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The Cultural Afterparty of Maidan

By ANDREY UKRAINSKIY and ANATOLIY SLOBODYANYUK | CounterPunch | May 29, 2015

Creative intelligentsia has always been a social stratum which effectively serves the ruling class but tries to preserve a semblance of independence. So in the current situation in Ukraine, it is no surprise to see the proliferation of pro-war art exhibitions, hundreds of patriotic videos, dozens of bands singing vulgar songs about the leader of the neighbor state of Russia, and performers who see the main problem of the country being Lenin monuments and who stage “performances” by burning his works. In this article, we look at small part of this insanity.

Huge numbers of Ukrainian so-called “creative middle classes” were jumping up and down on Maidan Square chanting “Whoever is not jumping is a ‘moskal’ [derogatory term for a Russian] in the company of ultra-right militants. But playing at revolution and counterculture very quickly turned into backing the most reactionary tendencies of the new authorities. The transition from quantity to quality became obvious after the exhibition ‘Beware of Russians’ was presented in April 2014 at the Modern Art Center M17 in Kyiv. “Russians” sporting St. George ribbons were placed in zoo cages with signs attached to the cages saying “Do not feed”. The “Russians” were drinking vodka, playing balalaikas, honoring Putin and threatening visitors.

It is possible to find in any country such idiots as those who staged this exhibition. The most important thing to note is whether such conduct is supported by the state and what is the reaction of the society to such actions. Ukrainian media provided good feedback from the exhibition. A significant number of the ‘denizens of culture’ who attended it supported the exhibition. This was quite a telling fact.

Half a year later, the exhibition ‘Top 100 of the best patriotic posters‘ became a direct continuation of this dehumanizing tendency. The vulgar posters on display were often just adaptations of posters from bygone eras, with slogans adapted to the present day. So we saw, ‘Don’t pass it by, kill a ‘colorad!’ [1] and ‘Vata has no right to speak‘. [2]. Other themes present were sexism (in adapted pin-up pictures), anticommunism, clericalism, and pro-war propaganda.

The exposition ‘Goddess of War’ in Kharkiv presented panel images titled ‘Dogs of the DPR’, portraying dead bodies of members of the defense forces of Donetsk and Donbas.

Openly fascist cartoons about ‘vatniks’ (see footnote 2) by Irena Karpa (Ukrainian writer and musician) portrayed the Donbas population as subhumans. The xenophobic message of the cartoons was clear, even without translation. Not to speak of the utterly failed and banal artistic content of the effort. But all that didn’t stop the cartoons from being shown on the Ukrainian central television channel Inter and being welcomed by the chauvinist part of society.

During the last year, Ukrainian ‘art workers’ have actively dehumanized any opponent to the current political authorities. The derogatory terms ‘vatniks’ and ‘colorads’ resemble the die Untermenschen (‘sub-humans’) of the Third Reich or the ‘cockroaches’ label given to the Tutsi people massacred in Rwanda. (In March 1945, the magazine of the U.S. Marine Corps called the Japanese people “Japanese lice” (louseous japanicas). In the same month, 67 Japanese cities were bombed with fire-bombs. Later, Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered nuclear bombs.[3])

After such ‘art’ exhibitions in the months following the triumph of Euromaidan, it’s not surprising to recall that just one week after ‘Beware of Russians’ exhibition, on May 2, the Ukrainian ultra-right burned alive some oppositionists in the Odessa Trade-Union House.

Neither the artists involved in these macabre displays nor the consumers of their products seem to understand clearly what they have gotten themselves drawn into. Such radical metamorphosis in the behavior of the seemingly “creative and, intelligent” class of people could be predicted, but the threat of cultural nationalism was underestimated by many people on the anti-fascist side. The cultural nationalism appeared primarily ‘nationalist’ and not ‘cultural’, rather expansive than protective.

A few words should be said about Serhiy Zhadan – a writer and poet, famous in both Ukraine and Russia. Despite his support to Maidan, his glorification of the so called Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO), and his participation in attempts to demolish Lenin’s monument in Kharkiv (and this is not a complete list of his activity), some people who still call themselves the “Ukrainian left”, like the small, liberal sect Left Opposition or the national-anarchists of the Autonomous Workers’ Union, tolerate Zhadan or consider him an ally because they would like to be ‘trendy’ and be “liked” by some circles of Kiev elitist closed groups.

We can talk for a long time about the metastasis and regress of Ukrainian culture. Putrefaction is a colorful process, accompanied by multiple miasmas. But the general judgment remains the same – putrefaction is an immediate consequence of death.

The oft-criticized thesis of ‘CULTURE’ (as the sum of cultural products and the process of their production) and ‘MATERIAL PRODUCTION’ (as a basis for cultural life of the society) has received a stunning confirmation in Ukraine. Our country has actually stopped the process of producing both. Last year was a time of endless carving up and selling for cheap the cultural and industrial legacy of the Soviet era. Profits from transportation of Russian gas to Europe and rents paid by Russia for stationing its naval forces in Crimea have been squandered. All the normal ways of conducting business were ignored because of their lesser potential profit, compared to an illegal takeover and selling of enterprises. Donbas (as well as Crimea) was ousted from the public discourse, including art discourse, during the past several decades and de facto excluded from the decision making in the Ukrainian economic context.

The art that found itself in a fruitless and sterile environment, acquired its own specific character. Some successful artists left the country. The producers of cultural product of early 1990’s (whose activity was aimed mostly at addressing the dissolution of the USSR and its legacy) were far from untalented, but now they occupy high positions and push modern Ukrainian culture to a self-destructive path. (Along that road, they do not overlook creating their private villas in elite neighborhoods, and not only in Ukraine.)

This was actually the cultural background of Maidan. A creative minority at the time of Maidan’s beginning has effectively isolated itself inside its own, closed pseudo-underground environment of exhibitions-concerts-performances which were interesting only to the inner circle. Meanwhile, the masses continued to be satisfied with mass culture. On both sides we find crowds of lonesome people – crowds consisting of ‘unique personalities’ but who suffer because nobody listens to them. That’s because they actually have nothing to say.

Maidan was like a final gasp of breath. Through bloody sacrifice, the economic health of Ukraine (relatively speaking) was destroyed and only some meaningless catchwords remain – like “dignity” [Maidan was called a “revolution of dignity”] and fancy symbols of the supposed freedom in the European Union.

We were witness to an emotional activisation of half-educated and half-witted persons causing outbursts of cultural mythology. Issues of style and taste didn’t bother anyone at that time – anything of ‘pro-Maidan’ style was seen by Maidan participants as needed, appropriate and ‘trendy’’.

This charge of the quasi-idea (which was supposed to raise the cultural level of the masses) has stuck in the minds of the ‘creative layers’. That’s why we witness an apotheosis of aesthetic squalor, cannibalistic immorality and populist orientation among the creators of ‘culture’ in ‘modern’, post-Maidan Ukraine. Those who pretended to had something to say suddenly discovered that a portion of society supporting Maidan could only hear, or were only interested in, a set of incantations—”Glory to Ukraine – Glory to heroes” (Nation über alles).

It is no wonder that some artists, looking for popularity, were charmed by it all and assumed that it would endure. But their hopes are groundless because nationalist hysteria is temporal. The upsurge of nationalist hysteria and its inevitable fall are each the results of the objective processes in society and culture, not a product of the actions of the ‘creative layers’. Soon they will be held to account for their participation in absolutely monstrous (both ethical and moral) ‘art’ events. Or try to erase it from their biographies, though this will be quite a difficult task for them.

Andrey Ukrainskiy is a doctor, left-wing activist and journalist from the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. He lives in exile from Ukraine due to the conditions of government and vigilante repression. 

Anatoliy Slobodyanyuk was a lecturer in the Faculty of Sociology of Kharkiv National University. In November 2014, he was fired along with the dean of the faculty and numbers of other lecturers and academics. They were fired for their criticism of new regime and alleged support for “separatism” as widely accused in social media networks. Soon after, he received numerous threats from far-right, pro-Maidan nationalists. He also lives in exile.

May 29, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | | Leave a comment

Ukraine humanitarian crisis ‘one of the world’s worst’ – UN refugee agency

RT | May 28, 2015

The rise in the number of refugees in the Ukrainian conflict is resulting in one of the world’s “worst humanitarian crisis” today, the UN has confirmed, as sporadic fighting and a lack of aid forces civilians flee to neighboring countries, mainly Russia.

The number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and those seeking refuge abroad is reaching catastrophic proportions despite the February-implemented Minsk II ceasefire agreement which barely holds ground with intermittent fighting continuing in the Donbass region.

The latest statistics from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show that some 857,000 Ukrainians have sought asylum in neighboring countries. That is an increase of about 23,000 people in the last two weeks.

“The situation seems to be getting worse,” William Spindler, UNHCR Senior Communications Officer for Europe, West Africa, Statelessness told RT. He says that the number of IDPs and refugees from Ukraine has surpassed 2 million people. He added that people in Donbass continue to live in “substandard accommodation” as a result of the ongoing fighting.

“1.2 million people have been displaced inside Ukraine and over 800,000 people have gone to neighboring countries,” Spindler said, confirming the latest figures disclosed by his office. He added that those fleeing to neighbouring countries have gone “mainly to the Russian Federation” as well as Belarus, Poland, Germany and France.

In the latest report on the Ukraine conflict, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that between mid-April 2014 and 14 May 2015, at least 6,334 people were killed and 15,752 wounded. It also reported a danger posed to civilians by “unexploded ordinance and landmines” that are still left in Donbass.

“The situation is very serious, very worrying. This is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world today,” Spindler said.

The lack of medicine and medical equipment in conflict areas in Ukraine poses great danger, OCHA reported earlier. Both humanitarian and political efforts on the ground by the parties involved need to be “stepped up,” Spindler says, in order to reverse the dire situation that resulted from Kiev’s ongoing so-called “anti-terrorist operation” in eastern Ukraine.

“We are distributing essential aid but our efforts are not sufficient to deal with the needs,” said Spindler, stressing that more funding is needed to continue humanitarian aid work as the current financing covers only some 40 percent of the organization’s mission to Ukraine.

One of the main areas of concern for the UN refugee agency is the “difficulty” civilians have crossing the conflict line, Spindler told RT. He said that in some cases people were “separated” at the crossing line between Ukrainian and rebel controlled territories, as they tried to join their relatives or “obtain benefits that they are entitled to.”

Russia meanwhile continues to receive refugees from Ukraine, accommodating those seeking shelter in refugees camps before helping them settle all across the federation. “During multiple visits to a refugee center for Ukrainians we did not notice any problems with accommodation, food, medical services and education. Everything is organized as it should be, on the same level as for Russian citizens,” UN Refugees Agency (UNHCR) representative in Russia Baisa Vak-Voya told journalists Monday.

At the same time, Federal Migration Service chief Konstantin Romodanovsky called the situation in Ukraine a humanitarian disaster, as up to 600 Ukrainians cross into Russia daily.

“It is a catastrophe, of course. Homes have been ruined there. People vote with their feet, leaving their home country and entering Russia, where they get the status of temporary refugees – not because this is something Russia wants, but simply because there is no place they can live in,” Romodanovsky told Interfax on Monday.

Russia meanwhile estimates that over a million of Ukrainians have entered Russia since the conflict began last year, according to Valentina Kazakova, head of the Federal Migration Service’s Department for Citizenship.

Out of that number some 350,000 have applied and most of them granted temporary refuge status. “Another 105,000 have applied for entrance onto the state program for assisting the voluntary resettlement of compatriots from foreign countries,” Kazakova told Interfax earlier this month.

Since the conflict began another 195,000 Ukrainians requested temporary residence permits in Russia, while 40,000 applied for permanent residence cards and 88,000 for citizenship.

May 29, 2015 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

Latest Amnesty International Ukraine War Crimes Report Fails the Test

By Roger Annis | The New Cold War | May 29, 2015

Amnesty International has issued a 33-page report on the treatment of captured combatants and of civilians caught in the crossfire of the civil war (‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’) that the governing regime in Kyiv launched in eastern Ukraine in April 2014. Titled, ‘ Breaking Bodies: Torture and Summary Killings in Eastern Ukraine‘, the report presents grave allegations against the Ukrainian government and against the defense forces of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics. Allegations include forced and illegal detentions, prisoner abuse and torture, and summary executions.

The report has made headlines in Western mainstream press. One reason for that is its authorship. Amnesty International is a respected and renowned agency. But another reason is the nature of the report itself-it accuses both sides in the civil war with equal vigour.

That appeals to editors of Western publications who for the past year have systematically ignored or downplayed the documented accusations levied against the Ukrainian government and its armed forces and allied paramilitaries in earlier human rights reports. Those include the report of Human Rights Watch in October 2014 saying that Kyiv is using cluster weapons against civilian targets, and the lengthy reports in November 2014 and March 2015 of the Moscow-based Foundation for the Study of Democracy. The Human Rights Watch report concerning cluster weapons was corroborated by a separate and coincidental New York Times investigation and by later findings of inspectors of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Is there any basis to Amnesty International’s equal treatment and equal blame against both sides? No there is not.

Firstly, Amnesty produces no numbers to back its equivalency treatment. It says these are difficult to ascertain. This may be true for arriving at very specific numbers. But given the volume of media and human rights reports documenting human rights violations and war crimes by Kyiv, and considering that the Ukrainian government controls more than 95 per cent of the territory of the country, it is a stretch, to say the least, to make an equivalency argument.

Secondly, the Amnesty report excludes reporting on the multiple documented cases of human rights atrocities throughout Ukraine, for example the massacre in Odessa on May 2, 2014 that saw more than 50 people killed by right-wing vigilantes. It makes no mention of the economic embargo and routine interruption of aid shipments imposed by Kyiv against the rebel territory, including cutting the pensions of seniors. Instead, the report selectively chooses the band of territory proximate to the actual combat zone in the southeast of Ukraine. As if documented human rights violations by the Ukraine government elsewhere in the country would have no bearing on its conduct in the war zone, a war zone, moreover, that Kyiv has created. As if the recent string of killings of journalists and politicians in Kyiv and other cities of the country are incidental.

The Amnesty report shows extreme bias against the rebel forces in Donetsk and Lugansk by its selective language. It calls them “separatists”, “the separatist side”, or “the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic… and Luhansk People’s Republic”.

The term “separatist” is a pejorative, used to discredit those so labelled. Considering the changes to Ukrainian law in the past year which have made the advocacy of “separatism” in Ukraine a grave criminal act, not to speak of an invitation to vigilante violence and murder against anyone so accused, it is inconceivable that a human rights organization would so carelessly use the term.

Two additional reasons make Amnesty International’s use of the term a scandal. One, there is the small matter that it is not true. The leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics as well as the advocates for political rights throughout eastern Ukraine have made it clear that they are receptive to any and all political options for the Donbas territory. The leaders of Donetsk and Lugansk signed the ceasefire agreement in Minsk, Belarus to this effect on February 12, 2015. Unfortunately, the Kyiv regime refuses to adhere to the clauses in that document, including the one that obliges it to negotiate forms of political autonomy (‘federalization’) with the rebel movement (a fact which the report by Amnesty omits mentioning).

Two, Amnesty International as well as the supporters of the governing regime in Kyiv throw around the term “separatist” (by which we can understand “political self-determination” or “secession”) as if it were some high crime. It is not. It is enshrined in international law. Many of the major countries of the NATO military alliance presently supporting Kyiv in its war have had perfectly legal “separatism” votes take place in their territories, including in Quebec, Canada in 1976 and 1995 and in Scotland, United Kingdom in 2015. Irony of ironies, modern, independent Ukraine itself was born of two “separatist” acts which made the country independent—the revolution of 1917-18 and the vote in 1991 to discontinue the Soviet Union.

While Amnesty has harsh language for the “separatists” of Donetsk and Lugansk, the extremist militias who are fighting alongside the regular Ukrainian army and committing no end of human rights atrocities are given kid-glove treatment. The Amnesty report calls the extreme-right militias that are waging cruel war in eastern Ukraine “volunteer militia formations”. This is the same, polite language used by Western media to minimize and obfuscate who it is, exactly, the NATO countries are backing in Ukraine, including with weapons and military training. (In recent months, the extremist paramilitaries have been incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard in order to lessen embarrassment to their NATO country benefactors.)

Amnesty’s report commits another significant travesty in the field of human rights investigation by drawing an equivalency of responsibility between the national government in Kyiv and the rebel forces in eastern Ukraine. The two are not equivalent. Kyiv has sent its army against its own people, a violation of international convention and law. Kyiv is a member of the United Nations and is a signatory to all manner of international laws and conventions obliging it to protect the human and political rights of its citizens.

Kyiv has shelled and bombarded civilian targets on a scale far in excess of whatever shells from the opposite side have incidentally struck civilian targets. Last September, when the rebel side had huge military momentum in its favour, it declined to press its advantage and retake the city of Mariupol, saying the civil damage and civilian casualties that would result were unthinkable and would be unpardonable.

Of course, the rebel military should be subject to the same standards governing human and political rights as any government. Indeed, there is ample evidence, including in this latest report by Amnesty, that the governing powers in Donetsk and Lugansk are living up to their responsibilities. But to charge them with the same degree of responsibility as the internationally recognized government in Kyiv is to make a mockery of international law. How many judges would give a free pass to rights violations by a national government were it to argue, “Hey, you can’t accuse us of war crimes, we say that the other side committed them, too.”

The fact that Kyiv is able to perpetrate war crimes and massive rights violations against its civilian population while enjoying the vigorous backing of many of the major governments of the world and of much of mainstream media, while a leading, international human rights organization apparently turns a blind eye, is a very alarming sign of the deterioration of the regime of accountability for war crimes that the post-WW2 trials against officials of Nazi Germany established.

Lastly, in its hasty and all-too-brief summary of the human rights topic it is supposedly investigating, Amnesty leaves a gaping, unanswered question. It writes in the report, “The [Donetsk Peoples Republic] officially suspended prisoner exchanges on 5 April 2015, but even since that time it has released some prisoners on an ad hoc basis. Some have been released directly to relatives who picked them up from their places of detention, while others have been released after informal negotiations, including by priests and war veterans on both sides of the conflict.”

Now why did the DPR suspend prisoner exchanges? Left unsaid in the Amnesty report is that the decision was made by Donetsk officials because of Kyiv’s failure to implement the Minsk ceasefire agreement, specifically, its obligation to join in creating working groups to oversee implementation of all the agreement’s terms. Questions have also been raised about whether Kyiv is providing genuine prisoners of the conflict for exchange or whether it is emptying its jails of common prisoners, as it did following the first ceasefire agreement in September 2014 (New York Times report).

Overall, this report by Amnesty International is an example of the bad place where a human rights agency ends up when it promotes a “plague on both your houses” line in a conflict where feigned neutrality only obscures the human rights issues at stake.

Unfortunately, Amnesty’s “both sides are to blame” message will carry a great deal of weight and will be spread far and wide. It deserves vigorous response and challenge.

May 29, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

US government ordered to prepare Guantánamo force-feeding videos for release

Reprieve | May 29, 2015

An appeal court has today ordered the Obama Administration to redact 12 hours of secret Guantánamo force-feeding footage in preparation for its public release, rejecting the Administration’s argument that not one single frame should be seen by the public.

The classified videos, which show Guantánamo prisoner Abu Wa-‘el Dhiab being forcibly removed from his cell and force-fed by the US military, were ordered to be released to the public by federal Judge Gladys Kessler in October 2014, following a First Amendment intervention from 16 US press organizations in the abuse case Dhiab v Obama.

The Obama Administration defied Judge Kessler’s order to prepare the videos for release, complaining that the process was too much work and insisting that revealing even one frame from the videos posed a national security risk. Leaving the videos unredacted, the Administration took the case straight to D.C.’s federal Court of Appeals in an attempt to get the order overturned.

In a judgment handed down today, the Court of Appeals ruled that the Administration’s refusal to comply with the lower court’s order was wrong, and rejected its attempt to use the ‘burdensome’ task of redacting videos as a reason to circumvent the First Amendment.

The Obama Administration must now comply with Judge Kessler’s original order to redact the videotapes to address national security concerns, and submit the redacted tapes to her court for reconsideration ahead of their release.

Alka Pradhan, Reprieve US attorney for Mr Dhiab, said: “The Obama Administration’s defiance of Judge Kessler’s order suggests a basic contempt for both the court’s authority and our First Amendment rights, which the Circuit judges recognized.

“The Administration is fighting hard because once those videotapes are redacted, they are one step closer to public release – and the government is one step closer to being held accountable for their treatment of Guantanamo detainees. Yet the harder the Administration resists, the more they confirm that they have much wrongdoing to hide.

“It is time to stop running absurd arguments, and simply to do the right thing: expose and end the ongoing abuse of hunger-strikers at Guantanamo Bay.”

May 29, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

With Courage and Anguish, A Gaza Athlete Speaks Out

By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | May 28, 2015

His name is Iyad Abu Gharqoud; he is a soccer player and a resident of Gaza, and he speaks to us directly from The New York Times today, allowing us to hear his anguish— as well as his courage—in telling his own experience of Israeli oppression. This is a rare occurrence in the newspaper of record, and we should savor the moment.

It is true that Abu Gharqoud’s op-ed piece “FIFA Should Give Israel the Red Card,” appears in print only in the international edition, but it is also to be found online, with a reasonably prominent position on the World page. The essay, calling on FIFA to suspend Israel for its treatment of Palestinians, is notable for its ring of genuine feeling: his love of soccer, his grief at the suffering he has endured and witnessed and his fear of Israeli reprisals for this moment of speaking out.

The young athlete writes to us from Bureij, a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, where his family has lived since they were driven from their home near Beersheba in 1948. He has found “great joy” in playing soccer, but as a professional he has come up against the fact that Palestinians under occupation live “at the whim of Israeli officials.”

His teams, Hilal al Quds and the Palestinian national team, are often held up at check points or prevented from traveling altogether; players, coaches and referees are denied travel rights, harassed and imprisoned; and two athletes were permanently maimed last year when Israeli border police shot them in their feet.

Abu Gharqoud writes of the special agony of Gaza, where Israel bombed soccer fields and recreation areas last summer, where four boys died under Israeli shells as they played soccer on a sandy beach and where Israeli missile fire killed eight soccer fans as they watched a televised World Cup game.

When he calls for FIFA to suspend Israel, his plea has the force of a moral argument. “I have been stopped at too many checkpoints, held for too many hours and suffered too long on account of my Palestinian nationality to be silent at this crucial moment,” he writes.

Here it becomes clear that he is taking a serious risk by speaking out. He goes on: “I have dedicated much of my life to excelling at the sport I love, but there are more important things in life than success on the soccer pitch.” In other words, he knows that Israel could choose to ruin his career for what he has told the world.

This is an antidote to the usual Times reports on Palestine/Israel, where we find official commentary taking the place of on-the-ground reality. Abu Gharqoud speaks with an authentic voice, and he gives us one small piece of the crushing Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Although he writes of soccer, he links its struggle under Israeli rule to the larger picture of occupation, to the “subjugation of the Palestinian people.” Two states or one, he writes, is not important. “Equality is.”

The article should point us to Israel’s repressive policies beyond the game of soccer. We could substitute almost any other endeavor in its place and find similar stories: in education, for instance, where schools are attacked with tear gas and students detained on the way to exams, in agriculture, where crops are destroyed and market produce left to rot at checkpoints.

In this piece, the Times has lifted the curtain to give us a brief view of the crushing effect of the Israeli occupation. Readers would benefit from more of this, but past experience warns that we should not expect a repeat any time soon.

May 29, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Activists Confront “Jerusalem Hug” March

IMEMC News & Agencies | May 28, 2015

Activists confronted participants in the so-called “Jerusalem Hug” march, in which Palestinian and Israelis participated in Jerusalem, on Thursday.

Palestinians from Jerusalem gathered near Damascus Gate, where the march took place, and started telling Palestinian participants in the event that it had “normalization” goals.

There were minor scuffles and exchanges of swearing between the two sides.

Head of Fateh’s Jerusalem youth council Ahmad al-Ghoul told Ma’an News Agency that Palestinian participants in the march — from the West Bank cities of Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, and Tulkarem — were deceived into joining it by luring them with permits to enter Jerusalem.

Al-Ghoul said that the organization claimed that the march was a “humanitarian project for people in the West Bank” and provided them with permits and the necessary transportation without showing them the “normalization” goals of the visit.

He added that such organizations equate the “victim and the executioner” and show the world a picture of Palestinians and Israelis living in peace and love, spending millions of shekels in the process.

Israeli police detained Mahdi Abu Sbeih and Shadi al-Labban, who were trying to stop the march.

May 29, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment