Over 1,000 delegates from 42 countries have signed up to participate in the December 31 Gaza Freedom March that will mark the one-year anniversary of the Israeli invasion and call for an end to the siege that has brought 1.5 million people to the edge of disaster.
Organizers cut off registration on November 30 to give the Egyptian officials enough time to clear the group for entry into Gaza, but also because the numbers were becoming unwieldy. “No one has ever taken a group this size into Gaza,” said coordinator Ann Wright, whose skills as a retired U.S. army colonel are coming in handy organizing the logistics for such a massive group.
Full Story.....http://bikyamasr.com/?p=6369
Sign the Petition – Britain Must Implement the Goldstone Report
One year since Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, raining bombs on 1.5 million Palestinians, killing over 1400 and wounding over 5,000, the Israeli government has tightened its blockade on Gaza, creating a dire humanitarian disaster. Appallingly, the British government abstained on the votes at the UN on the Goldstone Report, which called for an end to the blockade, and for war criminals to be brought to justice.
Please sign the petition here www.iparl.com/petition-psc calling on the British government to implement the Goldstone Report – we will be presenting the petition to Gordon Brown in January.
To follow the Convoy to Gaza
Live map of the route: http://readingpsc.org.uk/
On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Pal_S_
Read the messages of support: http://www.palestinecampaign.
Video of the send-off Sunday 6 December: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
The Interview Ha’aretz Doesn’t Want You To See
Rehaviya Berman
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Rehaviya Berman conducted an interview with Ali Abunimah, for Ha’aretz, a few weeks ago. The Interview was never published. Berman decided to publish it on his blog [Hebrew] and I decided to translate it, for your reading pleasure: Exclusive: One On One with the Leader of the Electronic IntifadaRehaviya Berman Meet Ali Abunimah, the son of a Jordanian diplomat, a Palestinian activist, and the man who brings the hottest news of the struggle to thousands of people. His message: Forget two states, one will be tough enough to get it right. The Interview before you was commissioned by one of the the big newspapers. For a reason that has yet to be clarified, this paper decided not to publish the interview. It’s published here, because it’s the opinion of the editor that it’s important that this be read by the Israeli public. Full Story.... pulsemedia.org/2009/12/06/the- WE ACCOMPLISH MIRACLESby Flora Nicoletta"There is always the light at the end of the tunnel. And we have many tunnels."The Gaza Strip is a land of deep sadness, great sacrifices, ancient sufferings, big tragedies and many uprisings. When you walk in the night on the Gaza seashore, Emad Al-Ghoul or Mussa Salem would indicate a myriad of lights at a distance, towards the north, and would tell you: "This is Erbia... this is my village... now in Israel..." And from the roof of an almost completely destroyed building in Beit Lahia, Ahmad Al-Madhoun would tell you: "You see these lights... this is my hometown, Al-Majdal-Askalan. My ancestors used to live there and then, in 1948, my grand-parents were expelled and they became refugees in Gaza. We have still land and property there. Now it's called Israel. All my relatives are scattered all over the globe. Moreover, at the beginning of this year, the Israeli army has destroyed my 5-storey building, as you can see..." Full Story....http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=60824 Israeli military urged to release rights activist Ma'an - The Israeli military appeals court should end the administrative detention of Mohammed Othman, a Palestinian rights activist, and order his release, Human Rights Watch said Saturday. Othman was detained without charge by Israeli authorities and has been held more than two months on what appear to be politically motivated grounds. On the basis of secret evidence that Othman and his lawyers were not allowed to see, a military court confirmed a military order consigning Othman to three months administrative detention. Othman has no criminal record and is not known to have ever advocated or participated in violence. His detention period, which may be renewed indefinitely, ends on 22 December. "The only reasonable conclusion is that Othman is being punished for his peaceful advocacy," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW, in a statement. "The authorities interrogated him for months, then ordered him held some more, but they won't say why they are holding him and haven't accused him of any crime." Israeli authorities detained Othman, an activist with the Stop the Wall campaign, a non-violent protest movement, on 22 September 2009, as he returned to the West Bank from a trip to Norway, where he spoke about the separation barrier that Israel has constructed in the occupied territories. On 23 November, after Othman had been detained for 61 days "for the purpose of interrogation," Colonel Ron Weisel, an Israeli military commander of the West Bank, ordered him held for three months of administrative detention on the grounds that he was a threat to the "security of the area." The military court of administrative detainees, located in Israel's Ofer military base, near Ramallah in the West Bank, upheld the order on 25 November and counted the time that Othman had already been detained toward his detention. Othman's administrative detention order came one day after a military court ordered his release. He was originally detained under Israeli military orders authorizing "interrogative detention." According to his lawyers at Addameer, a Palestinian prisoners' rights organization, on 22 November the Military Court of Appeals ordered Othman's release on bail on the grounds that no progress had been made in his interrogation, no other evidence against him had been produced, and no charges had been laid against him. However, the court also remanded Othman to detention for 24 hours and allowed the military prosecutor to issue an administrative detention order during that time. Weisel issued Othman's administrative detention the next day. Israeli authorities have violated Othman's rights in detention, HRW charged. Mahmoud Hassan, a lawyer at Addameer who represents Othman, told the group that on 2 November Israeli authorities transferred Othman from the West Bank to a prison in Be'er Sheva, Israel without informing his family or his lawyers, and barred his lawyers from seeing him for 15 days. "We learned about it only two days later from staff at the Ofer jail, where we tried to visit him," Hassan said. Othman was not allowed to attend two subsequent hearings on his case, Hassan added, during which time he was threatened with administrative detention. Israeli military orders authorize barring outside access to detainees "for the purposes of the interrogation." International standards governing the treatment of all persons detained require prompt notification of a detainee's family, both after the person is detained and after a transfer to another place of detention. In addition, all detainees have the right to be visited by legal counsel, and any restriction on that right can only be in "exceptional circumstances, set out in law." The administrative detention order saying that Othman "is a risk to the security of the area" cites military order 1591 from 2007. Under that order, the military commander of the West Bank may detain an individual for up to six months and renew the detention indefinitely. A military judge must review the commander's detention order, but the judge does so in a closed hearing, without witnesses, based on secret information that the detainee and his attorney cannot see. The defendant may appeal the military judge's decision to the military court of appeal for administrative detainees, which is also located in the Ofer military base. According to Jamal Juma'a, a coordinator for the Stop the Wall campaign, an Israeli soldier had detained Othman at a checkpoint during the summer and threatened him because of his advocacy against the barrier. Juma'a said that before joining the campaign, Othman worked with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), a World Council of Churches program to accompany Palestinian non-violent activists. As of 9 November, Israel held more than 322 Palestinians in administrative detention, 132 of them for more than a year, according to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem. According to the most recent available official statistics on the cases that actually go to trial in Israeli military courts, obtained by Yesh Din, another Israeli human rights organization, in 2006 Israeli military courts found defendants not guilty in only 23 (or 29 percent) of 9,123 trials. Although international human rights law permits some limited use of administrative detention in emergency situations, the authorities are required to follow basic rules for detention, including a fair hearing at which the detainee can challenge the reasons for his or her detention. As the occupying power in the West Bank, Israel is also bound by the rules governing occupation, which require it to use administrative detention only for imperative reasons of security, HRW pointed out. Jewish occupiers set fire to Palestinian property
Palestinian 'terrorist' takes aim at Sasha Baron Cohen A Palestinian grocer from Bethlehem filed suit against comedian Sasha Baron Cohen on Monday, for the sum total of $115 million in libel damages over his film Bruno, which is equal to half of the movie's gross box office earnings. According to the London Daily Mail, the Palestinian, Ayman Abu Aita, who is also a peace activist, said that Baron's depiction of him as a Lebanese terrorist in his recently released and controversial movie has ruined his life. He has also filed suit against NBC, Universal Studios and famed American talk show host David Letterman for being part of the film which tricked him into meeting Cohen under the false pretext that Cohen was a German producing a film about the Palestinian cause, the Daily Mail reported. Abu Aita also told the Daily Mail that since the film was released to cinemas this summer, he has received several death threats despite the fact that he is a firm opponent of terrorists. Cohen is famous for his outrageous characters such as Borat, a Kazakh who travels to the United States in order to find Pamela Anderson, and Bruno, a gay Austrian who wants to regain world recognition by trying to solve the Middle East crisis. During the scene, Abu Aita was depicted as a leader of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, according to the caption which refered to him as 'Terrorist group leader, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.' The scene itself was actually filmed in a hotel on Israeli teritory near Bethlehem. In July Letterman set out a goal to discover the identity of the man depicted as the terrorist, and traced Abu Aita down through a CIA contact Israel refuses Irish FM permission to visit Gaza
Israeli authorities deny Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin permission to visit the impoverished coastal sliver of Gaza which has long been under an Israeli siege. Speaking at the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs on Friday, Martin said no substantive reason had been given for the refusal. "I just wanted to go in myself and see Gaza," he said according to the Irish Times newspaper. Similar requests from other European countries had also been turned down. The Irish Foreign Minister meanwhile described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as 'completely unacceptable.' "If progress is not realized quickly, then the international community as a whole may need to reconsider what further pressure it can bring in favor of achieving a negotiated, two-state settlement," Martin told the committee. Israel has imposed a crippling siege on the Gaza Strip since. The Israeli army also launched a massive military offensive, known as 'Operation Cast Lead' against the coastal sliver in December 2008 and January 2009. More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the three-week offensive, which inflicted $ 1.6 billion of damage to the Gazan economy. “I am appalled by the indiscriminate attacks by Israeli forces which have resulted in so many civilian fatalities. The death and suffering, as well as the humanitarian deprivation, now being inflicted on the people of Gaza as a result of the continuation of the Israeli Operation Cast Lead cannot be justified in any way and must now be brought to an immediate end," Martin stated. Martin also called on Tel Aviv to provide further clear evidence it was 'serious about engaging in peace negotiations' rather than being more preoccupied with 'simply managing what could well escalate into a situation of incipient conflict.' |
NLG National Statement on Dhoruba Bin Wahad
and Naji Mujahid's Denial of Entry to Occupied Palestine
The National Lawyers Guild calls upon the United States State Department to lodge a formal protest over the treatment of Dhoruba Bin Wahad and Naji Mujahid, two Black political activists denied entry to Palestine. We further call upon the Israeli government to end its racist and unjust detention and interrogation policies and reiterate our call for the freedom of Palestinian political prisoners.
On November 23, 2009, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a former U.S. political prisoner and leader of the Black Panther Party, and Naji Mujahid, a student-activist from Washington D.C. were on a tourist bus enroute from Amman, Jordan to the to the West Bank of occupied Palestine. Both had been invited to attend the International Conference on Palestinian Political Prisoners in Jericho that was sponsored by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Prisoners and ex-Prisoners Affairs. As the bus crossed the King Hussein Bridge that connects Jordan with the Israeli-occupied West Bank, it stopped for a border inspection by Israeli officers. Of the numerous individuals on the bus, only Dhoruba and Naji were ordered to disembark. Significantly, both were the only Black people on the bus.
Within a short time, the border officials searched under Dhoruba's name on the internet. They discovered that he is Muslim, a former Black Panther leader and someone who spent 19 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. (Dhoruba, a target of COINTELPRO, was arrested in 1971 and sentenced to life in prison. His conviction was overturned in 1990). Both Dhoruba and Naji were interrogated, strip searched and their property confiscated and searched. Despite their cooperation and offer to return into Jordan, their detention continued for over 12 hours. They were ultimately released but denied permission to enter occupied Palestine and returned to Jordan.
The treatment accorded Dhoruba and Naji would be outrageous if it occurred to anyone. And as Naji Mujahid himself stated shortly after returrning to Amman, "the humiliation and frustration that we endured was a small taste of what we can be sure the Palestinians go through on a daily basis." But the incident is rendered even more shameful because its genesis appears to have been racial profiling. Dhoruba and Naji were ordered off the bus before Israeli border officials had any idea of their country of origin or personal histories. They only knew that they were Black. Moreover, the incident occurred only days after it was reported that the South African government deported an Israeli official following allegations that a member of Shin Bet, the Israeli secret police, had infiltrated the airport in Johannesburg in an effort to get information on South African citizens, particularly Black and Muslim travelers (Reuters, November 22, 2009).
This action, of course, comes on the heels of numerous denials of entry to occupied Palestine to Palestinian and Arab Americans and others, new visas that prevent free movement inside occupied Palestine to those granted entry, and a continuing and obvious pattern of racial and ethnic discrimination in denying entry to occupied Palestine. In this case, the racist actions of the Israeli government prevented critical meetings between former US political prisoners and former Palestinian political prisoners from taking place. In addition, Dhoruba and Naji were contracted by African American news agencies to report on the conference, bringing much needed news about Palestine to the Black community - a project blocked by this denial of entry.
The National Lawyers Guild was founded in 1937 and is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.
For further information contact:
Robert J. Boyle, Esq.
212-431-0229
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