Posted on: 2014

By Jessica Purkiss

Ali Shamlawi, 17, was held in solitary confinement, beaten and intimidated into confessing to throwing stones. He has now been in Israeli military detention for a year facing charges of attempted murder.
A Palestinian teenager who confessed to throwing stones after he was tortured in Israeli custody faces attempted
 murder charges and a severe prison sentence.

Ali Shamlawi, 17, is accused of throwing stones at a truck near Ariel, a settlement in the occupied West Bank, causing a traffic accident in which a three-year-old Israeli girl was seriously injured.

He is facing charges of attempted murder. The maximum sentence for attempted murder under Israeli military law is life in prison.

Shamlawi says he confessed to throwing stones under duress and now denies the charges.

In a sworn testimony given to DCI-Palestine, he claims he was held in solitary confinement, beaten and intimidated, and denied access to counsel by Israeli authorities during his arrest and interrogation.

He has now been in detention for a year and neither his lawyer, nor his family know when a verdict will be reached.

After Shamlawi’s latest appearance in court on March 13, 2014, his mother, Nema Shamlawi said: “[Ali’s] childhood is being lost. He doesn’t see the sun and the air…doesn’t live his childhood as it should be.”

Under Israeli military law, Palestinian children can be imprisoned for up to a maximum of one year before legal proceedings must be completed against them. The military court has the right to extend detention by a further 60 days. After that, the military court of appeals can extend custody indefinitely in three-month chunks.

Shamlawi is one of five boys arrested in connection with the same stone-throwing incident. The others are: Mohammed Suliman, Mohammad Kleib, Tamer Souf, and Ammar Souf. They were all aged 16 at the time.

The Israeli army alleges that on the evening of March 14, 2013, the boys were throwing stones at passing vehicles on a main road near Ariel settlement.

The stones caused a passing truck to brake suddenly, and Edva Biton, an Israeli woman from the West Bank settlement, Yakir, crashed the car she was driving into the back of the truck. She and her three daughters were injured in the accident – her three-year-old daughter, Adele, suffered serious head injuries.

The boys are each charged with 20 counts of attempted murder – among other charges. The Israeli military prosecution insists that the boys consciously “intended to kill.” A senior Israeli military officer speaking on the condition of anonymity previously declared that factors specific to the case merited filing attempted murder charges, but prosecutors would not seek life sentences because the case did not warrant it, according to Al-Jazeera English.

Israeli military law, which fails to ensure and denies basic and fundamental rights, is applied exclusively to the Palestinian population, including women and children. Settlers living in the West Bank are subject to the Israeli civil legal system. No Israeli children come into contact with the military court system.

The case received extensive press coverage inside Israel. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu branded stone throwing as an act of terror, saying “stones are lethal weapons.” While Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called for the Israeli army’s rules of engagement to be changed to allow them to open fire on stone-throwers.

“Palestinian kids, whether they throw stones or not, must be judged impartially,” said Adnan Rabi, a lawyer with DCI-Palestine. “In this case, punishment and retribution seem to be underlying statements made by some Israeli officials.”

Throwing an object, including a stone, at a moving vehicle with the intent to harm it or the person travelling in it carries a maximum penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment under Israeli Military Order 1651.

While the age of majority for Palestinians was raised from 16 to 18 in 2011, the amendment did not apply to sentencing provisions, leaving children 16 and older subject to the same maximum sentences as adults.

Each year, around 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12, are arrested, detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military detention system, with the majority of Palestinian child detainees held on charges of throwing stones. Israeli children living in the same territory do not come into contact with the military court system.

According to figures from DCI-Palestine, three out of four Palestinian children experience physical violence during their arrest, transfer or interrogation.

Shamlawi testified to DCI-Palestine that he was subjected to both physical and psychological abuse during his arrest and interrogation. He says he was repeatedly beaten by soldiers during his arrest and strip-searched.

Shamlawi was interrogated without being informed of his rights and without the presence of a lawyer or a family member. During interrogation, he says that his interrogator pulled his hair, made him watch his friends being interrogated and threatened to torture his mother if he did not confess.

Shamlawi did sign a confession in which he admitted to throwing two stones. He says he confessed under duress – and continues to deny that he did actually throw stones.

An Israeli army spokesperson commented on the case in October 2013: “We would like to emphasize that the defendants received all of their rights according to the law, including the right to avoid self-incrimination and the right to legal counsel over the course of the investigation.”

Shamlawi says he also spent five days in solitary confinement.

In 2012, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Richard Falk, condemned Israel’s use of solitary confinement against Palestinian children saying it “flagrantly violates international human rights standards.”

In sworn testimonies to DCI-Palestine, the other four boys also reported physical abuse and stints in solitary confinement. One boy reported sexual threats from a prison guard.

The boys’ allegations constitute a violation of international human rights treaties ratified by Israel, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

A 2013 United Nations report from the Committee on the Rights of the Child found that “Palestinian children arrested by the [Israeli] military and police are systematically subject to degrading treatment, and often to acts of torture.”

All five teens are currently being held in Megiddo Prison in Israel. The transfer of Palestinian children to prisons inside Israel contravenes article 76 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.

It provides that “protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein.”

DCI-Palestine lawyer Adnan Rabi added: “We are concerned that the children’s best interests, which should be regarded as a primary consideration by the military prosecutors and judges, will not be factored in at all.”

*Jessica Purkiss is a freelance contributor to Defence for Children International Palestine.

Source:

http://www.dci-palestine.org

Posted on: 2014

By Jonathan Cook

For 66 years Israel’s founding generation has lived with a guilty secret, one it successfully concealed from the
 generations that followed. Forests were planted to hide war crimes. School textbooks mythologised the events surrounding Israel’s creation. The army was blindly venerated as the most moral in the world.

Once, “Nakba” – Arabic for “Catastrophe”, referring to the dispossession of the Palestinian homeland in 1948 – would have failed to register with any but a small number of Israeli Jews. Today, only those who never watch television or read a newspaper can plead ignorance.

As marches and festivals are held today by Palestinians across the region to mark Nakba Day – commemorating the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and the erasure of more than 500 villages – Israelis will be watching.

In fact, the Israeli media have been filled with references to the Nakba for the past 10 days, since Israel celebrated its Independence Day last week. The two anniversaries do not quite coincide because Israel marks its founding according to the Hebrew calendar.

While Israeli Jews were trying to enjoy guilt-free street parties last week, news reports focused on the activities of their compatriots – the Palestinians who remained inside the new state of Israel and now comprise a fifth of the population. Estimates are that one in four of these 1.5 million Palestinian citizens is from a family internally displaced by the 1948 war.

More than 20,000 staged a “March of Return” to one destroyed village, Lubya, buried under a forest near Tiberias and close to a major Israeli highway. Long tailbacks forced thousands of Israeli Jews to get a close-up view as they crawled past the biggest nakba procession in Israel’s history.

For others, images of the marchers waving Palestinian flags and massively outnumbering Israeli police and a counter-demonstration by Jewish nationalists were seen on TV news, websites and social media.

The assault on Israel’s much cherished national mythology is undoubted. And it reflects the rise of a new generation of Palestinians no longer willing to defer to their more cautious, and traumatised, elders, those who directly experienced the events of 1948.

These youth see themselves as representing not only their immediate relatives but Palestinians in exile who have no chance to march back to their village. Many of Lubya’s refugees ended up in Yarmouk camp in Damascus, where they are suffering new horrors, caught in the midst of Syria’s civil war.

Palestinians in Israel are also being galvanised into action by initiatives like prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to legislate Israel as a Jewish state. They see this as the latest phase of an ongoing nakba – an attempt to erase their nativeness, just as the villages were once disappeared.

Palestinians are making a noise about the Nakba on every possible front – and not just on Nakba Day. Last week media around the world reported on one such venture: a phone app called iNakba that maps the hundreds of destroyed villages across Israel. Briefly it became one of the most popular iPhone downloads, connecting refugees through new technology. Nakba visibly restores a Palestine that Israel hoped literally to have wiped off the map.

The app is the initiative of Zochrot, an Israeli organisation that is jointly run by Jews and Palestinians. They have been finding ever more creative and provocative ways to grab headlines.

They arrange regular visits to destroyed villages that a growing number of curious Israeli Jews are participating in, often in the face of vehement opposition from the communities built on the rubble of Palestinian homes.

Zochrot has created a Hebrew information pack on the Nakba for teachers, though education officials ban it. Last year it staged the first Nakba film festival in Tel Aviv. It is also creating an archive of filmed interviews with Israeli veteran fighters prepared to admit their part in expulsions.

Zochrot also held last year the first-ever conference in Israel discussing not just the principle but how to put into practice a right of return for the millions of Palestinian refugees across the region.

Palestinian youth are taking up the idea enthusiastically. Architects are designing plans for new communities that would house the refugees on or near their old lands.

Refugee families are trying to reclaim mosques and churches, usually the only buildings still standing. Israeli media reported last month that internal refugees had been attacked as they held a baptism in their former church at al-Bassa, now swamped by the Jewish town of Shlomi.

Workshops have been arranged among refugee groups to imagine what a right of return might look like. Youth from two Christian villages, Iqrit and Biram, have already set up camps at their old churches, daring Israel to hound them out like their grandparents. Another group, I Won’t Remain a Refugee, is looking to export this example to other villages.

The size of the march to Lubya and the proliferation of these initiatives are a gauge of how Palestinians are no longer prepared to defer to the Palestinian leadership on the refugee issue or wait for an interminable peace process to make meaningful progress.

“The people are sending a message to the leadership in Ramallah that it cannot forget or sideline the right of return,” says Abir Kopty, an activist with the Lubya march. “Otherwise we will take the issue into our own hands.”

Meanwhile, progress of a kind is being made with Israeli Jews. Some have come to recognise, however reluctantly, that a tragedy befell the Palestinians with Israel’s creation. But, as another march organiser notes, the struggle is far from over. “That is a first step. But now they must take responsibility for our suffering and make amends.”

*Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books).  His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

Source:

http://www.jonathan-cook.net

Posted on: 2015

By Terry Ahwal

In June of this year, more than 800 families from the United States of America will be coming to Ramallah for
 its fifty-sixth annual convention. This will mark the first time that the Ramallah people will host their annual convention in their ancestral homeland. I can’t tell you the excitement that has been generated by our members who are coming to Ramallah. For the first time in the history of the federation, the board voted unanimously to support hosting the convention in Ramallah.

Some of the people who are travelling to Palestine are second- or third-generation Ramallites who have never travelled outside the United States. Others will be arriving after leaving Ramallah decades ago. Those of us who frequently travel to Palestine can’t wait to see the joy these people will experience upon their arrival to our beloved homeland. The old saying, “that you can’t go home again,” does not speak for the people who are going to Palestine. As a coordinator of Project Hope, a programme that brings young American-born Palestinians to volunteer in Ramallah, I witness and hear the words of first time travellers to Palestine saying again and again, “I feel like this is home.” Indeed this is how many of us who live in the diaspora feel. Palestine is home. It is in our hearts day in and day out. To set foot in it is liberating and magical.

I left Palestine as a teenager. My parents sent me to the United States for fear that I may end up in jail for speaking out against the brutal Israeli Occupation. My distance from Palestine did not stop me from loving it, nor did it stop my speaking on behalf of the people who are and continued to be oppressed. I am not alone; the majority of us have never forgotten our roots. In fact, we draw on our heritage to make us better Americans. Our rich roots give us the strength to stand up for the rights of people regardless of their background. Since we experienced injustices and war first-hand, our voices are at the forefront in opposing oppression in all its forms.

As Palestinian-Americans, our work does not stop only with speaking out on behalf of the injustices bestowed upon the Palestinian people. Collectively and individually, we live, breathe, and work to maintain our rich Palestinian culture. For example, for the last 64 years the American Federation of Ramallah Palestine has been developing cultural programmes on the national and local levels to ensure that our Palestinian culture stays alive despite the distance. We’ve developed dabka programmes to teach our children the art of Palestinian folklore. We have also developed Project Hope and the Federation Medical Mission, so that our people can travel to Palestine and volunteer their time and talents in Palestine. Some of our local clubs have established Arabic classes to teach young students the language of their ancestors. We have programmes for all age groups. Our aim is to connect people to each other so that they can bond with their ancestral homeland. We are proud of our Palestinian and American heritage and work diligently to bridge the gap between the United States and Palestine.

For years, we have waited to hold our convention in Palestine in hopes that Palestine would be free from the shackles of the Occupation. We still dream and work for a free, viable Palestine. Our decision to have our convention in Palestine is a decision of solidarity and commitment to the Palestinian people. In conjunction with putting on a great convention in Ramallah, we are working with the State Department in the US to push for a genuine and just peace, not only in Palestine, but also in the region. Although the road to justice has many obstacles, we believe that colonialism will never succeed.

As the prodigal sons and daughters of Palestine, we are coming to visit you and hope to learn from you the power of hope and perseverance in the face of a powerful oppressor who refuses to see your humanity. We are eager to see and touch the olive trees standing tall, despite efforts to remove them from their sacred grounds. We are eager to hear the vendors selling hamleh and bouza Rukab. We are salivating at the prospect of eating fresh knafeh Nabulsia. We are fervent about the possibility of kneeling at the holy places to pray with you for peace and justice in our homeland. We are coming with our families to share with your our experiences and learn from yours.

Our journey to Ramallah for the convention will be about connecting, experiencing, and learning. When you see us on the street, please tell us your story.

* Terry Ahwal was born in Ramallah and immigrated to the United States in 1972. She served as the executive director of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and was an assistant county executive. She is currently the president of TA&M Consulting Solutions. She holds certifications in leadership from Notre Dame Mendoza School of Business and a BA in political science from the University of Michigan. She has served on numerous non-profit boards and is a past president of the American Federation of Ramallah Palestine.

Source:

http://archive.thisweekinpalestine.com/

Posted on: 2013

By Stuart Littlewood

I have to admit, I was only dimly aware of the Dalet Plan before reading Alan Hart’s latest article ’The green light fo
r Zionism’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine’.

The Dalet Plan, or Plan D, was the Zionist terror mob’s diabolical blueprint for the violent and blood-spattered takeover of the Palestinian homeland – some call it the Palestinian holocaust – written 65 years ago and based on three earlier schemes drafted between 1945 and 1948. It was drawn up by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency.

Plan D was a carefully thought-out, step-by-step plot choreographed in advance of the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood. It correctly assumed that the British authorities would no longer be there. Indeed, the British had completed their departure by 15 May 1948.

The Plan’s intention, on the surface, was to gain control of the areas of the Jewish state and defend its borders. But it also aimed to do much more. It included measures to control the areas of Jewish settlements and concentrations located outside Jewish borders and ensure “freedom of military and economic activity” by occupying and controlling important high-ground positions on a number of transport routes.

This would be achieved by, amongst other things, “applying economic pressure on the enemy by besieging some of his cities”, “encirclement of enemy cities” and “blocking the main enemy transportation routes… Roads, bridges, main passes, important crossroads, paths, etc. must be blocked by means of: acts of sabotage, explosions, series of barricades, mine fields, as well as by controlling the elevations near roads and taking up positions there.”

Jewish forces would occupy the police stations, described as “fortresses”, fifty of which had been built by the British throughout Palestine after the Arab unrest of 1936-39.

The Plan discussed “operations against enemy population centers located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force.” These operations included:

“Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.

“Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”

Villages emptied in this way were then fortified. “Outside the borders of the state” seems a curious thing to say since nobody was saying then where Israel’s borders ran, and nobody is saying now.

If they met no resistance, “garrison troops will enter the village and take up positions in it or in locations which enable complete tactical control,” said the Plan. “The officer in command of the unit will confiscate all weapons, wireless devices, and motor vehicles in the village. In addition, he will detain all politically suspect individuals…  In every region, a [Jewish] person will be appointed to be responsible for arranging the political and administrative affairs of all [Arab] villages and population centers which are occupied within that region.

And here are the chilling guidelines for besieging, occupying and controlling Arab cities:

1. By isolating them from transportation arteries by laying mines, blowing up bridges, and a system of fixed ambushes.

2. If necessary, by occupying high points which overlook transportation arteries leading to enemy cities, and the fortification of our units in these positions.

3. By disrupting vital services, such as electricity, water, and fuel, or by using economic resources available to us, or by sabotage.

4. By launching a naval operation against the cities that can receive supplies by sea, in order to destroy the vessels carrying the provisions, as well as by carrying out acts of sabotage against harbor facilities.”

It is one of the sickest documents in history and shows why so many people question Israel’s legitimacy. Jewish terror gangs committed a massacre at Deir Yassin to set the tone and ‘soften up’ the Arabs for expulsion. More atrocities followed the declaration of Israeli statehood on 14 May 1948. 750,000 Palestinians were put to flight as Israel’s forces obliterated hundreds of Arab villages and towns. The village on which Sderot now stands was one such. To this day they have been denied the right to return and received no compensation. 34 massacres are said to have been committed in pursuit of the Jewish nation’s racist and territorial ambitions.

White Colonialist Club

The UN Partition of Palestine in 1947 cannot stand close scrutiny. At that time, UN membership did not include African states, and most Arab and Asian states were still under colonial rule. It was pretty much a white colonialist club. The Palestinians themselves had no representation and they weren’t even consulted.

The first vote failed to reach the two-thirds majority required. To ensure success in the second vote a good deal of arm-twisting was applied to the smaller countries, but again it fell short. At the third attempt France was persuaded to come “on board” after the US threatened to withdraw desperately needed post-WW2 aid, and on 29 November the UN voted to partition Palestine into three parts: a Jewish state on 14,000 sq km with some 558,000 Jews and 405,000 Palestinian Arabs; and an Arab state on 11,500 sq km with about 804,000 Palestinian Arabs and 10,000 Jews. Jerusalem, including major religious sites, was to be internationally administered.

No sooner had Britain packed her bags than Israel declared statehood on 14 May 1948 and immediately began expanding territorial control across all of Palestine to accommodate a new Jewish state expanding on all fronts. 15 May marks the dark day in 1948 remembered by Palestinians as al-Nakba (the Catastrophe) brought about by the military terror that forced them off their homeland.

Atrocities occurred at Deir Yassin, Lod and Ramle. The massacre at Deir Yassin was carried out by the two Zionist terror groups, the Irgun and the Stern Gang. On an April morning in 1948 (before the Israeli state declaration) 130 of their commandos made a dawn raid on this small Arab town with a population of 750, to the west of Jerusalem. The attack was initially beaten off, and only when a crack unit of the Haganah arrived with mortars were the Arab townsmen overwhelmed. The Irgun and the Stern Gang, smarting from the humiliation of having to summon help, embarked on a ‘clean-up’ in which they systematically murdered and executed at least 100 residents – mostly women, children and old people. The Irgun afterwards exaggerated the number, quoting 254, to frighten other Arab towns and villages.

The Haganah played down their part in the raid and afterwards said the massacre “disgraced the cause of Jewish fighters and dishonoured Jewish arms and the Jewish flag”.

Deir Yassin signaled the beginning of a deliberate programme by Israel to depopulate Arab towns and villages – destroying churches and mosques – in order to make room for incoming Holocaust survivors and other Jews. In any language it was an exercise in ethnic cleansing, the knock-on effects of which have created an estimated 4 million Palestinian refugees today.

In July 1948 Israeli terrorist troops seized Lydda, shot up the town and drove out the population. Donald Neff reported, as part of the ethnic cleansing, the Israelis massacred 426 men, women, and children. 176 of them were slaughtered in the town’s main mosque.
The remainder were forced to walk into exile in the scalding July heat leaving a trail of bodies – men, women and children – along the way.

Of all the blood-baths they say this was the biggest. The great hero Moshe Dayan was responsible. Was he ever brought to book? Of course not.

By 1949 the Zionists had seized nearly 80 percent of Palestine, provoking the resistance backlash that still goes on.

Even if the UN Partition had been legitimate – which many people doubt – the Israeli state’s greedy ambition immediately overran the generous borders gifted to the Zionists. Few, if any, of the Jews imported into Palestine can trace ancestral connection with the Jews who were driven out by the Roman occupation. As Lord Sydenham warned when he opposed the Balfour Declaration, they are an alien population dumped on an Arab country. “What we have done,” he predicted, “by concessions not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, is to start a running sore in the East, and no-one can tell how far that sore will extend.”

Israel’s numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity, and its continual defiance of international law and the UN Charter, together forfeit all claim to legitimacy as far as Arabs and non-Arabs around the world are concerned – at least, those that haven’t been bribed to say otherwise.

UN Resolution 194 called on Israel to let the Palestinians back onto their land. It has been re-passed many times, but Israel still ignores it. The Israelis also stand accused of violating Article 42 of the Geneva Convention by moving settlers into the Palestinian territories it occupies, and of riding roughshod over international law with their occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

As Plan D shows, “expulsion and transfer” (i.e. ethnic cleansing) were always a key part of the Zionists’ scheme. According to historian Benny Morris no mainstream Zionist leader could conceive of future co-existence without a clear physical separation between the two peoples. Ben-Gurion, who became Israel’s first prime minister, is reported to have said in 1937: “New settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin…” The following year he declared: “With compulsory transfer we have a vast area [for settlement]… I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.”

On another occasion he remarked: “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it is true, but 2,000 years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country.” Ben-Gurion reminded his military commanders that the prime aim of Plan D was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. He was well aware of his own criminality.

It is high time the Palestine solidarity movement circulated Plan D/Plan Dalet far and wide and, in particular, brought it to the attention of political half-wits who stooge for and support the Israeli regime and turn a blind eye to its unbridled terrorism.

– Stuart Littlewood  is a marketing specialist turned writer-photographer in the UK. He is a regular contributor to Al Arabiya English website and the author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.

Source:

http://www.palestinechronicle.com

Posted on: 2014

By Patrick O. Strickland

Fadi Abu Nemeh cannot remember a time during his four years at Al-Quds University (AQU) when Israeli occupation
 authorities did not harass students and local residents alike.

“I also grew up in Abu Dis,” Abu Nemeh, a 21-year-old media studies student, explained, referring to the Jerusalem-area town where the university is located.

“The military’s violence has been especially consistent since the second intifada,” he added. “My high school shared a building with AQU and the soldiers used to come there, too.”

A number of military checkpoints and outposts of Israeli settlements are located near the campus and each day armored military vehicles pass by several times, often stopping to clash with students and local residents.

Israel’s wall in the West Bank — which is illegal, according to the International Court of Justice — dissects land belonging to Abu Dis and cuts off the university and town from the rest of Jerusalem.

“We come to school, where we have human rights programs and a liberal arts education but we step outside to have our rights constantly violated by Israel’s military,” Abu Nemeh told The Electronic Intifada.

Military attack

On the third day of school this semester, 22 January, students were greeted with one of the worst raids the campus has seen in years.

Around 10 AM, Israeli soldiers stopped in front of the university entrance and demanded that students show their identification cards.

The military then launched an attack, firing rubber-coated steel bullets and showering the campus with tear gas.

Nour Hamayel, 20, a third-year English literature major, was sitting with friends drinking coffee in a university corridor when they heard frantic screams.

“We were all alarmed as a weird smell suffocated our throats and [the gas] blurred our vision,” she recalled. “Students were running aimlessly in search of oxygen.”

A group of soldiers then stormed the building and busted into a classroom, where they arrested at least one student.

“Struggling to breathe”

Hamayel and her friends tried to gather their books as quickly as possible, scrambling for an exit as the soldiers clashed with other students. “[University] medics then screamed, ‘Girl down! Girl down!’” she said. “There was a girl on the floor struggling to breathe [and] with swollen eyes.”

A local popular committee spokesperson subsequently told Ma’an News Agency that more than 100 persons suffered from excessive tear gas inhalation (“Israeli forces raid Abu Dis campus, clash with students,” 22 January 2014).

The campus is also home to Bard College at Al-Quds University, an international satellite campus of New York’s Bard College.

AQU and Bard at AQU faculty and staff issued a collective statement calling on Bard College President Leon Botstein to denounce the raid and provide a plan of action in order to “ensure the safety and welfare of all AQU students, staff and faculty” from Israeli soldiers.

Bard College replied by issuing a rare statement, a brisk two paragraphs despite the years of systematic harassment (“Bard College responds to military incursion at Al-Quds University,” 29 January 2014).

“Incursions such as these interfere directly with the mission of the university to promote scholarship and encourage the free exchange of ideas,” Botstein wrote in a joint statement with Jonathan Becker, Bard College’s vice-president.

“Al-Quds University students and faculty, including those in the Al-Quds Bard Honors College for Arts and Sciences [the building that was raided], must be allowed to pursue their educational goals free from fear of violence,” the statement added.

But Botstein and Becker did not refer to any of the prior assaults, which number in the dozens each year, according to students and faculty.

Asked for a comment, Becker told The Electronic Intifada: “We have many campuses around the world and do not issue statements on every event that takes place on or near them.”

Bard College’s other satellite campuses are in Russia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan and Germany. It is unlikely that their students face the same level of human rights abuses that Palestinians face.

Becker declined to answer whether Bard College has taken any concrete steps to address the problems faced by students at AQU.

Hypocrisy

Faculty, students and activists say the prevailing silence about the attacks is part and parcel of the hypocrisy with which many academic institutions across the world treat Palestinians.

In November 2013, a rally organized by student affiliates of Islamic Jihad included a military-style parade. A small group of students assembled that day to pay tribute to Palestinians who died while engaged in armed attacks against Israel or were killed by Israel’s military.

Tom Gross, a staunchly rightwing and pro-Israel journalist who reported on the parade, accused the students of “fascist-like displays,” and decried them for bearing plastic guns.

Although AQU released an official condemnation of the rally, referring to it as “totally unacceptable,” both Brandeis University and Syracuse University indefinitely suspended long-standing academic relationships with AQU.

“Intellectual dishonesty”

Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), argued that Brandeis and Syracuse were morally inconsistent.

“US universities that took action against Al-Quds University in occupied East Jerusalem because of a tiny student protest with fake guns have taken hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty to the next level,” he told The Electronic Intifada.

Barghouti pointed out that neither Brandeis nor Syracuse condemned Israel’s 22 January assault, explaining that Israeli soldiers who regularly attack Palestinian students were armed with real weapons, but that “did not warrant any opprobrium from the same US universities.”

“No means to protect”

AQU students and faculty alike explained that the constant military incursions have created a militarized learning environment.

“It is constantly surprising to me how we ask of our students to rise above their daily circumstances and join the world of higher thinkers, when we have no means to protect them or ourselves when the Israeli military attacks our campus,” Tala Abu Rahmeh, 29, an Arabic and English literature professor, told The Electronic Intifada.

According to AQU’s Human Rights Clinic, a university project, the Israeli military attacked the campus or clashed with students at least 12 times in 2013.

Amnesty International researcher Saleh Hijazi explained that the Abu Dis area, which includes the university and at least two nearby high schools, has been subjected to “clear intimidation in certain instances in 2013.”

On 22 October last year, Israeli forces demolished a home near AQU’s campus. When students and locals confronted them, soldiers fired at them with rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters (“Clashes in Abu Dis following Israeli house demolition,” Ma’an News Agency, 22 October 2013).

“As an occupying force, Israel has an obligation to protect civilians,” Hijazi told The Electronic Intifada. Demolishing a home in broad daylight demonstrated “a total disregard to safety of people.”

Students and faculty continue to suffer the consequences of Israel’s actions.

Abu Rahmeh asked, “How do you ask a student to delve into Aristotle when he or she feels like their basic safety is constantly violated?”

Editors’ note: one paragraph was slightly ammended to clarify that Bard at AQU staff also signed onto the statement calling on Leon Botstein to denounce the Israeli raid.

* Patrick O. Strickland is an independent journalist .

Source:

ElectronicIntifada

Posted on: 2014

By Tristan Thomas

When I was pulled aside for questioning at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv a few weeks ago, I was relatively unconcerned. 
It had happened on a previous trip, and this time I was more prepared.

Before I traveled, I had heard many stories of people being denied entry because of their online activities, so I had “unfollowed” influential activists on Twitter. I searched through my photos on Facebook, even deleting my cover photo of me with two Arab friends, knowing that it would just lead to questions.

I always censored what I wrote and shared online in an effort to ensure I could enter Israel to visit friends. I have tweeted about US drone killings of civilians in Yemen, police shooting protesters on the streets of Cairo and death sentences in China.

Yet, when it came to Israel and its constant violations of dignity and rights, I was silent. Nearly unique in its ability to foster self-censorship, both domestically and abroad, Israel made me feel like I had to keep my criticism private in an attempt to ensure I could enter the country.

Invisible force

This invisible force is felt by everyone who might question the status quo. Inside Israel, teachers have been threatened with dismissal for their “left-wing” views and journalists detained for doing their jobs, while foreign passport holders are regularly denied entry and banned because of their work or activism.

These stories and the warnings they brought with them filtered down and eventually resulted in stopping me from posting 140 characters on a website just so that I could still enter the country.

This subconscious self-censorship extends beyond those who are familiar with the Palestinian struggle. Invariably, every time I share a critical story or post on my private Facebook account, I receive a phone call from my parents a day or two later expressing their concern that I might be harming my future job prospects if these posts became public.

The fear of criticizing Israel or the larger Zionist movement has led to caution from my parents, not just to ensure access at the Israeli-controlled borders, but to ensure full access to opportunities in normal, everyday life here in the UK.

They have never shared the same concerns when a post is critical of Britain or the US.

This silence was always difficult for me and led to many debates about whether my choice was really the right one. In thirty years’ time, would I feel comfortable telling my kids that I didn’t speak up about these injustices, just so I could enjoy a holiday in Israel?

Silence in response to aggression only helps the aggressor. It allows the aggression to continue unchallenged by individuals, by the media and by governments. When the BBC decided not to air an emergency charity appeal for Gaza while it was under Israeli attack in early 2009, most British people remained silent.

When the majority remains silent, those who speak up can be cast as extremists, so unreasonable that they should just be ignored. Every week as the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) grows, those in favor of boycotting Israel are invariably characterized as radical outsiders and, often worse, anti-Semitic or violent.

Thought Police

Israel has been extremely successful in making people all over the world feel they cannot express their discomfort, let alone their outrage, at the actions being perpetrated in Palestine. Reminiscent of the Thought Police in George Orwell’s 1984, the reach of Israel’s censorship by proxy has spread globally and affects everyone, ensuring people are silent and so allowing Israel to continue oppressing with impunity.

After twenty hours of detention and questioning on 9 April, I was denied entry to Israel and deported. The Israeli authorities told me they took this action for “security reasons” but would not elaborate.

My silence was a selfish silence but one that was indirectly encouraged and enforced by Israel to further achieve its aims.

The need to self-censor that I felt was necessary did not help me nor allow me to enter the country and will not help the Palestinians in their struggle.

* Tristan Thomas is a final year undergraduate studying politics and economics at Cardiff University in Wales who has studied Arabic and travelled throughout the Middle East. He also helps run Cardiff Student Action for Refugees, a group working and campaigning with asylum-seekers and refugees in the city.

Source:

http://electronicintifada.net/

Posted on: 2014

By Jonathan Cook

Israel is facing its first digital mutiny in the ranks. And the issue fuelling the soldiers’ discontent could not be more
 revealing about the self-harming character of Israeli society.

This month, a social-media campaign went viral in defence of David Adamov, an Israeli conscript caught on camera pointing his cocked rifle at a 15-year-old Palestinian in Hebron who dared to argue with him. He also threatened to put “a bullet in the head” of another young Palestinian for filming the confrontation.

Outraged by media reports that Adamov had been jailed for 20 days, hundreds of male and female soldiers posted photos on social media sites holding placards in front of their faces – to avoid punishment – expressing support for their comrade in arms.

Within hours, a Facebook page backing Adamov had attracted more than 100,000 likes. A senior government minister, Naftali Bennett, joined the outcry, declaring on his own page that the soldier “did the right thing”.

The ironies mounted as the campaign unfolded. Fellow soldiers have styled Adamov “David of Nahal”, a reference to his army brigade and, it seems, an allusion to the Bible. In his supporters’ eyes, Adamov is the victim-hero of an unlikely ­Goliath – a mouthy, unarmed Palestinian minor.

The military chief of staff, Benny Gantz, has admitted that the incident raises matters of “military ethics”, but only because of the insubordination expressed in the ­social media campaign, not because of Adamov’s misuse of his firearm. And more revealing still, the army responded to the uproar by pointing out that Adamov had not been jailed for abusing the Palestinian youth but because, in an unrelated matter, he assaulted his commanding officer.

The Nahal brigade had been in the news a few weeks earlier. Its soldiers were discovered to have designed and printed a graduation T-shirt with a hate-filled message for Palestinians. The shirt featured an image of a Nahal soldier in the city of Nablus above the slogan “Nablus, we’re coming!” and a warning to Palestinian mothers that their sons’ fate would be decided by the brigade.

The problems at the heart of these two incidents were underscored in a recent Amnesty International report titled Trigger Happy. The human rights group identified a disturbing pattern of behaviour: Israeli soldiers were targeting unarmed Palestinians, including children, with live ammunition, in some cases as they fled. Amnesty called the army’s use of force mostly “unnecessary, arbitrary and brutal”.

Amnesty found that, after a lull in Palestinian deaths following the end of the second intifada in the mid-2000s, the rate of killings and injuries is dramatically on the rise.

Unlike the situation a decade ago, Palestinians were often being killed at largely non-violent demonstrations against land confiscations. Stone throwing, even when it posed no danger to soldiers, was routinely greeted with live ammunition.

Amnesty described army investigations into the killings as “woefully inadequate”. It could not identify a single soldier who had been convicted of the “wilful killing” of a Palestinian in the occupied territories in the past 25 years.

Of course, in no period in its history did the “most moral army in the world” come close to justifying its self-promoted reputation. But the transformation of the occupation into a permanent state of affairs, as well as recent technological innovations, appear to be making a dire situation even worse.

What the Amnesty report highlights is an entrenchment of prejudices shared equally by the higher and lower ranks. It has not helped that over the past decade extremist settlers have come to dominate the officer class.

Palestinians, including children, have become dehumanised in the eyes of Israeli society. And long-standing impunity means soldiers understand that reckless or malevolent behaviour will rarely if ever land them in trouble.

Paradoxically, technology – particularly cameras in mobile phones – has only compounded these ugly trends.

Shortly after the Adamov incident, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a press conference to deplore young Israelis’ obsession with their phones and the “selfie”, arguing that Israeli youth were “slaves” to technology.

Although he did not set out his reasoning, it is not too difficult to fathom. Israeli soldiers, like teenagers around the world, love to boast online about their exploits. The difference is that some Israelis posing for a selfie may be committing a war crime as they do so.

Young Palestinians are using their smartphones for similar purposes: to document their abuse and humiliation at the hands of armed ­Israeli teenagers. The ensuing photos and videos now feed the outrage of a watching world and regularly embarrass Israel’s image-makers.

Strangely, Israeli soldiers are behaving no more cautiously. In fact, they seem to be exaggerating their cruelty for the reality show that is their military service. And their commanders, faced with endless discomfiting episodes, seem more committed than ever to avoid setting a precedent by punishing them.

Possibly through overexposure, wider Israeli society seems to have rapidly become more inured to this kind of gratuitous violence.

The paradoxes run deeper still. The ever greater transparency of the occupation fuels the soldiers’ sense of victimhood and oppression. If they are now to be denied the title of “the most moral in the world”, then they seem to believe their army ought to be dubbed “the most misunderstood”.

This mirrors a more general ideological shift to the right in Israeli society as global sympathy for the Palestinians grows. The world may consider us oppressors, say Israelis, but we refuse to act the part of the guilty: we will proudly parade our tyranny instead.

Israeli society, like its soldiers, is caught in a self-destructive cycle: its very sensitivity to criticism pushes it ever more resolutely towards outcast status.

* Jonathan Cook  is a Nazareth- based journalist and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

Source:

http://www.jonathan-cook.net

Posted on: 2014

By Ramzy Baroud

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry couldn’t hide his frustration anymore as the U.S.-sponsored peace process continued to falter. 
After eight months of wrangling to push talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority forward, he admitted while in a visit to Morocco on April 4 that the latest setback had served as a “reality check” for the peace process. But confining that reality check to the peace process is hardly representative of the painful reality through which the United States has been forced to subsist during the last few years.

The state of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, but also around the world, cannot be described with any buoyant language. In some instances, as in Syria, Libya, Egypt, Ukraine and, most recently, in Palestine and Israel, too many calamitous scenarios have exposed the fault lines of U.S. foreign policy. The succession of crises is not allowing the U.S. to cut its losses in the Middle East and stage a calculated “pivot” to Asia following its disastrous Iraq war.

U.S. foreign policy is almost entirely crippled.

For the Obama administration, it has been a continuous firefighting mission since President George W. Bush left office. In fact, there have been too many “reality checks” to count.

Per the logic of the once powerful pro-Israel Washington-based neoconservatives, the invasion of Iraq was a belated attempt at regaining initiative in the Middle East, and controlling a greater share of the energy supplies worldwide. Sure, the U.S. media had then made much noise about fighting terror, restoring democracies and heralding freedoms, but the neocons were hardly secretive about the real objectives. They tirelessly warned about the decline of their country’s fortunes. They labored to redraw the map of the Middle East in a way that they imagined would slow down the rise of China, and the other giants that are slowly, but surely, standing on their feet to face up to the post-Cold War superpower.

But all such efforts were bound to fail. The U.S. escaped Iraq, but only after altering the balance of power and creating new classes of winners and losers. The violence of the invasion and occupation scarred Iraq, but also destabilized neighboring countries by overwhelming their economies, augmenting militancy and creating more pressure cookers in political spaces that were, until then, somewhat “stable.”

The war left America fatigued, and set the course for a transition in the Middle East, although not the kind of transition that the likes of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had championed.

There was no “New Middle East,” per se, but rather an old one that is in much worse shape than ever before. When the last U.S. soldier scheduled to leave Iraq had crossed the border into Kuwait in December 2011, the U.S. was exposed in more ways than one. The limits of U.S. military power was revealed — by not winning, it had lost. Its economy proved fragile — as it continues to teeter between collapse and “recovery.” It was left with zero confidence among its friends. As for its enemies, the U.S. was no longer a daunting menace, but a toothless tiger.

There was a short period in U.S. foreign policy strategy in which Washington needed to count its losses, regroup and regain initiative, but not in the Middle East. The Asia Pacific region, especially the South China Sea, seemed to be the most rational restarting point, and for a good reason.

Writing in Forbes magazine in Washington, Robert D. Kaplan described the convergence under way in the Asia pacific region: “Russia is increasingly shifting its focus of energy exports to East Asia. China is on track to perhaps become Russia’s biggest export market for oil before the end of the decade.”

The Middle East is itself changing directions, as the region’s hydrocarbon production is increasingly being exported there.

Russia is covering the East Asia realm, according to Kaplan, as “North America will soon be looking more and more to the Indo-Pacific region to export its own energy, especially natural gas.”

But the U.S. is still being pulled into too many different directions. It has attempted to police the world exclusively for its own interests for the last 25 years. It failed. “Cut and run” is essentially an American foreign policy staple, and that too is a botched approach. Even after the piecemeal U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, the U.S. is too deeply entrenched in the Middle East region to achieve a clean break.

The U.S. took part in the Libya war, but attempted to do so while masking its action as part of a larger NATO drive, so that it shoulders only part of the blame when things went awry, as they predictably have. Since the Jan. 25 revolution, its position on Egypt was perhaps the most inconsistent of all Western powers, unmistakably demonstrating its lack of clarity and relevance to a country with a massive size and influence. However, it was in Syria that U.S. weaknesses were truly exposed. Military intervention was not possible — and for reasons none of which were moralistic. Its political influence proved immaterial. And most importantly, its own legions of allies throughout the Middle East are walking away from beneath the American leadership banner. The new destinations are Russia for arms and China for economic alternatives.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia in late March might have been a step too little too late to repair its weakening alliances in the region. Even if the U.S. was ready to mend fences, it neither has the political will, the economic potency or the military prowess to be effective. True, the U.S. still possesses massive military capabilities and remains the world’s largest economy. But the commitment that the Middle East would require from the U.S. at this time of multiple wars and revolutions is by no means the kind of commitment the U.S. is ready to impart. In a way, the U.S. has “lost” the Middle East.

Even the “pivot” to Asia is likely to end in shambles.

On the one hand, U.S. opponents, Russia notwithstanding, have grown much more assertive in recent years. They too have their own agendas that will keep the U.S. and its willing European allies busy for years. The Russian move against Crimea once more exposed the limits of U.S. and NATO in regions outside the conventional parameters of Western influence.

If the U.S. proved resourceful enough to stage a fight in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, the battle — over energy supplies, potential reserves, markets and routes — is likely to be the most grueling yet. China is not Iraq before the U.S. invasion — broken by decades of war, siege and sanctions. Its geography is too vast to besiege, and its military too massive to destroy with a single “shock and awe.”

The U.S. has truly lost the initiative, in the Middle East region and beyond it. The neocons’ drunkenness with military power led to costly wars that have overwhelmed the empire beyond salvation. And now, the U.S. foreign policy makers are mere diplomatic firefighters, from Palestine, to Syria to the Ukraine. For the Americans, the last few years have been more than a ‘reality check’, but the new reality itself.

– Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter, UK. His latest book is ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’ (Pluto Press, London). You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/RamzyBaroud. 

Source:

http://www.palestinechronicle.com

Posted on:2014

By William A. Cook

Justice and legitimacy are one and inexorably linked to the Charters and Declarations of the United Nations. 
This is a truth that Michael J. Rosenberg does not address as he castigates the supporters of the BDS movement in his recent article: “The Goal of the BDS Movement is the Dismantling of Israel.” He makes this point in his piece: “The reason why BDS keeps failing despite the almost universal recognition that the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the blockade of Gaza, are illegal and immoral is that the BDS movement is not targeting the occupation per se. Its goal is the end of the State of Israel itself…”

In fact, the BDS Movement does not have to dismantle the state of Israel, the state of Israel is not only dissembling its inherent Judaic roots of compassion and equity for all humans but delegitimizing the state itself by defying the International Laws established for all member states of the United Nations. Let me illustrate with 16 of the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that the Israeli government signed in 1949. I will place Articles 16 to 29 after this article as footnotes for those who would want to continue the full impact of Israel’s illegal occupation of a defenseless people. One cannot argue truth when one has abandoned it as Rosenberg has by elimination of the essence of why the BDS Movement must exist, to rectify 65 years of injustice.

*****************************************

On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: (In 1949, Israel adopted and signed this Proclamation.)

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the commonpeople,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore,

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

proclaims

THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction. (Israel is under this provision as an occupying power.)

Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty. (Apply this to the conditions that imprison the Palestinians.)

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. (Palestinians living under the edicts of an occupying power have been assassinated without recourse to due process as declared to be a right under this proclamation, are condemned to constant harassment, forced break-ins of homes and businesses, and subjected to military checkpoints wherever they go. They have no security being without a military of any kind.)

Article 4.

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. (Under the occupation the Palestinians are in fact enslaved by denial of articles of this Proclamation or in servitude to the occupiers through confiscation of their lands and homes or by imprisonment.)

Article 5.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. (It has been established that Israeli prisons use torture as former Directors of Mossad have attested utilizing  conditions that deny formal charges, right of access to their accuser or of evidence used to incarcerate them.)

Article 6.

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. The Palestinians are subject to the laws of the Israeli government and its courts, laws they were not allowed to approve or disprove; they are in fact subjugated by laws that are based on beliefs different from those created for the International community by the United Nations or allowed to create their own laws responsive to those designed by that body.)

Article 7.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. (It is obvious that the Palestinian people are discriminated against under Israeli laws and have only token representation by the legal system that incarcerates them.)

Article 8.

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law. (Even the UNHRC has been neutralized to provide such rights.)

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. (This is a matter of daily routine under the Occupation with laws in place that protect the perpetrators.)

Article 10.

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him. (No such system of justice exists in the occupied territories for the Palestinian people.)

Article 11.

(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

(2), No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence or international law, at the time when it was committed nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. (Check the human rights witness to checkpoints that mock and ridicule Palestinians.)

Article 13.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (This is a right totally denied to the Palestinian people yet open to others who immigrate to the state because of religion.)

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. (This is a right denied to the Palestinians.)

Article 14.

(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. (This is a right that properly belongs to the Palestinian refugees but denied by the state of Israel.)

(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15.

(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality. (This is a right denied to the Palestinians.)

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Needless to say, there is no need to go further with all the rights denied to the Palestinian people by the state of Israel. I will let the flow of the Universal Declaration continue without comment only to make it absolutely clear that Israel is a rogue member of the United Nations having not only denied the rights of the indigenous people of Palestine but invaded at will surrounding neighbors without provocation beyond their “existential” beliefs that justify in their minds disregard of international law. Since they have the bought blessing of the United States Congress they have no fear of retribution or the need to respond to demands that they adhere to the laws designed by the communities of nations around the world. 

In fact, the Israeli Zionist government has declared itself illegitimate by disregarding the laws that it purportedly adopted when it signed as a member of the United Nations in 1949. When they determine that they are responsible as detailed here point by point in defiance of International Law then they can blame others for seeking Justice for the people of Palestine. Justice exists in the universal recognition declared by 193 nations around the globe, it does not exist in Israel.

Article 30.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Here are the remaining Articles of the Declaration. They speak for themselves; we must speak for those who are denied their rights.

Article 16.

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17.

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.

(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

(2) Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country.

(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.

(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Prepared for Internet by the Information Technology Section Department of Public Information

* William A. Cook Prof. William A. Cook is Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. He serves as senior editor at MWCNEWS. His commentary and analysis have been featured in several online publications. He is author of The Rape Of Palestine: Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied, Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy and The Chronicles Of Nefaria. The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction by Dr. William A. Cook is out now, available to order from Palgrave Macmillan! His work that has spanned the Bush era up to now resulted in 100s of articles and three books.

Source:

http://www.intifada-palestine.com

Suheir Hammad is a Palestinian- American poet, author and political activist. Her parents were Palestinian refugees who immigrated along with their daughter to Brooklyn, New York City when she was five years old.

She grew up absorbing the stories of her family and the life they had in the hometown of Lydda before the 1948 Palestinian exodus. She was raised with traditional family values and the idea to keep “looking for the other side of the story” by her parents who are refugees.

Her first introduction to poetry was through the Koran, which her mother described as the most perfect poetry in the world. Poetry has always played a significant role in her life; she recollects writing poems as soon as she could read. Her literary influences are broad and expansive including June Jordan, Alice Walker and some of the many Palestinians who risked their lives daring to be Palestinian.

Her family´s experience is reflected in her writing and we can see that in her two first books, “Born Palestinian, Born Black” and “Drops of this Story,” a memoir detailing her experiences growing up as a Palestinian-American. Hammad is known to tackle issues like sexism, violence and the challenges facing women in her writing.

From her experience in life she learned to use language as a tool to provide a voice to the Palestinians people but also to all those who are displaced and without a voice.

She is now working on her third publication which will be a book of prose.

Her many awards include a Tony Award for Special Theatrical Event for Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway (2003), the Emerging Artist Award from the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Institute at NYU (2001), the Morris Center for Healing Poetry Award (1996) and the Audre Lorde Writing Award at Hunter College (1995 and 2000).

Daughter

Leaves and leaving call october home
her daughter releases wood
smoke from her skin
rich in scorpio
blood survived the first
flood each new year marks
a circle around her
thick bark middle
this the month summer and
winter fall into each
other and leave orange
yellow ashes
the vibrancy of death
carry it all
coiled in my belly
cut on the cusp
of libra tail
tips the scales
tonight it is raining in
the tradition of my parents
wanted a daughter not a writer
happy birthday poet
who loves you baby
the way your mama did
under her breast the way your
father did under his breath
leaves and leaving have known
my name intimately
i harvest pumpkins
to offer the river eat
buttered phoenix meat
to celebrate a new year
new cipher for my belly
i got a new name
secret nobody knows
the cold can’t call me
leaving won’t know
where to find me
october gonna hide me
in her harvest in
her seasons
happy birthday daughter
of the falling

Video

Suheir Hammad: Poems of war, peace, women, power

Further reading:

– Drops of Suheir Hammad: A Talk with a Palestinian Poet Born Black

– Suheir Hammad: Poet and Author

– Interview with Suheir Hammad

Source:

–http://globalartscentral.com/

–http://www.poetryfoundation.org/

– https://www.hampshire.edu/