Activism

Press release: Euro-Med 

The international secretary for the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and director of We Are Not Numbers joined the growing number of peace and justice advocates who are being denied permission to enter Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

   “Despite the fact that I already had been granted a permit to enter Gaza, the Israeli airport police said I was not allowed to enter the country due to my organization’s ‘illegal’ human rights work”   
Pam Bailey, international secretary for the Euro-Med Monitor

Pam Bailey, who arrived at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport August 21 on her way to the Gaza Strip, was detained by the Israeli Border Police in a jail-like barracks for 11 hours—without access to her telephone or laptop—before being deported back to the United States. The Israeli border police also conveniently “lost” the suitcase of books Bailey was bringing into Gaza for youth there, including such dangerous topics as the latest Harry Potter story and a set of GRE study guides.

“Despite the fact that I already had been granted a permit to enter Gaza, the Israeli airport police said I was not allowed to enter the country due to my organization’s ‘illegal’ human rights work,” reports Bailey. “When I later consulted an Israeli attorney, I was told that Israel has created a growing blacklist of Palestinian and international NGOs it does not like due to their advocacy for human rights.”

Euro-Med monitors and reports on human rights abuses throughout the Middle East-North Africa region, with its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, and one of its primary field offices in the Gaza Strip. We Are Not Numbers, which Bailey founded and directs, is a Euro-Med project that trains Palestinian youth to be effective storytellers in both Gaza and Lebanon.

Bailey was on her way into Gaza to train a new group of writers, kick off a women’s empowerment initiative and supervise the production of a new report documenting Israel’s increasing crackdown on the entry of internationals into the Strip.

“Pam’s detention and expulsion from Israel without any evidence of wrongdoing or opportunity for appeal provided unexpected and personal documentation for the report now being prepared by Euro-Med,” says Inas Zayed, Euro-Med Monitor legal officer. “It is well known how Israel has deprived the Palestinians of Gaza of freedom of movement, but increasingly, Israel also is preventing internationals from entering. There is no defensible justification for such arbitrary denials and deportations, denying Palestinians of exposure to the outside world in every way possible.”

    “It is well known how Israel has deprived the Palestinians of Gaza of freedom of movement, but increasingly, Israel also is preventing internationals from entering.”   

Inas Zayed, Euro-Med Monitor legal officer

Earlier this summer, Israeli officials detained, interrogated and deported five Americans—including four black Muslims—trying to enter the country to “gain a better understanding of the situation on the ground,” according to the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. Upon their arrival on July 17, a U.S. campaign staffer and four other members of the group — all carrying U.S. passports — were interrogated by Israeli border police about their backgrounds and political involvement. They then were deported.

Likewise, on August 15, Charlotte Kates, international coordinator for the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, was denied entry to the West Bank by Israeli authorities at the King Hussein Bridge crossing in Jordan. Kates was attempting to join a delegation of European parliamentarians and lawyers in support of Palestinian prisoners.

The harassment and denial of NGOs and personalities has been long-running, although recently escalating. In 2014, for example, Israel denied entry to members of a UN inquiry into war crimes committed by Israeli military forces during Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip.

In many cases, deportations are accompanied by blanket orders to stay out of Israel for 10 years.

“We all have to unite and start fighting back against this arbitrary discrimination against those who seek to peacefully hold Israel to account,” says Zayed. 

Source: www.euromedmonitor.org

Jinan Aldameary

Al Jazeera

An international campaign to exert economic pressure on Israel to end its violation of Palestinian rights has not been defeated, one of its founders has said, despite claims made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We are winning the global battle for hearts and minds,” said Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian activist who co-founded the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in 2005.

Since its launch, BDS has aspired to campaigns such as those seen during the anti-apartheid era, when people were called on to boycott goods from South Africa and divest from the country. 

Netanyahu’s recent claims that BDS is in retreat are “laughable”, Barghouti told Al Jazeera.

“This [was] Netanyahu’s desperate attempt to deflect internal condemnation of his failure to stop BDS,” he added.

‘Hits on many fronts’

Addressing Israel’s Knesset State Control Committee meeting in July, Netanyahu said that BDS was “on the defensive”.

“They are taking hits on many fronts. We have beaten them”, Netanyahu said, according to media reports.

But several Israeli politicians at the meeting criticised Netanyahu’s administration for not doing more to defeat BDS.

OPINION: BDS is a war Israel can’t win

Participants also wanted to discuss two reports by Yosef Shapira, Israel’s state comptroller, which listed Israeli failures against BDS movement.

As the committee’s chairwoman Karin Elharra said: “Israel is facing a strong de-legitimisation campaign”. 

‘Build bridges, not boycotts’

Launched over a decade ago as a global, nonviolent campaign seeking to exert pressure on Israel through boycotts on its goods, deterring investment and calling for sanctions, BDS has been accused by its critics of anti-Semitism.

Addressing the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in February, US presidential nominee Hillary Clinton described the BDS movement as “alarming”, particularly “at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise”.

In May, Israel’s mission to the United Nations and the World Jewish Congress held a day-long conference at the UN’s headquarters in New York titled “Build Bridges, Not Boycotts” to denounce the efforts of BDS.

A month later, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order blacklisting organisations and businesses that supported BDS. 

That order led to a backlash and protests by those who accused Cuomo of limiting basic rights.

BDS founder Barghouti says the movement has nothing to do with religion and “never targeted Jews, or Israelis as Jews”.

“This is a movement that calls for the equal rights for all people, irrespective of identity,” he said.

‘Fundamental rights’

Cuomo’s executive order blacklisting BDS supporters “violates fundamental constitutional rights”, said Rahul Saksena, a lawyer at Palestine Legal, which is dedicated to protecting the rights of people in the US who speak out for Palestinian freedom.

“The government cannot create blacklists based on First Amendment-protected speech, and the government may not condition the receipt of government benefits on the requirement that we forgo constitutional rights,” Saksena told Al Jazeera.

Despite the renewed focus on BDS by Israel, the movement has recently enjoyed an increase in support, particularly at the grassroots level, and among trade unions, academic associations, artists, church groups and some governments, Barghouti said.

Although the movement continues to gain attention, it is yet to have a significant economic effect on Israel, said Marwan Hanania, a scholar of Middle East history and politics.

BDS should focus strictly on Israeli activities inside the West Bank and Gaza, which could even draw support from left-wing Israelis, Hanania said.

“It is important for activists to broaden their horizons and attempt to be more inclusive,” he said

“Their message has to resonate with people who are not particularly knowledgeable or interested in the Palestinian cause on its own terms.”

It is a view shared by US academic and political theorist Noam Chomsky, who described BDS as “too broad”, in an interview with Al Jazeera in February.

“I support the aspects of BDS aimed at the occupied territories. Those are the ones that have been successful; they are principled and correct,” Chomsky said, explaining that he opposed actions being taken “against Israel itself”.

That would be like boycotting the US for the policies of its government.

“I do not suggest boycotting Harvard University and my own university, even though the United States is involved in horrific acts … You might as well boycott the United States,” Chomksy said. 

Boycotting Israeli businesses and products outside the occupied territories would be ineffective, he added.

Source: www.aljazeera.com

By ELIYAHU KAMISHER

The Jerusalem Post

The bag features bold Arabic script along its side, which translates to: “This text has no other purpose than to terrify those who are afraid of the Arabic language.”

A photo of the bag has struck a nerve with many social media users after journalist Nader Sarras snapped a photo of man wearing the tote bag on the Berlin subway last week.

The Haifa-based design studio Rock Paper Scissors is responsible for the bag, which sells for $15 on their website.

Sana Jammalieh and Haitham Charles Haddad two friends who met at the Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art in Tel Aviv run the design studio.

In an interview with AJ+, an affiliate of Al Jazeera, Haddad said the bag was meant to challenge peoples’ perception of the Arabic language and “kind of make fun of those who are afraid of the language.”

Jammalieh contended that the bag is a pushback against generalizations of Arabs. “What I would like to tell people: give Arabs a break. Forget about the stereotypes,” she stated.  “Arabic language and culture are beautiful things that are full of love.”

Source: www.jpost.com

Darializa Avila Chevalier and Khury Petersen-Smith

The Electronic Intifada 

Solidarity with Black people in the US cannot be conditioned on silence over Israeli racism. Keiko Hiromi Polaris
August opened with a major development in the struggle against anti-Black racism in the US and beyond.

Activists from more than 50 organizations came together in the Movement for Black Lives and published the Vision for Black Lives, which identifies key aspects of the oppression of Black people and puts forth solutions to the systemic violence and oppression that target Black people in the United States. This statement proposes a set of demands for activists to advance that address racialized poverty, police violence, environmental racism and myriad other issues that plague Black communities in the United States.

While the vision inspired activists in the US and around the world, not everyone was excited. The Vision for Black Lives statement was immediately met with a slew of criticism from Zionist organizations and publications.

The criticism focused on how the statement declares solidarity with the movement for Palestinian liberation. It is unsurprising that organizations such as the Jewish Community Relations Council — in this case, the Boston Chapter — reacted with hostility to the vision for its solidarity with Palestinians. The organization states that it is committed to building support for Israel. What is a little striking is the JCRC’s rejection of the entirety of the Movement for Black Lives because of its stance on Palestine.

Since the state-sanctioned murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012, the 2014 Ferguson uprising in response to the police murder of Michael Brown and the countless other Black lives lost to police violence, a movement has coalesced around a rallying cry that should be uncontroversial: Black lives matter. This latest stage in the struggle for Black freedom has transformed the conversation around racism in the US and is forcing people to take a stand on what the Vision for Black Lives accurately names a war on Black America.

In its response to the vision statement, the JCRC has virtually nothing to say about the main issues that the statement addresses: rampant police violence, economic devastation and other realities of the racist nightmare for Black people. Instead, it focuses on a small, though important, portion of the statement.

Tepid
The JCRC’s response does say that “we recommit ourselves unequivocally to the pursuit of justice for all Americans and to working together with our friends and neighbors in the African-American community, whose experience of the criminal justice system is, far too often, determined by race.” This, the one line in JCRC’s statement that addresses anti-Black racism in the US, is tepid at best.

It is also a lie. A previous line says that JCRC “cannot and will not align ourselves with organizations” that use the word “genocide” to characterize Israel’s violence, indicating that the organization’s “commitment” to anti-racism is actually highly equivocal.

An anti-racism based on the premise that its proponents agree with JCRC’s embrace of Zionism is not anti-racism at all.

That Zionist organizations are willing to reject the current battle for Black lives raging in the United States when its activists find common ground and solidarity with Palestinians simply reaffirms what we already knew: Zionism is racism. Because the very principle of Zionism dictates that Jewish people be granted greater privileges by the State of Israel than its non-Jewish subjects, the result is necessarily a system of apartheid and inequality.

This comes at the expense of other groups, particularly Palestine’s non-Jewish indigenous inhabitants. Systematic dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, along with other forms of brutal violence by Israeli police and military, are the daily practices of the Israeli state. This is only possible through the racist dehumanization of the Palestinian people.

It follows, then, that US organizations committed to Zionism as a core principle will only make a limited commitment to anti-racism here.

JCRC’s statement accuses the Vision for Black Lives of seeking “to isolate and demonize Israel singularly amongst the nations of the world.” This is simply false; the Vision for Black Lives statement identifies a number of oppressive regimes backed by the US and projects carried out directly by the US military to oppress people abroad.

There are, however, many Israeli practices that are extraordinary — even among the world’s imperial states. These include its systematic arrests and “trials” of children in military courts and its use of 19th century practices and language regarding the colonization of Palestinian land. After all, where else in the world today does a government talk openly of “settlements” and “settlers”?

Israel also maintains an apartheid regime with distinct laws and services that only apply to Jewish people. While we have no illusions that the US or South Africa are countries of equality, at least similar white supremacist laws in these places were defeated by freedom struggles decades ago.

Superficial?
The Vision for Black Lives’ characterization of Israel was a basis for other organizations and publications to disagree with the document. The Anti-Defamation League, which characterizes the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel as anti-Semitic, issued a response to the vision that, unlike the JCRC, acknowledges the existence of mass incarceration and other oppressive realities for Black people in the US. But the ADL opposes the document for referring to Israel as an apartheid state, which it calls a “gross mischaracterization.”

The head of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, also argues that “it’s repellent and completely inaccurate to label Israel’s policy as ‘genocide.’”

Similarly, writers with +972 Magazine took issue with the language that the vision uses to describe Israel’s violence toward the Palestinians.

The progressive English-language news site based in Israel, which features writers who advocate for the human rights of Palestinians, greeted the vision warmly, with writer Amjad Iraqi explaining that “Black activists have delivered a powerful message to the Palestinian people: you are not alone in your struggle.” +972, however, has published three separate posts (including Iraqi’s) that argue that the vision is wrong for characterizing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as genocide.

In the most extensive article on the subject, Dahlia Scheindlin argues — with incredible condescension — that the authors of the Vision for Black Lives should retract their use of the word. Unable to believe that Black activists looking at the same facts as her could rationally draw different conclusions, Scheindlin attributes the charge of genocide to describe Israel’s practices to “a rush job and a superficial form of groupthink.”

Though the Vision for Black Lives’ primary purpose is not to call attention to Palestine, the platform actually presents some key facts and arguments to justify its use of the terms “apartheid” and “genocide.”

For example, the vision statement notes that Palestinian homes are routinely bulldozed to make way for Israeli settlements and that Israel has more than 50 laws on its statute books that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of the state. The United Nations has defined the crime of genocide as including a deliberate policy to impose conditions of life on an ethnic, racial or religious group to bring about the group’s total or partial destruction. By seriously examining the situation, it is entirely reasonable to argue that Israel is trying to destroy the Palestinian people and is therefore committing the crime of genocide.

Neither the ADL nor any of the +972 Magazine bloggers who take issue with the platform respond to this context.

They argue, instead, that Black Lives Matter activists should not use the word “genocide” because it is divisive and that Jewish readers take offense. But with growing criticism of Zionism within the Jewish community, not all Jewish groups responded the same way.

No strings attached
Jewish Voice for Peace responded both to the vision, and to Zionist organizations’ opposition to it, by declaring that the group “endorses the Movement for Black Lives platform in its entirety, without reservation.” IfNotNow, a Jewish youth group formed in response to Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza, and JVP’s Jews of Color Caucus, have issued similar statements of support.

Greenblatt of the ADL describes the characterizations of Israel as an apartheid state and calls for support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement as “offensive in tone,” while Scheindlin calls on the Movement for Black Lives to “correct” the “genocide language.” Sheindlin states that “adopting slogans of certain activists” contributes to “the inevitable and understandable emotional turmoil” and that, therefore, “many now question the level of partnership and support that so many Jewish actors are eager to provide.”

Scheindlin argues, and Greenblatt suggests, that the horrific truth of Israel’s US-backed practices should be obscured in the name of tactfulness. We reject this logic entirely; the pursuit of justice should be guided by that alone, even if it makes those unwilling to acknowledge the full depths of injustice uncomfortable.

After all, there is nothing tactful about the act of genocide.

It may come as a surprise to see the ADL and +972 Magazine writers on the same side of this question.

The ADL, while purporting to defend civil rights, contributes generously to anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism in the US and abroad and allies with the very US urban police departments on the front lines of the war against Black America. Indeed, in 2015 it commended the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department for participating in an ADL training — just shy of the first anniversary of the department’s repression of the Ferguson uprising.

The ADL characterizes any critique of Israel as anti-Semitism. +972 Magazine, on the other hand, regularly publishes criticisms of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, publicizes egregious acts taken by the Israeli military and covers Palestinian protests with sympathy.

Both camps seem to take for granted, however, Israel’s constitution as a Jewish state, one that continues to uphold the legal privileges of Jews over the rights and equality of non-Jews. Many of the +972 bloggers criticize the worst violence of the Israeli military and police forces without acknowledging that the state’s reason for being, as a country that exists for Jewish people first and foremost, makes it incompatible with equality for Palestinians — or any non-Jews.

The Vision for Black Lives proposes a movement that seeks to end global racism — with its mutually devastating effects on Palestinians, Black people in the US and around the world. In their responses to that movement, some of these organizations and individuals are saying that the value they see in Black lives is predicated on their support for, complicity in, and toleration of the crimes the State of Israel commits against the Palestinian people.

While we understand the nuanced differences between these various arguments we are responding to, and that not all of them disavow the entirety of the vision statement, we find the many points of commonality that are of great cause for concern. They have shown that their support for our liberation is conditional; that so long as we, as Black people, remain silent or reserved in the face of ethnic cleansing, we may have a right to live free of fear and oppression.

That is not the meaning of liberation. Our freedom cannot be bought at the expense of another’s oppression. Claiming solidarity to us so long as we remain silent on the oppression of our Palestinian sisters and brothers is insulting.

As the Dream Defenders recently stated in their response to this Zionist backlash, “True solidarity does not come with strings attached.”

And in these heavy days of racist violence in the US and Palestine, we are inspired to see more people and organizations making the connection. We will continue to do our parts to build the struggle for Black lives and to support the fight for Palestinian freedom.

We will build on efforts like the 2015 Statement of Black Solidarity With Palestine, and various delegations of Black activists to Palestine and Palestinian activists to the US that foster solidarity between both movements for the mutual benefit of each — and the liberation of all oppressed people.

Source: electronicintifada.net

JTA- Jewish Telegraphic Agency 

Students for Justice in Palestine, a pro-Palestinian student advocacy group, denied an Israeli report that it had collected information on Jewish students on college campuses in North America.

Two pro-Israel groups active on campus also said they had no knowledge of such activity.

Israel Radio reported Tuesday that information on the group’s alleged activities was presented to members of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee when it met to discuss efforts to boycott Israel by anti-Israel groups at American colleges. The report said the committee had vowed to work against the singling out of Jewish students.

Knesset member Anat Berko of the ruling Likud party, who was among the lawmakers who held the session, told Israel Radio that Students for Justice in Palestine had been collecting information on where Jewish students live.

Citing information from Miluimnikim BaHazit (Reservists On Duty), a pro-Israel advocacy group of Israel Defense Forces veterans, Berko said the committee was told “about the marking out of Jewish dorms, of rooms of Jewish students, for example at New York University and other campuses.”

The National Students for Justice in Palestine later told the Forward it had “never heard of such cases.” While “all SJP chapters on campuses across the country are autonomously run,” the group said, “NSJP is firmly against all forms of bigotry, including anti-Semitism.”

Officials from the Zionist Organization of America and StandWithUs, which combat anti-Semitism on college campuses, knew nothing of any such activity, the Forward reported.

On Wednesday, an aide to Berko told The Times of Israel that Berko was only reporting to Israel Radio what the committee had been told. Nonetheless, the aide said Students for Justice in Palestine was “collecting information on where Jewish students live,” and that there had been several incidents in which “eviction notices” were placed in dormitories where “there are mezuzahs.”

The aide said notices telling students to leave dorms and referencing Israeli military actions against Palestinians had been posted at NYU and on a campus in Connecticut. Israel Hayom in June quoted a Jewish student describing a similar incident on his Florida campus.

Source: www.jta.org

By Christian Sanchez Chicago Monitor “The Palestinians in Gaza are the American Indians of the Middle East.” This was the opinion of the late American Indian civil rights leader, Russell Means. In reviewing the history of the two peoples, it is clear that both Palestinians and American Indians share similar hardships. There is the common … Continued