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Italian workers go on strike over cuts

Press TV – December 19, 2011

Public sector workers in Italy are once again holding a strike to protest against the imposition of the government’s harsh austerity measures aimed at saving the country from financial ruin.

Italian postal and health workers were joined by teachers on Monday in a one day strike to protest a package of cost-cutting measures the government aims to pass by the end of the year.

Protesters in Rome are expected to march on parliament to oppose Prime Minister Mario Monti’s 30-billion euros budget bill.

Italy’s main union leaders say the measures are too tough for pensioners and workers and not tough enough on the wealthy.

The main objections are the introduction of property taxes on primary residences as well as pension cuts and the hefty raise of the retirement age.

Monti believes Italy will “collapse” like Greece without the new austerity measures, saying the package will also help solve the eurozone debt crisis.

Italy’s debt, totaling around 1.9 trillion euros, is 120 percent of its Gross Domestic Product. Rome has been under intense pressure to act quickly ahead of a key European Union summit on Thursday and Friday.

The government has said it will meet its target of balancing the budget by 2013 but has warned the Italian economy will slip back into recession next year.

December 19, 2011 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Adelaide BDS, one year of protest

|  October 3, 2011

BOYCOTT ISRAEL

The Boycott of Israeli goods is part of an international movement known as the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. The movement was initiated in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organisations and has gained momentum internationally as the brutality of Israel has time and again been exposed to the world.

The main goals of the movement are to:

– Expose the true nature of Israel’s occupation and apartheid practices

-Give real value to human rights by making Israel accountable for its crimes

– Reveal and highlight the complicity of the international community in supporting Israeli crimes that relentlessly violate human rights and international law

– End international law support for Israeli occupation and apartheid with the understanding that apartheid cannot be sustained without external assistance.

Join the Campaign:

http://www.bdsmovement.net/

http://www.afopa.com.au/

The music for this video is ‘We Resist (Free Palestine)’ by DocJazz

http://www.docjazz.com

December 19, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

In blow to Israel, French BDS activists acquitted of crime in calling for boycott

By Ali Abunimah – The Electronic Intifada – 12/18/2011

Twelve French activists from a group called Boycott 68 have been acquitted on charges of “inciting discrimination and racial hatred” for calling on French shoppers to boycott Israeli goods.

The court judgment in the eastern city of Mulhouse deals a blow to efforts by French prosecutors and Zionist groups to outlaw the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. The acquittal received wide coverage in French media.

Campagne BDS France declared in a statement (my translation), on the day of the verdict:

Thursday, 15 December will be a historic date for the Campaign in France. The court at Mulhouse has in effect acquitted the 12 activists prosecuted for their participation in the BDS campaign.

They had been pursued by the usual conveyers of Israel’s policies, as well as by the LICRA [International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism] for “discrimination and inciting hatred and violence toward a group or nation” for having participated in two boycott actions in the Carrefour supermarket in Illzach.

The protests took place in September 2009 and May 2010. The statement noted that similar cases, have been brought against French activists in the cities of Perpignan, Paris, Bordeaux and Pontoise and that on 8 July a court in Paris had acquitted another activist on a similar charge. More cases are pending.

Zionist, anti-Palestinian groups behind charges

Charges against the activists in Mulhouse were brought, according to Reuters, after complaints by the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, known by its French acronym BNCVA, the France Israel Chamber of Commerce and LICRA.

BNCVA is an unofficial group that purports to fight against anti-Semitism, but its website indicates that it is closely affiliated with and perhaps a project of the Paris-based European branch of the extreme anti-Palestinian Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center is notoriously behind the destruction of Muslim graves in Jerusalem to build a so-called “Museum of Tolerance.” Shimon Samuels is the director of both the European Wiesenthal Center and the BNCVA.

The real agenda of the BNCVA was revealed in a comment by its president Sammy Ghozlan in reaction to the court judgment. It appears to be to conflate support for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitic statements and acts – which are illegal in France and many other European countries.

The decision, Ghozlan told Reuters, would encourage more “pro-Palestinian propaganda.” “We know,” Ghozlan said, “that such propaganda is the essential source of anti-Semitic acts that take place on our soil.”

The Mulhouse judgment is thus a blow to Israeli-inspired efforts to criminalize support for Palestinian rights in Europe and to legally declare all such speech and action as “anti-Semitic.”

A “civil right” to call for boycott

French prosecutors had asked the court to fine each of the activists €500 ($650), but the judges instead released the defendants. One of the lawyers for the activists hailed the decision, according to Reuters (my translation):

For Attorney Antoine Compte, lawyer for the accused in Mulhouse, the new jurisprudence that appears to be taking root in France signifies that calling for boycott “is a civil right as long as it is accompanied neither by violence nor by pressure on people.” He noted that previous boycott movements in the past, against the Spain of General Franco, or the Olympic Games in China were never the target of legal pursuit.

Even the France-Israel Chamber of Commerce conceded on its website that “BDS won an important legal battle in Mulhouse.”

French BDS activists’ distinctive form of protest

The multiplying efforts to use criminal charges to suppress free speech in France and shield Israel from accountability are an indication of how widespread BDS activism has become, and the distinctive forms of protest French activists have adopted – particularly highly visible actions in supermarkets.

Activists posted a video of such an action at a Carrefour supermarket in southern France on 26 November.

A recent brief documentary that you can view online profiles the increasingly bold protests by French activists and the mounting prosecutions that they have faced.

December 18, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Activists file lawsuit against Minnesota State Board of Investment over Israel bonds

By Nora Barrows-Friedman – The Electronic Intifada – 12/16/2011

Activists with the Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign (MN BBC) have officially filed a lawsuit against the State Board of Investments (SBI), demanding that Minnesota divest from Israel’s illegal military occupation activities in Palestine.

This lawsuit was filed despite Governor Mark Dayton’s recent rejection of MN BBC’s demand that the SBI divest from Israel bonds, the campaign stated in a press release sent by email to The Electronic Intifada. The statement continued:

On November 29, 2011, MN BBC, along with 26 other co-plaintiffs, including Palestinian residents of the besieged village of Bil’in in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Jewish-Israeli members of the Israeli human rights advocacy group Boycott From Within, served a lawsuit against the SBI demanding that it cancel its Israel Bonds investments. The suit was not formally filed in court at that time in order to permit the SBI an opportunity to resolve MN BBC’s divestment demand without the necessity of court action.

The lawsuit claims that the Board’s investments in Israel Bonds are unlawful according to Minnesota and international law because they help fund Israel’s universally condemned illegal settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Following Governor Dayton’s rejection of the divestment demand, the Executive Committee of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), headquartered in New York, advised all four members of the SBI Board, including Governor Dayton, that the Board was aiding and abetting Israel’s violation of international law, which also violates Minnesota law. The NLG correspondence to each of the four Board members, which was delivered to them on December 13, 2011, is posted at the MN BBC website at http://mn.breakthebonds.org/?p=1597.

In deciding to proceed with the lawsuit, the plaintiffs also considered the murder by Israeli soldiers last Friday of Mustafa Tamimi, a Palestinian resident of Nebi Saleh, one of a growing number of West Bank villages besieged by Israeli settlers. Tamimi was shot point-blank in the face with a high velocity tear gas grenade. Israel buys a portion of its military equipment with the aid of Israel Bonds. MN Break the Bonds Campaign believes that Minnesota should not be investing our state’s money in such atrocities.

The full text (in PDF format) of the MN BBC’s lawsuit can be read by clicking here.

A summary of complaint reads:

Plaintiffs demand that the SBI divest from Israel Bonds on the basis that monies invested in Israel Bonds are pooled in Israel’s general treasury without restriction on use and that the SBI knows that these pooled funds augment funds that are then used and have been used by Israel to fund activities that violate customary international law. The SBI has refused to divest, in violation of its statutory obligation to act prudently. An actual controversy and dispute of a justiciable nature has therefore arisen between the plaintiffs and defendant.

Activists with MN BBC have been working tirelessly to pressure state lawmakers to divest from Israel bonds. They have initiated public letter-writing campaigns to the Minnesota SBI over the past year, in an effort to flood the capitol building with demands that Minnesota divest from Israel, as well as meetings with SBI representatives in person. Back in March, MN BBC activists met with SBI officials, but said that the state was “unresponsive” to the demands to divest from Israel.

The Electronic Intifada will follow this important lawsuit and provide updates. For more information on the Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign, visit their website at http://mn.breakthebonds.org/.

December 16, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | , | Leave a comment

BDS Update: BDS Unites East and West

By Eric Walberg | Palestine Chronicle | December 14, 2011

Cairo – Just in case there was an iota of doubt left in your mind, Israel was officially declared an apartheid state during a session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in Cape Town on 7 November.

Among depositions, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza cited the Fourth Geneva Convention and the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which prohibits “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

This was just in time to honour the UN-endorsed International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, marked on 29 November to coincide with the anniversary of the UN vote for the Partition Plan, and first celebrated in 1976. Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists in 10 European countries staged more than 60 actions as part of a Day of Action calling on supermarkets and governments to “Take Apartheid off the Menu”.

In the UK, 26 November was declared a national BDS Day of Action targetting Britain’s largest supermarket chain Tesco, the only supermarket in the UK that is openly selling illegal settlement goods. Activities ranged from street protests, e-lobbying, relabelling, flash protests and internetworking. While Agrexco may be kaput as Israel’s largest supplier of fresh produce to Europe, Mehadrin has taken its place and was the target of the European Day of Action Against Israeli Agricultural Produce Exporters.

Demonstrators in the US boarded buses run by Veolia to educate passengers about Israel’s apartheid policies. Boston activists launched a campaign challenging the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Rail Company’s contract with Veolia. In Baltimore, activists demonstrated at Penn Station during rush hour, singing a freedom song and drawing connections between the Palestinian and American struggles for equality, linking Veolia’s profiteering from racism and exploitation in Israel/Palestine to the City of Baltimore’s contracts with its own workers.

In a cynical rearguard bid to attract Christmas shoppers, Israel Lobby activists launched Buy Israel Week November 28, hastily put together to counter the growing BDS tide. Luke Akehurst, director of We Believe in Israel, called for two BUYcott days, featuring discount coupons, sponsored by StandWithUs, El-Al, the Jewish National Fund and other such pillars of Israeli apartheid.

While American sympathisers were politely tolerated in their protests against Veolia’s transport activities in Israel, their compatriots in Palestine proper were violently arrested for confronting Veolia and Egged, the two major culprits, and targets of BDS activists in Europe.

Inspired by their Western supporters, six Palestinian Freedom Riders emulated the legendary Freedom Riders of the American south of the 1960s, riding settler bus 148 near the illegal settlement of Psagot. Much like those courageous black and white Americans (including many Jews) of yesteryear, the Palestinians were forcibly removed and arrested.

This new generation of Freedom Riders will further inspire Westerners for whom “It is a moral duty to end complicity in this Israeli system of apartheid,” according to arrested Hebron resident Badee Dwak. Fellow arrestee Basel Al-Araj minced no words: “The settlers are to Israel what the KKK was to the Jim Crow South — an unruly, fanatic mob that has enormous influence in shaping Israeli policies today and that violently enforces these policies with extreme violence and utter impunity.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker wrote: “Board the buses to Everywhere. Sit freely. Go into Jerusalem with my blessing. Like many of my country people, I have witnessed this scenario before and know where it can lead. To a straightening of the back and a full breath taken by the soul. Some of us have shed blood, others have shed tears. Some have shed both. All sacred to the cause of the dignity we deserve as beautifully fashioned citizens and Beings of this Universe.”

Sadly, as he honoured the Freedom Riders of the 1960s for their courage and dedication fifty years ago, President Barack Obama had no such words for the equally brave ones in Israel today.

In the Arab world, 29 November activities took BDS the logical extra step, with 7,000 Jordanians gathering in the Jordan Valley and marching to the Israeli border to condemn Israel’s settlement expansion, calling for the liberation of Al-Quds (Jerusalem), home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is the second holiest site for Muslims. “We sacrifice our souls and blood for Al-Aqsa Mosque and Al-Quds,” the Jordanians chanted after noon prayers, calling on Jordanian authorities to scrap its peace treaty with Israel.

Even as 100,000s of Cairenes gathered to defend the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square 26 November, a rally co-sponsored by Al-Azhar and the Union of Muslim Scholars attended by 5,000 called on Muslims to fight “Jerusalem’s Judaisation”. Al-Azhar Imam Ahmed Al-Tayeb said: “We are telling Israel and Europe that we shall not allow even one stone to be moved there.” Activists chanted: “Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, judgment day has come.”

In other boycott news, a victory for a clutch of brave and principled tennis fans arrested for protesting at the New Zealand Women’s Tennis Open last December, which featured Israeli Shahar Peer. After a year of trials, they were finally exonerated in a landmark decision by High Court Justice Paul Heath, who said “Disruption of an individual’s enjoyment of a sporting event was not the same as disruption of public order.” Quipped a free John Minto, “Annoyance is not a crime, annoyance is part of being in democracy.” The judge said it was clear the protest was meant to convey to the tennis player the concerns at the way Israel treated the Palestinian Territories.

In contrast to the tidal wave of Western artists now boycotting Israel-linked events (the Yardbirds just cancelled a scheduled Tel Aviv show), iconic singer and actor Barbra Streisand performed at a fundraising gala in Los Angeles for Friends of the IDF. Streisand supports OneVoice, which promotes a two-state solution that fails to address structural injustices and has long been discredited. Guests of honour included media magnate Haim Saban and former Israeli Military Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, who commanded the attacks on Gaza in 2008-09 which killed 1,400 Palestinians. An Israeli propaganda video about Streisand’s appearance at the gala features armed Israeli soldiers running in a scenic sunset. A shameful sunset in her own career.

In a wonderfully shocking divestment move, Israeli powers-that-be are furious at BNP Paribas for shutting down its operations in Israel. Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and Banks Supervisor David Zaken believe the bank’s board of directors caved to pressure groups, in the first case in years of a foreign bank leaving Israel. BNP Paribas has had operations in Israel since 2003. The bank claims it sustained serious damage from the Greek crisis, yet the only foreign branch it is closing is its Israeli one.

Unfortunately, as yet, no international governmental sanctions against Israel have been imposed in the past few months. On the contrary, the US continues to oppose attempts to boycott Israel, putting great pressure especially on Arab League states, which officially support BDS. Under US antiboycott legislation enacted in 1978, US firms are prohibited from compliance with any such boycott directly or for a third party, and are required to report any such request to the US Department of Commerce. The WTO is an accomplice, as Israel is supposed to be treated as a Most Favoured Nation by member states.

This pressure has unfortunately had its effect. Morocco and Gulf Coordination Council members, especially Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, acceded to US arguments that boycotting Israel harmed the “peace process” and turn a blind eye to third-party economic relations with Israel and even quietly conduct direct trade.

But the Arab Spring is forcing these truant governments to wake up to their people’s demands. And the US showpiece for its vision of the new Middle East — Iraq — doesn’t dare end boycott activities, which were the hallmark of Iraqi politics prior to the US invasion.

December 15, 2011 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

West Bank village steps up protests against Israel’s theft of land

By Ben Lorber | The Electronic Intifada | December 13, 2011

For approximately five months, the residents of Kufr Qaddoum have united to demonstrate against the illegal Israeli settlement of Kedumim and the Israeli military’s closure of their village’s main road. Kufr Qaddoum, a West Bank village so old that, according to legend, Abraham was circumcised there with an axe, has since 1976 been plagued by Kedumim, a 3,000-inhabitant Israeli settlement that now surrounds the village on five hilltops. Kufr Qaddoum’s main road, which passes through Kedumim to link the village to Nablus, was closed by the Israeli military in 2003.

“The people of Kufr Qaddoum used this road long before the settlements came,” said Murad Shttaiwa, spokesman for the demonstrators. “Before 2003, we could drive through the settlement with no problems. Between 2004 and 2005, after the road was closed to cars, we walked through the settlement with no problems.”

In 2005, the road became closed to foot traffic as well. Before the new, indirect route to Nablus was constructed in 2008, “we used to walk and drive down unpaved dirt roads around Kedumim, but the settlers would still throw stones at cars and people,” Shttaiwa explained. “We would not react to it … for three years, we used to travel on a road made for animals.”

Now that Kufr Qaddoum’s main road is closed to villagers, a 13-kilometer straight journey to Nablus has turned into a 26-kilometer detour through a busy West Bank artery. “Three people have actually died trying to get through the main road,” Shttaiwa said, “because they were ill in ambulances, and the soldiers wouldn’t let the ambulance through.”

Taking the closures to court

When the road was first closed in 2003, villagers organized a single demonstration. “It was very peaceful,” Shttaiwa said. “The people left work and came, took their cars to where the barrier is [on the road], and then just sat and talked. We spoke with the soldiers and the soldiers stated to us that the road will eventually be opened.”

When the soldiers’ promise failed to materialize, however, villagers took the issue to court in 2004. After five years of waiting, in November 2010 Kufr Qaddoum finally received a positive response from the Israeli court system, authorizing its Palestinian villagers to use the road again. At that time, however, the Israeli military groundlessly claimed that the road is “unsuitable” and “unsafe” for human traffic. After all legal appeals failed, villagers decided to organize weekly demonstrations in July 2011.

Since then, Kufr Qaddoum has consistently held one of the most tight-knit, well-organized and well-attended Palestinian-led demonstrations against the Israeli occupation in the West Bank.

Hundreds of villagers, united with international activists and flanked by gas-masked media teams, walk down the main road towards Kedumim week after week, demanding the right to movement. “I’m very happy that a lot of people from the village are coming out for the demonstrations,” said Shttaiwa. “Even during Ramadan we thought people would fall back from protesting, but they still came out in numbers. Even during harvesting, they did not fall back, they still came out in numbers — after the harvest, they would put away their equipment and come out for the demonstrations.”

Funeral for the occupation

At the front line of the demonstration, villagers often stage a telling spectacle. A week before Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority’s president, gave a speech to the UN in September, villagers held a mock funeral for the occupation on 16 September, carrying a coffin draped with an Israeli flag.

A video of the demonstration, produced by the International Solidarity Movement, shows villagers setting the coffin ablaze moments before a phalanx of Israeli soldiers opened fire with tear gas (“Kafr Qaddoum September 16 2011,” 16 September 2011).

Later in September, villagers burnt an effigy of Benjamin Netanyahu after holding a mock trial condemning the Israeli prime minister for war crimes (“Kufr Qaddoum demands access,” International Solidarity Movement, 30 September 2011).

Demonstrations in Kufr Qaddoum have been accompanied by everything from a donkey painted with an Israeli flag to a live band from the Netherlands.

As demonstrations show no signs of losing steam, the Israeli military has escalated its attacks on Kufr Qaddoum. A recent report by the Palestinian news agency WAFA indicated that 12 persons — including five Palestinian children — were attacked with heavy tear gas and stun grenades during a weekly demonstration (“Israeli soldiers suppress Kufr Qaddoum weekly anti-settlements march,” 4 November 2011).

“Even though the demonstrations and the barriers are 500 meters away” from the village, explained Shttaiwa, “the soldiers will get closer and closer … [on 11 November], the soldiers got so close they were right outside my house, and the tear gas got inside the house, so my two-year-old son smelled it, and came up to me and said ‘Daddy, my eyes hurt!’”

Aggression gets worse

The military enters the village, in Shttaiwa’s words, because “the protests are getting stronger and stronger, and they want to stop the protests, so they are becoming more violent and more aggressive.” The Israeli military is also conducting frequent night raids into the village. Four days before a protest on 21 October, the army entered the village at night and arrested nine people (“Permission to enter their own lands: Kufr Qaddoum rampaged again by military,” International Solidarity Movement, 21 October 2011).

Though protests focus on the closure of their main road, the villagers of Kufr Qaddoum resist an occupation which touches on all aspects of their lives. More than half of the village’s land, approximately 11,800 dunams (one dunam equals 1,000 square meters), is situated in Area C of the West Bank — an area under the full administration of the Israeli army. Under the carve-up of the West Bank made by the 1993 Oslo accords, Area C includes all Israeli settlements and most of the Jordan Valley.

That means villagers need permission to access their own land from the Israeli District Coordinating Office. Olive harvesters, therefore, are unable to prepare their trees for the harvest throughout the year, and are only given a few days to complete the harvest itself.

Eyal Ha-Leuveni, a researcher with Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, told The Electronic Intifada that it is “very difficult” for Palestinians who own land around the Kedumim settlement to go through the permit process. “First you have to prove your ownership of the land, and this depends on your family history — if one family member was involved in a crime, likely no family member will get a permit,” Ha-Leuveni said. “The permit process can take years, and in the meantime you get a temporary permit, which is very insecure.”

In addition, Palestinian farmlands in Area C are often stolen by settlers. In March 2008, a legal battle, waged by lawyers from Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din on behalf of Kufr Qaddoum residents, helped expose the method of land takeover characteristic of Kedumim and other settlements across the West Bank (“Court case reveals how settlers illegally grab West Bank lands,” Haaretz, 17 March 2008).

Kedumim’s local council members would map the “abandoned lands” around the settlements, even if they were outside the council’s jurisdiction, with the aim of taking them over. The council would “allocate” the lands to settlers, who would sign an official form stating that they have no ownership claim; and that the council is entitled to evict them whenever it sees fit, in return for compensating them solely for their investment in cultivating the land.

Kedumim’s former security chief, Michael Bar-Neder, testified that the land “allocation” was followed by an effort to expand the settlement. Bar-Neder said that once the settlers seized the lands, an application would be made to the military commander to declare them as owned by the State of Israel, since under an Israeli “law” covering the West Bank, anyone who does not cultivate his land for three years forfeits ownership of it (“Court case reveals how settlers illegally grab West Bank lands,” Haaretz, 17 March 2008).

It is important to emphasize that Israel’s “laws” regarding the West Bank lack any legitimacy as all Israeli settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. In violation of international law, Israel has seized West Bank land, in the words of Ha-Leuveni, “first by military orders, then by state land, then by private acquisition.”

The area where Kedumim now sits, said Ha-Leuveni, “is land that was first taken by military orders, where the army claimed the land was needed for military needs. Israel abandoned this justification in the 1980s, but it did not return any of this land to Palestinian owners.”

In a process that accelerated throughout the 1980s, West Bank land transferred from military to state ownership. “All the policy of declaring state land,” added Ha-Nuevi, “is an Israeli invention. There are large parts of the ‘state land’ of Qedumim that were owned or at least cultivated by Palestinians before Israel called it state land.”

According to a July 2010 report on Kedumim by B’Tselem, “construction of approximately 59 [Kedumim] units deviated from the ‘state lands’ allotted to the settlement; two permanent structures and 12 caravans were erected on private Palestinian land; and a new neighborhood, comprising some 30 caravans, was built west of the settlement, deviating from the allotted ‘state land.’” (“By Hook and By Crook: Israeli Settlement Policy in the West Bank,” B’Tselem, July 2010).

In addition, Israel plans to erect a wall between Kedumim and Kufr Qaddoum, which, according to a 2005 report by The Economist, would grab another 5,000 dunams more than the 5,000 Kufr Qaddoum has already lost (“Life in the armpits of Palestine,” 7 April 2005).

Shttaiwa estimated that Kufr Qaddoum has already lost 58 percent of its land to Kedumim, and will lose 80 percent upon completion of the wall. Contrary to the Kedumim security officer’s statement, quoted in The Economist, that “not one centimeter of Qedumim is built on land known for sure to be private,” a 2009 B’Tselem map details that much of Qedumim is built entirely on privately-owned Palestinian land (“Private Palestinian land in the built-up and municipal area of Kedumim,” B’Tselem, 2009).

Illegal appropriation of Kufr Qaddoum land to the settlement

This process of illegal appropriation has plagued Kufr Qaddoum since the establishment of Kedumim in 1976. “Every year the settlement has expanded,” Shttaiwa told The Electronic Intifada. “Since the settlement came it has been expanding, as well as stealing more and more land. Over the years they have also attacked people harvesting their olives, thrown stones at them, and stolen their olives. It has gotten worse in recent years.”

Settler violence, Shttaiwa explained, increased after the first intifada, in which Kufr Qaddoum played a minimal role. “At the beginning we had no problems … [but] now these settlers are known to be pretty violent,” he said. “In the first intifada they killed a male from here and injured another one as well. After the second intifada, they began attacking olive trees.”

Two years ago, settlers spray-painted “This is Israel” and other graffiti upon the burial stones of a Kufr Qaddoum cemetery.

In testimony given to B’Tselem last year, farmer ‘Abd a-Latif ‘Obeid said that over the years, Kedumim settlers have intentionally sabotaged his olive harvest, dumped burning refuse onto his land, and stolen more than fifty dunams to build greenhouses and a park (“Testimony: Israel seizes land and hampers access for farmers near the Kedumim settlement,” B’Tselem, 21 June 2010).

“We’ve been suffering from this situation since 1984,” he states in the report. “All the land seizures, the settler attacks, and the need to coordinate entry are aimed at expanding the Kedumim settlement, which already has a large amount of land, and at taking, little by little, the rest of our land. They force us to neglect our land so it will be easier for them to annex it to the settlement.”

In addition, Kufr Qaddoum suffers from the socio-economic effects of occupation. A 2007 report by the Jerusalem-based Land Research Center estimates that, since 2002, 75 percent of Kufr Qaddoum’s residents became unemployed after construction of Israel’s wall in the West Bank and closure of Kufr Qaddoum’s main road shut out many possibilities for income generation in Israel and Nablus (“Closing of Israeli roads in Kafr Qaddum village,” Land Research Center, 7 February 2007).

Now, almost half of Kufr Qaddoum’s residents depend on foreign aid for living, and emigration has reached a record high of 10-15 percent of the total population.

“Everyone is affected”

The demonstrations in Kufr Qaddoum are a long-overdue response to the suffering the village has endured for decades. The whole village comes out to demonstrate — college students who are tired of paying 20 shekels ($5) a day to get to take an extended detour to school in Nablus; farmers who are tired of living in fear, tired of seeing their olive trees burnt, their land stolen, their livelihoods ruined; villagers who demand the right to move freely down a road that is their own.

“In Kufr Qaddoum and throughout Palestine,” Shttaiwa explained, “we do not have demonstrations for the sake of the demonstration itself. None of us likes to be dead, or likes to smell tear gas, or likes to damage his house. We only want our rights. We always say to the Israeli army, ‘give us our rights and we will not go for demonstrations. Leave our land and we will not go to demonstrations.’ That is our message in Palestine.”

Ben Lorber is an activist with the International Solidarity Movement in Nablus. He is also a journalist with the Alternative Information Center in Bethlehem. He blogs at freepaly.wordpress.com.

December 13, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Occupy protesters succeed in port bid

Press TV – December 13, 2011

US ‘Occupy’ protesters have successfully shut down California’s Oakland port, as the movement continues to gain strength across the country.

Protesters successfully blocked trucks arriving at the port of Oakland California on Monday, in an attempt to block the entrance of goods serving the capitalist class in the country, the Occupy California website reported.

Port workers were sent home following the shutdown.

The latest developments follow efforts by protesters to block several of the busiest West Coast ports.

Meanwhile, demonstrators severely disrupted traffic at ports in Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, Portland, and Long Beach.

Protesters called the coordinated rallies a response to the dismantling of Occupy encampments by US police across the country.

Protests have been led by Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen, who sustained a head injury during an Occupy Oakland rally in October.

The Occupy Wall Street movement began when a group of demonstrators gathered in New York’s financial district on September 17 to protest against the unjust distribution of wealth in the country and the excessive influence of big corporations on US policies.

Despite the police crackdown and mass arrests, the Occupy movement, which grew out of the Occupy Wall Street movement, has now spread to many major US cities as well as to Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and other countries.

December 13, 2011 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

‘Ha’aretz’: Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists storm ‘Jewish supermarket’!

By Phan Nguyen | Mondoweiss | December 12, 2011

There’s a phenomenon that I have at times witnessed which continues to shock me though it should not: individual Jews exploiting the fears and insecurities of other Jews in order to garner their support for an agenda that they otherwise would not be so supportive of.

Such is the case with a recent Ha’aretz report by Barak Ravid. Ravid warns his readers that

An intensive delegitimization campaign is taking place in cities across the United States—on university campuses, at malls and in front of Israel consulates.

Well sure, we’ve heard about it before. That’s the thing they call the BDS, right? But wait:

The campaign is not aimed at the settlement enterprise, or against the occupation and the humiliation of millions of Palestinians at checkpoints, but rather the campaign is against the very existence of the State of Israel, and promoting a boycott of anything that might even smell Israeli.

One example is the story of “Park Slope Food Co-op,” a Jewish supermarket located in Brooklyn, situated in one of the most “Jewish” areas in the United States. Every week, hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists assemble near the entrance, where one can purchase Israeli goods, and call for a general boycott of the store.

Truly frightening, especially since it’s so untrue. How shall we parse this?

1. The Park Slope Food Co-op is not a “Jewish supermarket.” It is a food cooperative open to everyone who joins as a working member. It is not explicitly marketed toward Jews, and there is nothing distinctly Jewish about it (as some of the Christmas-themed products currently on the shelves will attest to).

2. “Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists” do not “assemble near the entrance” every week. Ravid is possibly referring to the one or two people who leaflet outside the Co-op every now and then.

3. Moreover these leafleters are not “call[ing] for a general boycott of the store” but instead calling for a member referendum on whether the Co-op should honor the Palestinian BDS call.

4. The Hebrew version of Ravid’s article reports the same thing but includes this additional lie:

…where one can purchase Israeli goods such as Bamba, Milky, and hummus…

I have never seen Bamba or Milky at the Co-op, and hummus is not an “Israeli good.”

So how did Ravid come up with this story? Most likely he coordinated with Yuli Edelstein, the Israeli Minister of “Information,” whom Ravid quotes in the same article. Edelstein and his entourage visited the Park Slope Food Co-op last week, along with StandWithUs regional coordinator Avi Posnick, who has been tasked with taking down the Co-op.

Richard Silverstein has the scoop on that story on his blog. (Disclosure: I assisted Richard with the story.)

Finally, Ravid claims that the BDS campaign has nothing to do with supporting human rights and equality for Palestinians. Instead, it is motivated by hatred for Israel and is “promoting a boycott of anything that might even smell Israeli.” Since his sole example turns out to be a complete fabrication, we can dismiss this argument as well.

But we should note how often this type of argument is made, and we should understand the racist assumption behind this thinking. The assumption is that those who fight for Palestinian human rights are disingenuous because Palestinians aren’t human beings and aren’t worth fighting for. Thus the only possible motivation for criticizing Israel for its treatment of Palestinians is hatred of Jews.

Both Ha’aretz and Barak Ravid owe the literate world an apology.

December 12, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Israeli SodaStream: Maybe Green, Definitely Not Clean

By Theresa Wolfwood | Palestine Chronicle | December 10, 2011

It seems like a great idea – to buy a counter top device that converts tap water into sparkling fizzy water. Add a line of 100 flavours of sweet syrups; in the words of the sales clerk I spoke to, ‘it’s a fun thing.’

SodaStream (sometimes marketed as Soda Club) is sold around the world including in my city, often by big chain stores like Costco, Kmart and Amazon (USA); Sears, The Bay, and Home Outfitters (Canada); Tesco, Asda and Argos (UK); Migros (a large coop network in Switzerland); Carrefour (France & other countries); Edeka, Adler, and Karstadt, (in Germany where it is distributed by Brita, the international water filter company. Brita products are sold in Israel by SodaStream.)

The world’s largest producer of home carbonation systems, sold in 41 countries, SodaStream claims to be environmentally friendly because it uses its own reusable bottles, saving the production and transport of millions of disposable plastic containers and saving money and time for consumers. As some of the syrups use natural products, while others use sugar and artificial sweeteners, it is promoted also as “healthy” in natural food, eco-friendly, green and biological shops.

It sounds too good to be true – and so it is.

These products are labelled “Made in Israel”, the company claims to have factories elsewhere including China. An examination of the corporate annual report reveals that only some parts are made in China. (SodaStream International Ltd.; Annual report,” 30 June 2011).

SodaStream is owned by Soda-Club, an Israeli company founded in 1991 by Peter Wiseburgh and publicly traded on NASDAQ as SodaStream International under the symbol SODA with 2009 revenues of USA$ 142,842,000.

However, the products are not made in Israel at all.

SodaStream is manufactured in Mishor Adumin, (also known as Mishor Edomin) one of 171 illegal settlements within Palestine. Mishor Adumin is about 20 kilometres east of Jerusalem in a strategic area of illegal settlements designed to cut off Palestinians’ right of free movement between the northern and southern areas of the West Bank. Syrups are produced in another settlement, Ashkelon. (The device uses disposable carbon dioxide cartridges which are made in Germany and other countries.)

“These products are fraudulently labelled as “Made in Israel”, but are in fact produced in illegal settlements under the conditions of the military occupation in the West Bank, outside the internationally-recognized borders of Israel.” http://www.bdsmovement.net/2011

Environmentally-friendly? Think of the Palestinian residents and farmers of Mishor Adumin whose homes, fields, orchards and forests were destroyed to create this industrial settlement and the neighbouring residential settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim which today ranks third in population of all Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Over 1.5 million trees have been destroyed in Palestine by the occupiers as they insinuate their homes and factories into Palestinian land. More than 300,000 Palestinians are homeless as a result of home demolitions in Palestine.

The environmental destruction continues. When I was in Palestine I witnessed fields, orchards and homes being bulldozed and leveled, preparing for the continuation of the wall and the construction of an Israeli-only super highway linking all the settlements around Jerusalem, including Ma’aleh Adumim and Mishor Adumin.

So how can SodaStream be green?

There is nothing clean about the production of this ‘fun’ product, either. Many of the workers in SodaStream factory are Palestinians, desperate for any kind of job. Independent research has revealed that workers are poorly paid, sometimes below the minimum wage, are threatened with job loss (in any Israeli-owned facility) if they complain about bad working condition, job insecurity or low wages. They are the occupied subjects of military rule, lacking legal rights, including the right to organize. (For more details, see here)

SodaStream has also been accused of fraud. The European Union grants certain tax benefits to Israeli goods imported into Europe, but that does not include goods produced in occupied territories. In 2010 the European Court of Justice ruled that its products manufactured in Israeli-occupied territories were not subject to the preferential import duty treatment as goods manufactured within Israel. In Germany shipments of these products have been stopped by customs because they are not labelled truthfully.

Resolutions #242 & #338 of the UN Security Council include statements that prohibit permanent settlement of occupied lands for domestic or commercial purposes; Israel continues to rob Palestine of land, resources and access. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 also states that, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, founded by 180 civil organizations in Palestine, has spread around the world. Solidarity groups everywhere are chalking up successes in consumer products and institutional investments, including national pension plans. (See: BDS: BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights. 2011. Haymarket Books, USA by Omar Barghouti)

Meanwhile SodaStream claims with much publicity to have sold one million of its devices in socially-responsible Sweden. But in July, 2011 the Coop (Cooperative Stores Network) announced it would stop selling SodaStream products because they are made in occupied territory and their sale was in conflict with Coop’s own ethical standard as well as Global Compact, the UN ethical guidelines for businesses. In Belgium as well as other European countries BDS campaigners actively protest against the sale of SodaStream.

USA and Canada both have a Free Trade Agreement with Israel. That means, as in the European Union, certain taxes are not levied on partners. By allowing SodaStream to sell its fraudulently labelled “Made in Israel” products, illegally produced under military occupation, as free trade products, the company receives financial concessions under Free Trade agreements.

Boycotts are powerful tools for our international campaigns for human rights. Ahava Cosmetic Products are also made in an illegal settlement, Mitzpe Shalem, near the Dead Sea; they are no longer sold in major outlets in Canada and USA after boycott actions. As law respecting citizens we have a responsibility to stop the illegal sale of another luxury product with dubious health or environmental benefits, made under conditions that violate the human rights of workers and all Palestinians.

Boycott SodaStream!

– Theresa Wolfwood is a writer and activist in Victoria, BC, Canada. She visited Palestine in 2010 and Belgium in 2011.

December 11, 2011 Posted by | Environmentalism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Volunteer in Gaza with the ISM

International Solidarity Movement, Gaza | December 9, 2011

The International Solidarity Movement is appealing for activists to join our team in the besieged Gaza Strip.  After being barred from Gaza in 2003 following the murders of Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall, ISM Gaza was reinstated in August 2008 when ISM and other volunteers traveled aboard the historic, siege-breaking voyage of the first Free Gaza Movement boat. ISM has maintained a constant presence in Gaza since that time, for over three years of Israel’s crippling siege.

ISM volunteers refused to leave when Israel began bombing Gaza in December 2008. During the devastating 23-day assault, activists accompanied ambulances and provided vital testimony to the international media.

Daily life in Gaza is a harrowing struggle. In stark violation of international law, Israel enforces a three-nautical-mile fishing blockade. The Israeli-imposed ‘buffer zone’ swallows up a third of Gaza’s farmland, which lies along the Israeli border. Farmers are routinely shot and killed simply for working their land well inside Gaza’s borders.

ISM Gaza volunteers accompany farmers and demonstrators in the ‘buffer zone’, as well as fishermen routinely harassed by the Israeli navy. Visit http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/category/gaza/ to watch videos and read reports by ISM Gaza.

Those interested in joining the ISM Gaza team are required to attend a preliminary training in their home country and must communicate with the volunteers in Gaza prior to arrival. Entering Gaza is an arduous process that may require some time to be spent in Egypt. All ISM volunteers in Gaza must agree to ISM principles as delineated on www.palsolidarity.org.

Also recommended:

  • Previous experience in the West Bank with the ISM strongly encouraged; if not, experience with nonviolent direct action, preferably elsewhere in the Middle East
  • A historical understanding of Palestine and some knowledge of the current political situation
  • Arabic language skills highly recommended; if not English is necessary
  • Cultural sensitivity
  • Ability to stay in Gaza for an extended period of time (over a month)
  • High degree of independence and self-sufficiency
  • Ability to do deal with protracted stressful situations
  • Experience with consensus-based decision-making

For more information about where to attend a preliminary training or other questions, please email gazaism@gmail.com.

December 9, 2011 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

My Occupy LA Arrest

By Patrick Meighan | December 6, 2011

My name is Patrick Meighan, and I’m a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom “Family Guy”, and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.

I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people at Occupy LA. I was sitting in City Hall Park with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Being Peace” when 1,400 heavily-armed LAPD officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of about 50 peaceful protestors who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked, around a tent (the symbolic image of the Occupy movement). The LAPD officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted “We Are Peaceful” and “We Are Nonviolent” and “Join Us.”

As we sat there, encircled, a separate team of LAPD officers used knives to slice open every personal tent in the park. They forcibly removed anyone sleeping inside, and then yanked out and destroyed any personal property inside those tents, scattering the contents across the park. They then did the same with the communal property of the Occupy LA movement. For example, I watched as the LAPD destroyed a pop-up canopy tent that, until that moment, had been serving as Occupy LA’s First Aid and Wellness tent, in which volunteer health professionals gave free medical care to absolutely anyone who requested it. As it happens, my family had personally contributed that exact canopy tent to Occupy LA, at a cost of several hundred of my family’s dollars. As I watched, the LAPD sliced that canopy tent to shreds, broke the telescoping poles into pieces and scattered the detritus across the park. Note that these were the objects described in subsequent mainstream press reports as “30 tons of garbage” that was “abandoned” by Occupy LA: personal property forcibly stolen from us, destroyed in front of our eyes and then left for maintenance workers to dispose of while we were sent to prison.

When the LAPD finally began arresting those of us interlocked around the symbolic tent, we were all ordered by the LAPD to unlink from each other (in order to facilitate the arrests). Each seated, nonviolent protester beside me who refused to cooperate by unlinking his arms had the following done to him: an LAPD officer would forcibly extend the protestor’s legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor’s left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the LAPD officer would grab the protestor’s right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent protestor, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor.

It was horrible to watch, and apparently designed to terrorize the rest of us. At least I was sufficiently terrorized. I unlinked my arms voluntarily and informed the LAPD officers that I would go peacefully and cooperatively. I stood as instructed, and then I had my arms wrenched behind my back, and an officer hyperextended my wrists into my inner arms. It was super violent, it hurt really really bad, and he was doing it on purpose. When I involuntarily recoiled from the pain, the LAPD officer threw me face-first to the pavement. He had my hands behind my back, so I landed right on my face. The officer dropped with his knee on my back and ground my face into the pavement. It really, really hurt and my face started bleeding and I was very scared. I begged for mercy and I promised that I was honestly not resisting and would not resist.

My hands were then zipcuffed very tightly behind my back, where they turned blue. I am now suffering nerve damage in my right thumb and palm.

I was put on a paddywagon with other nonviolent protestors and taken to a parking garage in Parker Center. They forced us to kneel (and sit–SEE UPDATE) on the hard pavement of that parking garage for seven straight hours with our hands still tightly zipcuffed behind our backs. Some began to pass out. One man rolled to the ground and vomited for a long, long time before falling unconscious. The LAPD officers watched and did nothing.

At 9 a.m. we were finally taken from the pavement into the station to be processed. The charge was sitting in the park after the police said not to. It’s a misdemeanor. Almost always, for a misdemeanor, the police just give you a ticket and let you go. It costs you a couple hundred dollars. Apparently, that’s what happened with most every other misdemeanor arrest in LA that day.

With us Occupy LA protestors, however, they set bail at $5,000 and booked us into jail. Almost none of the protesters could afford to bail themselves out. I’m lucky and I could afford it, except the LAPD spent all day refusing to actually *accept* the bail they set. If you were an accused murderer or a rapist in LAPD custody that day, you could bail yourself right out and be back on the street, no problem. But if you were a nonviolent Occupy LA protestor with bail money in hand, you were held long into the following morning, with absolutely no access to a lawyer.

I spent most of my day and night crammed into an eight-man jail cell, along with sixteen other Occupy LA protesters. My sleeping spot was on the floor next to the toilet.

Finally, at 2:30 the next morning, after twenty-five hours in custody, I was released on bail. But there were at least 200 Occupy LA protestors who couldn’t afford the bail. The LAPD chose to keep those peaceful, non-violent protesters in prison for two full days… the absolute legal maximum that the LAPD is allowed to detain someone on misdemeanor charges.

As a reminder, Antonio Villaraigosa has referred to all of this as “the LAPD’s finest hour.”

So that’s what happened to the 292 women and men were arrested last Wednesday. Now let’s talk about a man who was not arrested last Wednesday. He is former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince. Under Charles Prince, Citigroup was guilty of massive, coordinated securities fraud.

Citigroup spent years intentionally buying up every bad mortgage loan it could find, creating bad securities out of those bad loans and then selling shares in those bad securities to duped investors. And then they sometimes secretly bet *against* their *own* bad securities to make even more money. For one such bad Citigroup security, Citigroup executives were internally calling it, quote, “a collection of dogshit”. To investors, however, they called it, quote, “an attractive investment rigorously selected by an independent investment adviser”.

This is fraud, and it’s a felony, and the Charles Princes of the world spent several years doing it again and again: knowingly writing bad mortgages, and then packaging them into fraudulent securities which they then sold to suckers and then repeating the process. This is a big part of why your property values went up so fast. But then the bubble burst, and that’s why our economy is now shattered for a generation, and it’s also why your home is now underwater. Or at least mine is.

Anyway, if your retirement fund lost a decade’s-worth of gains overnight, this is why.

If your son’s middle school has added furlough days because the school district can’t afford to keep its doors open for a full school year, this is why.

If your daughter has come out of college with a degree only to discover that there are no jobs for her, this is why.

But back to Charles Prince. For his four years of in charge of massive, repeated fraud at Citigroup, he received fifty-three million dollars in salary and also received another ninety-four million dollars in stock holdings. What Charles Prince has *not* received is a pair of zipcuffs. The nerves in his thumb are fine. No cop has thrown Charles Prince into the pavement, face-first. Each and every peaceful, nonviolent Occupy LA protester arrested last week has has spent more time sleeping on a jail floor than every single Charles Prince on Wall Street, combined.

The more I think about that, the madder I get. What does it say about our country that nonviolent protesters are given the bottom of a police boot while those who steal hundreds of billions, do trillions worth of damage to our economy and shatter our social fabric for a generation are not only spared the zipcuffs but showered with rewards?

In any event, believe it or not, I’m really not angry that I got arrested. I chose to get arrested. And I’m not even angry that the mayor and the LAPD decided to give non-violent protestors like me a little extra shiv in jail (although I’m not especially grateful for it either).

I’m just really angry that every single Charles Prince wasn’t in jail with me.

Thank you for letting me share that anger with you today.

Patrick Meighan

——-

UPDATE (12/9/11): Hey all, thank you for the nice thoughts from many folks who have read this account. One necessary clarification about the 7 hours spent by the roughly 100-of-us in the Parker Center parking garage immediately following our arrest:

though we were indeed forced to kneel on that parking garage pavement for an extended period and though we did in fact have our hands tightly zipcuffed behind our backs for that entire seven-hour stretch on the pavement, and though we were barred from standing and moving for that time period, the LAPD officers, in point of fact, did allow us to shift ourselves out of the kneeling position onto our butt-cheeks, our side-legs, etc., as necessary. At the very least, when we began to do so, they did not stop us. I apologize for implying otherwise.
I also want to say that I don’t consider my above-described treatment at the hands of the LAPD to be, in any way, uniquely-brutal, or that I was especially victimized. Yes, getting arrested and going to jail was scary and sometimes painful and it generally sucked, but jail is supposed to suck. Again, the point of this blogpost is not that I was treated especially poorly by the LAPD officers who arrested, processed and held us. The LAPD officers were just doing their jobs, as they understood them. The point of the blogpost is simply to contrast the legal response to nonviolent protestors against the the legal response (or, rather, non-response) to the perpetrators of the largest act of coordinated larceny in economic history, for whom the next arrest will be the first one.

Best,

Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA

December 9, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Appeal denied in Holy Land Five case

By Nora Barrows-Friedman – The Electronic Intifada – 12/08/2011

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals formally denied an appeal in the ongoing case of the Holy Land Five (HLF), deciding to uphold the convictions of the leaders of the once-largest Muslim charity organization in the US on spurious “terrorism” charges despite irrelevant, prejudicial evidence and unconstitutional precedents used by the federal government.

The Dallas Morning News reported on 7 December that:

Fifth Circuit Judge Carolyn Dineen King, writing on behalf of colleagues Emilio M. Garza and James E. Graves, Jr., noted:

“While no trial is perfect, this one included, we conclude from our review of the record, briefs, and oral argument, that the defendants were fairly convicted. For the reasons explained below, therefore, we affirm the district court’s judgments of conviction of the individual defendants. We dismiss the appeal of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.”

Since the Bush administration dismantled the Holy Land Foundation — which sent direct humanitarian aid to Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation as well as to communities in the US suffering from the effects of natural disasters — under the guise of the draconian Patriot Act, the five defendants have been accused and convicted of providing “material support” to “terrorist organizations” (namely the Hamas political party in Palestine). In September 2009, all five were sentenced to prison terms varying from 15-65 years. The Patriot Act strengthened a Clinton-era “anti-terrorism” legal caveat called the Material Support law which has been used to take down Muslim organizations and individuals in this country for the last ten years.

This past September, as The Electronic Intifada reported, oral arguments began in the appeals process, following last year’s submission of a 149-page appeal by the defense team.

In a press release from the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA), it is pointed out that the Federal government violated significant amendments of the US Constitution and basic legalities during this ten-year effort to prosecute the Holy Land Five. Those violations include:

– The fact that the court barred the defense from learning the names of two government witnesses, one of which was the government’s key witness in the trial. According to the brief, this action violated the defendants’ Fifth Amendment right to due process and Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses against them.

– The fact that the court admitted unfairly prejudicial evidence with little or no relevance to the charges in the case. This evidence included exhibits about Hamas suicide bombings, testimony about Hamas killing collaborators with Israel, a video of demonstrators stomping on and burning the American flag and other such imagery — none of which had any connection to the defendants.

– The fact that the court denied the defense access to evidence the prosecution had access to. Instead, prosecutors were allowed to cherry-pick what evidence the defense could review.

The Electronic Intifada will provide updates in the HLF case, especially regarding the next steps for the defendants, their families and their legal teams.

The ongoing efforts by the US government to criminalize Palestine solidarity and charity work — see the continuing persecution of Dr. Sami al-Arian, who was never convicted but remains on repressive house arrest following years of imprisonment, including solitary confinement; or the FBI’s grand jury cases against activists in the Midwest — is nothing new, and is not surprising, but as my colleague (and subpoenaed activist in the grand jury trial) Maureen Murphy has written, “it poses a special threat to the growing Palestine solidarity movement in the US, which is increasingly challenging the US government’s military aid to Israel and its diplomatic cover for Israeli war crimes and apartheid.”

December 8, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

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