by Seumas Milne guardian.co.uk Wednesday 10 November 2010

Photo Palestinian boy holds national flag during rally in occupied Palestine.

In a quiet street in the Sheikh Jarrah district of occupied East Jerusalem 88-year-old Rifka al-Kurd is explaining how she came to live in the house she and her husband built as Palestinian refugees in the 1950s. As she speaks, three young ultra-orthodox Jewish settlers swagger in to stake their claim to the front part of the building, shouting abuse in Hebrew and broken Arabic: “Arab animals”, “shut up, whore”.

There is a brief physical confrontation with Rifka’s daughter as the settlers barricade themselves in to the rooms they have occupied since last winter. That was when they finally won a court order to take over the Kurd family’s extension on the grounds that it was built without permission – which Palestinians in Jerusalem are almost never granted. It is an ugly scene, the settlers’ chilling arrogance underpinned by the certain knowledge that they can call in the police and army at will.

(…اكثر)

Haaretz Nov. 2010

Photo Richard Wainwright Residents and protesters gather in the village of Nil’in to demonstrate against land confiscation and the Separartion Barrier running through their land.

A group of leading Israeli film and television artists have signed onto an online petition supporting the right of theater actors to refuse to perform in the newly opened arts center in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

“A number of Knesset members and ministers from Yisrael Beitenu and Likud and other right-wing figures are calling for cutting off funding to artists that this week called for a boycott of the cultural center in Ariel,” the online petition said.

(…اكثر)

BDS Quebec conference final statement Nov. 2010

Photo Palestinian flag flying in sky at demonstration against Israeli apartheid.

As part of the growing global movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid, grassroots organizations in Montréal successfully hosted a conference aimed at moving forward the BDS movement in Québec. The conference, which took place October 22 to 24 at the Université de Québec à Montréal, brought together hundreds of people concerned about social justice and human rights from across Canada and around the world.

(…اكثر)

Allan Boesak and Farid Esack | 10 November 2010

Photo Israel’s apartheid wall from above.

In the opening lines of an open letter to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Rabbi Warren Goldstein, leader of the South Africa’s Orthodox Jews, makes a plea that: “Without truth there can be no justice, and without justice there can be no peace.” If ever there was a case of a single swallow not heralding summer, alas, this is it. The rest of his article bears little relationship to the truth:

(…اكثر)

Thursday 11/11/2010, Ma’an news

Photo: Christian Als. A young man looks for his mother’s grave in a cemetery in Beit Lehia that was destroyed by tanks in January 2009. Israel’s three-week-long attack has given rise to charges of war crimes on both sides.

Gaza City – Israeli warplanes bombed a residential area Thursday in the southern Gaza Strip.

Injured Palestinians were stranded at the site of the blast in the Absan village east of Khan Younis, witnesses said.

Warplanes targeted two houses with four air strikes. The homes are owned by Naji Abu Hashem and the Al-Qara family, locals said.

(…اكثر)

Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements Nov. 10th 2010

Photo Oren Ziv ActiveStils Palestinians, international and Israeli activists attended a night demonstration in Bil’in protesting ongoing recently nightly invasions to the village by the Israeli army.

The Israeli Army raids Bil’in the fourth time in three days Today, the 10 November a raid happened again in the village of Bi’lin. The Army entered at around 8 pm for the second time that day. In the morning, at around 3.00 am, they had already entered the village with five jeeps and searched Ashraf al-Khatibs home.The soldiers broke down the door of the neighbor’s house, and went in. However, they were not able to find who they were looking for in neither of the houses. When people from the village arrived, the 20 soldiers pointed their guns directly in the face of the people, and acted very aggressively. They also broke the door from al-Khatib’s house when they entered.

(…اكثر)

by Rebecca Manski Mondoweiss on November 9, 2010

Photo Oren Ziv / Activestills Demolition of Al-‘Araqib village, Palestine.

Picking up a passenger by the hot, treeless roadside, Bedouin advocate ‘Ali Abu Subayh wheels his Fiat around onto a path, spitting rocks and coating the windows with dust, headed toward an “unrecognized village” in southern Israel. Between the 1950s and 1970s, the Israeli government displaced the Bedouin of the Negev desert into a sliver of land less than 2 percent the size of their former range. The government built seven townships for the Bedouin, and simultaneously declared all existing Negev Bedouin villages to be illegal. Today, Abu Subayh and 80,000 other Bedouin citizens of Israel born in one of these 45 “unrecognized” villages are threatened with further displacement. More than once, Abu Subayh, a field worker with the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages, has himself returned home to find a piece of paper flapping on the post at the entrance to the goat pen—a demolition order.

(…اكثر)

Montreal event with Israeli activist Noam Lekach via Anarchists Against the Wall

Friday November 19th 2010
18h00 Concordia University
Hall Building Room 937
1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West
Montreal, Quebec

(…اكثر)

The Link Newspaper by Justin Giovannetti — November 2, 2010

Photo Palestinians line-up at Israeli military check point in occupied Palestine.

Ramallah, Palestine — “No pictures,” yelled the Palestinian driver as he guided his bus through precariously thick traffic towards the Qalandia Checkpoint.

While the driver admitted that the Israeli Defense Force probably wouldn’t shoot at a foreigner taking pictures, the use of deadly force is authorized at Qalandia. Israel’s 600 other checkpoints scattered across the West Bank operate in a similar manner. Palestinians are reminded of that fact regularly.

(…اكثر)

by Isabelle Saint-Mézard Le Monde diplomatique

Photo Kashmir youth battles against Indian military forces.

India and Israel were born (in 1947 and 1948) through long and violent partition processes, from the ruins of the British empire. Both were caught up in inextricable armed conflicts. Yet this did not make for any particular affinity between the countries: rather the reverse.

From the 1920s onwards, the leaders of India’s nationalist movement sided with the Palestinian Arabs against British imperialism, opposing the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state. India voted against the partition of Palestine at the UN General Assembly of 1947, and only recognised Israel in 1950. Until the 1980s it formed a bloc with the Arab countries at the UN and within the Non-aligned Movement, in defence of the Palestinian people’s right to a sovereign state.

(…اكثر)