It was strangely uplifting to spend two nights and three days in the Galilee, North Palestine. We visited good friends, made new friends, saw 3000 year old olive trees, walked in the ruins depopulated villages, and shopped and ate in Palestinian towns which survived 62 years of colonial apartheid. We crossed from Bethlehem to occupied East Jerusalem with a wave of an Israeli soldier’s hand (who did not bother to check papers of an Israeli car. A few minutes later we crossed the Green line (borders before 1967) that is neither marked or guarded. The imaginary green line had long disappeared since Israeli colonies go deep into the occupied West Bank. But in the areas of West Jerusalem, we could still see many signs of the three dozen Palestinian villages depopulated since 1948. Then taking “route 6” north. This highway was built on newly confiscated Palestinian village lands.
Over 530 Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated. The remaining 130 villages and towns had most of their land taken and now the remaining Palestinians who comprise 20% of the Israeli population live on about 2% of the land while the Jewish population controls the rest (which is mostly Palestinian property). When we take the whole of Palestine (West Bank and Gaza included), we see that Palestinians who remained (some 50% of the population is restricted to less than 10% of historic Palestine. Thus access to land is nearly 9 folds more to the Jewish population (most of it not native) even without the return of refugees.
We visited devastated Palestinian villages like Iqrit (a catholic christian community of which only the church remains), Al-Zeeb (a fishing muslim community where the mosque and the few remaining buildings are converted for recreation of Israelis), and Al_Bassa (that used to be a thriving mixed town of Christians and Muslims and was filled with Jewish immigrants initially from Bulgaria and is now called Shlomi).
But we also visited still heavily populated (and growing) Palestinian towns like Arrabe, Sakhnin, and Acre. One is tempted to feel sad at the inability of the Zionist Jews to see that they could have lived with the natives instead of at their expense. I was saddened to see how Jewish settlements throughout the Galillee are built on Palestinian lands instead of on the very many open spaces. I was saddened to see how these Jewish communities live behind guarded perimeters (gated communities). Palestinian towns, impoverished but still open to visitors.
Throughout the trip we met a few of the 1.5 million Palestinians who remain steadfast and work to reject the schemes of Judaicizing the Galilee (and the Negev, hopefully my next trip). These are inspiring people in everything they do. I am humbled by their dedication. I kept thinking of Tawfiq Ziyad’s poem Unadikum (I call upon you) which was rendered into patriotic songs of love of land and people. It says in part,
I call upon you
I press on your hands
I kiss the land
under your shoes
I gift you the light of my eyes
the beats of my heart
and I sacrifice myself for you
as I share with you…
The trip is chronicle in this short video in which I included singing Ziyad’s song.
For more information see
Abnaa Al-Balad Movement http://www.abnaa-elbalad.org/
article just published in Haaretz by Ahmed Tibi on http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1…
reality of Palestinians inside the state of Israel
For Al-Bassa http://www.palestineremembered.com/Ac…, and video on Al-Bassa by Uri Zakhem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4or6g…
For Iqrit http://www.palestineremembered.com/Ac…
For Al-Zeeb http://www.palestineremembered.com/Ac… and video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE2BLn…
For the following episodes go to Youtube
31 mars 2010 — Shoppers occupied Waitrose supermarket in London in protest over the support for illegal settlements in Israel. Much of the produce sold as ‘Israel’ actually comes from stolen lands in Palestine.
Global day of action for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. In solidarity with people of Palestine
30 March 2010, London
more info on http://www.waronwant.org
A Vote for Israel’s Accession to the OECD is a Vote in Support of Israel’s War Crimes and Other Grave Violations of International Law and Human Rights
Palestinian civil society urges the peoples and governments of OECD member states to defer Israel’s OECD accession until it respects international law and the human rights of the Palestinian people and shows commitment to the fundamental values shared by OECD members.
BNC, Palestine, 15 March 2010 – The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is scheduled to convene in May 2010 in order to take a formal decision on Israel’s application for membership in the Organization. A vote for Israel’s accession to the OECD will be regarded by an overwhelming majority of Palestinians, Arabs, and people of conscience around the world as a decisive and far-reaching act of complicity in rewarding and perpetuating Israel’s occupation, colonization and apartheid against the Palestinian people. Furthermore, it will irreparably undermine the rule of law and further entrench the culture of impunity that has enabled Israel to escalate its commission of war crimes and what is described by some leading international law experts as a prelude to genocide against Palestinians in the illegally besieged and occupied Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) calls upon civil society organizations around the world to apply maximum pressure on their respective governments to ensure that Israel will not be admitted into the OECD, including by casting a vote against Israel’s accession in the final review of its application in May. Membership in the OECD will intensely fuel Israel’s militarism, belligerence and aggression, further destabilizing the entire region, undermining security as well as social, political and economic development and making the quest for a just peace an unattainable goal.
The BNC deplores the OECD’s persistent disregard of evidence submitted by human rights and civil society organizations in process of examination of Israel’s membership application [1]. The BNC further deplores the decision by the OECD to consider Israel’s inability to provide economic statistics which distinguish between the state of Israel and the Palestinian and Syrian territories it occupies as not constituting and obstacle to Israel’s OECD accession [2].
We affirm that the OECD becomes complicit in Israel’s unlawful acts, if the Organization fails to address – despite ample evidence – Israel’s reality as an oppressive occupying and colonizing power in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip and continues to ignore Israel’s system of institutionalized racial discrimination which is the root cause of the extreme poverty among its Palestinian citizens highlighted in OECD reports.
In light of the persistent refusal of many OECD member states to consider Israel’s violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, we call inparticular on OECD members that have voted in support of the recommendations of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (Goldstone Report) in the United Nations – Ireland, Mexico, Portugal, Switzerland and Turkey – to reaffirm their principled stand also in the context of Israel’s bid for OECD membership. We urge you to maintain and reaffirm your position that Israel, like all other states, is to be held accountable to the standards of international law and universal human rights and must respect them before it can be welcomed as a member in the OECD.
Respect and compliance with international humanitarian and human rights law is a requirement for members under OECD instruments. The 1960 OECD Convention, for example, affirms that “economic strength and prosperity are essential for the attainment of the purposes of the United Nations, the preservation of individual liberty and the increase of general well-being.” In the “Road Map for the accession of Israel to the OECD Convention” adopted by the Council in November 2007, the Council noted that in order for Israel to accede to the OECD it must demonstrate its commitment to “fundamental values” shared by all OECD members and meet related benchmarks. The stated OECD values include “a commitment to pluralist democracy based on the rule of law and the respect of human rights, adherence to open and transparent market economy principles and a shared goal of sustainable development.”
Condemned as a state that is practicing occupation, colonization and apartheid by a recent authoritative legal study in South Africa supervised by international law expert and former UN human rights rapporteur, Prof. John Dugard, Israel is not in compliance with international law and OECD standards and benchmarks [3]. Israel has yet to comply with the recommendations of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict and investigate and prosecute where needed those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity that resulted in the death of more than 1,400 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in the winter of 2008/9. Israel has yet to lift its illegal blockade of the occupied Gaza Strip which has brought to the brink of starvation almost 1.5 million Palestinians, most of whom are refugees Israel had displaced and dispossessed back in 1948. It has yet to dismantle its illegal Wall in the occupied Palestinian West Bank in accordance with the 2004 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion. Israel has yet to end its almost 43-year-old occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, reverse its colonial enterprise and release Palestinians detained and imprisoned. It has yet to transform its political and legal system in order to provide reparation for millions of Palestinian victims, including return for the refugees, and allow full and equal participation of its Palestinian citizens. Only then will Israel meet the standards of pluralist democracies valued by the OECD.
The BNC reiterates the concerns expressed on numerous occasions to the OECD by human rights and civil society organizations and calls upon the governments and peoples of OECD member states to say no to Israel’s bid for membership in the OECD.
[1] See for example: Letter to Mr. Angel Gurria, Secretary General, OECD (22 human rights and civil society organizations), 28 September 2008: www.arabhra.org/HraAdmin/UserImages/Files/NGO%20Letter%20to%20the%20OECD.pdf;
Letter to the Foreign Ministers of Non-EU OECD member states (16 organizations), January 2009: http://www.badil.org/en/documents/category/36-regional-bodies; and Arab Higher Monitoring Committee to the OECD, 27 Feb. 2010: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1152638.html
For readers who may not be intimately familiar with English terminology, an oxymoron is a figure of speech by which contradictory terms are combined to form an expressive phrase or epithet such as cruel kindness and falsely true. (It’s derived from the Greek word oxymoros meaning pointedly foolish).
For my contribution to the De-legitimizing Israel series, I’m going to confine myself to one question and answer.
The question is: How can you de-legitimize something (in this case the Zionist state) which it is NOT legitimate?
The editor of one of the internet’s biggest sources of classified government information says there is strong evidence to suggest that video footage of an alleged US attack on Iraqi civilians is genuine.
Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks.org, told Al Jazeera that the footage, released on Sunday, corroborates witness testimony.
The video is believed to show a US helicopter firing at civilians in Iraq in 2007, during an attack in which 12 civilians were killed, the website said.
Please note: This is a full uncut version of the video primarily intended for research purposes.
The second video is a short and concise version with added context
—-
Wikileaks has obtained and decrypted this previously unreleased video footage from a US Apache helicopter in 2007. It shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad. They are apparently assumed to be insurgents. After the initial shooting, an unarmed group of adults and children in a minivan arrives on the scene and attempts to transport the wounded. They are fired upon as well. The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths ocurred. Wikileaks released this video with transcripts and a package of supporting documents on April 5th 2010 on http://collateralmurder.com
Protesters disrupted a lunchtime performance by the Israeli chamber music group the Jerusalem Quartet in London on March 29, halting a live BBC broadcast from the prestigious Wigmore Hall in central London.
Radio listeners heard classically trained soprano Deborah Fink, a member of Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, singing the words “Jerusalem is occupied” before a BBC announcer interrupted the broadcast.
Fink continued singing lyrics highlighting Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing until security staff removed her.
The protest, organised by Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign, continued as four other demonstrators intervened in the live concert at regular intervals. All were removed from the hall but no arrests were made.
Protest was aimed at the four Israeli musicians because, as cultural ambassadors for the State of Israel, they promote the interests of the state and provide a cultural veneer for its policies against the Palestinians.
Outside the Wigmore Hall, demonstrators handed out leaflets explaining to the audience Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land, its ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem, the apartheid nature of the Israeli state and its attempt to starve the people of Gaza into submission.
The Jerusalem Quartet issued a statement calling the protests “mistaken, ignorant and inconsiderate”. They said they were “musicians, not politicians” and held up the involvement of two of them with Daniel Barenboim’s Israeli-Arab West-Eastern Divan Orchestra as proof that they did not deserve to be confronted with protest.
However they made no reference to Israel’s injustices against the Palestinian people, nor to their participation in Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations that Barenboim had refused to attend. They also kept quiet about Israeli state funding for their tour of Australia last year.
“Their claims that music is separate from politics are as baseless as the same arguments used against the cultural boycott of South African apartheid,” said one of the protesters.
Monday’s demonstration came the day before the 2nd Global Day of Action on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Against Israel.
It also coincided with the appearance in court in Edinburgh of five members of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign for disrupting a Jerusalem Quartet concert last year.
Following their actions Israel’s ambassador to the UK complained of “attempts to sabotage the marketing of Israeli art and culture in Britain.”
Mick Napier from Scottish PSC said:
‘Scottish PSC congratulates the protesters in London today, and would like to see all other supporters of Palestine do the same every time the Jerusalem Quartet appear as ambassadors of the apartheid state’.
ENDS
See the following links for media discussion of the Jerusalem Quartet protest.
Discussion on BBC World Service “Europe Today” programme, 30.48 minutes in via this link.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p006x9vs/p006x9y9/Europe_Today_01_04_2010/
West Bank reaches Wigmore Hall
http://www.guardian .co.uk/culture/ 2010/mar/ 30/jerusalem- quartet-wigmore- hall-protest
Protesters silence Israeli musicians in London
Protesters disrupt Jerusalem Quartet recital
http://www.rhinegol d.co.uk/magazine s/classical_ music/news/ classical_ music_news. asp
Jerusalem Quartet concert disrupted by anti-Israeli protests
http://www.bbcmusic magazine. com/news/ jerusalem- quartet-concert- disrupted- anti-israeli- protests
7 ways to stop musical ‘ambassadors’ for Israel
http://www.indymedi a.org.uk/ en/2010/03/ 448318.html
Jewish Chronicle
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/30001/protesters-disrupt-jerusalem-quartet-wigmore-hall
band annie's Weblog 