palestine

Kristin Szremski,The Electronic Intifada,11 June 2010

Solidarity activists protest outside Caterpillar’s annual shareholder meeting in Chicago, 9 June. (Kristin Szremski)

While pro-Palestinian activists and supporters of Israel lined opposite sides of South LaSalle Street outside the Northern Trust Building in Chicago on 9 June, James Owens, the outgoing CEO and Chairman of Caterpillar Inc., told a room full of shareholders the company was not responsible for the way Israel uses the bulldozers the company manufactures in the United States.

Sherman has also stated that he is planning on working with the Department of Homeland Security to make sure all non-U.S. citizens aboard the flotilla would be permanently barred from entering the U.S. This list includes Nobel peace laureate Mairead Maguire, former UN assistant secretary general Denis Halliday, as well as a number of parliamentarians and government officials from Ireland, Britain, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, and Israel.

Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.

May 31st, 2010
Islamabad—Journalists and activists rallied today at the National Press Club in Islamabad to condemn the Israeli assault on the Free Gaza Flotilla which reportedly killed at least 19 people and injured dozens. The convoy of ships, which aimed to deliver over 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza strip, was 65km from the Gaza coast in international waters when it was attacked. According to the Free Gaza Movement’s twitter feed at http://witnessgaza.com/,six of the casualties were Turkish activists and 10 were internationals aboard the Mavi Marmara ship, the flotilla’s lead vessel.

April 16, 2010

By Rob Mulford
mulford.rob@gmail.com

Download article as a PDF

Some walls are made of stone
Some of words and whispers
Some walls are never known
Some are buried deep inside us

(Taken from the last four lines of the first verse of “Breaking Down the Walls” on the album Come Into the Light by Susan Grace; Black Dog Productions 2009)

Walls often appear as opinion. Like air they are ubiquitous, their source rarely questioned. Some are cultural, mythological, carried generation to next like genetic inheritance. Some are the product of conditioning by church, state, or advertising. Consider the self-erected wall materialized in a waving flag, a prophylactic, allowing a parent to blindly see his child off to war or the specimen of American free will “obeying his thirst” drinking a can of carbonated sugar water. Perhaps nowhere is this metaphor more demonstrative than when conversation turns to the “Israeli / Palestinian Conflict”. Having seen its many manifestations erected as barriers to peace and justice I was not surprised by opinions volunteered me a year ago after announcing my plan to travel to Occupied Palestine.

A call for an end to more “quiet diplomacy” with Israel

A favorite professor of mine once told me that the more you learn about history, the more you realize how little you really know, and how much you still have to learn. Last night, I was both moved and angered to further learn about the ongoing destruction and blockade of the Gaza strip. The award winning Palestinian journalist, Mohammed Omer, showed photographs and told us many moving stories about his life and experiences in Gaza. These stories included the demolition of Mohammed’s home and loss of his brother and neighbors.

by Philip Rizk
(Originally posted on The Electronic Intifada)

Protest at the Egyptian embassy in Beirut against the wall being constructed by the Egyptian government at the border with Gaza.: (Matthew Cassel) On the third night of my abduction by Egyptian authorities last year, after intermittent interrogation and being handcuffed and blindfolded in a two by two meter cell, a state security officer asked me why I had so many “international relationships.” The following night my kidnappers drove me home. I was never given a reason for why state security agents kidnapped me from a march protesting the ongoing siege on Gaza. Though, judging from the focus of the interrogation, the reason had something to do with the two years I lived and worked in Gaza and solidarity efforts I have been involved in since then.

January 8, 2010

Photo: Laura Durkay

When I traveled to Cairo to participate in the Gaza Freedom March, I hoped to enter Gaza to contribute toward ending the siege and preventing future air assaults and invasions, such as the 22-day Operation Cast Lead that Israel launched against Gaza at the close of 2008.

I was also keenly looking forward to meeting a young Gazan who had greatly assisted my co-workers on a Voicesdelegation to Gaza during last year’s Operation Cast Lead. At considerable risk to himself, this young man met members of Voices at the border, arranged housing, translated, and assisted in bearing witness to the devastation caused by the Israeli military assault. Due to the callousness of the Egyptian authorities, I was not able to meet this man or deliver much needed material aid to his community. Early this morning, my co-workers and I received an email from our friend in Gaza, saying that the Israeli military is once again bombing near the Rafah border. One Palestinian was killed and others were injured.

(Cairo) Gaza Freedom Marchers approved today a declaration aimed at accelerating the global campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli Apartheid.

Roughly 1400 activists from 43 countries converged in Cairo on their way to Gaza to join with Palestinians marching to break Israel’s illegal siege. They were prevented from entering Gaza by the Egyptian authorities.

As a result, the Freedom Marchers remained in Cairo. They staged a series of nonviolent actions aimed at pressuring the international community to end the siege as one step in the larger struggle to secure justice for Palestinians throughout historic Palestine.

This declaration arose from those actions:

On Monday, 85 year old Hedy Epstein began a hunger strike as a modest gesture to call upon the Egyptian government to let us go to Gaza and for the end of the seige of Gaza. Hedy is a Holocaust survivor and her decision immediately inspired at least twenty two others of us to join her.