Human rights groups issued a report saying that the Israeli military police, better known as the border police, arrested 100 Palestinian children from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan in October.
Budrus, a documentary film now debuting across the US, tells the story of a successful protest campaign by unarmed Palestinian civilians against Israel’s military occupation in my small West Bank village. Our struggle’s success and the consequent expansion of civil resistance to other West Bank communities may provide hope to viewers desperate for positive news from the Middle East, but today an Israeli crackdown on unarmed Palestinian protesters is threatening this growing movement. For our movement to thrive and serve as a true alternative to violence, we need Americans’ to demand that Israel, a close US ally, end this repression.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) notes that the Spanish authorities refused to provide Avi Dichter, former Director of the Israeli General Security Services, with requested immunity prior to a planned visit to Spain. Mr. Dichter is currently the subject of a criminal lawsuit before the Spanish Courts in relation to his role in the Al Daraj assassination of July 22, 2002.
PCHR applaud this move, noting a welcome return to the rule of law. Spain, along with all other High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, is subject to a legal obligation to search for and prosecute all those suspected of committing grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
Once upon a time the staple piece of clothing was the blue shirt of the Labor Movement, and songwriter Mordechai Zeira sang about it: “And it’s much better than all jewels.” A new generation has arrived, and its shirt is darker. Today it’s black and bears the legend: We are all the victims of Goldstone.
Dozens of friends of the two Givati Brigade soldiers arrived wearing these infuriating shirts at a military court a few days ago. Their friends had been convicted of overextending their authority while risking the life of an 11-year-old, and to be precise, of conduct unbecoming of soldiers. The soldiers received the scandalous support of senior officers, and the two convicted men have become heroes.
Photo Israeli soldiers moving to repress popular demonstrations in occupied Palestine.
Many shebab (youth), two journalists and a girl were injured on Friday at the weekly demonstration in An Nabi Saleh. Villagers had employed a new strategy in response to the increasing violence of soldiers and border police.
Demonstrators split up and approached the road from the two opposite hills divided by the valley. The side with most of the shebab was blocked with massive amounts of teargas and attacked by border police. From the other side, most of the internationals, women, and children entered the road and continued the demonstration.
Today’s demonstration in Bil’in against the Apartheid wall, organized by the Popular Committee of Bil’in, was joined by many local residents, Israeli activists as well as many internationals. As the group moved peacefully towards the Apartheid wall, they chanted to “Freedom to all Palestinian Political Prisoners”. Demonstrators carrying the Palestinian flag crossed through a gate to confront the awaiting soldiers with a simple question, “What are you doing here?”
Photo Noé Sardet. Detroit-based hip-hop artist Invincible performing in Montreal.
Hundreds gathered in Montreal for the fourteenth edition of Artists Against Apartheid occurring as part of the Quebec/Canada-wide conference on the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement targeting the Israeli government. Artists Against Apartheid XIV was co-presented by Afro Latin Soul and featured Invincible from Detroit, members of Nomadic Massive performing along side with celebrated Cuban hip-hop ensemble Obsesión and a special appearance by Montreal Iraqi hip-hop artist The Narcicyst. Photographer / filmmaker Noé Sardet captured some images from the concert.
The worldwide campaign to boycott Israel as an apartheid state took a giant Canadian leap forward last weekend with a three-day BDS Conference in Montreal (boycott, divestment and sanctions) that saw the coming together of separate and diverse initiatives into what a South African trade union delegate called “an unstoppable movement.”
At a time when the old western-dominated colonialist-militarist world order is in decline, when the loot-and-run, slash-and-burn, bomb-and-rebuild capitalist model is in crisis, when western civil societies are clamoring for a more participative democracy to combat corruption, secrecy and the lies of their security-obsessed states, and mobilizing globally to save the planet, has the Palestinian cause become a symbol of the struggle for human values for a new generation and a new century?
Audio recording opening Quebec Boycott Divestment & Sanctions BDS conference
Photo: Paul Di Stefano. Opening panel @ Quebec/Canada wide BDS conference.
This panel will present and assess the achievements and aims of the BDS movement internationally and in Palestine over the past 5 years, and speak to the challenges ahead for the BDS movement in Québec, Canada and around the world.
Featuring Omar Barghouti, Coordinator, Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the Boycott National Committee (BNC), Palestine Areej Ja’fari, Coordinator of the Palestine Freedom Project, West Bank Stephen Faulkner, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
