IHH: PALESTINE OUR ROUTE HUMANITARIAN AID OUR LOAD FLOTILLA CAMPAIGN SUMMARY REPORT
Izvještaj turske humanitarne organizacije IHH o humanitarnoj flotili, izraelskom napadu na brodove i aktiviste, te zlostavljanju i kršenju ljudskih prava aktivista za vrijeme dok su držani u zatočeništvu. U flotili su sudjelovali građani iz 36 zemalja (Alžira, Australije, Bahreina, Belgije, Bosne i Hercegovine, Kanade, Egipta, Francuske, Njemačke, Grčke, Indonezije, Irske, Italije, Jordana, Kosova, Kuvajta, Libanona, Makedonije, Malezije, Mauritanije, Maroka, Novog Zelanda, Norveške, Omana, Pakistana, Palestine, Poljske, Srbije, Južne Afrike, Španjolske, Švedske, Sirije, Turske, Ujedinjenog kraljevstva, SAD-a i Jemena), među njima i parlamentarni zastupnici iz Njemačke, Kuvajta, Izraela, Irske, Švedske, Grčke, južnog Cipra, Maroka, Jemena, Egipta i Alžira, 89-godišnji arhiepiskop Helarion Capycci, te brojni aktivisti, intelektualci i predstavnici nevladinih udruga.
Mairead Maguire: Choose Peace
It is time for the International Community to finally stop allowing Israel to act with blatant disregard for human Life, Human rights and International Law. The partial lifting of the siege shows what International pressure can achieve, but it is not enough and only a full lifting of the siege can bring freedom to the people of Gaza. It is time for Israel to choose peace. It is time for world leaders and the international Community to join together and call on Israel to lift the siege of Gaza completely, End the occupation of Palestine and allow the Palestinian people their right to Self-determination. To help bring closer that day we can all do something. Not everyone can go with The Freegaza boat people, but supporting the BDS campaign, calling for an end to EU special trading status with Israel insisting that USA end its economic/military assistance to Israel until it upholds its International commitments. Palestine is a key to peace in the Middle East so by us all refusing to be 'silent' in the face of Israel's continued apartheid policies we can all bring closer an end to all violence in the Middle East.
Activists prevent Israeli ship from unloading at US port
For the first time in US history, a peaceful protest was able to stop workers from unloading an Israeli cargo ship on Sunday, 20 June, in the San Francisco Bay area. From 5:30am until 7pm, social justice activists and labor union organizers blocked and picketed several entrances at the Port of Oakland, preventing two shifts of longshoremen with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) to come to work and unload the Israeli Zim Lines cargo ship.
Palestinian trade unionists call on dockworkers to block Israeli trade
Today, we ask you to join the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU), who resolved not to offload Israeli ships in Durban in February 2009 in protest of Israel's war of aggression on Gaza, and the Swedish Dockworkers Union who resolved to blockade all Israeli ships and cargo to and from Israel in protest of Israel's attack against the Freedom Flotilla and the ongoing deadly Israeli siege of the occupied Gaza Strip. Israel's ongoing blockade of essential food, health, educational and construction supplies is not only immoral, it is a severe form of collective punishment, a war crime that is strictly prohibited under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, that is inducing mass poverty, water contamination, environmental collapse, chronic diseases, economic devastation and hundreds of deaths. This three-year-old medieval siege against 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza has been squarely condemned by leading legal experts, including UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Prof. Richard Falk, who described it as constituting "slow genocide." Israel's deplorable attacks on the unarmed ships are a violation of both international maritime law and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which states that "the high seas should be reserved for peaceful purposes." Under article 3 of the Rome Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation of 1988, it is an international crime for any person to seize or exercise control over a ship by force, and also a crime to injure or kill any person in the process. As prominent international law scholars have recently confirmed, there is absolutely no legal justification for Israel's act of aggression against international civilian ships carrying humanitarian and developmental aid to civilians suffering under occupation and a patently illegal blockade, which has created a man-made and deliberately sustained humanitarian catastrophe. Our response must be commensurate with this crisis. Gaza today has become the test of our universal morality and our common humanity.
Daybreak outpouring of Bay Area picketers stops unloading of Israeli ship
International organizations renew condemnation of Gaza siege
In its statement released following the Israeli government's announcement, Amnesty International urged the Israeli government to "completely lift" its blockade against Gaza. Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's director for the Middle East and North Africa, denounced Israel's move: "This announcement makes it clear that Israel is not intending to end its collective punishment of Gaza's civilian population, but only ease it. This is not enough ... Any step that will help reduce the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza is to be welcomed, but Israel must now comply with its obligations as the occupying power under international law and immediately lift the blockade." ... "Just as important as allowing goods into Gaza is allowing exports to leave Gaza, yet there is no mention of this in today's announcement," stated Smart. "Banning the vast majority of exports, raw materials and the movement of people has destroyed the economy of Gaza, and pushed its population into unemployment, poverty and dependency on aid agencies for survival. These problems will not be solved while the blockade continues." Amnesty's appeal comes on the heels of a similar statement released on Monday, 14 June by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). ... "The closure imposed on the Gaza Strip is about to enter its fourth year, choking off any real possibility of economic development," the statement read. "Gazans continue to suffer from unemployment, poverty and warfare, while the quality of Gaza's health care system has reached an all-time low ... The whole of Gaza's civilian population is being punished for acts for which they bear no responsibility. The closure therefore constitutes a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel's obligations under international humanitarian law." The ICRC's full statement calls on the international community to make sure Israel ends the blockade and meets its obligations toward Palestinians in Gaza under humanitarian law ("Gaza closure: not another year!").
Part 5 Rachel Corrie Passengers Press Conference
Ilan Pappe: What drives Israel?
Israel is in a state of denial. Even in 2010, with all the alternative and international means of communication and information, most of the Israeli Jews are still fed daily by media that hides from them the realities of occupation, stagnation or discrimination. This is true about the ethnic cleansing that Israel committed in 1948, which made half of Palestine's population refugees, destroyed half the Palestinian villages and towns, and left 80% of their homeland in Israeli hands. And it's painfully clear that even before the apartheid walls and fences were built around the occupied territories, the average Israeli did not know, and could not care, about the 40 years of systematic abuses of civil and human rights of millions of people under the direct and indirect rule of their state. Nor have they had access to honest reports about the suffering in the Gaza Strip over the past four years. In the same way, the information they received on the flotilla fits the image of a state attacked by the combined forces of the old anti-Semitism and the new Islamic Judacidal fanatics coming to destroy the state of Israel. (After all, why would they have sent the best commando elite in the world to face defenceless human rights activists?)
Prosvjed u Beit Jali pored Betlehema 6-6-2010
Passengers grabbed Israeli weapons to stop the killing
Turkish survivors recount horror
Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught managed to speak to some of the injured activists, who are recovering in an Ankara hospital.
Tel Aviv peace Demonstration 5th june 2010 (flotilla event)
Gaza Freedom Graffiti in the Warsaw Ghetto
Aktivisti ispisali grafite na zidu varšavskog geta
Izraelski i poljski aktivisti Yonatan Shapira i Ewa Jasiewicz u nedjelju (27. lipnja) su na jednom zidu originalnog dijela varšavskog geta ispisali grafite „Oslobodite sve getoe“ i „Slobodna Gaza i Palestina“ na engleskom i hebrejskom, te izvjesili palestinsku zastavu i pozvali međunarodnu javnost da se pridruži aktivistima u globalnoj borbi za pravdu i podrži bojkot, dezinvestiranje i sankcije protiv Izraela.
Yonatan Shapira said: 'I was always taught growing up that the atrocities that happened to the Jewish people here happened because the world was silent. And therefore I cannot be silent. The Jewish people needed to be liberated from the ghettoes, and now Israelis need to be liberated from the crimes of their own government. Each one of us can take part in this global struggle for justice, and support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for the sake of not just the Palestinian people but for Israelis too'.
Miko Peled: Gaza Siege: Catastrophic, Not 'Unsustainable'
Armed Israeli commandos attacked the flotilla in international waters in an act of piracy. The people aboard the boat did what every navel officer would tell you was their duty: they heroically defended their ship and their cargo and, as we know, nine people gave their lives in this act of heroism. The Israeli commandos in panic and cowardice fired into the unarmed crowd, killing nine, and thus turned a mishap into an unspeakable tragedy. Had I been able to go on the Free Gaza flotilla this would have been my third attempt to enter the besieged Gaza where Israel has imprisoned and is slowly starving 1.4 million civilians, including 800,000 children. Palestinians have never had an army, a navy, a tank or a plane, yet they are being held under siege and are constantly attacked, suffering countless civilian casualties, horrific disease and inexcusable misery.
Flotilla raid diary: 'A man is shot. I am seeing it happen'
Someone who is going too slowly immediately gets a stun device fired into his arm. He falls. Another man who is not moving fast enough is shot with a rubber bullet. I think: I am seeing this happen right beside me. It is an absolute reality. People who have done nothing being driven like animals, being punished for their slowness. We are put in a group down on the deck. Where we will then stay for 11 hours, until the ship docks in Israel. Every so often we are filmed. When I jot down a few notes, a soldier comes over at once and asks what I am writing. That's the only time I lose my temper, and tell him it's none of his business. I can only see his eyes; don't know what he is thinking. But he turns and goes. Eleven hours, unable to move, packed together in the heat. If we want to go for a pee, we have to ask permission. The food they give us is biscuits, rusks and apples. We're not allowed to make coffee, even though we could do it where we are sitting. We take a collective decision: not to ask if we can cook food. Then they would film us. It would be presented as showing how generously the soldiers had treated us. We stick to the biscuits and rusks. It is degradation beyond compare. (Meanwhile, the soldiers who are off-duty have dragged mattresses out of the cabins and are sleeping at the back of the deck.) So in those 11 hours, I have time to take stock. We have been attacked while in international waters. That means the Israelis have behaved like pirates, no better than those who operate off the coast of Somalia. The moment they start to steer this ship towards Israel, we have also been kidnapped. The whole action is illegal.We try to talk among ourselves, work out what might happen, and not least how the Israelis could opt for a course of action that means painting themselves into a corner. The soldiers watch us. Some pretend not to understand English. But they all do. There are a couple of girls among the soldiers. They look the most embarrassed. Maybe they are the sort who will escape to Goa and fall into drug addiction when their military service is over? It happens all the time.
Ostali linkovi za Palestinu/Izrael:
"What solidarity means": a letter from Gilboa Prison
Ameer Makhoul je borac za ljudska prava, ravnatelj arapske mreže nevladinih organizacija Ittijah, jedan od vodećih aktivista palestinskog pokreta za bojkot, dezinvestiranje i sankcije i palestinski državljanin Izraela. Izraelske vlasti su Makhoula uhitile u ranim jutarnjim satima 6. svibnja 2010. u njegovom domu u Haifi i od tada se nalazi u pritvoru. Na početku su izraelske vlasti medijima zabranile svako izvještavanje o njegovom uhićenju, a gotovo 2 mu tjedna u pritvoru nisu bili dopušteni posjeti odvjetnika. Optužili su ga za „špijunažu“, a lokalne i međunarodne organizacije za ljudska prava osudile su njegovo uhićenje kao politički motivirani progon s ciljem slabljenja organiziranja palestinskih građana u Izraelu.
Više informacija o ovom slučaju na engleskom, hebrejskom, arapskom možete pronaći na blogu: FREE AMEER MAKHOUL & OMAR SAID
EU rubber-stamping grants for Israeli war industry
Israel's attacks on Gaza in late 2008 and 2009 provided its air force with an opportunity to experiment with state-of-the-art pilotless drones such as the Heron. Although human rights groups have calculated that the Heron and other drones killed at least 87 civilians during that three-week war, EU officials have tentatively approved the release of fresh finance to the Heron's manufacturer, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). Two projects involving IAI have recently passed the evaluation stages of a call for proposals under the EU's multi-annual program for research, which has been allocated 53 billion euros ($64 billion dollars) for the 2007-13 period. The Union's executive arm, the European Commission, has confirmed that IAI is one of 34 Israeli "partners" involved in 26 EU-funded projects for information technology which are under preparation. Among the other Israeli firms being considered for such funding are Afcon, a supplier of metal detectors to military checkpoints in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including the Erez crossing between southern Israel and Gaza. Afcon was also awarded a contract in 2008 for installing a security system in a light rail project designed to connect illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem with the city center. Mark English, a Commission spokesman, said that the procedures relating to the projects have not yet been completed. But the Israeli business publication Globes reported last month that Israeli firms stand to gain 17 million euros ($21 million) from the latest batch of EU grants for information technology. According to Globes, this will bring the amount that Israel has drawn from the EU's research program since 2007 to 290 million euros ($360 million). Israel is the main foreign participant in the EU's science program. Officials in Tel Aviv say they expect Israeli firms and research institutes will have received around 500 million euros ($621 million) from the program by the time of its conclusion. ... drones made by IAI and other Israeli companies have been bought by several European countries taking part in the US-led war in Afghanistan. "The military industry is a central point of the Israeli economy," she said. "The equipment it makes is sold as 'battle-tested,' which is a dark way of describing its use in the occupied [Palestinian] territories."
An Interview with Cecilie Surasky: Echoes From The Warsaw Ghetto In Gaza
You don't have to compare what happened to Palestinians in Gaza to the Holocaust to make it seem more important than it already is. It already is so important and so unique in its own way. The Holocaust was a systematic, well planned extermination of millions of people… And it was six million Jews but it was 11 million people altogether. The other 5 million were homosexuals, socialists, artists, intellectuals, people with disabilities. Obviously in the case of Gaza and the Occupied Territories we don't have anything like that. But I do think that people do draw lessons from the rise of the Nazis. In Nazi Germany, the reign of Hitler was 12 years and before the Final Solution, the agenda to exterminate an entire people, you had a gradual legalized crushing and tightening of people's lives. And there are Jews who we have worked with and Jews who lived through that time and they say “look, you can't compare the systematic extermination in terms of the deaths of people. But I lived through that experience of dehumanization, of the crushing of people's freedom and spirit. And there are things that are similar.” The culture of collaborators that Israel creates to monitor and divide people. The black market that has emerged in Gaza similar to those in the ghettos. The sickness. The way those with money find a way to survive and perhaps even profit, and those without have little recourse. The slow death by bureaucracy and laws—in the West Bank farmers need multiple permits just to farm their own land- no guns are needed to destroy a family. The crackdown on human rights activists in Israel right now- the midnight raids and media gag orders on arrests of Israeli citizens, banning people like Noam Chomsky from the country simply because of their ideas, attempts to shut down human rights organizations… These are not the elements of a healthy democracy. These are signs of an incipient fascism. And I use that word because our many friends on the ground in Israel use that word now. I have letters of my great grandmother –I am looking at them right now sitting at my desk- from the Warsaw ghetto. That's where she was tortured to death and she wrote these letters to my grandparents asking for help. And I have letters from friends in Gaza. The tone of the letters feels similar to me. They're prisoners. They're trapped. They don't have enough food or supplies. They want help getting young relatives out. And they don't know what may happen the next day- a bomb, a lethal attack. And mostly, a sense that the world doesn't care. I am deeply haunted by that common message I heard from my great grandmother in the Ghetto and from people I've known in Gaza. Of course we see the echoes of that and of course Jews in Israel are a traumatized people. But the problem is, it doesn't help to compare Gaza to the Holocaust. Eleven million people are not being systematically slaughtered in Gaza . But what you do have is, as I said, a kind of a slow destruction of a culture, a slow destruction of life. It's a slow ethnic cleansing that is not only killing people but destroying families, destroying spirits, destroying an entire culture with a cruel and callous deliberate intention that causes massive unnecessary suffering on almost every level. They are literally prisoners. And that doesn't need to be compared to the Holocaust to know how horrible and immoral and outrageous it is and how it must be stopped. Operation Cast Lead killed some 1,400 people and injured countless others. The attack didn't just kill civilians including children, it terrorized an entire population of 1.5 million. It sent them a message that they can never be safe, they cannot protect their families. The level of dehumanization required to justify this kind of treatment of an imprisoned population of 1.5 million people is terrifying. Of course when I hear Israeli government officials use almost identical language that Nazis used to describe Jews, calling Palestinians a virus or bug that must be eradicated, it gives me terrible chills. That process of dehumanization is universal….it has happened in every corner of the earth, and the lesson is that Jews are just as capable as everyone else. We are not better or worse. We are the same.
Kutak za obožavatelje zlika i nedjela Shimona Peresa:
Na linku možemo čuti kako irska mirovna nobelovka (koja je, za razliku od Peresa, svoju nagradu zaslužila) i mirovna aktivistica Mairead Maguire podsjeća da Shimon Peres nije samo otac izraelskog ilegalnog nuklearnog naoružanja, nego i otac utrke u nuklearnom naoružanju na Srednjem istoku.
