Israeli Military's negligence exposes schoolchildren to Israeli settler threats

A press release from Christian Peacemaker Teams in At-Tuwani.

October 26, 2010

On the afternoon of Monday October 25^th, Palestinian schoolchildren from the villages of Tuba and Maghayir al Abeed were threatened by four adult Israeli settlers from the Havat Ma'on outpost while walking home from school. The children, aged 6-13, were walking without their normal Israeli military escort because the military had, for the second consecutive afternoon, failed to arrive to accompany the children.

After waiting for the military for over an hour, the children were forced to take a longer route on which masked Israeli settlers have attacked Palestinians and Internationals on three separate occasions over the past two weeks (see release, http://www.operationdove.org/?p=417). Internationals from the Christian Peacemaker Teams accompanied the children home and were present to observe the four Israeli settlers leave a house on a ridge above the path and begin to run towards the children and Internationals. The schoolchildren immediately began to run away, at which point the settlers slowed to a brisk walk but continued to follow the running children for a few more minutes until all were safely out of sight.

The Israeli military is mandated by the Israeli Knesset to escort these children to and from school each day because Israeli settlers from the Ma’on settlement and Havat Ma’on outpost have repeatedly attacked schoolchildren on their way to and from school. On the afternoons of the 24^th and 25^th, Internationals from Operation Dove and the Christian Peacemaker Teams made repeated calls to the Israeli military to notify them that the children were ready and waiting for the escort, but the army never arrived. This is the third incident this month in which the army has failed to arrive to escort the schoolchildren.

Operation Dove and Christian Peacemaker Teams have maintained an international presence in At-Tuwani and South Hebron Hills since 2004.

[Note: According to the Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, and numerous United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Most settlement outposts, including Havot Ma'on (Hill 833) are considered illegal under Israeli law.]

Vatican wants the occupation ended

A Vatican Synod on the Middle East recently convened and subsequently released an important statement regarding Israel/Palestine (see Ynet article). The Vatican body stated that Biblical concepts and interpretations of sacred scripture cannot neither be used to justify the occupation nor Israel's territorial claims which lead to settlement expansion. Here is an greatly encouraging quote from Greek-Melchite Archbishop Cyrille Salim Bustros:

"We Christians cannot speak about the promised land for the Jewish people. There is no longer a chosen people. All men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.

"The concept of the promised land cannot be used as a base for the justification of the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of Palestinians," he added. "The justification of Israel's occupation of the land of Palestine cannot be based on sacred scriptures."

The statement also stated the obvious (yet immensely important to explicitly state time and time again):

"Palestinians are suffering the consequences of the Israeli occupation: the lack of freedom of movement, the wall of separation and the military checkpoints, the political prisoners, the demolition of homes, the disturbance of socio-economic life and the thousands of refugees."

Thank you Catholic Church for restoring a small sliver of my (recently held) hope in the Christian Church. I pray this is a small step toward the global church being a voice for justice in Israel and Palestine.

Ethnic cleansing isn't pretty; No Israeli sister cities

Last night I attended a protest of the Chicago Festival of Israel Cinema. This demonstration that fits in with the 2005 call from Palestinian civil society to use boycotts, divestments, and sanctions to force Israel to recognize and respect Palestinian human rights.

That being said, I understand that the cultural boycott of Israel is probably the most controversial aspect of the boycott. A lot of people can get behind boycotting Israeli settlement goods, because to many people, settlements are the most clear obstacle to peace and the most evident violation of international law.

Nevertheless, I support the cultural boycott of Israel. Why? Because Israel cannot keep operating in the world -- through the arts, economics, sports, and politics -- as if it's not carrying out a brutal occupation of the West Bank, operating the largest open-air prison in the world, and egregiously violating human rights and international laws.

It's the same reason I think tourists who go to Tel Aviv, Nazareth, and Eilat -- without ever stepping foot in the occupied territories -- are deceiving themselves and not getting a full picture of Israel. Israel is an occupier. Israel disregards the rulings of the International Criminal Court. Israel scoffs at international law. Israel is a racist, apartheid state in which all non-Jews are second class citizens. Israel imprisons 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, barely nothing in and nothing out.

That's why they can't have a film festival in Chicago, because the arts are used to whitewash the myriad evils that the Israeli state carries out on a daily basis. It's like taking a rotten apple, hiding the bad part, and showing the world the small sliver of the apple that is still shiny and red.

Here's a bit of background to the event from the Palestine Solidarity Group - Chicago, followed by video and pictures. (A more professional video was shot and is being edited, I will post it once it's finished.)

The protest is part of an ongoing campaign calling on Chicago Sister Cities International, which is co-sponsoring the festival and whose offices are located in the Chicago Cultural Center, to drop the Israeli city of Petach Tikva from its program and end business-as-usual with apartheid Israel.

The festival is being promoted as “The Real Reel Israel” yet we know that the fictional image of Israel as a liberal, multicultural state being trotted out at this festival is another PR attempt by the racist Israeli government and its supporters to whitewash the all too real Israeli military occupation, oppression of Palestinian citizens of Israel and the ongoing denial of the rights of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

When did you choose to be straight?

Sometimes asking the right questions is the most important thing.

The Great Book Robbery

From the filmmakers website:

60,000 Palestinian books were systematically looted by the newly born State of Israel during the 1948 war. The story of the stolen books is not only at the heart of our project but also the launching pad of a much bigger and wider endeavor: We intend on communicating the scope and depth of the Palestinian tragedy through the destruction of Palestinian culture in 1948.

Stealing books and erasing a people and a culture. Not exactly light accusations.

The Great Book Robbery (teaser) from Benny Brunner on Vimeo.

Israeli Taliban Torch Palestinian Girls’ School, Destroy Olive Trees

Cross posted from Informed Comment by Juan Cole.

(My Note -- Juan Cole always reminds me of the importance of the language that we use. What was done to Native Americans and aboriginal peoples is what is being done to Palestinians, so let's call it that. The term 'illegal aliens' is a buzzword in the U.S. that carries negative connotations of a people who don't belong, so let's use it to describe people who immigrate from across the globe to live in homes that Palestinians were forced to leave. And settlers who torch schools are no better than the Taliban. Let's call it what it is folks.)

The phrase “ethnic cleansing” conjures up a swift, comprehensive act of expulsion. But in reality, moving a large population off its land is the death of a thousand cuts, a slow, inexorable process of stealing property, harassment, forcing people into a condition of malnutrition. The Native Americans in the Americas, the Aborigines in Australia, and the Palestinians in Israel/Palestine were only sometimes forced off their land suddenly and en masse. The gradual processes told, in the long run.

The amazing thing about what is being done to the Palestinians in the Palestinian West Bank by Israeli illegal aliens is that it is happening in full view of the world, reported on by wire services, and yet remains invisible to Western publics.

The world reacts in horror when the Taliban in Afghanistan torch girls’ schools. But Israeli squatters just set fire to the store room of a Palestinian girls’ school, and the whole school would have gone up in flames if that warehouse had not been near a water main. The Israeli illegals left behind graffiti saying ‘regards from the hills.’

Early in October, Israeli squatters set fire to a Palestinian mosque in Bethlehem.

For instance, there is the seasonal vandalism against olive trees in Palestinian orchards, which reached a fever pitch this year. The Israeli authorities prosecute few of these offenses and almost never hand down a punishment to an Israeli squatter. The 10 million olive trees in the West Bank and Gaza, occupying some 45 percent of the farmland, are the matrix of Palestinian existence. An attack on olive trees is a form of economic warfare of the first water. (There are some counter-attacks by Palestinians on the orchards of Israeli illegal immigrants, but they are minor in number compared to the onslaught on theirs).

Or consider the ways in which the Israeli squatters unleash their sewage on Palestinian vineyards. A potent symbol for the way the stateless, rights-less Palestinians are continually shat upon by the Israelis.

See this Aljazeera video on sewage guerrilla war against the Palestinians from this summer:

Or there is the news that “The Palestinian Authority on Wednesday condemned an Israeli military order to confiscate 1,000 acres of the Palestinian Al-Jalud village, south of Nablus. ” The Israeli army just steals Palestinian land whenever it likes, supposedly on ‘security’ grounds. But the international law on military occupations forbids such confiscations by the occupying power.

The video that should change the world

Watch this video. Watch it from beginning to end.

Abeeb Abu Rahma, seen in this video, was imprisoned weeks after this video was shot. He has been in prison ever since, on fabricated charges.

But you understand why he was arrested, right? This kind of nonviolent resistance, this passion, this determination to take back the land that is his, will bring the Israeli occupation regime to its knees. That's why Israel had to arrest him.

Hear the passion in his voice, even if you can't understand his words, and know the courage it takes for him to embrace nonviolent resistance in the face of these occupying forces. Several people from Abu Rahma's village have been killed, many more are in prison, for their impassioned resistance.