Showing posts with label disaster Israeli. Show all posts
Showing posts with label disaster Israeli. Show all posts
Saturday, 13 February 2010
Palestinian Bil'in weekly demonstration reenacts the Avatar film
The village of Bil'in reenacted James Cameron's new film Avatar during todays weekly demonstration. Five Palestinian, Israeli and international activists were painted blue, with pointy ears and tales, resembling the Avatar characters. Like Palestinians, the Avatars fight imperialism, although the colonizers have different origins. The Avatars presence in Bil'in today symbolizes the united resistance to imperialism of all kinds.
Todays non-violent demonstration was again met with excessive violence by the Israeli army. Sound bombs and tear gas were used, leaving four people directly injured by the canisters. The canisters were shot directly at the protesters, which is in violation with the IDFs firing regulations. Many other activists suffered from tear gas inhalation.
Before coming to Bil'in, Israeli activists reported that police were present at their carpool meeting point. Their IDs were checked and some cars reported they were followed by the police. At the Rantis checkpoint, they were delayed once more and activists were obliged to continue their journey by taxi.
Bil'in has reason to celebrate this week. Yesterday, preparations for the construction of the new Wall began, which returns 30 per cent of Bil'ins land to the village. Iyad Burnat, Head of the Bil'in Popular Committee speaks of a victory: We feel relieved and feel the non-violent resistance is successful in its aim. Nevertheless, we will continue our struggle against the occupation as Bil'in still has another 30 per cent of land that is confiscated by Israel.
Next week Bil'in will have a special demonstration, celebrating five years of non-violent resistance and expects a large number of demonstrators. Bil'in calls for all its supporters to invite people to join in next weeks demonstration.
Friday, 5 September 2008
Don't buy or stock Israeli products
New call to shoppers to stop buying Israeli goods, especially from illegal Israeli settlements, and to supermarkets to stop stocking such goods
In July this year TV channel More4 and several national newspapers featured graphic reports about British supermarkets selling goods exported from illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank. This was a stark reminder of the continued apartheid policies of the Israeli state.
At the same time genuine Palestinian producers are deliberately prevented from producing and exporting goods by the drastic conditions of Israeli occupation, and insuperable clamp-downs on trade’. On August 23rd 44 peace activists sailed to Gaza to challenge the siege, and to show the world that the Palestinians are trapped.
Kim Howells the Minister responsible for relations with Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has stated that it “is essential to [ensure] that customers can make an informed choice between Palestinian produce and produce from Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law”.
After 60 years of oppression, dispossession and occupation for the Palestinian people, and no justice from the international community, the BOYCOTT ISRAELI GOODS CAMPAIGN (BIG) is now launching a new campaign:
The emphasis on settlement exports spearheads the general case for the boycott of Israeli goods.
A campaign spokesperson said, 'We are calling for a boycott of all Israeli goods, but also especially drawing attention to settlement goods. At present Israel exports fruit and vegetables grown in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and Britain is one of the largest importers. These settlements are illegal under international law. To be complicit in this crime is also a crime in English law. These goods are often inaccurately labelled 'Produce of Israel', or misleadingly as ‘West Bank’, causing customers to believe they are Palestinian goods. These goods also benefit, illicitly, from the preferential rates of customs duty under the EC-Israeli Preferential Trade Agreement, thereby costing the British taxpayer millions of pounds in unpaid customs duty.’
There are plentiful alternative sources of supply for all Israeli goods stocked by supermarkets – such as fresh herbs and medjoul dates and other fruit and vegetables. Many supermarkets claim to have ethical trading policies. They should now prove it.
Notes to Editors
1. Israel militarily controls every aspect of Palestinian life in Gaza , the West Bank and East Jerusalem , occupied since 1967
2. “The establishment of settlements in the West Bank violates international humanitarian law which establishes principles that apply during war and occupation. Moreover, the settlements lead to the infringement of international human rights law.
The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Article 49). The Hague Regulations prohibit an occupying power from undertaking permanent changes in the occupied area unless these are due to military needs in the narrow sense of the term, or unless they are undertaken for the benefit of the local population.
The establishment of settlements results in the violation of the rights of Palestinians as enshrined in international human rights law. Among other violations, the settlements infringe the right to self-determination, equality, property, an adequate standard of living, and freedom of movement.” (http://www.btselem.org/english/Settlements/International_Law.asp)
3. Aid agencies report a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza because of the Israeli imposed siege ("The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion", Oxfam, Amnesty International, CAFOD, Trocaire, Save the Children, Care International, March 2008)
4. Israel 's racist housing policy has resulted in the demolition of 18,000 Palestinian homes since 1967. (The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) www.18000homes.org)
5. Israel restricts the movement of Palestinians with more than 609 obstacles to movement including checkpoints and roadblocks all over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem , and operates a segregated road system. ("Report No.65 Implementation of the Agreement on Movement and Access and Update on Gaza Crossing (30 April – 13 May 2008)", United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, August 2008)
6. According to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, Israel has killed 4,815 Palestinians, 951 of them minors in the last eight years alone.
7. Israel profits from exporting to the UK fruit and vegetables grown on illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land, and misleadingly labeled 'West Bank' ("'Illicit' settler food sold in UK stores", Observer, July 2008).
8. Israel continues to expropriate Palestinian land to build its apartheid wall, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice. ("Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory ", International Court of Justice, July 2004).
9. A call for boycott has been issued by Palestinians in the Occupied Territories . (Palestine BDS Campaign).
10. Israeli farms and companies prosper by exploiting stolen land and water, while impoverished Palestinian farmers are denied access to their own fields, orchards and wells and cannot market the few goods they manage to produce.
11. By stocking their shelves with Israeli goods, such as Carmel , Coral and Jaffa brands, supermarkets are supporting companies which benefit from the dispossession of Palestinian families.
12. For information about the Free Gaza Movement boat trip mentioned above please see http://www.freegaza.org/.
============================
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Box BM PSA
London
WC1N 3XX
Email: info@palestinecampaign.org
Tel: 020 7700 6192
Fax: 020 7609 7779
Web: www.palestinecampaign.org
In July this year TV channel More4 and several national newspapers featured graphic reports about British supermarkets selling goods exported from illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank. This was a stark reminder of the continued apartheid policies of the Israeli state.
At the same time genuine Palestinian producers are deliberately prevented from producing and exporting goods by the drastic conditions of Israeli occupation, and insuperable clamp-downs on trade’. On August 23rd 44 peace activists sailed to Gaza to challenge the siege, and to show the world that the Palestinians are trapped.
Kim Howells the Minister responsible for relations with Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has stated that it “is essential to [ensure] that customers can make an informed choice between Palestinian produce and produce from Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law”.
After 60 years of oppression, dispossession and occupation for the Palestinian people, and no justice from the international community, the BOYCOTT ISRAELI GOODS CAMPAIGN (BIG) is now launching a new campaign:
- To call on shoppers not to buy Israeli goods, and especially goods from the settlements – often misleadingly labelled ‘West Bank.’
- To call on the supermarkets to stop selling Israeli goods, and to stop colluding with Israel’s export of goods from the illegal settlements.
The emphasis on settlement exports spearheads the general case for the boycott of Israeli goods.
- Israel militarily controls every aspect of Palestinian life in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
- Israel’s racist housing policy has resulted in the demolition of 18,000 Palestinian homes since 1967.
- Israel restricts the movement of Palestinians with more than 600 roadblocks.
- Israel continues to expropriate Palestinian land to build its apartheid wall, declared illegal by the International court of justice in 2004.
A campaign spokesperson said, 'We are calling for a boycott of all Israeli goods, but also especially drawing attention to settlement goods. At present Israel exports fruit and vegetables grown in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and Britain is one of the largest importers. These settlements are illegal under international law. To be complicit in this crime is also a crime in English law. These goods are often inaccurately labelled 'Produce of Israel', or misleadingly as ‘West Bank’, causing customers to believe they are Palestinian goods. These goods also benefit, illicitly, from the preferential rates of customs duty under the EC-Israeli Preferential Trade Agreement, thereby costing the British taxpayer millions of pounds in unpaid customs duty.’
There are plentiful alternative sources of supply for all Israeli goods stocked by supermarkets – such as fresh herbs and medjoul dates and other fruit and vegetables. Many supermarkets claim to have ethical trading policies. They should now prove it.
Notes to Editors
1. Israel militarily controls every aspect of Palestinian life in Gaza , the West Bank and East Jerusalem , occupied since 1967
2. “The establishment of settlements in the West Bank violates international humanitarian law which establishes principles that apply during war and occupation. Moreover, the settlements lead to the infringement of international human rights law.
The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Article 49). The Hague Regulations prohibit an occupying power from undertaking permanent changes in the occupied area unless these are due to military needs in the narrow sense of the term, or unless they are undertaken for the benefit of the local population.
The establishment of settlements results in the violation of the rights of Palestinians as enshrined in international human rights law. Among other violations, the settlements infringe the right to self-determination, equality, property, an adequate standard of living, and freedom of movement.” (http://www.btselem.org/english/Settlements/International_Law.asp)
3. Aid agencies report a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza because of the Israeli imposed siege ("The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion", Oxfam, Amnesty International, CAFOD, Trocaire, Save the Children, Care International, March 2008)
4. Israel 's racist housing policy has resulted in the demolition of 18,000 Palestinian homes since 1967. (The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) www.18000homes.org)
5. Israel restricts the movement of Palestinians with more than 609 obstacles to movement including checkpoints and roadblocks all over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem , and operates a segregated road system. ("Report No.65 Implementation of the Agreement on Movement and Access and Update on Gaza Crossing (30 April – 13 May 2008)", United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, August 2008)
6. According to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, Israel has killed 4,815 Palestinians, 951 of them minors in the last eight years alone.
7. Israel profits from exporting to the UK fruit and vegetables grown on illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land, and misleadingly labeled 'West Bank' ("'Illicit' settler food sold in UK stores", Observer, July 2008).
8. Israel continues to expropriate Palestinian land to build its apartheid wall, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice. ("Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory ", International Court of Justice, July 2004).
9. A call for boycott has been issued by Palestinians in the Occupied Territories . (Palestine BDS Campaign).
10. Israeli farms and companies prosper by exploiting stolen land and water, while impoverished Palestinian farmers are denied access to their own fields, orchards and wells and cannot market the few goods they manage to produce.
11. By stocking their shelves with Israeli goods, such as Carmel , Coral and Jaffa brands, supermarkets are supporting companies which benefit from the dispossession of Palestinian families.
12. For information about the Free Gaza Movement boat trip mentioned above please see http://www.freegaza.org/.
============================
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Box BM PSA
London
WC1N 3XX
Email: info@palestinecampaign.org
Tel: 020 7700 6192
Fax: 020 7609 7779
Web: www.palestinecampaign.org
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
Palestinians capture violence of Israeli occupation on video
Palestinians capture violence of Israeli occupation on video
In a graphic and hard-hitting film Peter Beaumont speaks to Palestinians filming abuse from settlers and Israeli armed forces
Peter Beaumont in Ni'ilin
The Guardian, Wednesday 30 July 2008
An Israeli child from a far-right settler group in the West Bank city of Hebron hurls a stone up the stairs of a Palestinian family close to their settlement and shouts: "I will exterminate you." Another spits towards the same family.
Another settler woman pushes her face up to a window and snarls: "Whore!"
They are shocking images. There is footage of beatings, their aftermath, and the indifference of Israel's security forces to serious human rights abuses. There is footage too of those same security forces humiliating Palestinians – and most seriously – committing abuses themselves.
They are contained in a growing archive of material assembled by the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem in a remarkable project called Shooting Back.
The group has supplied almost 100 video cameras to vulnerable Palestinian communities in Hebron, the northern West Bank and elsewhere, to document and gather evidence of assaults and abusive behaviour – largely by settlers.
"We gave the first video camera out in Hebron [in January 2007]," says Diala Shamas a Jerusalem-based researcher with B'Tselem. But the project took off in earnest, however, in January this year.
The video is sometimes chaotic, jumpy. Sometimes only the audio is captured and a pair of soldiers' boots.
But what it documents in all its rough reality is the experience of occupation on a daily basis for the most vulnerable families and communities – giving a voice to those who have been voiceless for so long.
"Right now we have about 100 video cameras," adds Shamas. "The largest number are in the Hebron region where the most frequent complaints of settler attacks are. And recently in the northern area and the region next to the [building] of the [separation] wall where there are demonstrations."
She explains the reason for introducing the Shooting Back project.
"The project started as response to the need to gather evidence. We were constantly filing complaints to no avail on the basis of lack of evidence, or … we don't know the name of the settler.
"Now we are going back and forth with our video-cassettes to [Israeli] police station begging them to press rewind, freeze… it is the bulk of our work. The value of the footage is not only evidential. It also has had a remarkable value in terms of advocacy and campaigning.
'We quickly realised the media value of this footage. It is maybe an overstatement but we started bridging this gap between what was happening in the occupied Palestinian territories and what the Israeli public can see.
"There was a conspiracy of silence surrounding settler violence in particular. This footage is shocking to Israelis.'
And in particular it has been two pieces of video, shot by Palestinians this year and released by B'Tselem, that have gained massive international attention by throwing the issue of human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories back into the spotlight.
The first was footage of a group of four hooded settlers from the settlement of Susya armed with what look like pickaxe handles brutally beating a group of Palestinian farmers.
The second – not taken as part of Shooting Back programme – but supplied to B'Tselem by a 17-year-old schoolgirl from the village of Ni'ilin earlier this month showed a protester against the building of the West Bank barrier on his village's land being shot in the foot by an Israeli soldier with a plastic bullet as he was held blindfold and bound.
The protester was Ashraf Abu Rahma, aged 27. The video was shot by Salam Kanaan aged 17. A constant presence at the demonstrations in the Palestinian villages in the rocky hills of the West Bank, Ashraf is employed by the villages as a watchman on land that is threatened with being taken from the Palestinian villages for the building of the West Bank barrier.
He says he was unaware of what was happening to him until almost the moment before he was shot and wounded in the foot.
It is only when he saw the video too that he was able to understand what happened to him.
Arrested during a demonstration against the West Bank barrier in Ni'ilin on July 7 he recalled last week being almost immediately blindfolded.
"They had rounded up the foreigners [from the International Solidarity Movement] and arrested me and another guy separately.
"They put me in a jeep and started cursing me, hitting me and using bad language in Hebrew and Arabic. It had never occurred to me that they would shoot.
"They held me in the sun for a long time. Later I heard them discussing what they were going to do with me.
"I recall hearing a conversation about how to shoot me. What I recall is the words rubber bullet, rubber bullet... I was blindfolded so I was only aware of their aggression.
"It was only when I saw Salam's video that I understood what happened to me. The guy touching me on my right shoulder before I was shot.
"Just before it happened they said they're going to beat me. They said they were going to send me to hell. They know me because I've been to every protest."
Ashraf claims the abuse continued even when he was on the ground after the shot was fired. "When I asked for medical attention they said: this is nothing, we are going to beat you more."
Although the Israeli military's version is that the shooting was a misunderstanding of the orders given by the lieutenant colonel on the scene — and that the aim was only to "frighten" Ashraf examination of the footage makes it hard to credit that version.
Eyad Haddad, B'Tselem's Ramallah-based field researcher who tracked down the footage of Ashraf's punishment shooting, believes that the project has helped supply crucial evidence in documenting abuses.
"These events that happen are often so distant, or happen in the middle of the night, where there is no media.
"Where we've seen there is a lot of violation from the settlers and especially where there are demonstrations happening and we want to monitor the Israeli soldier's behaviour we are distributing video cameras.
"It is having a good effect and it will stop the violations."
Haddad says the organisation is now trying to encourage people living in areas of confrontation to use their own cameras — if they have them – or mobile phones to film potential abuses that they encounter.
"We want to encourage a mentality to use the cameras. It is the only weapon that the civilians have."
According to Diala Shamas the recent high international profile of the footage shot of the settler beating in Susya and the shooting of Ashraf Abu Rahma has meant that the group has not only been inundated with requests for cameras from Palestinian communities, but those who already have cameras supplied by B'Tselem are shooting more footage of their day to day experiences.
"In the beginning we were almost begging people to take the cameras with them when they went out. They didn't see the use of it. But after the media coverage over the Susya incident… we've gotten a flood of requests for our video cameras. And those who have got the cameras are using them much more frequently."
Commenting on the Ni'ilin footage she said: "It is one of the biggest victories because it is the troops not the settlers. It is not just a 'rotten apple' which is usually the response that we get from the government spokespeople. We didn't give out 100 video cameras to document rotten apples. It was to show there was something systematic happening and it was structural to the occupation.
"In this case it was remarkable that it was actually the soldiers themselves. They did in fact open an investigation.
"They couldn't ignore it."
In a graphic and hard-hitting film Peter Beaumont speaks to Palestinians filming abuse from settlers and Israeli armed forces
Peter Beaumont in Ni'ilin
The Guardian, Wednesday 30 July 2008
An Israeli child from a far-right settler group in the West Bank city of Hebron hurls a stone up the stairs of a Palestinian family close to their settlement and shouts: "I will exterminate you." Another spits towards the same family.
Another settler woman pushes her face up to a window and snarls: "Whore!"
They are shocking images. There is footage of beatings, their aftermath, and the indifference of Israel's security forces to serious human rights abuses. There is footage too of those same security forces humiliating Palestinians – and most seriously – committing abuses themselves.
They are contained in a growing archive of material assembled by the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem in a remarkable project called Shooting Back.
The group has supplied almost 100 video cameras to vulnerable Palestinian communities in Hebron, the northern West Bank and elsewhere, to document and gather evidence of assaults and abusive behaviour – largely by settlers.
"We gave the first video camera out in Hebron [in January 2007]," says Diala Shamas a Jerusalem-based researcher with B'Tselem. But the project took off in earnest, however, in January this year.
The video is sometimes chaotic, jumpy. Sometimes only the audio is captured and a pair of soldiers' boots.
But what it documents in all its rough reality is the experience of occupation on a daily basis for the most vulnerable families and communities – giving a voice to those who have been voiceless for so long.
"Right now we have about 100 video cameras," adds Shamas. "The largest number are in the Hebron region where the most frequent complaints of settler attacks are. And recently in the northern area and the region next to the [building] of the [separation] wall where there are demonstrations."
She explains the reason for introducing the Shooting Back project.
"The project started as response to the need to gather evidence. We were constantly filing complaints to no avail on the basis of lack of evidence, or … we don't know the name of the settler.
"Now we are going back and forth with our video-cassettes to [Israeli] police station begging them to press rewind, freeze… it is the bulk of our work. The value of the footage is not only evidential. It also has had a remarkable value in terms of advocacy and campaigning.
'We quickly realised the media value of this footage. It is maybe an overstatement but we started bridging this gap between what was happening in the occupied Palestinian territories and what the Israeli public can see.
"There was a conspiracy of silence surrounding settler violence in particular. This footage is shocking to Israelis.'
And in particular it has been two pieces of video, shot by Palestinians this year and released by B'Tselem, that have gained massive international attention by throwing the issue of human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories back into the spotlight.
The first was footage of a group of four hooded settlers from the settlement of Susya armed with what look like pickaxe handles brutally beating a group of Palestinian farmers.
The second – not taken as part of Shooting Back programme – but supplied to B'Tselem by a 17-year-old schoolgirl from the village of Ni'ilin earlier this month showed a protester against the building of the West Bank barrier on his village's land being shot in the foot by an Israeli soldier with a plastic bullet as he was held blindfold and bound.
The protester was Ashraf Abu Rahma, aged 27. The video was shot by Salam Kanaan aged 17. A constant presence at the demonstrations in the Palestinian villages in the rocky hills of the West Bank, Ashraf is employed by the villages as a watchman on land that is threatened with being taken from the Palestinian villages for the building of the West Bank barrier.
He says he was unaware of what was happening to him until almost the moment before he was shot and wounded in the foot.
It is only when he saw the video too that he was able to understand what happened to him.
Arrested during a demonstration against the West Bank barrier in Ni'ilin on July 7 he recalled last week being almost immediately blindfolded.
"They had rounded up the foreigners [from the International Solidarity Movement] and arrested me and another guy separately.
"They put me in a jeep and started cursing me, hitting me and using bad language in Hebrew and Arabic. It had never occurred to me that they would shoot.
"They held me in the sun for a long time. Later I heard them discussing what they were going to do with me.
"I recall hearing a conversation about how to shoot me. What I recall is the words rubber bullet, rubber bullet... I was blindfolded so I was only aware of their aggression.
"It was only when I saw Salam's video that I understood what happened to me. The guy touching me on my right shoulder before I was shot.
"Just before it happened they said they're going to beat me. They said they were going to send me to hell. They know me because I've been to every protest."
Ashraf claims the abuse continued even when he was on the ground after the shot was fired. "When I asked for medical attention they said: this is nothing, we are going to beat you more."
Although the Israeli military's version is that the shooting was a misunderstanding of the orders given by the lieutenant colonel on the scene — and that the aim was only to "frighten" Ashraf examination of the footage makes it hard to credit that version.
Eyad Haddad, B'Tselem's Ramallah-based field researcher who tracked down the footage of Ashraf's punishment shooting, believes that the project has helped supply crucial evidence in documenting abuses.
"These events that happen are often so distant, or happen in the middle of the night, where there is no media.
"Where we've seen there is a lot of violation from the settlers and especially where there are demonstrations happening and we want to monitor the Israeli soldier's behaviour we are distributing video cameras.
"It is having a good effect and it will stop the violations."
Haddad says the organisation is now trying to encourage people living in areas of confrontation to use their own cameras — if they have them – or mobile phones to film potential abuses that they encounter.
"We want to encourage a mentality to use the cameras. It is the only weapon that the civilians have."
According to Diala Shamas the recent high international profile of the footage shot of the settler beating in Susya and the shooting of Ashraf Abu Rahma has meant that the group has not only been inundated with requests for cameras from Palestinian communities, but those who already have cameras supplied by B'Tselem are shooting more footage of their day to day experiences.
"In the beginning we were almost begging people to take the cameras with them when they went out. They didn't see the use of it. But after the media coverage over the Susya incident… we've gotten a flood of requests for our video cameras. And those who have got the cameras are using them much more frequently."
Commenting on the Ni'ilin footage she said: "It is one of the biggest victories because it is the troops not the settlers. It is not just a 'rotten apple' which is usually the response that we get from the government spokespeople. We didn't give out 100 video cameras to document rotten apples. It was to show there was something systematic happening and it was structural to the occupation.
"In this case it was remarkable that it was actually the soldiers themselves. They did in fact open an investigation.
"They couldn't ignore it."
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Israel's UK ambassador fails to respond to assault claim
Friends of Mohammed Omer: No response from Israeli ambassador to assault claim
A week ago we asked the Israeli ambassador in Britain for the truth about the brutal attack on Mohammed Omer by security officials and, if appropriate, for an apology, compensation for his injuries and an undertaking in future to respect his right to go about his work unmolested. He has not replied.
By all accounts Mohammed's tormentors were taking an unhealthy interest in the whereabouts of his prize-money and put him in hospital when his answers weren't to their liking.
We sent Ambassador Ron Prosor numerous published reports and he will presumably have read John Pilger's article in The Guardian. Pilger, twice winner of the Journalist of the Year award, can be relied on to check his sources for accuracy as far as is humanly possible.
Omer was an honoured guest in Britain and was on his way home to his family in Gaza, having committed no crime, when Israeli security officials detained and tortured him. Reports say he was accompanied by Dutch diplomatic staff, who had helped with his travel arrangements in and out of Occupied Palestine.
According to an account on arabmediawatch.com, the Israelis "proceeded to go through every document and paper he had on him, taking down the names and numbers of the European parliamentary officials he had met on his tour. The Shin Bet officials then started to make fun of the European parliamentarians..."
If this is true the Israelis compound their lawlessness by insulting British MPs, among others, and violating their privacy and confidential dealings.
Dahr Jamail, co-recipient of the Martha Gellhorn award with Mohammed Omer, has filed this report:
As the civilized world knows, violence towards civilians, including cruel treatment, torture and outrages to personal dignity, is prohibited. We have added Jamail's report to the ambassador's reading list.
Israel's immediate response to the Omer incident was a denial. An unnamed Israeli security official was quoted as saying that a body search and an examination of Omer’s belongings were carried out “because of the suspicion that he had been in contact with hostile elements and had been asked by them to smuggle something in”. Omer received “fair treatment and no irregular action was taken towards him”. As for his injuries, he lost his balance and fell "for some reason unknown to us", they said.
This contradicts the Dutch diplomats who accompanied Omer, the doctors in Jericho and Gaza who examined Omer and found he had suffered bruises and broken ribs, and Reporters Without Borders who have recorded a sharp rise in Israel's brutal treatment of journalists, especially those returning from Europe.
Mohammed's experience is a tiny window into the widescale, systematic abuse of Palestinian people, which goes largely unreported in the West. Since the international community has permitted a situation in which all residents of Palestine - and visitors - must enter and leave through Israeli crossings the least it should do is insist on a UN presence at all detentions and interrogations.
In the meantime Israel seems especially twitchy about Palestinians with links to Europe.
A week ago we asked the Israeli ambassador in Britain for the truth about the brutal attack on Mohammed Omer by security officials and, if appropriate, for an apology, compensation for his injuries and an undertaking in future to respect his right to go about his work unmolested. He has not replied.
By all accounts Mohammed's tormentors were taking an unhealthy interest in the whereabouts of his prize-money and put him in hospital when his answers weren't to their liking.
We sent Ambassador Ron Prosor numerous published reports and he will presumably have read John Pilger's article in The Guardian. Pilger, twice winner of the Journalist of the Year award, can be relied on to check his sources for accuracy as far as is humanly possible.
Omer was an honoured guest in Britain and was on his way home to his family in Gaza, having committed no crime, when Israeli security officials detained and tortured him. Reports say he was accompanied by Dutch diplomatic staff, who had helped with his travel arrangements in and out of Occupied Palestine.
According to an account on arabmediawatch.com, the Israelis "proceeded to go through every document and paper he had on him, taking down the names and numbers of the European parliamentary officials he had met on his tour. The Shin Bet officials then started to make fun of the European parliamentarians..."
If this is true the Israelis compound their lawlessness by insulting British MPs, among others, and violating their privacy and confidential dealings.
Dahr Jamail, co-recipient of the Martha Gellhorn award with Mohammed Omer, has filed this report:
He was met by a Dutch official at the Allenby Bridge crossing (from Jordan to the West Bank) who was to ferry him back into Gaza. The official waited outside for Omer as he entered the Israeli building. Inside, Omer was told he was not allowed to call this embassy escort when he asked to do so; a Shin Bet officer searched his luggage and documents, and asked him for his English pounds.
Omer was surrounded by eight armed Shin Bet officers. This is how he described what happened next. “A man called Avi ordered me to take off my clothes. I had already been through an x-ray machine. I stripped down to my underwear and was told to take off everything. When I refused, Avi put his hand on his gun. I began to cry: 'Why are you treating me this way? I am a human being.' He said, 'This is nothing compared with what you will see now.' He took his gun out, pressing it to my head and with his full body weight pinning me on my side, he forcibly removed my underwear. He then made me do a concocted sort of dance. Another man, who was laughing, said: 'Why are you bringing perfumes?' I replied: 'They are gifts for the people I love'. He said: 'Oh, do you have love in your culture?’
"I had now been without food and water and the toilet for 12 hours and, having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of
them gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum. The pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time. Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing it into the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became a menagerie of pain, sound and terror."
Consider the fact that the Israeli Supreme Court has allowed the use of “moderate physical pressure” in the questioning of prisoners... Now consider the fourth Geneva Convention (1949): “(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities…shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.”
As the civilized world knows, violence towards civilians, including cruel treatment, torture and outrages to personal dignity, is prohibited. We have added Jamail's report to the ambassador's reading list.
Israel's immediate response to the Omer incident was a denial. An unnamed Israeli security official was quoted as saying that a body search and an examination of Omer’s belongings were carried out “because of the suspicion that he had been in contact with hostile elements and had been asked by them to smuggle something in”. Omer received “fair treatment and no irregular action was taken towards him”. As for his injuries, he lost his balance and fell "for some reason unknown to us", they said.
This contradicts the Dutch diplomats who accompanied Omer, the doctors in Jericho and Gaza who examined Omer and found he had suffered bruises and broken ribs, and Reporters Without Borders who have recorded a sharp rise in Israel's brutal treatment of journalists, especially those returning from Europe.
Mohammed's experience is a tiny window into the widescale, systematic abuse of Palestinian people, which goes largely unreported in the West. Since the international community has permitted a situation in which all residents of Palestine - and visitors - must enter and leave through Israeli crossings the least it should do is insist on a UN presence at all detentions and interrogations.
In the meantime Israel seems especially twitchy about Palestinians with links to Europe.
[Editor's note: The Israeli ambassador in London can be contacted by email by clicking here.]
Tuesday, 25 March 2008
US Labor statement on Gaza
Friends,
Given the poor record of U.S. labor on this issue, please give all the help you can in posting, publicizing and endorsing the following statement by New York City Labor Against the War.
http://www.petitiononline.com/Gaza/petition.html
US Labor and Gaza
New York City Labor Against the War
23 March 2008
New York City Labor Against the War joins the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions in denouncing Israel's recent massacres in Gaza, the victims of which include at least 130 Palestinians -- half of them civilians, including dozens of women and children -- since February
27.
Who are the terrorists?
Israel claims that it is fighting "terrorism" in Gaza. This is the same hollow excuse with which the U.S. seeks to justify war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the erosion of civil liberties and labor rights at home.
In fact, Israel's attacks are part of a relentless, U.S.-orchestrated campaign of collective punishment -- with complicity of the corrupt Palestinian Authority -- to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas government.
Long before its latest massacres, Israel had turned Gaza into the world's "largest open air prison," assassinating activists, and cutting-off essential goods and services to 1.5 million people. Only as a result did Hamas abandon a unilateral two-year truce.
Even now, Israel seeks to derail Hamas truce offers by escalating arrests, home demolitions, settlements and murder in the West Bank -- from which no rockets have been fired.
Despite media portrayals, this violence is overwhelmingly one-sided against Palestinians, who have no aircraft, artillery or tanks.
Thus, while only one Israeli has been killed by rockets launched from Gaza since May 2007, Israel's modern arsenal killed 60 Palestinians on March 1 alone.
On February 29, Israel's Deputy Defense Minister, Matan Valnai, threatened a bigger "Shoah" -- a reference to the Nazi Holocaust.
As UN official John Dugard has pointed out, Palestinian rockets are not the cause, but the "inevitable consequence," of Israeli state terror in Gaza, the slow-motion genocide which human rights organizations describe as "worse than at any time since the beginning of the Israeli military occupation in 1967."
Following the latest attacks, a Council on Foreign Relations expert explained, "You have Palestinians who wouldn't necessarily support the violence but they are saying, 'Well, what choice do we have?'"
Sixty years of ethnic cleansing and genocide
Israel's war on Gaza can only be understood as an attempt to stamp out all resistance -- including nonviolent protest -- to Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Indeed, most of Gaza's population are survivors of Zionist expulsions since the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, when 13,000 Palestinians were massacred, 531 towns and villages erased, 11 urban neighborhoods emptied, and more than 750,000 (85 percent) driven from 78 percent of their country.
In 1967, Israel seized the remaining 22 percent of Palestine -- including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza -- which, in violation of UN resolutions, remains under Israeli military rule.
Today, as a result of these policies, at least 70 percent of the 10 million Palestinians are refugees -- the largest such population in the world. Despite other UN resolutions, Israel vows that it will never allow them to return.
Palestinians who managed to remain within the 1948 areas -- today, 1.4 million (or 20 percent of the population in Israel) -- are permanently separated from their families in exile, subject to more than 20 discriminatory laws, treated as a "demographic threat," and threatened with mass expulsion.
In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, 140 illegal, ever-expanding Jewish-only settlements and road systems dominate the water resources and control 40 percent of the land. Palestinians are confined, separated, denied medical treatment, and degraded by an 8-meter-high separation wall, pass laws, curfews and 600 military checkpoints.
From 2000-2007, 4,274 Palestinians in these 1967 territories were killed, compared with 1,024 Israelis. The military has seized 60,000 political prisoners; it still holds and tortures 11,000.
All of these conditions have dramatically worsened since the Annapolis "peace conference" in November.
US sponsorship
Israel's war on Palestine depends completely on U.S. money, weapons and approval.
Since 1948, Israel -- the top foreign aid recipient -- has received at least $108 billion from the U.S. government. In the past ten years alone, U.S. military aid was $17 billion; over the next decade, it will be $30 billion.
Israel's recent assault on Gaza was endorsed by a Congressional vote of 404-1. Democratic and Republican presidential candidates fall over themselves to offer more of the same.
On March 22, Dick Cheney reassured Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of "America's. . . . commitment to Israel's right to defend itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other threats," and that the U.S. and Israel are "friends -- special friends."
This "special friendship" means that, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is U.S. aircraft, cluster bombs and bullets that kill and maim on behalf of the occupiers. Just one of many targets was the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions headquarters in Gaza City, destroyed by F-16s on February 28.
Such support bolsters Israel's longstanding role as watchdog and junior partner for U.S. domination over the oil-rich Middle East -- and beyond. In that capacity, Israel was apartheid South Africa's closest ally.
After 9/11, it helped intensify the demonization of Arabs and Muslims. It has 200 nuclear weapons, but helped manufacture "evidence" of Iraqi WMD. With U.S. weapons and support, it invaded Lebanon in 2006.
Together, these wars and occupations have killed, maimed and displaced millions of people, thereby creating the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Now, Israel is the cutting edge of threats against Syria and Iran.
In other words, oppression and resistance in Palestine is the epicenter of U.S.-Israeli war throughout the Middle East. These stakes are reflected in the ferocity of Israel's attacks against Gaza.
Labor’s role
In Palestine, South Africa, Britain, Canada and other countries, labor has condemned Israeli Apartheid.
Workers in the United States pay a staggering human and financial price, including deepening economic crisis, for U.S.-Israeli war and occupation.
But through a combination of intent, ignorance and/or expediency, much of labor officialdom in this country -- often without the knowledge or consent of union members -- is an accomplice of Israeli Apartheid.
Some 1,500 labor bodies have plowed at least $5 billion of union pension funds and retirement plans into State of Israel Bonds.
In April 2002, while Israel butchered Palestinian refugees at Jenin in the West Bank, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney was a featured speaker at a belligerent "National Solidarity Rally for Israel." In 2006, leadership of the American Federation of Teachers embraced Israel's war on Lebanon.
These same leaders collaborate with attempts by the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) to silence Apartheid Israel's opponents -- many of whom are Jewish.
In July 2007, top officials of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win signed a JLC statement that condemned British unions for even considering the nonviolent campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Just days ago, the JLC and the leadership of UNITE-HERE bullied a community organization in Boston into revoking space for a conference on "Zionism and the Repression of Anti-Colonial Movements."
Even the leadership of U.S. Labor Against the War, which receives funding from several major unions, remains adamantly silent about U.S. government, corporate and labor support for Israeli Apartheid.
Labor leaders' complicity parallels infamous "AFL-CIA" support for U.S. war and dictatorship in Vietnam, Latin America, Gulf War I, Afghanistan and elsewhere. It strengthens the U.S.-Israel war machine and labor's corporate enemies, reinforces racism and Islamophobia, and makes a mockery of international solidarity.
A necessary stand
More than forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came under intense public attack for opposing the Vietnam war. Even within the Civil Rights Movement, some dismissed his position too "divisive" and "unpopular."
In his famous speech at the Riverside Church in April 1967, Dr. King answered these critics by pointing out that "silence is betrayal," and that "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today . . . [is] my own government."
At the National Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace in November 1967, he reiterated the most basic principles of labor solidarity: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. . . . Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus."
These principles are no less relevant today.
Yes, the Israel lobby seeks to silence opponents of Israeli Apartheid. All the more need for trade unionists to break that silence by speaking out against Israeli military occupation, for the right of Palestinian refugees to return, and for the elimination of apartheid throughout historic Palestine.
Therefore, we reaffirm our support for an immediate and total:
1. End to U.S. military and economic support for Israel.
2. Divestment of business and labor investments in Israel.
3. Withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces from the Middle East.
-------------
Issued by NYCLAW Co-Conveners
(Other affiliations listed for identification only):
Larry Adams
Former President, NPMHU Local 300
Michael Letwin
Former President, UAW Local 2325/Assn. of Legal Aid Attorneys
Brenda Stokely
Former President, AFSCME DC 1707; Co-Chair, Million Worker March
-------------
NYCLAW, with Al-Awda-NY The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, is a
cofounder of Labor for Palestine .
Previous NYCLAW materials on Palestine include:
Response to Anti-Boycott Attacks (October 19, 2007)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2683
Open Letter to UTLA President A.J. Duffy (October 9, 2006)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2466
U.S. Government and Labor Aid to Israel (September 1, 2006)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2442
Labor and the Middle East War (August 11, 2006)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2429
Conference: Palestine, Labor and the AFL-CIO (July 23, 2005)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2245
From Palestine to the US - Labor Fights Back! (October 7, 2004)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2111
Report on the New York Visit by Representatives from the PGFTU
(December 22, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/1359
An Evening With Palestinian Trade Unionists (December 13, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/1328
Protest Israeli Consul's Speech to AFL-CIO (May 21, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/1001
No Labor Money for Israeli War Crimes! (May 21, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/999
Monday Israeli Consul Protest Postponed April 26, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/926
-------------
Subscribe to the NYCLAW low-volume listserv:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/
New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)
nyclaw01@gmail.com
PO Box 620166, PACC, New York, NY 10129
Given the poor record of U.S. labor on this issue, please give all the help you can in posting, publicizing and endorsing the following statement by New York City Labor Against the War.
http://www.petitiononline.com/Gaza/petition.html
US Labor and Gaza
New York City Labor Against the War
23 March 2008
New York City Labor Against the War joins the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions in denouncing Israel's recent massacres in Gaza, the victims of which include at least 130 Palestinians -- half of them civilians, including dozens of women and children -- since February
27.
Who are the terrorists?
Israel claims that it is fighting "terrorism" in Gaza. This is the same hollow excuse with which the U.S. seeks to justify war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the erosion of civil liberties and labor rights at home.
In fact, Israel's attacks are part of a relentless, U.S.-orchestrated campaign of collective punishment -- with complicity of the corrupt Palestinian Authority -- to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas government.
Long before its latest massacres, Israel had turned Gaza into the world's "largest open air prison," assassinating activists, and cutting-off essential goods and services to 1.5 million people. Only as a result did Hamas abandon a unilateral two-year truce.
Even now, Israel seeks to derail Hamas truce offers by escalating arrests, home demolitions, settlements and murder in the West Bank -- from which no rockets have been fired.
Despite media portrayals, this violence is overwhelmingly one-sided against Palestinians, who have no aircraft, artillery or tanks.
Thus, while only one Israeli has been killed by rockets launched from Gaza since May 2007, Israel's modern arsenal killed 60 Palestinians on March 1 alone.
On February 29, Israel's Deputy Defense Minister, Matan Valnai, threatened a bigger "Shoah" -- a reference to the Nazi Holocaust.
As UN official John Dugard has pointed out, Palestinian rockets are not the cause, but the "inevitable consequence," of Israeli state terror in Gaza, the slow-motion genocide which human rights organizations describe as "worse than at any time since the beginning of the Israeli military occupation in 1967."
Following the latest attacks, a Council on Foreign Relations expert explained, "You have Palestinians who wouldn't necessarily support the violence but they are saying, 'Well, what choice do we have?'"
Sixty years of ethnic cleansing and genocide
Israel's war on Gaza can only be understood as an attempt to stamp out all resistance -- including nonviolent protest -- to Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Indeed, most of Gaza's population are survivors of Zionist expulsions since the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, when 13,000 Palestinians were massacred, 531 towns and villages erased, 11 urban neighborhoods emptied, and more than 750,000 (85 percent) driven from 78 percent of their country.
In 1967, Israel seized the remaining 22 percent of Palestine -- including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza -- which, in violation of UN resolutions, remains under Israeli military rule.
Today, as a result of these policies, at least 70 percent of the 10 million Palestinians are refugees -- the largest such population in the world. Despite other UN resolutions, Israel vows that it will never allow them to return.
Palestinians who managed to remain within the 1948 areas -- today, 1.4 million (or 20 percent of the population in Israel) -- are permanently separated from their families in exile, subject to more than 20 discriminatory laws, treated as a "demographic threat," and threatened with mass expulsion.
In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, 140 illegal, ever-expanding Jewish-only settlements and road systems dominate the water resources and control 40 percent of the land. Palestinians are confined, separated, denied medical treatment, and degraded by an 8-meter-high separation wall, pass laws, curfews and 600 military checkpoints.
From 2000-2007, 4,274 Palestinians in these 1967 territories were killed, compared with 1,024 Israelis. The military has seized 60,000 political prisoners; it still holds and tortures 11,000.
All of these conditions have dramatically worsened since the Annapolis "peace conference" in November.
US sponsorship
Israel's war on Palestine depends completely on U.S. money, weapons and approval.
Since 1948, Israel -- the top foreign aid recipient -- has received at least $108 billion from the U.S. government. In the past ten years alone, U.S. military aid was $17 billion; over the next decade, it will be $30 billion.
Israel's recent assault on Gaza was endorsed by a Congressional vote of 404-1. Democratic and Republican presidential candidates fall over themselves to offer more of the same.
On March 22, Dick Cheney reassured Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of "America's. . . . commitment to Israel's right to defend itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other threats," and that the U.S. and Israel are "friends -- special friends."
This "special friendship" means that, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is U.S. aircraft, cluster bombs and bullets that kill and maim on behalf of the occupiers. Just one of many targets was the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions headquarters in Gaza City, destroyed by F-16s on February 28.
Such support bolsters Israel's longstanding role as watchdog and junior partner for U.S. domination over the oil-rich Middle East -- and beyond. In that capacity, Israel was apartheid South Africa's closest ally.
After 9/11, it helped intensify the demonization of Arabs and Muslims. It has 200 nuclear weapons, but helped manufacture "evidence" of Iraqi WMD. With U.S. weapons and support, it invaded Lebanon in 2006.
Together, these wars and occupations have killed, maimed and displaced millions of people, thereby creating the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Now, Israel is the cutting edge of threats against Syria and Iran.
In other words, oppression and resistance in Palestine is the epicenter of U.S.-Israeli war throughout the Middle East. These stakes are reflected in the ferocity of Israel's attacks against Gaza.
Labor’s role
In Palestine, South Africa, Britain, Canada and other countries, labor has condemned Israeli Apartheid.
Workers in the United States pay a staggering human and financial price, including deepening economic crisis, for U.S.-Israeli war and occupation.
But through a combination of intent, ignorance and/or expediency, much of labor officialdom in this country -- often without the knowledge or consent of union members -- is an accomplice of Israeli Apartheid.
Some 1,500 labor bodies have plowed at least $5 billion of union pension funds and retirement plans into State of Israel Bonds.
In April 2002, while Israel butchered Palestinian refugees at Jenin in the West Bank, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney was a featured speaker at a belligerent "National Solidarity Rally for Israel." In 2006, leadership of the American Federation of Teachers embraced Israel's war on Lebanon.
These same leaders collaborate with attempts by the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) to silence Apartheid Israel's opponents -- many of whom are Jewish.
In July 2007, top officials of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win signed a JLC statement that condemned British unions for even considering the nonviolent campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Just days ago, the JLC and the leadership of UNITE-HERE bullied a community organization in Boston into revoking space for a conference on "Zionism and the Repression of Anti-Colonial Movements."
Even the leadership of U.S. Labor Against the War, which receives funding from several major unions, remains adamantly silent about U.S. government, corporate and labor support for Israeli Apartheid.
Labor leaders' complicity parallels infamous "AFL-CIA" support for U.S. war and dictatorship in Vietnam, Latin America, Gulf War I, Afghanistan and elsewhere. It strengthens the U.S.-Israel war machine and labor's corporate enemies, reinforces racism and Islamophobia, and makes a mockery of international solidarity.
A necessary stand
More than forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came under intense public attack for opposing the Vietnam war. Even within the Civil Rights Movement, some dismissed his position too "divisive" and "unpopular."
In his famous speech at the Riverside Church in April 1967, Dr. King answered these critics by pointing out that "silence is betrayal," and that "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today . . . [is] my own government."
At the National Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace in November 1967, he reiterated the most basic principles of labor solidarity: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. . . . Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus."
These principles are no less relevant today.
Yes, the Israel lobby seeks to silence opponents of Israeli Apartheid. All the more need for trade unionists to break that silence by speaking out against Israeli military occupation, for the right of Palestinian refugees to return, and for the elimination of apartheid throughout historic Palestine.
Therefore, we reaffirm our support for an immediate and total:
1. End to U.S. military and economic support for Israel.
2. Divestment of business and labor investments in Israel.
3. Withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces from the Middle East.
-------------
Issued by NYCLAW Co-Conveners
(Other affiliations listed for identification only):
Larry Adams
Former President, NPMHU Local 300
Michael Letwin
Former President, UAW Local 2325/Assn. of Legal Aid Attorneys
Brenda Stokely
Former President, AFSCME DC 1707; Co-Chair, Million Worker March
-------------
NYCLAW, with Al-Awda-NY The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, is a
cofounder of Labor for Palestine .
Previous NYCLAW materials on Palestine include:
Response to Anti-Boycott Attacks (October 19, 2007)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2683
Open Letter to UTLA President A.J. Duffy (October 9, 2006)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2466
U.S. Government and Labor Aid to Israel (September 1, 2006)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2442
Labor and the Middle East War (August 11, 2006)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2429
Conference: Palestine, Labor and the AFL-CIO (July 23, 2005)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2245
From Palestine to the US - Labor Fights Back! (October 7, 2004)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/2111
Report on the New York Visit by Representatives from the PGFTU
(December 22, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/1359
An Evening With Palestinian Trade Unionists (December 13, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/1328
Protest Israeli Consul's Speech to AFL-CIO (May 21, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/1001
No Labor Money for Israeli War Crimes! (May 21, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/999
Monday Israeli Consul Protest Postponed April 26, 2002)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/message/926
-------------
Subscribe to the NYCLAW low-volume listserv:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/
New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)
nyclaw01@gmail.com
PO Box 620166, PACC, New York, NY 10129
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
