Forty-five human rights activists called upon fellow New Yorkers to boycott the Israel Ballet at its performance Sunday at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts. Accompanied by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, protesters performed ballet, sang, chanted, and handed out mock programs to bring attention to the Israel Ballet’s role in the Israeli state’s use of the arts to whitewash its crimes against the Palestinian people.
Activism
Bil’in has become a symbol of a civic struggle devoid of terrorism. Such persistent, ongoing protest action is remarkable. It has even prompted the Supreme Court to rule that the route of the fence should be moved, and that some 170 acres of land be returned to the villagers. Astonishingly, this ruling has yet to be implemented by the state, which is thus displaying brazen contempt of court.
Human rights activists from Vermont, New York and Israel interrupted a performance of the Israel Ballet at the Flynn Theater in Burlington, VT calling attention to the dance company’s complicity in Israeli war crimes.
IOA Editor: See also Ynetnews story and correction of facts by activists:
israeli-occupation.org/2010-02-20/us-protestors-halt-israeli-ballet-performance/
The International Women’s Peace Service is currently seeking applications from women who would like to join our on-the-ground team in Palestine as long term volunteers (short term volunteers are welcome).
As he prepares to leave Jerusalem after four years as the Guardian’s correspondent, Rory McCarthy reflects on a new, harsher climate of thought that is apparent in the wake of the Dubai assassination. But this attitude is not universal: dissent thrives in the most unlikely places.
National Ballet Company’s show in Vermont interrupted by pro-Palestinian protestors who force their way into theater.
UPDATED: Statement by one of the protesters — consisting of a performer of Yiddish music and actor, a theater artist and high school teacher, a filmmaker, and a musician and former Israeli Air Force pilot — correcting the Ynetnews report and presenting a strikingly different picture of the protest.
PLEASE JOIN US FOR A MOVING PROCESSION TO
PROTEST THE ANNUAL FUNDRAISING DINNER OF
THE FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES &
KEYNOTE IDF CHIEF OF STAFF GABI ASHKENAZI
Tue, 9 March 2010 5:00-7:00pm
53rd St/Lexington Ave, New York
Rashid Khalidi: “A two-state solution looks a lot further off today than it did in the 1990s… In spite of all of these vicissitudes…” Palestinians have an “extraordinary solidarity of society” and general cohesiveness, so they may just escape their “very, very grim future.”
Brown University student: “I thought it was phenomenal” [and] found it “particularly motivational,” and… was “enraged by the current situation in Palestine.”
We are Jews from the United States, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.”
Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish.
We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.
Demonstrators participating in rally protesting the Israel’s West Bank separation fence dismantled a section of the barrier on Friday, during a rally marking five years since the beginning of the Bil’in protests. About a thousand people took part in the rally, which was also attended by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Palestinian parliament member Mustafa Barghouti as well as Fatah strongman Nabil Shaath.
On February 25, 2010 activists around the world will participate in an international day of action to raise awareness about the issue of lack of freedom of movement in the Palestinian city of Hebron. The closure of Shuhada Street to Palestinians is just one prominent example of the policy of separation that affects the lives of Palestinians all across the occupied Palestinian territories.
Historian Howard Zinn’s remarkable work, including his most famous book, A People’s History of the United States, is summarized best in his own words. His primary concern, he once explained, was “the countless small actions of unknown people” that lie at the roots of the great moments of history–a record that would be profoundly misleading, and seriously disempowering, if torn from such roots. Howard, who died Jan. 27 at 87, was devoted to the empowerment of these unknowns.
Reut says the campaign is the work of a worldwide network of private individuals and organizations. They have no hierarchy or overall commander, but work together based on a joint ideology – portraying Israel as a pariah state and denying its right to exist.
IOA Editor: Conveniently, Israel’s ‘experts’ equate criticism of Israeli actions — mostly, directly connected to the Occupation, and the Occupation itself — for which Israel has deservedly earned the title “pariah state,” with denial of its right to exist. This is an old Hasbara trick: You criticize us, you’re really saying Israel has no right to exist. Left out of the discussion is “The right to exist as what?” As an occupying state? An Apartheid state? The term “delegitimization campaign” is actually turned on its head: It is the Israelis who are attempting to delegitimize their critics by calling them “delegitimizers,” trying to blur the distinctions between “delegitimizers” and anti-Semites, consistent with old Israeli propaganda practices: If you criticize us, and you’re not Jewish, you’re an anti-Semite. (And if you are Jewish, you’re sick – afflicted by “self-hate,” etc. See Ur Shlonsky’s recent email exchange on the Academic Boycott.) Those of us old enough have heard this some four decades ago.
The IOA is proud to be a very small part of the “worldwide network… [having] no hierarchy or overall commander…” We steadfastly reject the Occupation and strongly criticize Israel’s long record of violations of international law.
“Israel knows that the non-violence struggle is spreading and that it’s a powerful weapon against the occupation,” said Neta Golan, an Israeli activist based in Ramallah. “Israel has no answer to it, which is why the security forces are panicking and have started making lots of arrests.”
A fact sheet prepared by the Center for Constitutional Rights
It could be expected that a country that has ruled another nation for many years would show tolerance toward manifestations of unarmed protest against the occupation and its ills… The suppression of public protest under the transparent guise of protecting state security does not augment Israel’s international standing. Such a policy gives a bad name to “the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Late last night Occupation forces raided the Stop the Wall offices in Ramallah. Some 10 military jeeps, hummers and an armoured bus surrounded the building as soldiers searched rooms, turning the office upside down and confiscating computer hard disks, laptops, and video cameras along with paper documents, CDs, and video cassettes.
The activists’ lawyer described their arrest as part of a campaign by Israel to choke off weekly demonstrations by Palestinians, left-wing Israelis and foreign activists against Israel’s West Bank separation barrier as peace efforts remain at a stalemate.
Amira Hass: Tufakji has for years been researching Israel’s settlement policy and the ways by which Palestinian land is taken over, as well as planning policy which discriminates against Palestinians. He heads the cartography department of the Arab Studies Society, established in 1980 to document the social, political and cultural history of the Palestinians.
IOA Editor: Knowledge is power. Clearly, those Palestinians armed with the facts pose the greatest security risk to Israel.
B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Machsom Watch, Breaking the Silence and their ilk are nudniks, they are one-sided, they pick up any story floating around, often giving exaggerated credence to hearsay testimony and they have a tendency for overkill, conflating every report into a phenomenon. Yet we couldn’t do without them.
IOA Editor: Indeed, without them, liberal Anglo-Saxon Jewish immigrants such as Mr. Pfeffer could themselves become targets of the neo-fascist camp that is rapidly rising in Israel as a counter-movement to domestic human rights organizations and to Israel’s international critics. This Israel-centric commentary is presented here to show the tremendous pressure Israeli rights organizations are operating under, and the limited support they receive even from relatively-friendly media such as Haaretz.
“They’re using me to attack in the most blatant way the basic principles of democracy and the values of the Declaration of Independence: Values of equality, tolerance, social justice and freedom of speech,” she added. On Thursday, Chazan received an e-mail from Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief David Horovitz, informing her the newspaper would cease publishing her column. Chazan had provided the daily with one of its few leftist voices in recent years.
IOA Editor: Democracy for Jews only. The Declaration of Independence has been a part of Israel’s democratic facade since 1948: it never stopped Israel from robbing the Palestinian people of their homeland and turning them into refugees and third class citizens of the Only Democracy in the Middle East. In addition, unlike the US Constitution, the “Declaration” is just that: a non-binding statement without any legally enforceable powers.
Ridgen and Rossier’s new compelling documentary about controversial Jewish-American academic Norman Finkelstein is to open soon at Anthology Film Archives. The film has already played in prominent festivals around the world including the Sheffield Doc/Fest documentary festival, IDFA in Amsterdam and the Jewish Film Festival in Jerusalem.
“These organizations are trying to help Hamas in [its] fight against Israel,” argues Im Tirtzu chairman Ronen Shoval. “They are slandering the State of Israel and the Israeli soldiers around the world.”
An illuminating e-mail exchange between Ur Shlonsky, professor of linguistics at the Universite de Geneve, and the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation. As Shlonsky points out, it is remarkable when accusations of anti-Semitism, or “self-hating Jew” (the version used for Jews), come from the executive director of a major research-funding agency.
Michael Sfard: “I am embarrassed to say that the investigation team did not even go to Ni’ilin, the scene of the shooting… If a Jewish man had been shot and wounded, there is no doubt that the entire village would be under curfew and Israel would do everything possible to investigate.”
Carleton University (Canada) students’ new BDS campaign video which re-tells the story of the censorship of a poster by the University and the reasons behind the new divestment campaign.
There are widespread fears among Israeli academics that calls for a boycott of Israeli universities will intensify following the Ariel College decision. Yaron Ezrahi, a professor at Hebrew University, called the decision the “academisation of the occupation”.
Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, along with a slew of blogs, are playing an increasing role in the growing participation of young Israelis in protest rallies in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
The Israel Film Fund has ended its financial support for director Yonatan Segal’s new piece Odem, after learning that it compares Israel’s occupation of the West Bank to the Holocaust.
The Sheikh Jarrah vigils started as an avowedly political act – an outcry against a system which allows Jews to reclaim property held in east Jerusalem prior to 1948, but prohibits Palestinians from doing the same in west Jerusalem… Silencing the drums of Sheikh Jarrah is akin to eroding the pillars of Israel’s freedom.
IOA Editor: Written from an Israeli-centric perspective, this commentary supports citizens’ right to protest. But it overlooks a 61-year long reality where the “pillars of Israel’s freedom” never applied to Israel’s Palestinian citizens. And, no country running a four-decade long violent colonial occupation project can make any claims to “freedom.”
[T]he move to “purge” east Jerusalem of its Arab residents saddens [MK Mohammed Barakeh] not only on a personal level but also because he feels “there is no peace process, no two-state solution without east Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.”
Recent Israeli repression of anti-Occupation activities:
Israel blocking NGO efforts with tourist visas
Night Raids and Arrests of West Bank Popular Leaders
Police arrest CEO of Israeli rights group in Sheikh Jarrah
Israeli authorities deny American journalist entry
Israel stages night-time Ramallah raid, arrests activist
Israel Crushes Local Dissent, Attacks Global Criticism
The IDF also uses networking sites to its own ends: The army spokesperson’s office makes regular use of Facebook and Twitter, as well as publishing regular blogs. In the last year the military has intensified its online activities in an attempt to broaden its public relations drive to reach young people who increasingly gather information from unofficial sources, rather than traditional news providers.
IOA Editor: The reach and importance of online ‘social networks’ is often underestimated: Facebook, for example, has over 300 million global users. To the IDF, social networks provide a nearly limitless global arena for propaganda dissemination – for example, using what Israel does in Haiti to whitewash what it does in Gaza.
The IOA on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Israeli.Occupation – ‘fan’ us…
The IOA on Twitter: http://twitter.com/IsOccupation – follow us.
Keeping culture alive in a conflict zone is a daunting challenge. The Israeli Occupation involves not only the destruction of Palestine as a political entity, but the dissolution of its social and cultural life. Resisting that process and fighting the occupation through creativity is what drives Ahmad al-Bakri and Abdel Merizar, two exceptional and enigmatic young actors from Hebron.
MK Ahmad Tibi: “Barak continues to permit the infestation of settlements and surrender to Lieberman and Yisrael Beiteinu. Barak’s decision will only spur the academic boycott of Israel in the world. The Labor Party proves once again that that it is a barrier to reconciliation between the two nations.”
Amir Nizar Zuabi: “I don’t draw the line between: you’re Israeli, he’s Palestinian, or Muslim or Christian. I draw the line in a different place completely. I draw the line between people who believe that all people were born equal, and hence deserve the same things, same rights, same duties, same everything, and people who say, ‘Yes, but I am more special.’”
“There is a large variety of international activists here,” he says. “There are those who spend weeks and months in the village and take the political issue seriously, and there are others who, as part of their trip to Israel and Palestine, drop in at Bil’in to see what’s happening. Some of them have a strong political awareness, others come to take pictures.
