Mass singing of the Israel national anthem and more

I will be in Jordan June 9-15 and in the USA from June 16-July 15 (with a side trip to York University in Toronto to speak at a conference June 22-24, see http://www.yorku.ca/ipconf/ ). I plan to give talks and tend to other activist and work related issues. Please contact me if you would like me to speak to your community during this trip or visit together (especially in Jordan or the USA) . I will be back to Palestine July 16.

One Week After the murder of our friend Bassem Aburahmah, the weekly Bil’in demonstrations went on uninterrupted but 25 peaceful demonstrators were injured. The occupation soldiers "defending" the stolen land from its Palestinian owners smashed cameras of three reporters (Fadi Al-Arori from Reuters, Mohib Barghouti from Al-Haya and Israeli activist and filmmaker, Shai Pollack). They injured from the village included: Fadil Al Khatib, brothers Ahmed and Awada Abu Rahmah, brothers Riyad and Iyad Burnat, Khalid Alkhatib, Abdullah Aburahmah, Mohammed Alkhatib, Wael Fahmi, Basel Mansour, Tariq Alkhatib, Abdullah Yasin, Tamir Alkhatib, Nizar Aburahmah, Husam Alkhatib, Mohammed Nabil Aburahmah, Nour Yasin, Ibrahim Burant, Ahmad Aburahmah (Bassem’s Brother) and Adeeb Aburahmah. With these sacrifices, the demonstrators succeeded in building a memorial for Bassem Aburahmah near the gate where he was murdered. A video of the killing of Bassem made it to AlJazeera (see video below)

I also met Bassem’s brother Ashraf and learned that he was the man who was blindfolded and handcuffed before he was shot by a rubber coated steel bullet in the presence and order of an Israeli officer at a nearby Palestinian village (see footage below )

Must read and see : His name was Bessem ….(including photo of Bassem flying a kite next to the wall)

http://windowintopalestine.blogspot.com/2009/04/his-name-was-basem-from-bilin.html

We live in an Orwellian word just witnessing the news. Israel tried to shutdown preparations for the Pope’s visit to Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem so that the issue of teh refugees is not highlighted

(http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3245534845).

We want him actually to go to Gaza. And Yad Vashem (main museum for the Jewish holocaust) fired an employee who simply pointed out that Deir Yassin (an ethnically cleansed village in which a large massacre was committed by Zionist forces in April 1948) remains unmarked and unmentioned even as the site is actually visible from Yad Vashem

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=1080456 ). The Israeli police detained political activists from several cities for exercising their basic human right of freedom of expression (in this case against the draft to the Israeli Occupation Forces). Get informed on this http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/publish/article_1182.shtml
and Take action http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27127

And there will be mass singing of the Israel national anthem (which talks about Jewish yearning to the land even when Israel is not Jewish, there are over 20% Muslims and Christians despite the ethnic cleansing). The mass singing will get more than 100,000 singers, more than half of them are expected to be Zionist Jews who are not Israelis (i.e. Citizens of other countries)! To top off the week’s assemblage of "news", The Israeli deputy health minister just stated in a press conference after the identification of two Israelis with the disease, that Israel would insist on calling it Mexican flu not Swine flu!

Action is still the best antidote to despair...

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

Beit Sahour, Palestine

http://qumsiyeh.org