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Facts contradict Israel’s assertions in Bilin death

Press release, Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, 4 January 2011

The family of Jawaher Abu Rahmah mourns during her funeral in the West Bank village of Bilin, 1 January 2011 (Oren Ziv/Activestills)

The following edited press release was issued by the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee on 4 January 2010:

Since yesterday, the Israeli army has been promoting in the Israeli media a mendacious version regarding the events that led to the death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah of Bilin on Friday, 31 December 2010. According to the army’s version, Jawaher was not injured by tear gas and was possibly not even present at the demonstration. The army spokesperson did not see fit to publish an official statement on the matter, instead passing the information to the media in the name of anonymous “army sources.”

The facts of the matter — which are supported by the testimony of eyewitnesses who were present at the demonstration, as well as by the ambulance driver who evacuated her to the hospital — contradict completely the army’s version:

Soubhiya Abu Rahmah, mother of Jawaher: “I was standing beside Jawaher on the hill that is near the place where the demonstration took place, when we were injured by a cloud of tear gas. Jawaher began to feel unwell from inhaling the gas and started to move back from the place; soon after that she vomited and collapsed. We took her to the nearest road, and from there she was evacuated by ambulance to the hospital, where she remained until her death. She was not sick with cancer, nor did she have any other illness; and she was not asthmatic.”

Ilham Fathi: “I was on the roof of my house, which is located a few meters from where Jawaher stood. When the cloud of tear gas moved in our direction, I went downstairs in order to close the windows. While I was closing one of the windows, I saw her lose consciousness from the gas and ran over to her, together with Islam Abu Rahmah, in order to pull her away. We picked her up together and carried her to my garden. We called for help and she began to vomit and foam at the mouth.”

Islam Abu Rahmah: “I was standing with Jawaher, her mother and my grandmother in order to watch the confrontation that was going on just in front of us, in the area of the fence. The wind moved the gas in our direction, making our eyes itch and tear up. After that she [Jawaher] began to cough and foam at the mouth. Soon after that she became weak and lay down on the ground. I succeeded in carrying her as far as the Abu Khamis home, about 40 meters in the direction of her house, but then she became terribly weak, vomited violently and foamed at the mouth. She was having difficult breathing and lost her sense of direction. We got a few women to help her by waving a paper fan over her face in order to provide some oxygen. After that she was taken to the hospital.”

Saher Bisharat, the ambulance who evacuated Jawaher: “We received Jawaher near the entrance that is parallel to the fence, which is where the demonstration was taking place. She was still partially conscious, answered questions, and said that she had choked on gas. I took her straight to the hospital” (See the Palestine Red Crescent Society report).

The army has also claimed that the reports about Abu Rahmeh’s injuries started to arrive only several hours after the incident, in the evening. That claim is contradicted by a tweet sent by the nongovernmental organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which reported the injury of Jawaher, including her name, in real time (see JVP’s Twitter feed). The tweet was sent at 2:36pm (4:36 am on the West Coast of the United States). Wafa, the Palestinian news service, published a report that includes the injury of Jawaher Abu Rahmah shortly after the event (Four civilians injured and Israeli journalist arrested in Bilin march“).

Also according to “army sources,” which remain anonymous, Jawaher Abu Rahmah suffered from a serious illness, possibly leukemia; the “sources” postulate that she died from a pre-existing condition rather than tear gas inhalation. Several sources reject that claim.

Dr. Uday Abu Nahlah: “Jawaher Abu Rahmah was employed in my home on a regular basis. On Thursday she was at work as usual, healthy, only one day before her death.”

Jawaher had an inner ear infection, which affected her balance, for which she was recently given a CT scan. The radiologist who performed the CT scan, Dr. Hamis Al Sahfi’i, confirmed that the brain scan was normal (see the CT scan results). Jawaher had a minor health issue involving fluids in her inner ear. Her physicians insist that she did not suffer from any illness or from any symptoms that might, if combined with tear gas, lead to her death.

There is not, nor could there be, any indication that Abu Rahmah had cancer; in fact, she was in good health. The director of the hospital refutes the claim that she died from a pre-existing condition:

Mohammed Aida, director of the Ramallah health center where Abu Rahmah received her care: “Jawaher Abu Rahmah died from lung failure that was caused by tear gas inhalation, leading to a heart attack. She arrived at the hospital only partly conscious, and then lost consciousness completely” (See the hospital’s official medical report [PDF]).

Mohammed Khatib, a member of Bilin’s Popular Coordinating Committee: “The army is trying to evade its responsibility for Jawaher’s death with lies and invented narratives that have no basis. They are spreading these lies and invented narratives via the media, which is not bothering to do basic fact checking. Our version is supported by named sources and with medical documents. In a properly functioning society, the army’s version, which has been spread by anonymous sources, would not be considered worthy of publication.”

January 4, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Israeli troops– which killed 176 students, teachers in Gaza war– now raid Jenin university dorms

Ma’an 03/01/2011

JENIN — Israeli forces briefly detained one man after they entered the a university residence in Jenin, telling students they were searching for wanted Palestinians.

Soldiers also erected checkpoints around the city, targeting three Jenin-area villages.

Eight military units entered a dorm housing students from the Arab American University, onlookers estimated, but a security guard said he would not allow soldiers to enter rooms in the female dormitory.

When the soldiers reached the women’s dorm, a security guard prevented their access, witnesses said, [the soldiers] then detained him for over an hour.

Residents said troops also raided Kafr Ra’i and Fahma villages southwest of Jenin. Further, the army installed two checkpoints – one between Rummana and Zububa villages west of the city and another between Zabda village and the university, locals said.

An army spokeswoman said one new checkpoint had been installed near Zububa, but that it was later removed. She was not immediately familiar with raids in the area but said she would look into it.

No further detentions were reported.

January 4, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Settlers attack Hebron popular committee official

Ma’an – 02/01/2011

HEBRON — Settlers in Hebron attacked a Popular Committee official on Sunday, leaving him unconscious, witnesses said.

Azmi Ash-Shuyukhi was transferred by ambulance to Hebron’s government hospital after he was beaten while leading a solidarity tour near Yatta, south of the West Bank city.

After regaining consciousness, Ash-Shuyukhi said 10 settlers punched and kicked him, leaving cuts and bruises all over his body.

Israeli soldiers were present and witnessed the attack but did not intervene, he added.

Ash-Shuyukhi is the secretary-general of the local popular committee.

Meanwhile, journalist Naser Ash-Shuyukhi said settlers punctured the tires of his car while he covered events in the area.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem describes attacks by settlers against Palestinians as “routine,” but says Israeli authorities “employ an undeclared policy of leniency and compromise toward Israeli civilians who harm Palestinians.”

January 2, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

A Tiny Slice of the Palestinian Experience

By Alex Kane | January 2, 2010

Ramallah, West Bank–It’s a far cry from the daily checkpoints, beatings, tear-gassing and harassment that Palestinians have to go through, but today I can say that a tiny slice of the Palestinian experience became alive to me.

My arrival at Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel early today was the start of a long trip down Israeli security harassment lane.  After I showed my passport to an Israeli immigration agent, I was taken to a holding room, where I joined Palestinians trying to visit family and other–mostly non-white–people.  Three hours later, I was taken to a separate room, where I was questioned by a bald Israeli who said he was from the Ministry of Defense.

They immediately knew that my back story of why I came to Israel was false, and I had to admit I planned on visiting the West Bank.  After that came questions about my trip last year to Gaza, who I met with there, what I wanted to do in the West Bank and what the delegation I joined today was all about.  Absurdly, the defense official hinted that I was suspected of “terrorism”–the term used by Israel and the U.S. to smear anyone who dissents against their inhumane policies of occupation and war.  The agent also was curious to find out why I–as a Jew–was on the “Palestinian side,” working “against my homeland and my father’s,” to which I responded that Israel is not my homeland, and that I was for the human rights of all people, including Palestinians.  While these questions were fired at me, pictures of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres stared down at me, as if to mock me.

I was sent back to the holding room without my passport, where I spent the rest of my time sleeping, watching Curb Your Enthusiasm (a perfect mood-lifter) and messaging Israeli blogger Didi Remez over Twitter with updates on what was going on.

Five hours later, after I though I was to be deported or detained, I was let out of the grasp of Israeli security on the condition that I not enter the Palestinian territories.  As I drove to Ramallah, I passed by countless West Bank settlements–with their gleaming lights–and Palestinian villages surrounded by the illegal colonies.  There was no discernible difference between Israel proper and settlement areas over the Green Line, something that I marveled at even though I knew that was the case.

And now I’m here, back in Palestine after one year.  One can only be amazed that the Palestinian people remain so strong and steadfast after enduring 62 years of Israeli security harassment far worse than what I went through today.

January 2, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Israeli Army Injured Over 1,000 Palestinian Demonstrators in 2010

02 January 2011 | Sergio Yahni, Alternative Information Center (AIC)

A report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states that during the last week of 2010, Israeli forces injured 38 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, more than half of whom were participating in weekly demonstrations against the Separation Wall, settlements and land confiscations.

The report further notes that during 2010, Israeli forces injured 1,145 Palestinians in the West Bank, a 45% increase over 2009.

In confrontations that broke out on 27 December between Palestinian residents of the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan and Israeli forces, eight Palestinians were injured. The report also notes a number of injuries due to tear gas inhalation and the detention of five Palestinians, including a 13 year old child. The confrontations broke out as a result the large number of Israeli forces stationed in Silwan prior to a visit by Israeli Knesset members, who came to express solidarity with the settlement building Beit Yonathan, established in the middle of Silwan and part of which is supposed to be sealed by order of the court.

The report also details that 20 Palestinians and one international activist were injured in the weekly demonstrations in the West Bank against the Wall, settlement expansion, the total closure imposed on the main commercial road in Hebron and the uprooting of olive trees.

Five Palestinians and two international activists were injured in two additional demonstrations against restrictions on freedom of movement into East Jerusalem and Ramallah.

As a result of Israel’s violent policy of demonstration dispersal, on the first day of 2011 36 year old Bil’in resident Jawaher Abu Rahmah died from inhalation of tear gas.

According to demonstrators who were there, Israeli soldiers shot tremendous amounts of tear gas which was particularly strong. After breathing it Abu Rahmah choked, and was brought to a Ramallah hospital where it was diagnosed that she was suffering from gas poisoning. The doctors told her family members that she was not responding to treatment. Overnight her condition worsened and at 9.00 a.m. the next morning she was pronounced dead.

This is not the first time that a person is killed due to tear gas in 2010. On 24 September Mohammed Abu Sneneh, a 14 month old baby, died in the East Jerusalem village of Issawiya after he inhaled tear gas. The baby had been inside his house, into which tear gas shot by the Israeli police penetrated.

Activists in various Palestinian popular committees complain that in numerous cases, Israeli forces fire expired tear gas and that breathing this causes more damage.

Jawaher  is the sister of Bassem Abu Rahmah, who was killed when Israeli soldiers shot an extended range tear gas canister directly at him during a demonstration in Bil’in on 17 April 2009.

Translated to English by the Alternative Information Center (AIC).

January 2, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Detention and Torture

Obama’s Plan for Indefinite Detentions

By JENNIFER VAN BERGEN and DOUGLAS VALENTINE | December 30, 2010

Author’s Note: With the news of President Obama’s plan to make indefinite detentions a permanent feature of our legal landscape, we thought it apropos to re-publish an updated, edited excerpt from a law review article we wrote in 2006 THE DANGEROUS WORLD OF INDEFINITE DETENTIONS: VIETNAM TO ABU GHRAIB.

Where you find administrative detentions, you are likely to find torture. This connection exists even where it is clear that investigations and screenings leading to such detentions are, as Alberto Gonzales put it, “not haphazard, but elaborate, and careful . . . reasoned and deliberate.”

This reason is simple and can be traced to the elements of administrative detention itself: the absence of human rights safeguards and normal legal guarantees such as due process, habeas corpus, fair trial, confidential legal counsel, and judicial review; vague and confusing definitions, standards, and procedures; inadequate adversarial procedural oversight; excessive Executive Branch power stemming from prolonged emergencies; and the involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency, or other secret, thus unaccountable, Executive Branch agencies.

Without such protections, justice does not work and human rights are jeopardized. As William F. Schultz, Executive Director of Amnesty International, put it:

“[W]e are witnessing not just a series of brutal but fundamentally independent human rights violations committed by disparate governments around the globe. [W]e are witnessing something far more fundamental and far more dangerous. [W]e are witnessing the orchestrated destruction by the United States of the very basis, the fragile scaffolding, upon which international human rights have been built, painstakingly, bit by bit by bit, since the end of World War II.”

This is a remarkable statement that was originally made about the Bush Administration, but it applies equally as well now to the Obama Administration. The system was intentionally broken by the Bush Administration, just as it was by the Johnson and Nixon Administrations during the Vietnam War. And now Obama plans to sanctify this wrong and make it a permanent feature of American law.

Obama’s indefinite detention follows, at least in idea, the precedent set by and codified in the PATRIOT Act, enacted six weeks after 9/11. Section 412, which is still on the books, provides for the “mandatory detention of suspected terrorists.” This section nowhere refers to the detentions as “administrative detentions,” which result from administrative (that is, Executive Branch), not judicial, determinations. Yet this is exactly what they are. And they have been used before. The U.S. government’s internment of Japanese immigrants during the Second World War is perhaps the most recognizable example.

Section 412(a) authorizes the Attorney General to take into custody any alien whom he certifies as a terrorist. The alien may be detained indefinitely, in renewable periods of six months, as long as the Attorney General determines that he is a threat to national security, or endangers some individual or the general public.

In addition to PATRIOT Act detentions, the November 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which preceded the PATRIOT Act, has been used by the DOJ to justify administrative detentions.

Scholars have raised concerns about the PATRIOT Act detention provisions, as well as detentions under AUMF, which allow the Secretary of Defense to detain designated alien terrorist suspects without the restrictions that Section 412 contains. Additionally, military detentions of U.S. citizens Yaser Esam Hamdi, Jose Padilla, and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri have raised concerns. President Bush, citing his power as Commander-in-Chief and the laws of war, unilaterally declared these individuals “unlawful enemy combatants” subject to indefinite detention without trial or access to an attorney and without providing for a status determination hearing by a competent tribunal, which is required by the Geneva Conventions. The central concern raised by qualified legal observers about these detentions generally involves the important issues of due process and other constitutional and/or human rights guarantees.

Administrative detentions — sometimes called preventive detentions — are, by definition and practice, sought only during “national emergencies.” The emergency is the rationale for depriving suspected terrorists of adequate due process or human rights safeguards. A declaration of a national emergency is generally made unilaterally by the President and, once declared, the administrative detention laws may stay on the books for decades. This is one of the primary reasons why they are so dangerous, for without any Congressional determination of the beginning or end of hostilities, these inherently anti-democratic laws may be used for purposes of political repression.

However, few legal scholars or government officials have discussed the historically established connection between administrative detentions and torture. The subject only came into public consciousness with the revelation that U.S. soldiers were torturing terrorist suspects at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, and the detention facilities at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Since then, American and foreign journalists and human rights activists began to raise suspicions, subsequently borne out, that U.S. soldiers and CIA officers were routinely torturing terrorist suspects at numerous detention centers around the world. Nonetheless, to date, nothing has been done to ameliorate concerns about these detentions.

The conjoining of administrative detentions and torture is sadly by no means new to U.S. Government policies and practices. Specifically, during the Vietnam War, the United States engaged in a massive program of indefinite administrative detentions in South Vietnam of persons considered “dangerous to the national security” that engendered widespread torture and deaths of terrorist suspects.

There are many similarities between the Vietnam detentions and those used in the War on Terror, and those similarities are found not only within the procedures themselves but in the rationales for and policies behind them and even in the conditions of fear that created them.The Vietnam detention procedures provide a clear and compelling flow chart of the web of connections between administrative detentions, intelligence laws, national security courts (i.e. courts intended to deal exclusively with national security concerns), violations of international law (particularly the Geneva Conventions), and torture. These components now also appear in U.S. law and policies in the War on Terror and are continued, codified, and sanctified in Obama’s intended executive order.

One would have thought that a nation which was in large part responsible for the rescue of tens of thousands of Concentration Camp survivors and was a judicial participant in one of the most significant war crimes tribunals in history, the Nuremburg trials, would know better. How American officials could justify the detention camps in Vietnam, knowing about the torture and murders of innocents in them, after having witnessed Hitler’s internment camps and learned of the horrors he perpetrated in them, is an unanswered question. But, after the revelations of Vietnam — which all came out in congressional hearings in 1971 that led to both the repeal of the EDA and ultimately by degrees to “reforms” of the CIA’s Phoenix Program, contributing to the end of that protracted War, — Section 412 of the PATRIOT Act, Bush’s Military Commissions and unlawful enemy combatant designations, and now, Obama’s executive order establishing permanent indefinite detention are inexcusable.

For the full law review article, click here.

Jennifer Van Bergen, J.D., M.S.I.E., is the founder of the 12th Generation Institute, and author of THE TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY: THE BUSH PLAN FOR AMERICA (Common Courage Press, 2004) and Archetypes for Writers: Using the Power of Your Subconscious (Michael Weise Productions, 2007). She is currently working under contract with Bucknell University Press on a biography of Leonora Sansay, an early American novelist who was involved in the Aaron Burr Conspiracy, and on a screenplay about the conspiracy. She can be reached at jennifer.vanbergen@gmail.com.

Douglas Valentine is the author of numerous articles and five books: THE HOTEL TACLOBAN (1984), THE PHOENIX PROGRAM (1990), TDY (2000), THE STRENGTH OF THE WOLF (2004), and THE STRENGTH OF THE PACK (2009) (the latter two are histories of federal drug law enforcement). See: http://www.douglasvalentine.com/.

Source

December 30, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

1,100 Palestinian Children Detained During 2010

By Ane Irazabal – IMEMC & Agencies – December 30, 2010

The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Detainees’ Affairs reported, on Wednesday, that Israeli forces arrested 1,100 Palestinian children in 2010, most of them in East Jerusalem and Hebron.

File (photo from Al-awda.org)
File (photo from Al-awda.org)

In a report, PA Detainees’ Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqe claimed that these arrests are reflecting the systematic attacks that Palestinian youth suffer in the Occupied Territories on the daily basis.

He also stressed that during 2010 the higher number of detentions were made in the occupied East Jerusalem, about 500, and Hebron, stressing that children were often put under house arrest.

In addition, the report also denounced other practices that the Palestinian children suffer from the Israeli army, especially, its use as human shields.

According to Defence of Children International – Palestine, since April 2004, 16 Palestinian children suffered from this practice, although it is considered illegal by both international and Israeli law.

Recently, two soldiers from the Givati Brigade became the first soldiers to be charged and convicted of using a child as a human shield. The two soldiers were demoted from the rank of staff sergeant to sergeant and each given a three-month suspended prison sentence.

December 30, 2010 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

In Israel, Non-Violent Solidarity Activist Goes to Prison, Anti-Gay Terrorist Gets Community Service

By Max Blumenthal | Mondoweiss | December 28, 2010

On December 27, Anarchists Against the Wall co-founder Jonathan Pollak was slapped with a three month prison sentence for illegal assembly. He was convicted by an Israeli magistrate judge for his participation in a January 2008 Critical Mass bike ride through the streets of Tel Aviv in protest of Israel’s brutal military assault on the Gaza Strip. Though Pollak was offered community service, he accepted prison time because he was convinced that he had done nothing wrong.

The day before Pollak was sentenced, an Israeli judge handed down a sentence of six months of community service to Michael Naky. Naky’s crime? He helped devise and detonate a pipe bomb in order to kill as many homosexuals as possible at the 2007 Jerusalem gay pride parade.

In a single day in Israel’s kangaroo courts, a right-wing terrorist was sentenced to a few months of street cleaning while a non-violent activist dedicated to stopping the occupation was jailed under the most specious charges. And while Pollak’s sentencing was reported with great fanfare in Israel’s major papers, Naky’s passed below the radar (Yedioth devoted just six lines). The contrast in punishments represented just another symptom of a sick society unwilling to face the Molock in the mirror.

The state has made little effort to disguise the political nature of Pollak’s prosecution. He was not a ringleader of the Critical Mass protest, nor did he behave in an unusual manner. He simply rode his bike slowly, disrupting the normal flow of traffic along with dozens of demonstrators. However, the police recognized him as a prominent organizer of unarmed protests against the Israeli military repression in the West Bank, singled him out and arrested him.

I have documented Pollak’s actions at protests across the West Bank, where he spends most of his weekends, and I witnessed the respect he has earned from the residents of besieged Palestinian villages who count on him as their liaison to the outside world — a realm that the state of Israel has largely forbidden them from interacting with. Last summer, Pollak helped me gain entry into Ofer Military Prison to witness the show trials of Palestinian popular committee members who organize the unarmed protests against the Israeli segregation wall. He has done the same for numerous European diplomats, including British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who declared after a harrowing tour of the Israeli Occupation that Pollak helped arrange: “Popular resistance to the Occupation is the sole remaining possible alternative for the Palestinians to achieve their rights and avoid armed struggle.”

It is clear why the Israeli justice system acted in such a draconian fashion against Pollak: His activism is making an impact against the Occupation.

Association for Civil Rights in Israel chief legal counsel Dan Yakir described the political nature of Pollak’s prosecution succinctly when he said, “The fact that Pollak was the only one arrested, even though he behaved just like the rest of the protesters, and the fact that bicycle demonstrations are usually held without police involvement raises a strong suspicion regarding personal persecution and a severe blow for freedom of expression, just because of his opinions. A prison sentence in the wake of a protest is an extreme and exaggerated punishment.”

Naky’s lenient sentencing appeared to have been influenced by politics as well, especially when viewed in light of the state’s treatment of other right-wing terrorists. Chaim Pearlman, a fanatical settler suspected of stabbing to death three Palestinians in cold blood, was set free after a month in Shin Bet custody. And Jack Teitel, another Jewish settler convicted of randomly murdering several Palestinians and attempting to kill the Israeli left-wing intellectual Zeev Sternhell (Teitel also planned to attack the 2006 Jerusalem gay pride parade), was allowed to plead insanity and ruled unfit to stand trial.

The Israeli justice system has extended no such privileges to Palestinians like Ibrahim Amireh orAbdullah Abu Rahmeh, who rot in Israeli military prisons for resisting their dispossession through unarmed protest. And the state is leveling every legal weapon at its disposal against activists like Pollak, who declared at his sentencing hearing: “I will go to prison wholeheartedly and with my head held high. It will be the justice system itself, I believe, that ought to lower its eyes in the face of the suffering inflicted on Gaza’s inhabitants, just like it lowers its eyes and averts its vision each and every day when faced with the realities of the occupation.”

December 29, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Beatings and Intimidation in the West Bank

By Joseph Dana | December 27, 2010

On Friday, I was detained by Border Police officers in Nabi Saleh along with another Israeli. We were handcuffed behind our backs, thrown to the ground and beaten. The other Israeli was beaten much worse than I. His head was smashed against the ground and he was kicked repeatedly in the stomach. All of this happened in front a Palestinian Btselem photographer who captured the whole thing on video. After the beating, we were then detained and held in a Jerusalem prison for thirty hours. This story is only unique because it happen to Jews.

It is almost a daily ritual for Palestinians in the West Bank. In the coming days I will publish a more detailed account of my detention and the harassment which I experienced. The border police commander who led the beating gave us a clear explanation for his actions while in the police station when he said, ‘don’t come back to Nabi Saleh you piece of shit.” Israel does not want Israelis in Nabi Saleh documenting the ruthless and brutal repression of Palestinian unarmed demonstrations. The state will go to shocking lengths to intimate, beat and detain us. One has to experience it to fully believe it.

Before I release my in depth account of the events, I would like to draw your attention to a video just released by Btselem documenting a solider beating a Palestinian Btselem photographer. The photographer was on his own land when the soldier attacked him. No charges will be filed against this soldier.

btselem | December 22, 2010

December 27, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

The 27th of December, a day I will never forget

December 27, 2008
By Abu Yazan | Palestine Think Tank | December 27, 2010

I feel like sharing my story with my friends to show how much terror Israel has brought to us….

That day I was walking in the street with a friend of mine in the middle of Gaza City…we were laughing at some jokes he was saying…and all of the sudden we heard the roaring of the Israeli F16s…It is normal in Gaza to hear such things, so we did not pay much attention to that, we kept moving with our jokes….Then with a glance, an explosion happened in a police station that was around 150 meters away from us.. We went running to the place when another explosion took place followed by a third, then a fourth, a fifth, we didn’t know what was happening but we didn’t hesitate to keep on going to the first place bombed…We had our hands over our ears because the explosions never ended, it was very loud to the limit you think that you are the one being hit with those rockets.

When we arrived at the police station, this is exactly what we saw.. On the door there were two officers lying on the ground injured, when I told the man, “I am going to save you just hang on,” he said, “leave me and get inside”.. I didn’t know what was happening inside, so I went with my friend and with 15 other people following us…We found over 40 bodies lying on the ground dead and about 250 others were injured, most of them had bad injuries…

We left the dead and started to take the survivors out of the place fearing that the Israeli F16s would bomb the place for another time… Most of the survivors were in bad shape, while I was carrying the people, I reached to a person who was badly injured but he looked like he was dead to me, his body was all burned.. he was saying, “ashhad an la elah ela allah, ashhad an mohammed rasool allah”…and that’s what made me notice that he was alive…I just moved towards him and in a hurry tried to take him out of the place, I grabbed him by the hand but the problem was that his hand was not part of his body anymore…I tried from his leg and the same thing happened, his leg just slipped out of his body, so I was there looking at him and knowing that he has no hope. “What shall I do?!” I was saying in a loud voice, I didn’t know how to carry him because each part of his body was a piece and I had to take him out of that place…I had three other people coming towards me and shouting very loud, “lets get him out of here quick,” and that’s what we did…

After like fifteen minutes we took all the survivors and the bodies out of the place, we all left, and after 5 minutes…the Israeli airplanes just hit the place again…we all were praying that we don’t get hit while we were inside… I moved to the hospital with the last ambulance to see what was happening and believe me what I saw was really disgusting and awful… Bodies all lying on the ground… the white suit of all the doctors turned out to red as if they are working in a grocery… This is the day where I decided to work and tell the world about Palestine and about the crimes Israel commits against Palestinians…

And every Palestinian has his own story, because no one stayed at home that day…everyone wanted to take a role in rescuing the injured.

December 27, 2010 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | Leave a comment

An Open Letter from Gaza: Two Years after the Massacre, a Demand for Justice

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel | December 27, 2010

We the Palestinians of the Besieged Gaza Strip, on this day, two years on from Israel’s genocidal attack on our families, our houses, our roads, our factories and our schools,  are saying enough inaction, enough discussion, enough waiting – the time is now to hold Israel to account for its ongoing crimes against us. On the 27th of December 2008, Israel began an indiscriminate bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The assault lasted 22 days, killing 1,417 Palestinians, 352 of them children, according to main-stream Human Rights Organizations.  For a staggering 528 hours, Israeli Occupation Forces let loose their US-supplied F15s, F16s, Merkava Tanks, internationally prohibited White Phosphorous, and bombed and invaded the small Palestinian coastal enclave that is home to 1.5 million, of whom 800,000 are children and over 80 percent UN registered refugees. Around 5,300 remain permanently wounded.

This devastation exceeded in savagery all previous massacres suffered in Gaza, such as the 21children killed in Jabalia in March 2008 or the 19 civilians killed sheltering in their house in the Beit Hanoun Massacre of 2006. The carnage even exceeded the attacks in November 1956 in which Israeli troops indiscriminately rounded up and killed 275 Palestinians in the Southern town of Khan Younis and 111 more in Rafah.

Since the Gaza massacre of 2009, world citizens have undertaken the responsibility to pressure Israel to comply with international law, through a proven strategy of boycott, divestment and sanctions. As in the global BDS movement that was so effective in ending the apartheid South African regime, we urge people of conscience to join the BDS call made by over 170 Palestinian organizations in 2005. As in South Africa the imbalance of power and representation in this struggle can be counterbalanced by a powerful international solidarity movement with BDS at the forefront, holding Israeli policy makers to account, something the international governing community has repeatedly failed to do. Similarly, creative civilian efforts such as the Free Gaza boats that broke the siege five times, the Gaza Freedom March, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and the many land convoys must never stop their siege-breaking, highlighting the inhumanity of keeping 1.5 million Gazans in an open-air prison.

Two years have now passed since Israel’s gravest of genocidal acts that should have left people in no doubt of the brutal extent of Israel’s plans for the Palestinians. The murderous navy assault on international activists aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in the Mediterranean Sea magnified to the world the cheapness Israel has assigned to Palestinian llife for so long. The world knows now, yet two years on nothing has changed for Palestinians.

The Goldstone Report came and went: despite its listing count after count of international law contraventions, Israeli “war crimes” and “possible crimes against humanity,” the European Union, the United Nations, the Red Cross, and all major Human Rights Organizations have called for an end to the illegal, medieval siege, it carries on unabated. On 11th November 2010 UNRWA head John Ging said, “There’s been no material change for the people on the ground here in terms of their status, the aid dependency, the absence of any recovery or reconstruction, no economy…The easing, as it was described, has been nothing more than a political easing of the pressure on Israel and Egypt.”

On the 2nd of December, 22 international organizations including Amnesty, Oxfam, Save the Children, Christian Aid, and Medical Aid for Palestinians produced the report ‘Dashed Hopes, Continuation of the Gaza Blockade’ calling for international action to force Israel to unconditionally lift the blockade, saying the Palestinians of Gaza under Israeli siege continue to live in the same devastating conditions. Only a week ago Human Rights Watch published a comprehensive report “Separate and Unequal” that denounced Israeli policies as Apartheid, echoing similar sentiments by South African anti-apartheid activists.

We Palestinians of Gaza want to live at liberty to meet Palestinian friends or family from Tulkarem, Jerusalem or Nazareth; we want to have the right to travel and move freely.  We want to live without fear of another bombing campaign that leaves hundreds of our children dead and many more injured or with cancers from the contamination of Israel’s white phosphorous and chemical warfare.  We want to live without the humiliations at Israeli checkpoints or the indignity of not providing for our families because of the unemployment brought about by the economic control and the illegal siege.  We are calling for an end to the racism that underpins all this oppression.

We ask: when will the world’s countries act according to the basic premise that people should be treated equally, regardless of their origin, ethnicity or colour – is it so far-fetched that a Palestinian child deserves the same human rights as any other human being? Will you be able to look back and say you stood on the right side of history or will you have sided with the oppressor?

We, therefore, call on the international community to take up its responsibility to protect the Palestinian people from Israel’s heinous aggression, immediately ending the siege with full compensation for the destruction of life and infrastructure visited upon us by this explicit policy of collective punishment. Nothing whatsoever justifies the intentional policies of savagery, including the severing of access to the water and electricity supply to 1.5 million people. The international conspiracy of silence towards the genocidal war taking place against the more than 1.5 million civilians in Gaza indicates complicity in these war crimes.

We also call upon all Palestine solidarity groups and all international civil society organizations to demand:

– An end to the siege that has been imposed on the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a result of their exercise of democratic choice.

– The protection of civilian lives and property, as stipulated in International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law such as The Fourth Geneva Convention.

– The immediate release of all political prisoners.

– That Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip be immediately provided with financial and material support to cope with the immense hardship that they are experiencing

– An end to occupation, Apartheid and other war crimes.

– Immediate reparations and compensation for all destruction carried out by the Israeli Occupation Forces in the Gaza Strip.

Boycott Divest and Sanction, join the many International Trade Unions, Universities, Supermarkets and artists and writers who refuse to entertain Apartheid Israel. Speak out for Palestine, for Gaza, and crucially ACT. The time is now.

Besieged Gaza, Palestine

 

List of signatories:

General Union for Public Services Workers

General Union for Health Services Workers

University Teachers’ Association

Palestinian Congregation for Lawyers

General Union for Petrochemical and Gas Workers

General Union for Agricultural Workers

Union of Women’s Work Committees

Union of Synergies—Women Unit

The One Democratic State Group

Arab Cultural Forum

Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel

Association of Al-Quds Bank for Culture and Info

Palestine Sailing Federation

Palestinian Association for Fishing and Maritime

Palestinian Network of Non-Governmental Organizations

Palestinian Women Committees

Progressive Students’ Union

Medical Relief Society

The General Society for Rehabilitation

General Union of Palestinian Women

Afaq Jadeeda Cultural Centre for Women and Children

Deir Al-Balah Cultural Centre for Women and Children

Maghazi Cultural Centre for Children

Al-Sahel Centre for Women and Youth

Ghassan Kanfani Kindergartens

Rachel Corrie Centre, Rafah

Rafah Olympia City Sisters

Al Awda Centre, Rafah

Al Awda Hospital, Jabaliya Camp

Ajyal Association, Gaza

General Union of Palestinian Syndicates

Al Karmel Centre, Nuseirat

Local Initiative, Beit Hanoun

Union of Health Work Committees

Red Crescent Society Gaza Strip

Beit Lahiya Cultural Centre

Al Awda Centre, Rafah

Posted on 27-12-2010

December 27, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Leave a comment