Palestinian Hunger Striker Samer Issawi

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For journalists covering the case of 33-year-old Palestinian hunger striker Samer Issawi, who is reportedly on the verge of dying from a hunger strike that began last summer following his detention without charge or trial by Israel, the IMEU offers the following quotes for publication.

To speak with these individuals or for more information, contact Chris at (202) 903-3271 orchris@imeu.net, or Michael at (828) 424-0081 or michael@imeu.net. For a Palestine-based IMEU representative, contact Vivien at +972-597-220-838 or vivien@imeu.net.

 

 

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTHI, Leading figure in Palestinian civil society, longtime advocate for the non-violent Palestinian protest movement, and one of the founders of the independent political party, the Palestinian National Initiative:

 

“Samer Issawi is conducting the most peaceful form of nonviolent struggle for his freedom. He was illegally arrested by Israel and is kept under administrative detention, which allows Israeli authorities to imprison any Palestinian without charge or trial for an unlimited time. Samer is struggling like many of his colleagues against this racist practice. His life is at risk and it is the duty of those who believe in human rights to act immediately to save his life and free him from the system of racism and Apartheid.”

 

YOUSEF MUNAYYER, Executive Director of the Jerusalem Fund and the Palestine Center in Washington, DC, and regular contributor to the Daily Beast’s Open Zion blog:

 

"For months, Samer Issawi has refused food on a hunger strike and the world has ignored him. Despite his resilience, which is an inspiration to Palestinians everywhere, he is now reportedly close to death. He is demanding freedom and dignity, and is willing to pay the ultimate price to achieve them. At this moment, international players and global civil society have an opportunity to either stand in support of Samer and other Palestinians engaging in nonviolent resistance to Israel’s brutal and illegal occupation regime, or remain muted. There can be no in between. Palestinians are watching with heavy hearts and history is recording."

 

NOURA ERAKAT, Freedman Teaching Fellow at Temple Law School, adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and the Legal Advocacy Coordinator for the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights:

 

“Samer Issawl, a Palestinian political prisoner who has refused food, and even water at times, to protest his detention without charge or trial is imminently near death. He joins a mounting number of Palestinian political prisoners who have chosen the hunger strike as their primary protest tactic, in line with President Barack Obama's call to follow the example of Blacks who used ‘peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals of America's founding’ to achieve full equal rights in the US. Israel, however, has not responded positively to these compelling, nonviolent gestures.

“Israel holds Samer in administrative detention, or indefinite detention, on unknown charges. Administrative detention is applied almost exclusively to Palestinians, as Israeli military law does not apply to Jewish Israelis, and has been described by the UN Committee to End Racial Discrimination as tantamount to 'apartheid and segregation.' Since 1967, Israel has detained no less than 20% of the Palestinian population of the occupied territories, 200 of whom have died in captivity.

“The real crime of Samer and other Palestinian political prisoners is that they’ve had the audacity to protest the forced removal of Palestinians from their homes and lands by Israel, and their degrading treatment by an Israeli regime that treats them like criminals until proven innocent.”

 

-------------------
Christopher Hazou
Communications Manager, IMEU
(202) 903-3271
www.imeu.net
Follow us on Twitter: http://imeu.createsend1.com/t/r-l-uklidyl-nitukjku-n/
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The IMEU is an independent, non-profit, that works to provide resources and accurate information about Palestine and the Palestinians to journalists.

 

Vigil for a FREE PALESTINE, Saturday Feb 16, Noon-2PM, Seattle, Westlake Park

Tweet Please join us this Saturday to call for an end to THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE.

 

Come join us to demand Justice, Equal rights and an End to Ethnic Cleansing!

 

 What: Vigil for a FREE PALESTINE

Where: Westlake 4th&Pine

When: Feb 16, 12-2pm

 

See you there......

 

 

####

 

Amin Odeh

VoicesofPalestine.org

"Stand up for what is right,even if you are standing alone"

Progressive Commentary Hour – Africa and the new colonialism of the continent – 02/11/13 [Rick Rozoff, Wililam Blum, Glen Ford -- GREAT PANEL]

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Don't Dance on Palestinian Children's Graves; Please Boycott Brand Israel -- Dance Attendees Educated in Seattle

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The Northwest Regional BDS Coalition asked prospective audience members at Seattle performance by Israel-sponsored Hubbard Street Dance to boycott Brand Israel.

We educated the crowd with our signs and by passing out 150 or so leaflets explaining Israel's funding of cultural events to whitewash its image.

For more info on the Palestinian call for a cultural and academic boycott of Israel, please go to PACBI.org.

HUNGRY - Doc Jazz music video - FREE SAMER ISSAWI !

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOxOWAHesKI&feature=share&list=UU-g5A2kAe84cWaChKHNgR3A

Protests for Hunger Strikers, Prisoners at Israeli prison

Tweet http://bikyanews.com/85110/protests-for-hunger-strikers-prisoners-at-israeli-prison/

RAMALLAH: Over 150 people, mostly Palestinian citizens of Israel and East Jerusalemites, protested outside of Ramleh Prison on Monday, witnesses told BikyaNews.com.

Demonstrators traveled from Jaffa, Haifa, Ramleh, and Lod. An additional two buses came from East Jerusalem, a demonstrator said. The nonviolent demonstration lasted roughly one hour, and no clashes with police were reported.

Protesters called for solidarity with Palestinian hunger strikers and the release of all political prisoners. Among those present was the mother of Samer Al-Issawi, a prisoner who has been on hunger strike for nearly 200 days and whose health is rapidly declining.

Over the last few years, the plight of Palestinian hunger strikers has served as a unifying cause in an otherwise fractured political landscape.

According to the latest figures from Addameer Prisoner Support Network, there are presently 4,743 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. From that total, 193 are children, and another 23 under the age of 16. 177 are administrative detainees, held on “secret evidence” without charge or trial. 12 are members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

From Monday’s demo at Ramleh Prison

As of January 30, at least four prisoners were on hunger strike. Jafar Azzedine and Tarek Qa’adan have reached the 70day mark. Samer Al-Issawi is nearing the 200^th day. Akram Rikhawi, another prisoner who launched a 102-day hunger strike last year, joined on January 24 after Israeli Prison Services reneged on their agreement to release him.

“Hunger strikers all over the world gained the kind of attention that merited governmental pressure,” Aziz, a student from Haifa University, told BikyaNews.com “Yet when a Palestinian man being held in an Israeli prison without charges breaks a hunger strike record, the world fails to react.”

What I Learned about Empire in the West Bank -- Nathan Schneider

Tweet From a link on Mazin Qumsiyeh's blog [http://popular-resistance.blogspot.com/2013/01/unhrc-condemns-israel.html]

Link for the article:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/2013/01/what-i-learned-about-empire-in-the-west-bank/

EXCERPT:

There was a woman on the Freedom Bus, a middle-aged social worker from New York, who wanted to see Playback Theatre of this sort practiced by Israelis and Palestinians together, sharing their stories and thereby learning to coexist. She reported to me at one point, however, that she’d asked one of the actors about this idea, and the actor was not interested.

The Palestinian-American literary critic Edward Said once observed of the many polite dialogues he participated in that, “as the weaker, less organized party, the Palestinians could not really benefit from the uneven exchange.” Under occupation, the likely effect of such productions is the further pacification of the losing side. The activists we talked with in the West Bank asked not for dialogue, but for more bodies at protests, and more boycotts, divestments and sanctions against the occupation.

Said described the problem of diplomacy — also a kind of dialogue — in geographic terms: “They had the plans, the territory, the maps, the settlements, the roads: we have the wish for autonomy and Israeli withdrawal, with no details, and no power to change anything very much.” On the Israeli concrete wall that lines the border of the Aida Refugee Camp, someone painted these words of Nelson Mandela’s: “Only free men can negotiate.”

U.N. Rights Inquiry Says Israel Must Remove Settlers

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http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/01/31/uk-israel-palestinians-settlements-idUKBRE90U0E720130131

4:20pm GMT

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - U.N. human rights investigators called on Israel on Thursday to halt settlement expansion and withdraw all half a million Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank, saying that its practices could be subject to prosecution as possible war crimes.

A three-member U.N. panel said private companies should stop working in the settlements if their work adversely affected the human rights of Palestinians, and urged member states to ensure companies respected human rights.

"Israel must cease settlement activities and provide adequate, prompt and effective remedy to the victims of violations of human rights," Christine Chanet, a French judge who led the U.N. inquiry, told a news conference.

The settlements contravened the Fourth Geneva Convention forbidding the transfer of civilian populations into occupied territory and could amount to war crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the United Nations report said.

"To transfer its own population into an occupied territory is prohibited because it is an obstacle to the exercise of the right to self-determination," Chanet said.

All U.N. member states must comply with their duty under international law on the settlements, she said. "We have highlighted states' responsibility because the facts we denounce are known. The problem is nobody is doing anything about it."

In December, the Palestinians accused Israel in a letter to the United Nations of planning to commit what they said were further war crimes by expanding Jewish settlements after the Palestinians won de facto U.N. recognition of statehood, and said Israel must be held accountable.

Israel has not cooperated with the probe set up by the Human Rights Council last March to examine the impact of settlements in the territory, including East Jerusalem. Israel says the forum has an inherent bias against it and defends its settlement policy by citing historical and Biblical links to the West Bank.

Israel's foreign ministry swiftly rejected the report as "counterproductive and unfortunate". Palestinians welcomed the report saying it vindicated their struggle against Israel.

"The only way to resolve all pending issues between Israel and the Palestinians, including the settlements issue, is through direct negotiations without pre-conditions. Counterproductive measures - such as the report before us, will only hamper efforts to find a sustainable solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict," Israel's Yigal Palmor said.

But Hanan Ashrawi, a senior PLO official, told Reuters in Ramallah: "This is incredible. We are extremely heartened by this principled and candid assessment of Israeli violations."

The independent U.N. investigators interviewed more than 50 people who came to Jordan in November to testify about confiscated land, damage to their livelihoods including olive trees, and violence by Jewish settlers, according to the report.

"The mission believes that the motivation behind this violence and the intimidation against the Palestinians as well as their properties is to drive the local populations away from their lands and allow the settlements to expand," it said.

"CREEPING ANNEXATION"

About 250 settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have been established since 1967 and they hold an estimated 520,000 settlers, according to the U.N. report. The settlements impede Palestinian access to water and farmland.

The settlements were "leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination," it said.

Chanet said firms working in the territories must uphold human rights. France's Veolia, which built Jerusalem's light rail linking the western side of the city to the eastern side annexed by Israel after the 1967 war, won a case brought against it in a Nanterre court, whose ruling that it had not violated the Geneva Conventions is now on appeal, she said.

After the General Assembly upgraded the Palestinians status at the world body, Israel said it would build 3,000 more settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - areas Palestinians wanted for a future state, along with the Gaza Strip.

"I think that maybe it will help in the negotiation just to see that now, and especially when Palestine has been recognised as a state, things might change. Maybe, we hope. And now there is a new government in Israel," Chanet said.

"So things are moving. So we hope that our report will be in the middle of this movement."

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem and Noah Browning in Ramallah; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Talk Nation Radio: Marcy Wheeler: Brennan Is Obama's Cheney -- David Swanson's Blog

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Marcy Wheeler blogs as Emptywheel at Emptywheel.net. She says John Brennan, the nominee for CIA director, has been Obama's Dick Cheney, operating outside the law, lying about bin Laden, and lying about drones; the White House has killed an American for his speech; the CIA has stopped lying to Congress only by starting to tell Congress nothing at all; Senator Diane Feinstein is complicit in the drone kill program; Congress has asked President Obama 10 times for a legal basis for the drone kill program and been blown off every time; the prosecutorial abuse in the case of Aaron Swartz is not uncommon, but evidence suggests retribution for Swartz's making accessible the Department of Justice's own public information, requesting of information on the treatment of Bradley Manning, and possible (entirely legal) assistance to WikiLeaks.

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Israel to Demand Apology for Cartoon They Label as Anti-Semitic

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33755.htm

Impunity to kill: Six Palestinians Shot Dead by Israeli Forces in Less than a Fortnight -- Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Tweet http://www.ipsc.ie/press-releases/impunity-to-kill-six-palestinians-shot-dead-by-israeli-forces-in-less-than-a-fortnight

Yesterday, as media outlets focused on the outcome of the elections in Israel, it was business as usual in Israeli-occupied Palestine. Two Palestinians lost their lives at the hands of the Israeli occupation forces, bringing to six the number of young Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the past fortnight alone. These deaths have gone largely unreported in the Irish media and Israeli aggression continues apace. The Israeli government and its military continue to kill, maim and destroy lives and livelihoods with impunity, unchecked by the international community.

Yesterday, 23^rd January 2013, Lubna Munir Hanash, a young 22-year-old Palestinian woman was shot in the head and died from her injuries. Witnesses told the Ma’an News Agency that Israeli soldiers travelling in a civilian car opened fire at a group of people near Arroub refugee camp between Bethlehem and Hebron. Hanash, a student in her fourth year at Al-Quds University, had reportedly been visiting her sister in the camp.

Earlier yesterday a Palestinian child died in hospital as a result of gunshot wounds. 15-year-old Salih al-Amarin had been shot in the head on Friday by the Israeli military in Bethlehem and tragically succumbed to his injuries.

Another four young Palestinians were killed in the preceding fortnight, two in Gaza and two in the West Bank.

On 11 January, 22-year-old Anwar Mamlouk was shot by Israeli soldiers outside the Jabaliya regugee camp in Gaza. Mustafa Jarad a 21-year-old farmer from Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip was shot in the forehead by an Israeli sniper on 14 January while working his land 1,200 metres away from the border. Doctors tried to remove the bullet from his severely injured brain but Jarad died after surgery.

On 12 January 21-year-old Odai al-Darawish was shot dead. Although Israeli sources claimed they had shot al-Darawish in the legs according to their “rules of engagement”, medical reports show that he was hit in the back, indicating that he was likely shot while trying to run to safety. Samir Awad, a 17-year-old from Budrus, a village near Ramallah famed for its non-violent resistance to occupation, was shot from behind in the head, torso and leg while running away from Israeli soldiers on 14th January. Samir had just completed his last exam before the school break and had joined a group of friends to protest at Israel’s illegal apartheid wall.

The wall, which cuts through and steals Palestinian land, has led to the Awad family losing five acres of their land and 3,000 olive trees. The wall is just one of the ways in which Israel further dispossess Palestinians and according to the International Court of Justice, which in 2004 ruled that the wall was illegal, “construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, and its associated regime, are contrary to international law”.

Often when incidents such as these do received coverage in the Irish and/or western media, there has been an overreliance on official Israeli sources and a failure to challenge a narrative in which the term “rules of engagement” is used to obfuscate the shooting of young Palestinians in the back, and the euphemistic phrases “forbidden territory” and “infiltrators” are employed to place the blame on the victims of these cold-blooded crimes.

Indeed, it is important to point out something that has not been widely covered in our media. Since the announcement of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire in Gaza after the Israeli attack on the region last November, Israel has consistently broken the terms of the agreement. Over the past two months, 4 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, and 77 have been injured, including 16 children. There have been five military incursions, regular fire from border posts into the coastal strip, and numerous attacks on Palestinian fishermen by the Israeli navy at sea. Furthermore, Gaza remains under an Israeli-imposed siege and unilaterally declared Israeli ‘buffer zones’ remain in place around the border denying farmers access to their lands. Palestinian fighters, on the other hand, have stuck to the terms of the ceasefire.

In the same time period, Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have faced continued Israeli military and illegal settler violence and repression. 6 people, including 3 children have been killed; 79 people have been injured, including 18 children; there have been over 530 military incursions and around 30 settler attacks on people and property; over 2100 olive trees have been uprooted, destroyed or damaged;  plans for around 9,000 illegal settlement units have been announced; and in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem more than 440 people have been detained, including almost 70 children, along with a further 6 international and Israeli human rights defenders.

Therefore, it is clear that whatever the final outcome of the election process in Israel, there will be little change for Palestinians in the region – whether they live in occupied Palestine or inside Israel. While Israel purports to be the “only democracy in the Middle East”, and is often uncritically lauded as such despite the many very real problems with the practice of Israeli democracy, the reality is that Palestinians face systematic discrimination and apartheid and are met with an array of Israeli offences every day.

The Israeli Ambassador to Ireland, Boaz Modai, wrote recently in defence of the use of skunk, a foul smelling liquid used against unarmed Palestinian, Israeli and international demonstrators.  He stated that “[w]hile in dictatorial regimes across the Middle East, demonstrations are met with live ammunition, Israel as always seeks to use minimum force to deal with disturbances”. However, peaceful protests in occupied Palestine are routinely met not only with skunk but with live rounds, rubber-coated steel bullets, tear gas, concussion grenades and truncheons. Moreover, one does not even have to be involved in a demonstration for the Israeli army to use live ammunition on you. Simply being Palestinian seems to be enough of an offence to deserve being gunned down in the street, as Lubna Hanesh was yesterday.

An [un]Ode to Soda Stream by Dave Lippman

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http://youtu.be/nsxx6RxqcwM

P.S. -- Paul's gonna be mad at you, Dave!!  ;)

Justice for Rachel Corrie -- Breaking the Set

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http://youtu.be/ZT4INrtsu1M

Special Report: Why All Americans Should Care About the Holy Land Foundation Case By Stephen Downs, Esq. & Kathy Manley, Esq.

Tweet http://www.wrmea.org/wrmea-archives/541-washington-report-archives-2011-2015/january-february-2013/11611-why-all-americans-should-case-about-the-holy-land-foundation-case.html

"In 2008, five directors of the Holy Land Foundation, formerly the largest Muslim charity in the U.S., were convicted on charges of material support for terrorism—essentially for feeding the poor and for building schools and hospitals in Palestine. Although none of the defendants were accused of violence or even encouraging violence, some of them received sentences of up to 65 years, and are incarcerated in mostly Muslim isolation prisons.

At their first trial in 2007, the government conceded that no foundation money had gone to any terrorist organizations; rather, some money went to the same zakat (charity) committees in Palestine that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.N., the Red Crescent and many NGOs used to distribute aid to the Palestinian community during the same period. The zakat committees were not designated as terrorist organizations, and no practical way existed to distribute aid except through these committees, which is why other charities and the U.S. government itself used them. The first trial ended with a hung jury, without a single conviction on any count, and with some outright acquittals.

At the second trial, the government called an "anonymous expert" to testify that some of these zakat committees were "controlled" in part by Hamas—a designated terrorist organization but also, since January 2006, Palestine's lawfully elected government. The U.S. government claimed that channeling the foundation's charitable activities through these "controlled" committees helped raise the prestige of Hamas and thus constituted material support for terrorism.

A known expert can be cross-examined by the defense and shown to be ignorant about the subject, but an "anonymous expert" cannot be challenged because he is unknown—he could be a man off the street, or the prosecutor's brother. By definition, an expert must have a public identity that establishes the claimed expertise. The 6th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to confront (cross-examine) the witnesses against the defendant. Anonymous expert witnesses violate this fundamental principle. Yet on the basis of this anonymous "expert" opinion, all the defendants were convicted at the second trial. On Oct. 29, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the Holy Land Five's appeals, and let stand the criminalizing of charitable intent using the opinion of an anonymous expert to do so.

Well, one may say, injustices are everywhere. Why should I care about this particular case? The reason goes back to a 2010 Supreme Court case, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project,which involved two groups that sued the government to determine if merely giving advice to a designated terrorist organization on how to stop engaging in terrorism would constitute material support. The Court held that it would, because even advice on how to live peacefully was material support.

Under this ruling, then, coordinated free speech, peacemaking, charitable activities and social hospitality could all constitute material support, even if the defendant did not intend to engage in terrorism and in fact opposed it.

The plaintiffs in the original Humanitarian case (as opposed to the Supreme Court appeal) argued that the government should have to prove that a person intended to engage in terrorism—otherwise, anyone (like the directors of the Holy Land Foundation) could be convicted of terrorism without even realizing that he or she was doing anything wrong; due process requires that criminal laws give fair notice as to what conduct is prohibited. The Supreme Court disagreed with this argument, saying it was absolutely clear what is prohibited. The secretary of state publishes a list of designated terrorist organizations: just avoid all contact with organizations on the list, and no one will violate the law.

But that is exactly what the Holy Land Foundation directors did: they avoided providing aid to any designated terrorist organization on the list. On their own and through a former congressman, they even repeatedly asked the State Department and the Department of Justice for guidance on where they should and should not send their humanitarian aid. But the government refused to provide any guidance other than to refer them to the State Department list—which did not include the zakat committees. Yet by dealing with these committees, which were not on the list, the directors were found to have violated the law anyway, in direct contradiction to the Supreme Court's holding in the Humanitarian case.

By refusing to review the case, the Supreme Court signaled that due process no longer requires fair notice of prohibited conduct. Legal transactions could now be made criminal by discovering "associations" that were previously unknown to the parties involved. Moreover, the government could establish these "associations" by anonymous experts—mouthpieces for the government—that could not be confronted or cross-examined within the meaning of the 6th Amendment.

The implications are enormous. The government can now criminalize political, religious and social ideology and speech. Donating to peace groups, participating in protests, attending church, mosque or synagogue, entertaining friends, and posting material on the Internet, for example, could later be found to be illegal because of "associations," manufactured by anonymous experts, which in some way supposedly supported designated terrorist organizations one has never heard of.

In this decade during which our civil liberties have steadily eroded, Americans have seen their government claim, under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the right to hold citizens without charges indefinitely, and we've seen the president of the United States claim the right to assassinate American citizens anywhere in the world without due process by using a presidential "kill list." Now the government can convict any American of terrorism crimes he or she was not even aware of committing—based on information provided by an "anonymous expert" who can be neither challenged nor confronted."

Clemency for Leonard Peltier -- Dignity for the Indian People!

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http://youtu.be/kc1wagSad_A

Vigil for a FREE PALESTINE. Saturday Jan 19, 12-2pm, Westlake 4th&Pine

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Please join us this Saturday to call for an end to THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE.

 

Come join us to demand Justice, Equal rights and an End to Ethnic Cleansing!

 

 What: Vigil for a FREE PALESTINE

Where: Westlake 4th&Pine

When: Jan 19, 12-2pm

 

See you there......

 

 

Amin Odeh

VoicesofPalestine.org

"Stand up for what is right,even if you are standing alone"

Sodastream presents...How to profit from Occupation, Oppression and Apartheid

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http://youtu.be/93vMnpGcD9A

Bab Al Shams Part of Ongoing Strategy to Take Back Palestinian Land #BabAlShams

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http://youtu.be/S0hrv0YwC70

#BabAlShams

Live from #babalshams Village in Occupied Palestine!

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5 Broken Cameras -- Great Movie Showing in Seattle + Palestinian Leader Iyad Burnat

Tweet UPDATE:   5 BROKEN CAMERAS NOMINATED FOR AN OSCAR!!!!!!  SO EXCITING!   JAN. 9, 2012

Documentary - Feature
"5 Broken Cameras"
"The Gatekeepers"
"How to Survive a Plague"
"The Invisible War"
"Searching for Sugar Man"

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1699936/oscars-nominations-list-2013.jhtml

*********************

On January 13th at 7pm, please come hear Iyad Burnat speak. This event is free.

Iyad Burnat is head of the Bil’in Popular Committee and a leader in the village’s non-violent popular resistance movement. Since 2005 citizens of Bil’in have held weekly demonstrations against the building of the Israeli separation wall through the community’s agricultural lands, and the steady encroachment of illegal settlements. These demonstrations are the subject of the recent award-winning documentary film 5 Broken Cameras, which was made by Iyad’s brother, Emad Burnat. During his American tour, Iyad will tell the stories of Bil’in and life in the occupied West Bank, and talk about strategies for non-violent popular resistance with a goal of peace and prosperity for all people.

On January 17th at 7pm, please come see 5 Broken Cameras, a film made by Iyad's brother. $0-$10 sliding scale. Nobody turned away. All money will go to Iyad Burnat for his speaking tour.

5 Broken Cameras is a deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil'in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements. Shot almost entirely by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son, the footage was later given to Israeli co-director Guy Davidi to edit. Structured around the violent destruction of each one of Burnat's cameras, the filmmakers' collaboration follows one family's evolution over five years of village turmoil. Burnat watches from behind the lens as olive trees are bulldozed, protests intensify, and lives are lost.

Both events take place at Washington Hall, 153 14th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122

Washington Hall is wheelchair-accessible. Please be fragrance free.

Sponsored by
Jewish Voice for Peace Seattle
UW Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights

Jewish Voice for Peace is a diverse and democratic community of activists inspired by Jewish tradition to work together for peace, social justice, and human rights.
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MAN -- MUST WATCH! Perfecto.

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http://youtu.be/WfGMYdalClU

Why Idle No More Matters -- Winona LaDuke [What Happened in First Nation Villages]

Tweet http://www.honorearth.org/news/why-idle-no-more-matters

EXCERPT:

Enter DeBeers, the largest diamond mining enterprise in the world. The company moved into northern Ontario in 2006 . The Victor Mine reached commercial production in 2008 and was voted “Mine of the Year” by the readers of the international trade publication Mining Magazine. The company states it is “is committed to sustainable development in local communities.” This is good to know. This is also where the first world meets the third world in the north, as Canadian MP Bob Rae discovered last year on his tour of the rather destitute conditions of the village. Infrastructure in the Sub Arctic is in short supply. There is no road into the village eight months of the year, four months a year, during freeze up , there’s an ice road. A diamond mine needs a lot of infrastructure. And that has to be shipped in, so the trucks launch out of Moosonee, Ontario. Then, they build a better road. The problem is that the road won’t work when the climate changes, and already stretched infrastructure gets tapped out. 

There is some money flowing in, that’s sure. A 2010 report from DeBeers states that payments to eight communities associated with its two mines in Canada totalled $5,231,000 that year. Forbes Magazine reports record diamond sales by the world’s largest diamond company “… increased 33 percent, year-over-year, to $3.5 billion….The mining giant, which produces more than a third of the world’s rough diamonds, also reported record EBITDA of almost $1.2 billion, a 55 percent increase over the first the first half of 2010.”  

As the Canadian Mining Watch group notes “Whatever Attawapiskat’s share of that $5-million is, given the chronic under-funding of the community, the need for expensive responses to deal with recurring crises, including one that DeBeers themselves may have precipitated by overloading the community’s sewage system, it’s not surprising that the community hasn’t been able to translate its … income into improvements in physical infrastructure.” Last year, Attawapiskat drew international attention , when many families in the Cree community were living in tents. 

The neighboring Kaschewan Village is in similar disarray. They have been boiling water, and importing water. The village almost had a complete evacuation due to health conditions, and , “ … fuel shortages are becoming more common among remote northern Ontario communities right now,” Alvin Fiddler, Deputy Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, a regional advocacy network explained to a reporter. That’s because the ice road used to truck in a year’s supply of diesel last winter did not last as long as usual. “Everybody is running out now. We’re looking at a two-month gap” until this winter’s ice road is solid enough to truck in fresh supplies, Mr. Fiddler said in an interview.Kashechewan’s chief and council are poised to shut down the band office, two schools, the power generation centre, the health clinic and the fire hall because the buildings were not heated and could no longer operate safely. “ In addition some 21 homes had become uninhabitable,” according to Chief Derek Stephen . Those basements had been flooded last spring, as the weather patterns changed. Just as a side note, in 2007, some 21 Cree youth from Kashechewan attempted to commit suicide, and the Canadian aboriginal youth suicide rate is five times the national average. Both communities are beneficiaries of an agreement with DeBeers.

Idle No More Flashmob -- Westlake Cntr Seattle -- 12-29-12

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Folks we met as we stood outside in solidarity with our "Palestine:  It's About the Land" banner.

Idle No More - Seattle Flash Mob 12.22.12

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First Nation Chief Theresa Spence on 11th Day of Hunger Strike to Get Harper Govt' to Honor Treaty

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She puts her peoples case very eloquently.  HARPER LISTEN TO HER!

Gaza's Ark -- Celebrated in Song by Dave Lippman

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Sympathy from the Devil - William Norman Grigg

Tweet http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33347.htm

EXCERPT:

For the Obama Regime, child-killing is an instrument of policy. This was made clear in a recent story reported by the Military Times describing how U.S. troops in Afghanistan, fearful over the actions of a group of young men nearby called in an airstrike that killed all of the suspected guerillas – only to find out later that three of them were children, aged 8, 10, and 12. The families of the dead children said that they had been gathering dried animal leavings, which are used as fuel. 

The International Security Assistance Force in Kabul issued a statement acknowledging that the airstrike "accidentally killed three innocent Afghan children." That statement prompted Army Lt. Col. Marion Carrington to tell the Military Times that the children may not have been innocent. 

According to Carrington, whose unit is training Afghan police, "In addition to looking for military-age males, [we are] looking for children with potential hostile intent." Since hostility is the natural, and entirely commendable, reaction to foreign occupiers, Carrington is saying that any Afghan child with sufficient awareness to resent the occupation is a legitimate military target. 

What Adam Lanza did once in a fit of murderous irrationality, the Regime over which Obama presides does practically every day – and the killing is carried out by people who act with clear-eyed, clinical indifference to the suffering they inflict. 

Outrage Over Children Killed in Cold Blood -- Terrorism With a Bigger Budget

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Thoughts on the Newtown Shooting from Halfway Around the World -- Syazwina Saw

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http://smpalestine.com/2012/12/15/thoughts-on-the-newtown-shooting-from-halfway-around-the-world/

Living on Twitter is a precarious existence. 

Events do not manifest themselves well in just 140 characters. What you get are soundbites and facts, retweeted as endorsement or vilification, made popular by approval or mockery. When I joined Twitter in the end of 2008, I became a spectator to the Iranian revolution which died almost as soon started. And then there was Egypt, which continues to be a battlefield of ideals, beliefs and morals. Sometimes we fixate on details. Sometimes these prove to be insights. 

And when you live several continents away from the United States, as I do, then waking up in the morning means bracing yourself for whatever happened eight hours ago. Before I went to bed on Friday night, I saw tweets of people sending prayers to Newtown, but without further detail. 

And we woke up to the news of 20 children murdered at school. 

Names and ages of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, California, published on the front page of the New York Times. 

My timeline today is a picture of shared grief, horror and disbelief. It is an outpour of sympathy and vilification, of prayer and condolences, of anger and blame. The online debate immediately turned to gun control and mental health, and within the heady brew of blood and politics, a few facts are mentioned again and again: 

Eighteen hours before the shooting in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, Republicans pushed through a bill which allows people to carry a gun or rifle into schools and kindergartens. Obama continues to champion the use of drones in Afghanistan and other countries in order to target terrorists, but which generates a high number of civilian casualties, many of them children. Israel continues to receive funding from the US, most of which goes into the Israeli Defense Forces – two days ago, an IDF soldier killed 17-year-old Muhammad As-Salaymah who was bringing home a cake to celebrate his birthday. 

It appears that there is a pattern here, which continues to perpetuate itself. 

While the culture of violence has become, as with everything else, an increasingly global phenomenon, how it manifests is local. It shows up in our communities and it happens to our children. The death of the young, whatever the circumstances, is always a tragedy in itself. They symbolize our dreams and hopes, our investment for the future which we dream of but may never see fulfilled. When children die, we are left with the scraps of our messes. The empty spaces they leave behind echo our loss, their silent screams creating a wall of grief. 

Unfortunately, when children die, we also reduce them to sound bites. We reduce them to spectacles of previously unimaginable tragedy; we speak of them in whispers and with stunned expressions, as though they are isolated events. We treat their deaths as if they are without context. We fault these tragedies on singular subjects, usually the killer presumed deranged or desperate, and not as if they are the result of years of permitted violence. 

There is something amiss, and its cause is great, its habits too ingrained, that we prefer to hide behind our grief and point fingers. 

We at Sixteen Minutes to Palestine extend our hearts and prayers to the families, friends, and victims of the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Syazwina Saw

Syazwina Saw is a writer and editor for ISSUE Magazine and a graduate student based in Malaysia. She has also helped in the development of Sixteen Minutes to Palestine. She tweets here.

How We Can Solve the Palestinian Israeli Problem (Official Version)

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I LOVE THIS MOVIE!

The Free Bethlehem Singers at Seattle Figgy Pudding Festival -- 12/7/12

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UPDATE:  The next day we serenaded shoppers at Westlake under a Boycott Israel banner

************************************************************************

ONE OF THE SONGS:

ODE TO BOYCOTT

(Tune: Ode to Joy - L van Beethoven) 

Israel, end your occupation: 

There’s no peace on stolen land. 

We’ll sing out for liberation 

’till you hear and understand.

Ethnic cleansing and apartheid 

Should belong to history. 

Human rights cannot be silenced: 

Palestine will soon be free.

>Sing 3x through. 2^nd time in ROUND<

We got some really great applause and donations for the Pike Market Clinic, while educating the public who wandered between the competing choral groups.  Cheers!

Israel and Palestine, An [EXCELLENT] Animated Introduction by Jewish Voice for Peace

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Bring Leonard Peltier Home in 2012!

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Bring Leonard Peltier Home 2012 Concert

• LEONARD PELTIER
• DECEMBER 4, 2012
• BY: SHIRLEY PENA
• Subscribe

On Friday, December 14, 2012, The Beacon Theatre will host a diverse, devoted and distinguished line up of North American musicians to sing for freedom for LEONARD PELTIER.

Credits: 

 

Image courtesy of Randex Productions. Copyright 2012.

Child Casualties As a Result of U.S. Drone Strikes

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