Tag: Gaza

Pursuing nonviolent protest in Palestine

Posted on by kathiemm

People have asked, “Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?” One response has been Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who created the documentary Five Broken Cameras. Another good example is the young woman in our opening video who stood up to Israeli troops who were destroying Palestinian homes. This video should become an icon for nonviolence like the Tank Man in Tiananmen Square, or like Rachel Corrie, the young American woman who was killed by Israeli tank drivers for engaging in nonviolent resistance to the destruction of Palestinian homes.

A well-kept secret–perhaps because it is not as “newsworthy” as violence–is the substantial efforts of many Palestinians and Israelis to engage in nonviolence to resolve their rival claims to lands that the United Nations assigned to Palestine.

If you click on this link, you will see a long list of organizations that are working for nonviolence on the part of Israelis, Palestinians, or both.

A helpful article in The Economist about Palestinian efforts at nonviolence challenges Americans to support them in their quest.

Also inspiring is a brief documentary regarding Just Vision, a group founded by an American Jewish woman, Ronit Avi, working to promote nonviolence between Israelis and Palestinians through films such as Budrus.

To learn more about the many different examples of nonviolent resistance that Palestinians have adopted in response to Israeli occupation and what former President Jimmy Carter called the Israeli policy of apartheid, watch this video.

Many Israelis and Jews elsewhere in the world have supported the Palestinian cause. I believe that together these two waves of nonviolent protest against illegal occupation of Palestinian lands can bring about peace. You can join them.

March 16 was the tenthanniversary of the killing of Rachel Corrie in Gaza. Read her story on Engaging Peace and consider how you can join the worldwide observances to honor her nonviolent efforts at promoting peace.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

4,520 Palestinian political prisoners

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Dahlia Wasfi

In the early morning hours of December 12, 2012, Israeli forces raided the offices of three Palestinian civil society organizations in Ramallah in the West Bank, including the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

Photo by Peter used under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Addameer is a non-governmental institution that works to support Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli and Palestinian jails. Israeli soldiers confiscated four computers, a hard drive, a video camera, and an unknown amount of files and documentation. Posters of prisoners and hunger strikers were ripped down from the walls and strewn on the floor.

Addameer’s last monthly report from November 1, 2012, listed 4,520 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centers, including 156 administrative detainees, 10 women, and shockingly, 164 children.

Addameer was likely targeted by occupation forces because of its efforts to document Israel’s violations of the rights of prisoners.

These violations include:

  • Systematic torture and ill-treatment
  • Unjust solitary confinement and isolation
  • Collective punishment
  • Medical negligence

Violations of the human rights of prisoners and detainees—many of whom are held indefinitely and without charge—have driven many of those behind bars to go on hunger strike.

Like Bobby Sands and his fellow imprisoned Irish Republicans who united in hunger strike against the UK government, Palestinian political prisoners are on hunger strike demanding respect for their human rights. Some prisoners are also striking for the broader cause of ending the illegal occupation of Palestine.

Two cases that have received international attention were the hunger strikes of Khader Adnan, who protested his detention without charge or trial, and Mahmoud Sarsak, who began his hunger strike after his detention was renewed for the sixth time, without charge or trial.

Israeli officials agreed to release Adnan on the 66th day of his strike. Sarsak—a gifted soccer player who was detained in 2009 while en route from his home in Gaza to play in the West Bank–was released after 96 days without food (See Truthout article).

Thousands more, however, continue to languish in Israeli jails. Addameer reports that Israel continues to arrest an average of 11 to 20 Palestinians every day, totaling around 7,000 new detainees each year. Arbitrary administrative detention without charge or trial is an unacceptable practice, as is the harassment of Addameer’s human rights workers.

The United States should suspend aid to the Israeli military until the time that compliance with international humanitarian law becomes Israeli policy.

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

Gaza: A just war on either side?

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Dr. Mike Corgan

We are all hoping for a cease fire in Gaza, and possibly even one that lasts for longer than it takes to clear the rubble and mourn the dead.

Gaza Strip
Gaza Strip. Photo by NASA in public domain.

Is there a just war going on here on either side?

Hamas has fired rockets into Israel and this certainly violates the principle of targeting only enemy forces. Rockets by their nature are not aimed at any particular point but are “area” weapons that can be expected to come down anywhere in the general direction to which they are pointed. Unless they are being fired at a massed military formation, rockets cannot be part of just war.

For their part, the Israelis are using drone and air strikes with what appear to be precision-guided weapons. Those weapons do hit where they are aimed–at targets, perhaps legitimate, in the middle of an extremely dense civilian population. Thus they are certain to cause casualties among innocents and they certainly have.

So far, over 150 are dead, many of whom are clearly not Hamas militants. The Israeli response is not part of just war either.

Israel claims that it faces an existential threat. Hamas’s fundamental documents do call for the abolition of Israel altogether and they are doing what they can to achieve that end by force.

Israel obviously has extraordinarily good intelligence on exactly where the Hamas leaders are located. However, they are choosing to eliminate what may be legitimate targets by methods that keep their military casualties low but raise casualties among Palestinian civilians.

Is there a just war going on here on either side? Not the way things appear.

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of International Relations, Boston University

Not in my name (Stories of engagement)

Posted on by kathiemm

Our guest author, Glyn Secker, is on the executive committee of Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP) and was a lead organizer and captain of the Jewish Boat To Gaza last year.

I grew up with no faith and within no Jewish community, but with a deep commitment to human rights and justice. Searching for my cultural community, I became conscious that it had been buried by a fundamentalism that learned from history nothing but the very mindset of oppression through which it had itself emerged.

In the fight for human rights we should each choose the domain where we can be most effective. So for me, as a Jew, the title of our organization, “Jews For Justice For Palestinians” is an existential statement: its subtitle, “Two Peoples – One Future,” is a deep philosophical belief.

My family arrived in the U.K. as refugees from the pogroms in Poland and Romania. I live in London with Vanessa, who lost a generation of her family in the Holocaust, and our two sons.

I have been a lifetime campaigner for social justice and human rights:

  • Organizing and delivering printing presses to social democratic parties in Greece in 1974 prior to the fall of the military junta
  • Coordinating with social democratic parties in Czechoslovakia prior to the Velvet Revolution and the fall of the regime in 1982
  • Serving on the organizing team of the UK Anti-Nazi League in 1977 and the giant Rock Against Racism concerts in 1978.

I have been on fact-finding missions and solidarity work in Portugal in 1974, Algeria in 1978, Palestinian organizations in Lebanon in 1979, and Egypt in 1981, and I was a courier for social democratic parties in Turkey in 1982 following the military coup in 1980.

All of this prepared me to sail a boat to Gaza to breach the blockade and to say “Not in my name.” I  organized sailing our family boat to Gaza as a JfJfP boat in 2009, with hospital medical equipment provided at the ready by Conscience International, and the crew on standby.

This mission was postponed when Israel began impounding Free Gaza boats for the first time. However, in 2010, I was lead organizer and captain of the Jewish Boat to Gaza.

Glyn Secker