. Ethel now paces impatiently, pushing elevator buttons. Above the stage, captions from recent New York Times headlines wink on and off didactically.
Despite a long career on the radical left, Spiro said that this is his first arrest. The cause is peculiar: an article he wrote ten months ago. In the article, Spiro wrote that when settlers carry weapons, they ought to be considered as militiamen and therefore legitimate targets. He claimed that Israelis ought not to dictate to Palestinians their methods of struggle against the occupation, but strongly emphasized that he supports a non-violent struggle.
Unarmed Naksa Day demonstration meets brutal Israeli repression.
For the first time in decades, Palestinian activists in Ras al-Amud, a neighborhood of Jerusalem south east of the Old City, invited Jewish Israeli activists to join them in their protest against a fortress settlement in their area. The neighborhood is the site of nearly daily confrontations between Palestinian youth and Israeli forces, and is sometimes referred to as the “daily intifada”.
“We are rapidly turning into South Africa. The economic hardship due to sanctions will be felt by every family in Israel,” said Idan Ofer at a gathering of some 80 businessmen. (HEBREW)
IOA Editor: A clear indication of how Israel’s ruling elite is deeply concerned about the potential economic impacts of BDS on Israel’s economy and on all Israelis. The meeting, which was organized in great secrecy, included Israeli billionaires and other leading business figures and its purpose was to support a diplomatic initiative designed to avert the impending deterioration of Israel’s global status.
Rae Abileah, a Jewish-American activist of Israeli descent with the peace group CodePink, disrupted Netanyahu’s speech. Standing in the congressional gallery, she yelled, “No more occupation! Stop Israel war crimes! Equal rights for Palestinians! Occupation is indefensible!” As she screamed, members in the audience tackled her to the ground, and undercover security forces later dragged her outside. She was taken to George Washington University Hospital where she was treated for neck and shoulder injuries. At the hospital, police arrested Abileah and charged her with disorderly conduct for disrupting Congress.
The BBC continues to confuse cause and effect – Israeli attacks are always reported as retaliation to Palestinian violence or rockets, and the idea that Palestinian rockets, however ineffective, are armed resistance to Israel’s hammering from land, sea and air is rarely broadcast.
Matan Cohen needs your support in dealing with a heavy fine, a penalty for his challenging the State of Israel for shooting at him, and 14 others, during a West Bank protest. Please help this courageous activist.
For those who have never lived in a system of violence like the Israeli occupation, it is hard to understand how simply not going anywhere constitutes resistance, but when the objective of your oppressor is to get you to leave your land, staying put is part of the daily struggle. In this sense, every Palestinian living under the Israeli occupation is a nonviolent resister.
Move Over AIPAC / CodePink flashmob event at Union Station, Washington DC on 20 May 2011, during the annual AIPAC convention and the Move Over AIPAC convention and series of protest in Washington DC.
Unlike previous years, this Nakba Day was not simply a commemoration of the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians in 1948, when their homeland was forcibly reinvented as the Jewish state. It briefly reminded Palestinians that, despite their long-enforced dispersion, they still have the potential to forge a common struggle against Israel.
On the 63rd commemoration of the Nakba Palestinians coordinate a wave of historic demonstrations. Protests at the Lebanese, Syrian, West Bank, and Gazan borders and inside Egypt took place. Many died as a result of live fire, and hundreds were injured both from Israeli forces and others such as the Egyptian and Lebanese armies.
MK Hanin Zuabi (Balad ) canceled a scheduled lecture at the University of Haifa Sunday after the university announced it was banning on-campus political activity and called in security forces. The lecture, which would have coincided with Nakba Day, was arranged and approved by the university a month ago. Zuabi, who was invited by the Balad student association, had planned to discuss anti-Arab discrimination and other issues.
IDF soldier describes the distress of a young woman who tearfully pleaded to be allowed to pass through a Jenin checkpoint in order to sit an important exam. He gradually came to understand, he says, that the Israeli army’s intention was “to enforce tyranny on people who you know are regular civilians” and to “make it clear who’s in control here”.
A dramatic video published by the website baladee.net shows the moment when hundreds of Palestinian refugees and Syrians break through the border fence from Syria into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights (part of Syria occupied by Israel in 1967 and illegally annexed in 1981).
Ynetnews: Around 100 extreme leftists are protesting near Tel Aviv’s Cinematheque in a show of support for the Palestinian “Nakba Day,” “the Just people’s uprising”, and against “the killing of innocent civilians”.
IOA Editor: Interesting that Israel’s most popular Hebrew newspaper describes Israeli-Jews demonstrating in solidarity with Palestinians on Nakba Day as “extreme leftists” when all they do is protest against violations of international law. We now say, “We’re all extreme leftists…”
At the end of March, the Israeli parliament passed the Nakba Law which states that any body that receives government funding, such as schools, can be fined for commemorating the Nakba on Israel’s Independence Day. The Nakba means “Catastrophe” in Arabic and refers to the 1948 war, the result of which was the depopulation of two thirds of the Palestinian population, which today numbers millions of refugees. To this day many still hold the keys to their original homes, but are not allowed to return. In defiance of the law, the Israeli organization Zochrot posted a sign with the law in German throughout the core of Tel Aviv where thousands celebrated. Within minutes, police surrounded the Zochorot office.
The “peace negotiations” were a deceptive farce whereby biased terms were unilaterally imposed by Israel and systematically endorsed by the US and EU. Far from enabling a negotiated and fair end to the conflict, the pursuit of the Oslo process deepened Israeli segregationist policies and justified the tightening of the security control imposed on the Palestinian population, as well as its geographical fragmentation. Far from preserving the land on which to build a state, it has tolerated the intensification of the colonisation of the Palestinian territory.
Following Egypt’s January 25 Revolution, Egyptians are pushing for some of the country’s foreign relations policies to change, especially those related to Israel and Palestine. Aid or protest convoys to Gaza were frequently stopped or arrested during the Mubarak era by the ousted president’s regime, and now for the first time since the revolution thousands of activists are planning to march to the Rafah border town.
“Who Profits” activist Merav Emir: “I want to congratulate the German government for making such a clear and bold statement about the illegality of this train route under international law. We call on other European governments to follow suit in making sure that companies in their countries abide by international law.”
Morderchai Vanunu demands to apply a recently passed law and revoke his Israeli citizenship. “I have no interest in Israeli citienship, I don’t want to go on living here.”
Join a sunset cruise in New York Harbor: Wednesday, 25 May 2011
The Marco Polo Marina
23rd Street & FDR Drive ~ New York
BOARDING 6:30 pm · RETURNING 10:30 pm
