Artists Against Apartheid in Montreal captured in photo and video, an incredible cultural event which united many celebrated artists as part of the global campaign against Israeli apartheid through an international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions on the Israeli government.
This week marks the 26th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, one of the bloodiest events of the second half of the twentieth century. A Google search for recent news reports on this year’s commemoration of the atrocity, however, brought up very little. Yes, there were some emotional blog posts, as well as a link to the BBC’s “On this Day” page, featuring quick facts and figures about the massacre, alongside an archival, and iconic, photograph of twisted corpses lying in a heap next to a cinder-block wall, the victims of an execution-style killing.
Photo: Activestills. Palestinian worshipers trying to reach Jerusalem in Ramadan.
For years, Israeli authorities have both barred Palestinian access to rings of land surrounding settlements, and have not acted to eliminate settlers’ piratical closing of lands adjacent to settlements and blocking of Palestinian access to them. Blocking access is one of the many ways used to expand settlements. In recent years, Israel has institutionalized the closing of such lands in an attempt to retroactively sanction the unauthorized placement of barriers far from the houses at the edge of the settlements.
Settlers pave patrol roads and place physical obstructions on Palestinian lands adjacent to settlements, at times with the authorities’ approval, at others not. Settlers also forcibly remove Palestinians, primarily farmers, from their lands. B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, has documented cases of gunfire, threats of gunfire and killing, beatings, stone throwing, use of attack dogs, attempts to run over Palestinians, destruction of farming equipment and crops, theft of crops, killing and theft of livestock and animals used in farming, unauthorized demands to see identification cards, and theft of documents.
Collectif de Solidarité Lac Barrière et Tadamon! Montréal présentent…
On a hot afternoon during the month of Ramadan, there are few better places to be than resting beneath the shade of an orchard of guava trees, with the scent of fresh ripening fruit wafting around you. Farmer Sa’id Al-Agha sits quietly, his eyes resting on his fruit trees. ‘My father and my grandfather both grew up here, farming guavas, and I’ve lived here all my life’ he says. ‘This land is in my blood.’
Sa’id Al-Agha farms thirty donumms of guava plantations in Mawasi, in the south western Gaza Strip, where the loamy soil also encourages date palms and citrus trees to thrive (a donumm is equivalent to 1,000 square metres). His Mawasi farm is a tranquil haven in Gaza, which has one of the highest population densities in the world. There are some 120 guava farms dotted around Mawasi, and between them the farmers and their families cultivate more than 2,500 donumms of guavas. August and September are the height of the Gaza guava season, and we can hear workers calling to each other as they harvest the fruit by hand.
On Saturday, after 32 hours on the high seas, I sailed into the port of Gaza City with 45 other citizens from around the world in defiance of Israel’s blockade. We traveled from Cyprus with humanitarian provisions for Palestinians living under siege. My family in Michigan was worried sick.
They are not naive. They knew that Israel could have attacked us — as Israeli forces did in 2003, killing nonviolent American witness Rachel Corrie and Brit Tom Hurndall as well as thousands of unarmed Palestinian civilians over the years.
During a conference in California in May of this year I was surprised to receive an invitation from two American activists to join their group, the Free Gaza Movement, on a boat trip to Gaza in August. They spoke of their determination to break the inhuman Israeli siege of Gaza by facing it head on. They would sail directly to Gaza’s shores in boats laden with humanitarian supplies. At the time I thought them well meaning but unrealistic, even naïve, and I was sceptical about the success of their enterprise. I thought it unlikely it would ever take off, and an Israeli colleague, also invited, judged the Israeli navy would turn them back as soon as they sailed anywhere near to Gaza’s shores.
I could not have been more mistaken. Undeterred by our hints of problems they might encounter, these determined people pressed on vigorously with their preparations over the months, and this week they set sail in several boats as planned from Cyprus to Gaza.
Cher Jean-Luc Godard,
En cette année où l’écran de fumée des célébrations du 60ème anniversaire de l’Etat d’Israël occupe tout l’espace médiatique, que ce soit de façon ouverte ou déguisée sous la forme de célébrations culturelles “apolitiques”, votre décision de ne pas vous rendre au Festival du Film de Tel Aviv le mois dernier nous a fait l’effet d’un rayon de soleil!
Notre association basée à Montréal, Tadamon, qui signifie Solidarité en arabe, tente de relayer les voix palestiniennes qui appellent la communauté internationale à un boycott des manifestations culturelles organisées par l’Etat d’Israël. Cette démarche est une forme de pression non violente et populaire qui peut avoir des effets bénéfiques, comme ce fut le cas pour l’Afrique du Sud dans les années 80.
Nicosia, Cyprus: In a letter today to the Free Gaza Movement, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs acknowledged that the group of international human rights activists attempting to break the siege of Gaza were “humanitarian,” and stated that the Israeli government “assume[s] that your intentions are good.”
Greta Berlin, one of the organizers of the Free Gaza Movement stated that, “Since the Foreign Minister’s office responded to our invitation to join us, and said that we have good intentions, we now fully expect to reach Gaza.”
According to recent reports in the Israeli media however, the Israeli military is preparing to use force to stop the nonviolent campaigners from reaching Gaza. It’s not clear if the letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs signals a change of policy, or is simply an attempt to open up an official dialogue between the state of Israel and the Free Gaza Movement regarding the current blockade.
