ISRAELI NUDIST COLONIES
May 30, 2011 at 13:55 (Civil Liberties, Irony, Israel, Oppression, Palestine)
It was done in other countries …. why the fuss?

RAMALLAH, A Palestinian man held in the Israeli Ramon prison was placed Sunday in solitary confinement after he refused to succumb to routine strip searches.
The prisoners’ families said in a phone call to the PIC that the prisoner, Mohammed Nafidh Dweikat from Nablus, was dealt 21 days in isolation for refusing to strip fully naked during the search.
The prison administration has enforced a new kind of search requiring prisoners to take off all clothes and place them on special hangers as the prison service searches the prison sections, the prisoners have said.
Dweikat’s refusal to comply, as he was the first ever prisoner subject to the procedure, is what made him liable for punitive action, the prisoners added.
The prisoners have criticized the way the prison is run as well as and the prison’s refusal to take part in dialogue with inmates.
They called on human rights groups to help curb this “violation of humanity of people in the Israeli prisons”.
AIPAC’S WAR ON CHILDREN IN PHOTOS
May 30, 2011 at 11:03 (Israel, Occupation, Oppression, Palestine, Photography, Police Brutality, Status of Jerusalem)
Special police forces raided the house of 7 year-old Ali Siyam this afternoon and illegally arrested him, causing injury requiring hospitalization to both his aunt and father.
At 3 PM this afternoon, Israeli police forces raided the Alabasya neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem to arrest 7 years-old Ali Siyam from inside his parents’ house. Despite his young age, which is significantly younger than the age of legal responsibity, the boy was taken for questioning at the Russian Compound police station.
When Siyam’s father and aunt tried to protect the boy from the cops, they were violantly assaulted to a degree that required their evacuation to the Hospital. Siyam’s father, Hammouda, was beaten and maced with pepper-spray inside the house and his aunt, Amal, was struck with a rubber-coated bullet in her thigh. The two are currently at the Hadassa Har Hatzofim hospital.
On arrival to the police station, Siyam was taken in for questioning. The boy’s lawyer, Adv. Lea Tzemel, who was already present at the place was denied entry to the station and access to her client. When she proceeded to try and walk through the gate regardless, she was herself detained.
After being questioned for stone-throwing for a number of hours in the presence of his mother, the boy was eventually released from custody at 8 PM.*
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THE FBI KNOWS WHO AIPAC IS ~~ WHY DON’T YOU MR. PRESIDENT?
May 29, 2011 at 17:09 (AIPAC, Cover Up, Crime, Israel)
WASHINGTON, — Declassified files detailing an FBI investigation targeting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee are now available on the Internet. AIPAC was investigated after it acquired and circulated classified government information provided in strict confidence by US industry and worker groups opposed to AIPAC sponsored economic legislation.
The 50 pages now available as portable document files (PDF) include:
FBI reports of Israelis circulating classified documents in the US Congress, “compromising” the authority of the U.S. President. http://irmep.org/ila/economy/06201984.pdf
US Trade Representative concerns that AIPAC was tactically “divulging” classified information supplied by US industries opposed to AIPAC lobbying initiatives. http://irmep.org/ila/economy/06211984.pdf
Reports from the International Trade Commission that AIPAC and Israeli operatives “usurped” US government authority and that an Israeli intelligence service operative was working undercover on AIPAC’s staff: http://irmep.org/ila/economy/08131984r.pdf
Internal Department of Justice prosecutorial opinions that “theft of government property” had occurred: http://irmep.org/ila/economy/08301984.pdf
An FBI director order that the Washington Field office give the AIPAC investigation top priority after Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was caught on video surveillance stealing classified US national defense information: http://irmep.org/ila/economy/11151985.pdf
FBI special agent interviews of Israeli minister of economics Dan Halpern who claimed diplomatic immunity. Halpern admitted passing classified US documents to AIPAC but refused to name his source: http://irmep.org/ila/economy/03071986DHALERN.pdf
FBI special agent interviews of AIPAC’s former director of legislative affairs detailing how he made copies of the classified documents for AIPAC’s lobbying use after being ordered to return them to the US government. http://irmep.org/ila/economy/02131986DB.pdf
FBI interviews of key AIPAC employees involved in handling the classified US government information (full document listing): http://irmep.org/ila/economy/
According to research director Grant F. Smith, the newly released files present startling new insights into AIPAC’s activities in the United States. “These files, available on the Internet for the first time, reveal activities that undermined rule of law and governance. They have wrought massive economic harm to American businesses and workers. We urge all concerned Americans to carefully review and ponder the implications of these FBI files and other documents now available from the Israel Lobby Archive.”
The Israel Lobby Archive, http://IRmep.org/ila is a unit of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington. The Archive digitizes declassified documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act filings with law enforcement, economic, diplomatic and intelligence agencies. IRmep is a Washington-based nonprofit that studies U.S. Middle East policy formulation.
A PALESTINIAN’S VIEW OF ‘DEMOCRACY’ IN GERMANY
May 29, 2011 at 14:48 (Associate Post, Corrupt Politics, Democracy, Germany, Palestine)
A Palestinian in Deutchland
NETANYAHU: BROWN NOSING ON BOTH SIDES OF THE AMERICAN BORDER
May 29, 2011 at 06:36 (Canada, Corrupt Politics, Israel)
Netanyahu asked Canada PM to thwart G8 support for 1967 borders
G8 statement would have supported Obama’s policy that Israeli-Palestinian talks should be based on 1967 lines with land swaps.
At the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper thwarted an announcement Friday by the G-8 countries that would have supported U.S. President Barack Obama’s statement that talks between the Palestinians and Israel should be based on the 1967 borders with exchanges of territory.
The G-8 countries – the United States, Russia, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada – met in France on Thursday and Friday to discuss the situation in the Middle East.
Obama presented his Middle East policy to the G-8 as an alternative to a unilateral Palestinian move to seek support for statehood in the United Nations General Assembly in September, and to clarify to the Palestinians that the international community takes a dim view of the Palestinians’ move to win statehood in the United Nations.
According to a senior government official in Jerusalem, Israel was concerned over the implications of a specific mention of support for Obama’s call for negotiations based on the 1967 borders and exchanges of territory, so the prime minister’s bureau and the Foreign Ministry began working on the matter as early as the middle of last week.
The Foreign Ministry instructed its envoys in the various capitals to ask that the G-8’s concluding statement emphasize three things: that a Palestinian state will arise only through direct negotiations, not through a unilateral move in the United Nations; opposition to Hamas-Fatah reconciliation as long as Hamas rejects the Quartet’s conditions; and opposition to a mention of the issue of 1967 borders and exchanges of territory. However, there was concern over whether inclusion of the latter issue could be prevented, the official said, because at least seven out of the eight G-8 countries supported including it.
Tuesday, after Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, he telephoned Harper, who heads a rightist government under whose leadership Canada has become one of Israel’s greatest allies.
The senior government official said Netanyahu told Harper that mentioning the issue of the 1967 borders in the statement, without mentioning the other issues, such as Israel as a Jewish state or opposition to the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel, will be detrimental to Israeli interests and a reward to the Palestinians.
“The prime minister is in constant contact with various leaders in moving ahead the diplomatic process,” Netanyahu’s bureau said.
Since a decision on the statement requires consensus, Canada’s efforts led to a release of the statement without reference to the 1967 borders.
The statement released expressed general support for the Obama speech, but called for the establishment of a Palestinian state through negotiations, not unilaterally, and for Hamas to accept the Quartet’s conditions.
Harper said Friday that he thought the statement issued was “balanced.” He also said it was important not to “cherry-pick” Obama’s statement. “I think if you’re going to get into other elements, obviously I would like to see reference to elements that were also in President Obama’s speech. Such as, for instance, the fact that one of the states must be a Jewish state. The fact that the Palestinian state must be de-militarized.”
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman spoke over the weekend with Canada’s foreign minister, John Baird, and thanked him for Canada’s position during the G-8 deliberations. “Canada is a true friend of Israel and with a realistic and proper view of things, it understands that the 1967 borders do not conform to Israel’s security needs and with the current demographic reality,” Lieberman said.
THE BIBI CONGRESS FAILS TO SEE
May 28, 2011 at 18:06 (Associate Post, Israel, Palestine, Peace Process)
Netanyahu wants a Palestinian quisling, not peace partner
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By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine
There is absolutely no doubt that a true, dignified peace with the Palestinians is nowhere on Benyamin Netanyahu’s agenda. The clear spirit of insolence characterizing his recent speech before Congress, often described as an Israeli-occupied territory, caricatures an extremist demagogue who understands peace to mean domination and enslavement by Zionist Jews of the Palestinian people. Netanyahu doesn’t use terms such as “domination,” “enslavement” or even “subjugation. “However, the misleading rationales, pretexts, and red herrings he keeps invoking to justify Israeli recalcitrance and rejection of a just peace illustrate a depraved mindset that covets more lebensraum or “breathing space” at the Palestinians expense. Lebensraum represented the gist of Nazi Germany’s expansionistic policies toward its neighbors especially on the eastern front. Netanyahu has been disseminating lies which, were it not for Israel’s tight domination of Congress as well as the bulk of US media, would mark the man with the indelible stamp as a pathological liar. The list of demands he has been making shows that true peace and Israel can’t really be used in the same sentence, that the two are actually an eternal oxymoron. Netanyahu, who only a few months ago complained to western media that Israel couldn’t negotiate with a divided people, is now saying the opposite, that Israel can’t live with the latest reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas,. Looking into the brutal ugliness of his thuggish mentality, it is clear that Netanyahu wants to see Palestinians at each other’s throats once again, which he hopes would enable him to claim anew that Israel can’t have peace with a people who don’t have peace within themselves.!! Netanyahu says the Palestinian leadership must choose between peace with Hamas and peace with Israel. He easily forgets that that the Islamic liberation movement would actually look like a group of boy scouts when compared with the vast majority of his coalition government’s partners. It was this fact that prompted an Israeli cabinet minister to declare recently that “we are already a fascist state.” Netanyahu keeps complaining about the fact that Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel. Well does Israel recognize Palestine? Does Israel recognize a putative Palestinian state on the West Bank? Besides, why should Hamas recognize the legitimacy of a state that is based on ethnic cleansing, land theft and aggression? How would Hamas that recognizes “Israel ‘s legitimacy” face millions of Palestinian refugees who were uprooted from their homes and villages 63 years ago in order to make accommodations for racist invaders from Eastern Europe claiming mendaciously a religious affinity with the homeland of the Palestinian people. Indeed, such recognition by Hamas would spell the end of the movement in the eyes of the Palestinian people, Arabs and Muslims. Netanyahu insists that Israel can’t and will not return to the 1967 borders which he describes as indefensible. However, it is amply clear that what he has really in mind is the fate of hundreds of Jewish colonies inhabited by hundreds of thousands of Jewish fanatics who are inculcated with the false messianic doctrine that the Almighty created the entire universe for the sake of the Jew and that the very existence of non-Jews is inessential and that their lives have therefore no sanctity. It is really shameful and shocking that western intellectual circles and media don’t pay sufficient attention to this conspicuous Nazi dimension of the Jewish settler movement while readily indulging in demonizing Islamist freedom fighters fighting for freedom from Israeli occupation that differs little in substance from the Nazi occupation of Europe. Netanyahu also wants the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which implies that Israel would have the right in the future to expel its non-Jewish citizens. Unfortunately, there are western officials, including the President of the United States, who are willing to accept this orgy of insolence which goes beyond the pale of anything moral, anything human, anything decent. Indeed, one might wonder how Zionist Jews in the North America and Europe would react if the US declared itself a Protestant state or a Christian state whereby non-Christians would have to submit to the will of the Christian majority? One would expect many Zionist Jews to leave no stone unturned in protest against the “Nazification” of America and how anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly head again. Israel, whose leaders are among the world’s most professional liars when the Hebrew Bible commands people not to lie, claim that Israel is both Jewish and Democratic? However, everyone knows that Israel can’t be both Talmudic and democratic. There is no doubt that Israel is seeking true Palestinian quislings, not true Palestinian peace partners because no dignified Palestinian would accept these insolent dictates coming from one of the most mendacious persons under the sun. And if such a Palestinian did, he probably would be shot and killed like a stray dog in the streets of the West Bank. The nearly pornographic indulgence by Netanyahu in lying and misrepresenting the truth about the Palestinian plight underscores the insecure position and fragile foundation upon which the entire Zionist argument is based. It also gives the auspicious promise that this virulent diabolic entity won’t last very long because that which is based on falsehood won’t endure. |
DESPITE BIBI’S ‘AKS’, POLLARD DEVESTATED
May 28, 2011 at 17:10 (Chutzpah, Corrupt Politics, Espionage, Israel)
Jonathan Pollard Devastated By No Update From Bibi
Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard is upset that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has not updated him via his wife Esther since his meeting last Friday with US President Barack Obama, Pollard told The Jerusalem Post through Esther Thursday night.
Esther Pollard said officials in the Prime Minister’s Office had promised her that she would be updated soon after the meeting in the White House and that Netanyahu would meet with her soon after his return to Jerusalem. An official response from the Prime Minister’s Office denied that such a promise had been made.
“Jonathan told me that every day that passes without any word from the prime minister is another day that he feels he is being thrown out of the Embassy in Washington all over again,” Esther Pollard said. “I am devastated by the sadness and disappointment I hear in Jonathan’s voice every time he calls and asks me if we have had any word from the PM or the PMO yet. I know that it breaks his heart all over again every time that I have to tell him that no one has been in touch with us at all.”
Esther Pollard described herself as “heartbroken, deeply shocked, and genuinely distressed.” She said her husband was in “an excruciating state” and that it was “torture” for Jonathan to be kept in the dark.
“Jonathan urgently requires a status update,” she said. “Information is his oxygen. It is what keeps him alive and gives him the strength to hold on one more day. Even a negative report from Netanyahu or his office would be preferable to the anguish that Jonathan is experiencing, being cut off and rejected once again.”
Reported AT
ARAB UPRISINGS NOT A FACEBOOK REVOLUTION
May 27, 2011 at 09:13 (FaceBook, Ignorance, Internet, Middle East, Revolution)
Arab uprising an Internet thing, not a Facebook thing, says Zuckerberg
The social networking site founder says the Internet at large, not Facebook, made the Arab Spring possible: ‘If it weren’t Facebook, it would be something else.’
Some call the uprisings in the Arab world “the Facebook revolution.” Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the world’s biggest social network site, doesn’t seem to agree. Playing down his site’s role in revolutions from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya, Zuckerberg said Wednesday at the e-G8 Internet forum in Paris, “It’s not a Facebook thing, it’s an Internet thing.”
“I think Facebook was neither necessary nor sufficient for any of those things to happen,” he said, answering a reporter’s question about its role in the “Arab Spring.” “If it weren’t Facebook, it would be something else.” That said, millions of users in the Middle East have used Facebook and Twitter to organize protests in recent months.
Zuckerberg also said that Facebook does not plan to open up to children under the age of 13 in the short term, despite some reports indicating otherwise. Facebook, which has more than half a billion active users, operates policies around the world not to register children under a certain age. The age varies by country but is typically around 13.
Comments he made last week at an education conference, when he said regulations made it difficult for children to sign up for Facebook, had been taken out of context, he explained. He said the complexity of protecting children online meant the question was not a priority for the company.
Zuckerberg began the interview by batting away a question about Facebook’s plans to go public: “Not yet.” The company is expected tofloat next year.
THOSE REVOLTING PALESTINIANS
May 27, 2011 at 08:06 (Activism, Fatah, Hamas, Nonviolent Resistance, Oppression, Palestine)
A Palestinian Revolt in the Making?
At 10:30 on May 15, two battalions of Israeli combat soldiers opened fire with tear gas and rubber bullets on hundreds of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators at the Qalandia checkpoint dividing Ramallah from Jerusalem, sending people scrambling into the adjacent refugee camp. These were the opening shots of Israel’s response to protests commemorating the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe, used to define Israel’s creation of 750,000 Palestinian refugees in 1948. By nightfall Israeli soldiers had killed thirteen Palestinian refugees and wounded hundreds with live fire on its borders with Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and inside the West Bank.
The May 15 demonstrations reinvigorated the long-alienated Palestinian refugee community; although it is 70 percent of the Palestinian population, it has been largely shut out of the negotiations process with Israel. The emerging unity was on display at Qalandia, where youth trying to symbolically march from Ramallah to Jerusalem wore black T-shirts with the slogan “Direct Elections for the Palestine National Council, a Vote for Every Palestinian, Everywhere.” The PNC is the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation organization and is responsible for electing its executive committee. Traditionally, seat allocation in the PNC has been divided to represent the influence factions within the PLO, of which Hamas is not a member.
The Nakba protests have been the largest so far of a growing Palestinian youth revolt. The protests—launched with unity protests on March 15 in the Palestinian Authority–controlled West Bank and Hamas-governed Gaza Strip—are the Palestinian response to the outbreak of revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. While it is a new development, this manifestation of popular anger against Palestinian Authority concessions in the failed negotiations process—shockingly revealed with Al Jazeera’s January release of top-secret negotiation minutes, known as the Palestine Papers—and Israel’s practice of divide and rule has been simmering under the surface for the past three years.
“The unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas gave people hope to be here today and continue with this new phase of struggle,” said Fadi Quran, a founding organizer of the March 15 movement, amid the clashes with Israeli soldiers at the Qalandia checkpoint. “It showed us that something was possible and we must continue,” he added, coughing from tear gas.
The March 15 movement marks a generational shift in Palestinian politics. Demanding that Palestinians shape their future through full democratization of the PLO, March 15 has sought to reshape national identity through unity and the relaunching of a popular struggle.
Following a surge of momentum that has forced a reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas, ending four years of official national division, the Nakba Day protests expanded the concept of unity from below to encompass Palestinian refugees living on Israel’s borders.
According to Nathan Stock, the assistant director of the Carter Center conflict resolution team who was inside the Egyptian-brokered unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas, the momentum created on March 15, in concert with the uprising across the region, was a central catalyst in getting the parties to reconcile. Fresh from the closed-door negotiations in Cairo, Stock contended that “while the number of protesters was not huge, the demonstrations sent a clear signal to the leadership in Fatah and Hamas that the Arab Spring had reached Palestine, and that the public was getting increasingly frustrated with the division.” Stock noted that the revolution in Egypt, which brought about a command change in the Egyptian General Security Service and Foreign Ministry, enabled Egypt to become an honest broker and foster an environment of trust and compromise.
While the region in revolt was the immediate impetus for change in the Palestinian movement, the issues being addressed and the solutions now demanded on the street have long been seen as necessary to break the current Israeli-Palestinian impasse.
Speaking at her home in Amman, Jordan, in May 2008, Leila Khaled—a leading member of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Palestinian National Council member of the PLO and famed icon of Palestinian resistance who hijacked two airplanes in the late 1960s and early ’70s—was unequivocal about what she saw as the problems facing the Palestinian struggle.
“The PA and Hamas are not playing the game properly with Israel,” said the woman whose picture with a kaffiya and AK-47 is still an international symbol of Palestinian resistance. “They are not understanding its nature as an apartheid system. Which means both sides are giving illusions to the people that we are getting somewhere, when in fact we are getting nowhere,” she added between drags of a cigarette, sitting in her living room next to a photo of her son in his university graduation gown.
Khaled was frustrated with both the collusion and concessions being made by the PLO leadership to Israel (made clear to all with the recent release of the Palestine Papers), as well as the lack of progress in a then-divided Palestinian resistance and decline of national consciousness. “Nothing is moving forward, either on the political, economic or social level. On the contrary, we are witnessing the return to the family, to the village, to the tribe.”
Still, Khaled was optimistic, discussing the need for a democratic, grassroots movement to transform the PLO and push the cause forward. “We stress the popular resistance… wherever it is. We believe that it is the people that need to be involved in the struggle and find the means to mobilize society, ” she said. Now, three years later, the demands and popular action that Khaled cited as necessary are materializing in the emergence of a new generation of Palestinians, who are making their demands heard through mass unarmed protest.
Already successful in forcing Fatah and Hamas to forge a unity agreement, this uprising-in-the-making is showing no signs backing down. Fadi Quran had strong concerns that Fatah and Hamas would prioritize the narrow political aim of holding onto the power they have, instead of contributing to a national Palestinian consensus. This, he felt, was demonstrated by the accord’s avoidance of calls for PNC elections.
It is in this context that Palestinian youth are taking control of their struggle, shaking up representation internally and presenting an emboldened and united face to Israel on all fronts. “We do not know what is going to happen, but we have set something in motion. It is now up to the Israelis and how they react,” said Quran at the Qalandia checkpoint, as injured protesters were carried by on stretchers.
PHOTO ESSAY ~~ TRANSLATING BIBI’S WORDS INTO ACTIONS
May 26, 2011 at 13:08 (Collective Punishment, Ethnic Cleansing, Israel, Occupation, Oppression, Palestine, Soldier Brutality, Status of Jerusalem)
Photos of arbitrary attack on the citizens and the kidnapping of a minor Ahmed Shweiki , wounding Isaac Shweiki and photojournalist Ahmed Siyam
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Israeli forces attack neighborhood residents, several hospitalised
Israeli forces cracked down on stone-throwing youths during violent clashes in Bir Ayyub district today, then attacking residents ouside their homes in Alabasya neighborhood. Residents were attacked with pepper spray by a large force of Israeli troops, leaving 5 in need of urgent medical attention and transferred to hospital.
Isaac Shweiki, 46, was treated in the emergency department for his injuries. His son Ahmad Shweiki, 17, was arrested by Israeli forces.
Israeli forces also attacked Wadi Hilweh Information Center photographer Ahmed Siyam and sprayed him with pepper spray. Siyam required medical treatment and was transferred to a nearby clinic, suffering from severe burns to his skin.
THE HIGH AND PAINFUL PRICE WE PAY FOR OUR FREEDOM
May 26, 2011 at 06:55 (Civil Liberties, Collective Punishment, Human Rights, Israel, Oppression, Palestine)
A year of steadfastness in Israeli prison
A year of imprisonment has passed. To spend one year in prison is a high price to pay for Israel’s unjust rule. My share has been more modest compared to other prisoners who are about to enter their fourth decade in Israeli prisons.
It’s true, one should not differentiate between the sentences the same way we should not differentiate between the fighters for freedom — the sentence of the judges of oppression is always one of cruelty, terror and abuse. What is most important, however, is that it is always temporary.
Things in Palestine occur according to the following rule: the harsher the escalation of state-sponsored terrorism, oppression, political persecution and deportation policies, the stronger is our steadfastness, challenge, will to remain, preservation of our identity and commitment to our cause and dispossessed rights.
They wish to fragment our cause according to geography and the color of identity cards, but our senses are never suppressed and our struggle for liberation is one in all of its components. While they continue to reproduce oppression, we reproduce freedom and break out of their vicious circle, transforming their actions into reactions to ours.
Our rights in Palestine, whether we are in our homeland or in exile, are one: return; self-determination; ending the occupation; prisoners’ release; recovery of confiscated land; dismantling settlements and the apartheid wall; protection of Jerusalem, the Naqab, the Galilee and the coast from Judaization and eviction projects; and breaking the Israeli blockade on Gaza — all these causes form part of our single cause.
But the struggle for our cause is not waged only by us Palestinians. It is complemented by the rebellions in the Arab world and the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, isolating Israel on both the Arab and international levels. These actions are nothing but an extension of the Palestinian anti-normalization movement inside Israel and of our struggle to strip the racist colonizing regime of its legitimacy.
Speaking on behalf of the prisoners’ movement, I wish to allude to the dangers of the so-called security coordination between Israel and any Palestinian or Arab party. The victims of such coordination are, first and foremost, the fighters and prisoners for the freedom of Palestine and the Arab peoples. We call on the Arab peoples to stop the complicity of some Arab regimes with Israel on the so-called security coordination level by launching an Arab and Palestinian campaign for this cause.
To spend one year in prison is a high price to pay for Israel’s unjust rule. However, a free will has made this year an act of steadfastness, challenge and struggle for our people.
I hereby send a message of appreciation and love to all the people who call for my release, as well as to the popular committee for my defense and the Popular Committee for the Defense of Political Freedoms, which launched a campaign for my release from the very moment I was arrested.
From inside the prison cells I also wish to greet my loving and supportive family, and to all those who are in solidarity with our cause, here and abroad, as individuals, and the organizations they represent. They are in constant contact with me, and are partners in our struggle for liberation and freedom. What we seek, we the political prisoners, is freedom and not to accumulate more years of imprisonment. We were born free, and protecting our freedom is our responsibility.
On 15 May we commemorated the 63rd anniversary of the ongoing Palestinian Nakba. Our strength continues to stem from the justice of our cause and rights, which can be fulfilled only through struggle. To struggle for liberation, as well as to rebuild ourselves as people and institutions, is our right and obligation. As for the price that is paid. it will always be painful, whether it is individual or collective. Regardless of how painful it is, we will never deviate from the road to liberation and freedom of our people and land.
Their rule, not matter how long, is temporary, but freedom is our destiny.
Ameer Makhoul is a civil society leader and political prisoner at Gilboa prison
JEW BASHING DAY AT US CONGRESS
May 25, 2011 at 08:02 (Activism, Civil Liberties, Intolerance, Israel, Palestine)
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According to CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin:
Rae Abileah is in the hospital, after having been assaulted and tackled to the ground by members of the audience in the House Gallery during Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. Abileah, who is with the group CODEPINK: Women for Peace, interrupted Netanyahu with a banner that said “Occupying Land Is Indefensible” and shouting, “No more occupation, stop Israel war crimes, equal rights for Palestinians, occupation is indefensible.” She rose up to speak out just after the Prime Minister talked about the youth around the world rising up for more democracy. As this 28-year-old Jewish American woman spoke out for the human rights of Palestinians, other members of the audience—wearing badges from the conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee—brutally attacked her. The police then dragged her out of the Gallery and took her to the George Washington University Hospital, where she is being treating for neck and shoulder injuries.
“I am in great pain, but this is nothing compared to the pain and suffering that Palestinians go through on a regular basis,” said Abileah from her hospital bed. “I have been to Gaza and the West Bank, I have seen Palestinians homes bombed and bulldozed, I have talked to mothers whose children have been killed during the invasion of Gaza, I have seen the Jewish-only roads leading to ever-expanding settlements in the West Bank. This kind of colonial occupation cannot continue. As a Jew and a U.S. citizen, I feel obligated to rise up and speak out against stop these crimes being committed in my name and with my tax dollars.”
Abileah stands in solidarity with the Palestinian and Israeli activists who are routinely jailed and beaten for speaking out for democracy.
These actions were part of a week of protests called Move Over AIPAC.
In a subsequent update on the Move Over AIPAC website, it was reported that Abileah was arrested from George Washington University hospital
Written FOR
MOVE OVER AIPAC ~~ MAKE WAY FOR FREEDOM!
May 24, 2011 at 09:48 (Activism, AIPAC, Israel, Palestine)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech was interrupted Tuesday (GMT) by pro-Palestinian protesters affiliated with the Move Over AIPAC coalition.
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