Palestinian prisoners in several prisons, including Nafha prison, have reported in the past few days that they were threatened that family visits would be denied in retaliation for their participation in the hunger strike. Israeli prison officials told the prisoners that for each day they spent on hunger strike, they would be banned from family visitation for 1 month.
anti-Occupation
Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails have started a hunger strike to protest their treatment by the Israeli prison services, Palestinian Authority Minister of Detainee Affairs Issa Qaraqe said Tuesday.
Campaigners for Palestinian rights are celebrating after the primary Israeli agricultural produce export company Agrexco, which has been a key target of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in support of Palestinian rights, has been ordered into liquidation after being unable to pay its creditors… Agrexco is a partially state-owned Israeli exporter responsible for the export of a large proportion of fresh Israeli produce, including 60-70% of the agricultural produce grown in Israel’s illegal settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
A new website honouring the life of Shimon Tzabar (1926, Palestine – 2007, London), an artist, writer, poet, satirist and a vocal fighter against the occupation of Palestinian land by Israel. Examples of his paintings and drawings, his journalistic output, plays and poetry, and excerpts from his memoirs and from writings by others about him are reproduced here, some in English and some in Hebrew.
IOA Editor: Do not miss this important website honoring the life and work of Shimon Tzabar: an outstanding artist and a vigorous opponent of the Israeli occupation, starting immediately after the 1967 war.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators interrupt Israeli orchestra’s London performance. BBC Radio forced to suspend broadcast. UK minister tweets: Demonstrators turned entire audience pro-Israel.
IOA Editor: Indeed, the minister might be right. Unlike the disruption of speeches by Israeli officials, where irritating the audience may well be part of the objective, interrupting a concert is likely to generate total resentment by audience members who paid (often dearly) for tickets and whose attendance may have more to do with music and less to do with support of Israel. On the other hand, direct action outside the box office or music hall offers at least a chance of causing a few people to reconsider their attendance. Not that every action need result in immediate sympathy, but turning the audiences against one’s cause is hardly an effective BDS tactic.
Sygmunt Bauman: “Israel does not see the missiles falling on communities along the border as a bad thing. On the contrary, they would be worried and even alarmed were it not for this fire.”
While certainly factors besides the mounting pressure on Agrexco from the BDS movement were at work here, the movement has made an impact on the Israeli economy.
What’s needed very badly … is for Israelis to realize that the occupation is hurting the Palestinians terribly, that it’s driving them to try to kill us, that we are compelling them to engage in terrorism, that the blood of Israeli victims is ultimately on our hands, and that it’s up to us to stop provoking our own people’s murder by ending the occupation. And so long as we who oppose the occupation keep pretending that the Palestinians don’t have the right to resist it, we tacitly encourage Israelis to go on blindly killing and dying in defense of an unholy cause.
IOA Editor: Larry Derfner was fired from The Jerusalem Post after posting this article on his personal blog – despite subsequently removing it and apologizing. Without Derfner, a liberal-Zionist with a strong anti-Occupation record, the Post remains the same house of venom it has long been, even more so now.
For in this stretch of land, despite the many fences and walls and barriers of all sorts that scar its landscape, the borders are not clear and they are not permanent – not only the physical borders between one power and another and between one authority and another, but also the mental and moral borders between what is permissible and what is forbidden, between good and evil, between stupidity and wickedness, between the humiliated and those who humiliate.
Israel Harel does not deal with the simple fact that the land on which his son and his friends are living is private land, registered properly in the name of Palestinians, who have submitted to the High Court the deeds that prove their family’s ownership of the land. The petitioners’ documents are unequivocal, and the State of Israel is not denying their ownership.
On July 11th the Israeli parliament passed the controversial anti-boycott law. The law was written in response to the mounting global movement of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel and profits from its settlements and industry in the occupied West Bank. The Boycott movement began as a mass Palestinian civil society call, and has been supported from the beginning by some Israelis. The new law bans publicly calling for a boycott, classifying it a civil wrong.
Basically, the anti-boycott law allows all those who feel they have been harmed by a boycott, whether against Israel or an Israeli institution or territory (i.e. the settlements in the West Bank) to sue the person or organization who publicly called for it, for compensation. This definition is very broad—even a simple call not to visit a place falls under it—and most important, the prosecutor plaintiff doesn’t even have to prove damages.
Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa Philip Luther: “Despite proponents’ claims to the contrary, this law is a blatant attempt to stifle peaceful dissent and campaigning by attacking the right to freedom of expression, which all governments must uphold.”
Cindy Corrie: “After more than a year of hearings, we are at this moment in much the same place as we were when they began – up against a wall of Israeli officials determined to protect the state at all costs, including at the expense of truth.”
Uri Avnery: “The boycott law is a sophisticated law. It doesn’t impose criminal sanctions on someone who calls for boycotting the settlements. If it did, we wouldn’t have the slightest problem; we would go to jail. Instead, this law makes everyone who calls for boycotting the settlements liable for paying millions of shekels in compensation to the settlers. There is no limit to the sum that the settlers can demand of us in compensation for damages, without their even having to prove it [the damages]…”
High Court rejects petition to put 2 Border Guard officers on trial for death of Abir Aramin, but slams police, prosecution for ‘incomplete’ investigation.
IOA Editor: This is the latest chapter in the struggle of a Palestinian family whose daughter, Abir Aramin, who was murdered by Israeli Occupation forces, as they try to put their personal tragedy in the context of the broader struggle for justice and for Palestinian national liberation.
Bilin’s popular resistance leader Muhammad al-Khatib: ‘I am not for one state or for two states. I am for equality. The principles of equality and human rights are global principles, and they are no less applicable here than elsewhere.’
“We Divest From Israel’s Occupation” performs a flashmob in Times Square to call on TiAA-CREF to stop profiting from Occupation. The flashmob comes after TIAA-CREF refused to allow a shareholder resolution holding companies accountable in TIAA-CREF’s portfolio, such as Caterpillar, Elbit, Motorola, Northrup Grumman, and Veolia for doing business with Israel’s Occupation.
As the Flotilla boats to Gaza are prevented from leaving the Greek ports, the Israeli government congratulates its diplomatic efforts in pressuring Greece to stop the activists. Earlier in the week, the Israeli press cited an army debrief when all major newspapers reported the Flotilla activists will carry lethal acid on board their ships, according to army intelligence.
The United States is sure to bring all its considerable influence to bear to avoid such resolutions being brought before the Council… But the fact that such a course would clarify the situation, and finally extract a small price for the United States’ shameless pandering to Israel, is precisely the reason why this is a course to be seriously considered.
