Dancing On The Front Porch of Heaven Rehearsal Ulysses Dove’s commentary on his choreography with The Swedish Royal Ballet and snippets of the rehearsals.
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Join Naomi Klein, Neve Gordon, Noam Chomsky and thousands of others and tell Israel not to jail Ezra Nawi, one of Israel’s most courageous human rights activists. His crime? He tried to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins in the South Hebron region. Nawi, a Jewish Israeli of Iraqi descent, is a threat to the settlers and the Israeli government because he has brought international attention to efforts to illegally remove Palestinians from the Hebron region. He will be sentenced in July. (Watch the remarkable video of Nawi trying to stop the home demolition and his subsequent arrest.)
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The Israeli Ministry of the Interior demolishes hundreds of homes of its own Palestinian citizens every year due to zoning and planning schemes intentionally insufficient for the needs of the communities. There are, in addition, dozens of villages not recognized by the government whose residents live in the constant instability that comes with pending … Continue reading
An Open Letter from Jewish Peace Activists
We are peace activists of Jewish background. Some of us typically identify in this way; others of us do not. But we all object to those who claim to speak for all Jews or who use charges of anti-Semitism to attempt to squelch legitimate dissent.
We have learned with dismay the allegations regarding Hermann Dierkes, a trade unionist and leader of the Left Party (DIE LINKE) in the German city of Duisburg. Dierkes, in response to the recent Israeli assault on Gaza expressed the view that one way people could help Palestinians obtain justice would be to support the call of the World Social Forum to boycott Israeli goods, so as to put pressure on the Israeli government.
Dierkes has been subjected to widespread and vitriolic denunciations for anti-Semitism, and accused of calling for a repeat of the Nazi policy of the 1930s of boycotting Jewish products. Dierkes responded that “The demands of the World Social Forum have nothing in common with Nazi-type racist campaigns against Jews, but aim at changing the Israeli government’s policy of oppression of the Palestinians. “
No one has made any claims of anti-Semitism against Dierkes for anything other than his support of the boycott. Yet he has been accused of “pure anti-Semitism” (Dieter Graumann the Vice-President of the Central Jewish Council), of uttering words comparable to “a mass execution at the edge of a Ukrainian forest” (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung editorialist Achim Beer), and of expressing “Nazi propaganda” (Hendrik Wuest, General Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party).
We signatories have differing views on the wisdom and efficacy of calling for a boycott of Israeli goods. Some of us believe that such a boycott is an essential component of a campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions that can end the four-decade- long Israeli occupation; others think the better way to pressure the Israeli government is with a more selective boycott focused on institutions and corporations supporting the occupation. But all of us agree that it is essential to apply pressure against the Israeli government if peace and justice are to prevail in the Middle East and all of us agree that a call for a boycott of Israel has nothing in common with the Nazi policy of “Don’t buy from Jews.” It is no more anti-Semitic to boycott Israel to end the occupation than it was anti-white to boycott South Africa to end apartheid. Social justice movements have often called for boycotts or divestment, whether against the military regime in Burma or the government of Sudan. Wise or not, such calls are in no way discriminatory.
Violence in the Middle East has indeed led to some acts of anti-Semitism in Europe. There was a call to boycott Jewish-owned stores in Rome that was widely and appropriately condemned. We deplore such bigotry. Israel‘s crimes cannot be attributed to Jews as a whole. But, at the same time, a boycott of Israel cannot be equated with a boycott of Jews as a whole.
An acute and disturbing form of racism rising in Europe today is Islamophobia and xenophobia directed at immigrants from Muslim countries. Dierkes has been a champion in defense of the rights of immigrants, while some of those who accuse all critics of Israel of being anti-Semitic often participate themselves — like the Israeli government and state — in such forms of racism.
The Holocaust was one of the most horrific events in modern history. It is a dishonor to its victims to use its memory as a bludgeon to silence principled critics of Israel‘s unconscionable treatment of Palestinians.
From: Z Net – The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
Http://www.nytimes. com/2009/ 04/04/opinion/ 04bisharat. html
April 4, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Israel on Trial
By GEORGE BISHARAT
San Francisco
CHILLING testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that
Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international
law. The emergence of a predominantly right-wing, nationalist
government in Israel suggests that there may be more violations to
come. Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians also
constituted war crimes, but do not excuse Israel’s transgressions.
While Israel disputes some of the soldiers’ accounts, the evidence
suggests that Israel committed the following six offenses:
Violating its duty to protect the civilian population of the Gaza
Strip. Despite Israel’s 2005 “disengagement” from Gaza, the territory
remains occupied. Israel unleashed military firepower against a people
it is legally bound to protect.
Imposing collective punishment in the form of a blockade, in violation
of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In June 2007, after
Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip, Israel imposed suffocating
restrictions on trade and movement. The blockade — an act of war in
customary international law — has helped plunge families into poverty,
children into malnutrition, and patients denied access to medical
treatment into their graves. People in Gaza thus faced Israel’s winter
onslaught in particularly weakened conditions.
Deliberately attacking civilian targets. The laws of war permit
attacking a civilian object only when it is making an effective
contribution to military action and a definite military advantage is
gained by its destruction. Yet an Israeli general, Dan Harel, said, “We
are hitting not only terrorists and launchers, but also the whole Hamas
government and all its wings.” An Israeli military spokeswoman, Maj.
Avital Leibovich, avowed that “anything affiliated with Hamas is a
legitimate target.”
Israeli fire destroyed or damaged mosques, hospitals, factories,
schools, a key sewage plant, institutions like the parliament, the main
ministries, the central prison and police stations, and thousands of
houses.
•
Willfully killing civilians without military justification. When
civilian institutions are struck, civilians — persons who are not
members of the armed forces of a warring party, and are not taking
direct part in hostilities — are killed.
International law authorizes killings of civilians if the objective of
the attack is military, and the means are proportional to the advantage
gained. Yet proportionality is irrelevant if the targets of attack were
not military to begin with. Gaza government employees — traffic
policemen, court clerks, secretaries and others — are not combatants
merely because Israel considers Hamas, the governing party, a terrorist
organization. Many countries do not regard violence against foreign
military occupation as terrorism.
Of 1,434 Palestinians killed in the Gaza invasion, 960 were civilians,
including 121 women and 288 children, according to a United Nations
special rapporteur, Richard Falk. Israeli military lawyers instructed
army commanders that Palestinians who remained in a targeted building
after having been warned to leave were “voluntary human shields,” and
thus combatants. Israeli gunners “knocked on roofs” — that is, fired
first at corners of buildings, before hitting more vulnerable points —
to “warn” Palestinian residents to flee.
With nearly all exits from the densely populated Gaza Strip blocked by
Israel, and chaos reigning within it, this was a particularly cruel
flaunting of international law. Willful killings of civilians that are
not required by military necessity are grave breaches of the Geneva
Conventions, and are considered war crimes under the Nuremberg
principles.
Deliberately employing disproportionate force. Last year, Gen. Gadi
Eisenkot, head of Israel’s northern command, speaking on possible
future conflicts with neighbors, stated, “We will wield
disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired
on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction.” Such a frank
admission of illegal intent can constitute evidence in a criminal
prosecution.
Illegal use of weapons, including white phosphorus. Israel was finally
forced to admit, after initial denials, that it employed white
phosphorous in the Gaza Strip, though Israel defended its use as legal.
White phosphorous may be legally used as an obscurant, not as a weapon,
as it burns deeply and is extremely difficult to extinguish.
Israeli political and military personnel who planned, ordered or
executed these possible offenses should face criminal prosecution. The
appointment of Richard Goldstone, the former war crimes prosecutor from
South Africa, to head a fact-finding team into possible war crimes by
both parties to the Gaza conflict is an important step in the right
direction. The stature of international law is diminished when a nation
violates it with impunity.
George Bisharat is a professor at the University of California Hastings
College of the Law.
RUSSELL TRIBUNAL ON PALESTINE
In the Foreword to Bertrand Russell’s “War Crimes Tribunal on Vietnam”
(1971), Noam Chomsky says: “It is the fundamental duty of the citizen to
resist and to restrain the violence of the state. Those who choose to
disregard this responsibility can justly be accused of complicity in war
crimes, which is itself designated as ‘a crime under international law’ in
the principles of the Charter of Nuremberg. This is, in essence, the
challenge posed to us by the Russell Tribunal.”
Only four years earlier, Bertrand Russell had opened the Russell Tribunal on
Vietnam; a subsequent Tribunal was set up on Latin America. On 4 March 2009,
the Russell Tribunal on Palestine was launched at a press conference in
Brussels and one of the most moving addresses was given by Israeli peace
activist Professor Nurit Peled whose own 13-year-old daughter was killed by
a suicide bomber in 1997. (See video link of address below.) The countries
represented so far are: France, England, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Belgium,
Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Portugal, Slovenia, Germany, Norway, Algeria,
Tunisia, Egypt, South Africa, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Angola,
Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, USA, Australia, Lebanon,
Israel and Palestine. Countries willing to set up national support
committees are in the process of doing so. (More information is available on the website http://russelltribu nalonpalestine. net/pages/ National_ Support_Committe es-114379. html)
Although it has no official mandate, this Tribunal can put pressure on
governments to change their policies by mobilising public opinion. The
weight of that opinion becomes even more pronounced when those who support
the Tribunal are sufficiently eminent to attract media attention. It is
then that the public is truly faced with the responsibility of calling
governments to account. Already more than 100 eminent jurists, former
presidents, ministers and diplomats, Nobel laureates, academics, writers,
filmmakers, scientists, activists and public intellectuals have signed up as
members of the support committee.
Current Special UN Rapporteur Professor Richard Falk gave a dire warning in
1970 in an article he wrote for The Nation: “Given the perils and horrors of
the contemporary world, it is time that individuals everywhere called their
government to account for indulging or ignoring the daily evidences of
barbarism… the obsolete pretensions of sovereign prerogative and military
necessity had better be challenged soon if life on earth is to survive.”
Richard Falk ‘The Circle of responsibility’ , The Nation, 26 January 1970.
Falk is Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice, Princeton
University
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine follows in the spirit of those earlier
Tribunals and calls on citizens around the world to help reaffirm
international law as the standard by which the Israel/Palestine conflict is
resolved. Your support is needed to promote this Tribunal’s work through
press conferences and other publicity events. You can make a donation
through a bank transfer to the following account number:
Bank: KBC Bank
IBAN code: BE 92 733038712023 // Bic-code: KREDBEBB.
Mention: “donation for the Russell Tribunal”
Tribunal Russell, 115 rue Stevin, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
For further information on The Russell tribunal on Palestine,
please visit the website: www.russelltribunal onpalestine. net
Dear friends in the UK,
Bystander Ian Tomlinson was hit by a policeman and died during G20 protests last week. The right to peaceful protest is a vital part of our democracy — tell the Home Secretary and the Metropolitan Police to fix the flaws in British protest policing now and prevent any more deaths like this:
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Peaceful protests can change the world. Last week’s G20 summit wouldn’t have taken the decisions it did without the non-violent pressure hundreds of thousands of citizens brought to bear — like our peaceful march with thousands of green hard hats the weekend before the G20.[1]
The protests in the City of London immediately before the summit were rowdier than our own, but still overwhelmingly peaceful despite media hysteria, aggressive policing and a handful of troublemakers. Tragically, one man died that day — bystander and newspaper-seller Ian Tomlinson. Now video footage shows that he was struck down by a masked, baton-wielding policeman.[2]
We’ve worked with the police on our own public demonstrations, and they play an essential role in making peaceful protest possible. But not for the first time, the police lost their way at these City protests — using excessive force, starting to criminalise the peaceful majority and creating pressure-cooker confrontations instead of defusing them. Enough is enough — the British tradition of peaceful public protest is too important to lose. Follow this link to watch the video and sign the emergency petition to fix British policing of demonstrations — we’ll deliver it directly to the Home Secretary, Parliament and the Metropolitan Police:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/fix_british_protest_policing
The Independent Police Complaints Commission is now investigating Ian Tomlinson’s death minutes after he was struck down — but he was far from the only innocent person injured by violent police tactics on April 1st, as a growing flood of dependable eyewitnesses‘ testimonies and videos have begun to reveal.[3] This is not an isolated incident. It points to wider failings in the policing of demonstrations in the UK in recent years.
The policy of “kettling” (penning in people including bystanders, families and those who want to move on, often for ten hours or more) seems to create a pressure-cooker atmosphere of frustration and confrontation. Instead of isolating and removing the handful of troublemakers who wrecked the Royal Bank of Scotland branch, the police responded by cracking down on the peaceful majority, confining them, forcing them to give personal information, and charging them with batons and dogs. This cannot be right.
The separate and wholly-peaceful “climate camp” on Bishopsgate was subject to similar imprisonment and baton-charges. Initial police statements about these events have often turned out to be misleading. As well as constraining rights of assembly, new laws now supposedly prohibit taking the very photos and videos of police officers which have begun to reveal the truth of these events.
We can’t let this slide toward unaccountability continue. Many of those policing this demonstration wore balaclavas or took their identification numbers off. By telling the media before the protests that they were “up for it” if violence ensued, commanding officers were whipping up dangerous hysteria. As Andy Hayman, the former Assistant Commissioner of the Met wrote yesterday: “If left unchecked, we have a more violent crowd in uniform than the crowd demonstrating.”
This is ultimately a question of government policy and accountability — so we’ll deliver the petition to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and the Home Affairs Committee of Parliament as well as the Metropolitan Police, and alert the media to raise wider awareness of this effort.
After Ian Tomlinson’s death, it’s time to fix the policing of demonstrations in Britain. Sign the emergency petition at the link below, and share this message with friends, family and colleagues:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/fix_british_protest_policing
With hope and determination,
Paul, Alice, Iain and the whole Avaaz team
Sources:
[1] Avaaz video from peaceful London G20 demonstration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOkEdJGfrCw&eurl
[2] The Guardian — “New video footage from G20 protests gives fresh angle on attack”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2009/apr/08/g20-police-assault-ian-tomlinson-video
[3] Chris Abbott, Open Democracy — “Trapped and beaten by police in Climate Camp”:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/blog/ourkingdom-theme/ourkingdom/2009/04/09/trapped-and-beaten-by-police-in-climate-camp
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ABOUT AVAAZ Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means “voice” in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Buenos Aires, and Geneva. Call us at: +1 888 922 8229 or +55 21 2509 0368 Click here to learn more about our largest campaigns. Don’t forget to check out our Facebook and Myspace and Bebo pages!
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George Galloway has written a damning letter to the UK Charity Commission about their behaviour over the Viva Palestina convoy, which delivered £1million of aid directly to the people of Gaza, forced Israel and Egypt to open the Rafah crossing, and broke the siege which has resulted in misery for Gaza’s people.
The letter speaks for itself – please forward it widely.We need to make a stand against these people who are trying to silence critics of Israel, the UK and the US. They may believe that the Palestinian people are worth less than other people. We don’t.
Letter from Respect MP George Galloway to the Charity Commission
To the Charity Commission,
I have been travelling for many weeks in North Africa and the Middle East, Europe, and North America. I have returned to a London address I seldom visit to find a blizzard of correspondence from you. Your correspondence, when read together, as I have just done, seems to represent a wildly disproportionate and inappropriate reaction to our recent delivery of aid to the suffering Palestinians in Gaza, and must raise the question: Why?
The peremptory letters from you, and by you I mean the Charity Commission, are full of bluster and threat, issuing absurd deadlines to people it does not seem to occur to you are not even receiving your letters, either because they are working abroad (Ms Razuki and Mr Al-Mukhtar), travelling abroad on high profile political business (myself), or you are writing to them at the wrong address.
In my own case, Easter Saturday opened with your, latest, threat to go before a High Court judge in a bid to force me to appear before you. That will not be necessary. I look forward to telling you to your faces what I think of you. Which is this.
I have become increasingly concerned about the abuse of your powers displayed in your brazenly obvious political double standards. About your attempts, under the guise of regulating British charities, to police the democratic efforts of political activists in Britain in a way never envisaged by parliament. About your preparedness to waste large sums of public money in political stunts, either at the behest of others or in the hope that you are properly anticipating their wishes. And above all, in the context of this issue, your almost laughably obvious prejudice against the Palestinian cause and against Britain’s two million-strong Muslim community.
Just one example will suffice for now, although I have more, much more.
During Israel’s 22-day attack on virtually defenceless Palestinian civilians in Gaza – condemned by virtually everyone in the world from the United Nations to the Pope and including the British government – an organisation The Zionist Federation took out a full page advert in the Jewish Chronicle on 9th January asking readers to send “care packages” to “our [ie Israeli] soldiers fighting on the front line” in Gaza and to send charity vouchers to a British registered charity Operation Wheelchairs Committee (charity number 263089) for the same purpose.
Although this was immediately drawn to your attention you appear to have done absolutely nothing at all about such an abuse of charitable status. The Zionist Federation is presumably not a registered charity any more than Viva Palestina was. The Zionist Federation appeal was for money for “care packages” with donations possible online to www.zionist. org.uk and to the charity Operation Wheelchairs Committee. By the logic of your actions towards Viva Palestina, surely you should have immediately declared the Zionist Federation to be a charity with all that that entails. But you did not do so. Why? In any case, the Operation Wheelchairs Committee is a charity, soliciting for funds in this advert to support a foreign army involved in a widely condemned military action, in which thousands of civilians were killed, maimed and orphaned. Yet the Charity Commission did nothing. No freezing of bank accounts, no press releases, no carefully briefed “concerns”, no threats of High Court judges.
It will only take the reader (I am publishing this letter as widely as I can) a moment’s thought to imagine what the Charity Commission’s attitude would have been if a British – Muslim – Charity had taken a full page advertisement in a different British newspaper raising money for “care packages” for “our [ie Palestinian] soldiers fighting on the front line” in Gaza.
Not only would you have gone into overdrive and immediately begun freezing their assets, the hue and cry in the press you would have fed, would have seen the charity’s trustees under arrest.
This is an incontestable example of your persistent bias. Because in contrast to your inaction on a British charity raising money for the Israeli army and in the absence of such a hypothetical Muslim charity, you have launched this hysterical campaign to try and wreck the work of Viva Palestina instead.
Without any knowledge of the intentions of Viva Palestina and on the basis of press reports, you pronounced, as is your wont, that we were in effect a charity, to give yourselves locus in our affairs. You misunderstood – I believe deliberately – the structure of our Gaza convoy, purporting to believe that we – the subscribers (whatever that means) – were holding more than a million pounds about which you expressed “concerns”, when in fact, as you have been told but continue to ignore, this was never the case.
You first frightened the banks into refusing our attempts to open a bank account. When we finally found a bank which would allow us to open an account you intimidated them into freezing it, I believe exceeding your powers. You then began procuring documents – possibly illegally – about us from the Islamic Bank. As a result of your press briefings about your “concerns” newspapers began to refuse to accept advertisements from us, donors turned away, and the public were encouraged to believe that Viva Palestina was something to be avoided – conjuring-up an undisclosed but lurking suspicion about it.
In all this you acted not as the public would expect a Charity Commission to do, but rather as a self-appointed state policeman of the activist sector, a mission-creep towards a style of work which simply must be contested.
Here are the facts. Accept them and save the public purse a lot of money it can’t afford. And get off the backs of Britain’s Muslims and the Palestinian people.
I am not a trustee of Viva Palestina. You say I am a “subscriber” though you do not say what that means. I have nothing to do with Viva Palestina’s finances, I am not a signatory to its frozen bank account. I will attend the meeting with you, because I intend to launch a parliamentary campaign, and take it to the country, to put you back in your place.
I did inspire the creation of Viva Palestina and I am very proud of that. If those running it listen to me they will refuse to take anything off their website at your behest. The example you cite of an item which should be taken down, could just as easily have been any one of a hundred items. And would become so, once your right to dictate the activities of a political campaigning organisation was conceded.
For that is what Viva Palestina was, and is. Its constitution – its actual constitution not the one you wish it had – makes this abundantly clear. So does everything it says and does. If all that renders Viva Palestina not eligible to be a charity, then that’s fine. Let me emphasise this as strongly as I am able. Viva Palestina does not want to be a charity.
It is you, for transparently political reasons, who insisted that charitable status should be sought. You registered Viva Palestina as a charity in record quick time and without the great bulk of the information you normally required. And then you froze the record-quick new charity’s bank account so that it could not operate. These are police state tactics, entirely inappropriate and without any basis.
Viva Palestina simply provided a focus for an aid convoy from Britain to Gaza. It was de-centralised. Each participant was responsible for raising their own money, bringing their own vehicles, filling their own vehicles with their own aid, making their own donations in Gaza. You have been told this but continue to misrepresent the position. The money raised by Viva Palestina itself – a much smaller amount – was publicly declared to be intended as a donation to a British charity for work in Gaza – Interpal, with which you are depressingly familiar for having harassed it for years on repeatedly debunked smears.
The vast majority of the participants in the convoy, and the vast majority of those who helped them with money and aid, were British Muslims.
Having exerted that mighty effort, those British Muslims now find that their peaceful democratic response to the crisis in Gaza has been criminalised by you, and their aid confiscated. This all follows the high-profile police raid on vehicles from the Muslim community in the North West heading to join the convoy the night before its departure. This raid, blazed across the media, saw the arrest of ten Muslims headed for the convoy. All ten of them were later released without charge, but not before sowing the seeds of tremendous bitterness in the communities from which the men came.
This is dangerous as well as foolish. There are extremists on the edge of the Muslim community even now saying “I told you so” to those who had been naive enough to think Britain was still the kind of country where efforts like ours could be appreciated and, at least, be free from the kind of arbitrary and unjust actions taken by you. These actions undermine the confidence of British Muslims in the democratic system in Britain and are therefore dangerous and against the interests of our country.
I understand from my colleagues that you have now frozen more than £100,000 intended to help the suffering Palestinian people. Shame on you. I suppose it is too much to hope that you might have that on your conscience. But be sure I intend to let as many people as possible know, here and abroad, what you have done.
Viva Palestina’s work has effectively come to a halt since your intervention in its affairs and in my absence. This was, I’m sure, your intention. Viva Palestina has not spent any money improperly. It would not do so. Indeed it could not do so. It has spent hardly anything at all – thanks to you. But it intends to get its money back from you. Viva Palestina have instructed lawyers to deal with you and a barrister will accompany us to the meeting with you. If necessary we will start a new organisation free from your wrecking efforts. But we want this money back, please be sure about that. There are Palestinians dying as a result of the malignant, sinister, cynical actions taken by you. Trust me you’ll be hearing more about this.
Yours faithfully
George Galloway MP
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