Palestinski aktivisti za ljudska prava, Mohammad Othman i Jamal Juma, koji aktivno sudjeluju u kampanji protiv ilegalnog Zida koji Izrael gradi na okupiranom palestinskom području, napokon su 13. siječnja 2010. pušteni iz izraelskog pritvora. Svoje oslobađanje Mohammad i Jamal duguju isključivo diplomatskom pritisku, intervenciji Ujedinjenih naroda i akcijama, izjavama i apelima brojnih međunarodnih, palestinskih i izraelskih nevladinih organizacija za ljudska prava.
Mohammad Othman, koordinator za mlade Kampanje protiv aparthejdskog Zida (Stop the Wall), na slobodu je pušten nakon što je u izraelskom pritvoru proveo 113 dana bez suđenja i bez da je za bilo što optužen. Mohammada (32) su izraelski vojnici uhitili 22. rujna 2009. na graničnom prijelazu Allenby, dok se vraćao kući na Zapadnu obalu s turneje po Norveškoj. 22. studenog, nakon fizički i psihički iscrpljujućeg ispitivanja koje je trajalo 61 dan, sudac vojnog suda je naredio da se ispitivanje prekine. Slijedeći je dan Mohammad stavljen u administrativni pritvor. 22. mu je prosinca administrativni pritvor produljen na razdoblje od 1 mjeseca, no kasnije je taj period za deset dana skratio vojni sudac Suda za administrativne pritvorenike.
Jamal Juma (47), istaknuti palestinski aktivist za ljudska prava, koordinator organizacije Stop the Wall i osnivač nekoliko palestinskih mreža civilnog društva i nevladinih organizacija, oslobođen je iz izraelskog pritvora nakon 27 dana koje je proveo u istražnom centru Moskobiyyeh u Jeruzalemu. Iako je stanovnik Istočnog Jeruzalema, Jamala su ispitivali i pritovorili u skladu s izraelskim vojnim naredbama, odnosno vojnim pravosudnim sustavom koji ne jamči temeljno pravo na pošteno suđenje. Jamalovo ispitivanje završilo je nakon 8 dana, ali su ga u pritvornom centru Moskobiyyeh bez ikakvog razloga držali još dodatnih 19 dana, bez da je za bilo što optužen.
Unatoč ovoj dobroj vijesti, izraelska kampanja represije i uhićivanja aktivista za ljudska prava koji se nenasiljem bore protiv izraelskog ilegalnog Zida na Zapadnoj obali se nastavlja.
12. su siječnja 2010. uhićena 3 takvih aktivista u izraelskim noćnim racijama u selima Ni'linu i Bil'inu: Ibrahim Ameera, koordinator nil'inskog Narodnog odbora protiv Zida i ilegalnih naselja, te Zaydoun Srour i Hassan Musa, pripadnici Narodnog odbora u Nil'inu. Izraelska je vojska također pretresla dom S, mladog aktivista koji redovito sudjeluje u prosvjedima i pozvala ga na ispitivanje. Izraelske su snage također uhitile Mohammada Ali Yasina koji je aktivan u mladeži koja se nenasilno bori protiv ilegalnog Zida.
Abdallah Abu Rahmah je i dalje u izraelskom zatvoru, od 10. prosinca 2009. kada je uhićen. (Na linku možete pronaći dodatne akcije koje možete poduzeti s ciljem oslobađanja nenasilnog aktivista za ljudska prava Abdallaha Abu Rahmaha)
Zapovjednik izraelske vojske za betlehemsko područje je krajem prosinca upozorio pripadnike Narodnog odbora protiv Zida u selu Al-Masara da će vojska sve buduće prosvjede grubo suzbiti, a da će oni koji sudjeluju u prosvjedima ili ih organiziraju biti uhićeni i „stavljeni na crnu listu“. Od tog vremena selo proživljava redovite izraelske noćne napade.
Izvor: Human rights defenders Mohammad Othman and Jamal Juma released
Linkovi Palestina/Izrael:
Ireland To Gaza
Here, each and every one of us was „Deported“ from Egypt . This was our final thanks for having brought humanitarian aid to the suffering people in Gaza . For all of us, it is a badge of honour. Where else in the world would you be deported for having completed an act of charity? The mind boggles... Egypt can hold their heads in shame for what they did to us. Making us endure a 13 day detour, attacking us, and then deporting us, was some reception from a supposed friend of the west. Then, they announce that they will never allow another convoy of aid to pass through their land for Gaza. They have a big heart, and their generosity knows no bounds. At Cairo airport, our passports were held and only returned when stepping onto a flight. The British Embassy in Cairo did nothing for their citizens, and the US did even less. The Irish Embassy did more than every other Embassy put together. From the moment we landed in El Arish, they were making up to 5 calls a day to us to make sure we were all ok. They also made several calls for our safety to the Egyptian Government. Michael Martin also called to offer his support. Once again, Ireland stood up for its citizens and for the Palestinians.
PAS protests Egypt's action against Viva Palestina
Snimka prosvjeda pred egipatskim veleposlanstvom u Kuala Lumpuru zbog napada egipatskih vlasti na konvoj Viva Palestina. Malezijci su također donirali sredstva za Gazu i putovali u konvoju, a 1 je malezijski aktivist bio među 7 uhićenih i to navodno samo zato što je fotografirao napad egipatskih snaga na konvoj u luci Al-Arish.
Bristol Convoy Start To Return From Gaza
During her time in Gaza Siba visited an Orphanage. She also visited a UN refugee camp where people were housed in building made of built of earth bricks - the UN is resorting to this method of building due to the current restrictions on modern building materials. Among others she met a13 year old boy. He recounted the story of the night when the whole family had been asleep in their house when the bombs fell on them. His entire family of 12 perished and he lay buried for a long time under the rubble and had lost a leg. She also met widows and mothers who described their trauma of losing children. One woman had lost half her family and is now scared to let the others out of her sight. Siba says "This trip to Gaza was all an incredibly moving experience that will stay with me for a lifetime I want to go back again and again and help. I remember seeing the news of the attacks on television, but then it seemed so far away. It feels so different now I've seen it with my own eyes".
Grassroots activist Wa'el Al-Faqeeh to stand trial January 19
On the night of December 9th 2009 over 200 Israeli soldiers entered the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Their mission: to round up a list of local grassroots activists, whose promotion of popular struggle Israel had no answer for. Amongst those taken was 45 year old Wa'el Al-Faqeeh, when 50 soldiers stormed his home, pointing their weapons at him and his family as though the man they had come to arrest embodied a formidable threat. But those who know Al Faqeeh know that he worked tirelessly – and on a largely voluntary basis – in defense of human rights and the promotion of the strategies and philosophy of Palestinian non-violent resistance. Al-Faqeeh's membership to the Tanweer Palestinian Cultural Enlightenment Forum board of directors was a vehicle for the initiation of the BDS (Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment) campaign at An-Najah University as well as countless cultural, social and educational projects for Nablus youth, championing the belief of freedom through the fulfilment of learning and expression. His organisation of Iraq Burin's weekly demonstrations through the months of July to September played an instrumental role in the return of 30 dunums of land to the village annexed by neighbouring settlements and Israeli military forces. Al Faqeeh enthusiastically supported the cause of Palestinian farmers working under constant threat from settler and military violence, organising the annual olive harvest in the Nablus region and working year-round to defend agricultural communities' connection to their land and economic livelihood. His grassroots outreach across the political spectrum inspired all those he met and worked with, but Al-Faqeeh has suffered greatly for it. On more than one occasion he was threatened by Israeli officials for his involvement in popular struggle, severely limiting his movements for fear of arrest. This fear was realised on the 9th of December, when he was arrested and imprisoned by the Israeli military, joining 8,000 other Palestinian political prisoners like him.
Ali Abunimah: The United States, Israel and the retreat of freedom
Maintaining a Jewish-controlled "liberal democratic" regime in Palestine/Israel is incompatible with the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians. It emphatically depends on their permanent violation, especially the right of return. But the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians -- an end to discrimination against Palestinian citizens, dismantling the 1967 occupation regime, and the right of return for refugees -- is fully compatible with Israeli Jews exercising the human, civil, political and cultural rights to which they are unquestionably entitled. As a first step toward imagining and creating such a framework, we have to ditch the absurd idea reproduced by Freedom House, that Israeli Jews can epitomize perfect freedom while imposing perfect tyranny and dispossession on a greater number of human beings who belong to the same country.
Nablus executions: Shoot first, ask questions later
Categorical execution without trial constitutes state terrorism, whatever statements military spokespeople may peddle regarding Israel's exhaustive quest for "security" and the means necessary to enforce it. Whether or not Israeli intelligence's suspicions of Sarakji, Sharkh and Subih were well-founded, the cold-blooded execution of these and hundreds of other victims are a grave departure from a human's right to due process. Israel's tired accusations of terrorism against those it kills are rarely supported by evidence, and only a handful of cases of those killed on these grounds have ever been investigated; fewer still have been accountable for their actions.
Interview: Disabled activist continues struggle in Bilin
JM: Has your wheelchair ever been broken during a demonstration?
RB: Once, we had a demonstration in Bilin for disabled people, which I organized. Normally, we would protest right up at the wall, but on this occasion, the soldiers started shooting tear gas before we were even within sight. They started to shout that "after today, there will be no more demonstrations in Bilin" ... it was because the week before, they had shot an Israeli lawyer who was participating with us. So they wanted to stop the demonstrations because they were afraid of killing Israelis, not Palestinians! But that was a few years ago, so they haven't done a very good job on the "no more demos" promise ... It was a very powerful symbol of the occupation, to see the Israeli army shooting at the blind and people in wheelchairs. They shot three tear gas canisters at my wheelchair and broke it completely.
JM: Do you think that the Israeli army deal with you differently because you are in a wheelchair?
RB: They treat me exactly the same. They don't care if I am in a wheelchair or if I'm walking -- according to them, I am a threat to the State of Israel, as ridiculous as that may sound. Maybe they think I want to take revenge for what has happened to me, but I want to tell them that I am a man who wants peace. Even if they destroy my whole life, I only want to make peace.
PACBI: Bono: Don't cross Palestine's picket line
Performing in Israel would violate the almost unanimously endorsed Palestinian civil society Call for Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. This Call is directed particularly towards international activists, artists and academics of conscience, such as yourself. Moreover, it would come a year and a half after Israel's bloody military assault against the occupied Gaza Strip which left over 1,440 Palestinians dead, of whom 431 were children, and 5380 injured. The 1.5 million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, the overwhelming majority of whom are refugees who were expelled from their homes by Zionist forces in 1948, were subjected to three weeks of relentless Israeli state terror, whereby Israeli warplanes systematically targeted civilian areas, reducing whole neighborhoods and vital civilian infrastructure to rubble and partially destroying Gaza's leading university and scores of schools, including several run by the UN, where civilians were taking shelter.
This criminal assault comes after three years of an ongoing, illegal, crippling Israeli siege of Gaza which has shattered all spheres of life, prompting the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Richard Falk, to describe it as "a prelude to genocide." The UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, headed by the highly respected South African judge Richard Goldstone, found Israel guilty of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, as did major international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The Goldstone report concluded that Israel's war on Gaza was "designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability."
...
Through systematic repression and incarceration of human rights defenders without due process, Israel has made sure that those Palestinian "Gandhis" and "Kings" do not rise to prominence. Activists such as Mohammed Othman, Abdallah Abu Rahma, and Jamal Juma', to mention only a few recent examples, have been imprisoned without charge or trial, a practice that has been harshly condemned by Amnesty International. Historically, successive Israeli governments went even further in suppressing civil and popular resistance: one of Yitzhak Rabin's strategies in the first intifada, for instance, was to "break the bones" of young Palestinian protestors, often "preemptively;" more recently, Israeli military forces have brutally dispersed weekly nonviolent Palestinian protests against Israel's wall -- which was declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004 -- by firing rubber bullets, tear gas canisters and sometimes live ammunition onto protestors. Such methods have resulted in the injury of hundreds of peaceful protesters, including some internationals and Israelis, as well as the death of several Palestinian civilians. American human rights activist Tristan Anderson was shot in the head with a high velocity tear gas projectile while protesting peacefully in the village of Nilin against the wall. Your appearance in Israel would lend to its well-oiled campaign to whitewash all the above grave violations of international law and basic human rights through "re-branding" itself as a liberal nation enjoying membership in the Western club of democracies.
Uphill battle for academic freedom in US universities
Margo Ramlal-Nankoe, former professor of Sociology at Ithaca College in New York, said that after she started addressing issues of human rights abuses in occupied Palestine -- especially after the start of the second Palestinian intifada -- she was warned by faculty members at the college that she was "risking" her career and "would suffer repercussions from the administration." Ramlal-Nankoe told The Electronic Intifada (EI) that the verbal threats eventually led to alleged racist and sexist attacks, and an open death threat from a faculty member who protested Ramlal-Nankoe's support of a department colleague whose husband was Palestinian. "He [made] a cut-throat gesture with his hand across his neck to me," Ramlal-Nankoe said. She was later denied tenure in 2007.
...
Film studies professor Terri Ginsberg, similarly fired in 2008 by North Carolina State University (NCSU) in what she says was a punishment for her outspoken criticism of "Zionism, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and US Middle East policy," believes that institutionalized censorship on the Palestine-Israel issue in the academic realm is eerily reminiscent of the McCarthy era of the 1950s and '60s. "So many of the dynamics and methods of discrimination perpetrated against today's scholarly critics of Israel and US Middle East policy derive from and continue, in updated fashion, practices initiated and implemented during that shameful period," she says.
Egypt prevents local convoy from bringing aid to Gaza
Egipatske vlasti spriječile konvoj egipatskih građana da dostavi humanitarnu pomoć u Gazu (15. siječanj 2010.)
Egipatske sigurnosne snage su onemogućile dostavu humanitarne pomoći u Gazu koju je organizirao pokret Kifaya, povezan s egipatskom laburističkom strankom. Egipatska je policija rastjerala konvoj koji je počeo humanitarnu pomoć voziti prema sjevernoj egipatskoj granici. Jedan je vozač konvoja uhićen, a u doba pisanja ovog članka konvoj je još uvijek pokušavao doći do grada Al-Ismailije, unatoč cestovnim blokadama koje su egipatske sigurnosne snage postavile kako bi ga u tome spriječile.
