Latest News, Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, December 24th, 2009

Source: http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/2143.shtml

Today, 24 December, Jamal Jum`a underwent a hearing before a military judge at Moskobiyya Detention Center, in Jerusalem. Although Jamal’s interrogation over eight days apparently has finished, the judge granted the Israeli police and intelligence agency’s request to extend his detention for 12 more days of “investigation” before a scheduled second hearing.

This morning, the judge upheld the false premise of Jamal’s arrest as a West Bank resident, insisting that he is alien to his actual Jerusalem residence, because of his work in a Ramallah (West Bank) office. That makes Jamal the subject of Israeli military law.

The Israeli occupation authorities in Jerusalem are holding Jamal incommunicado, without access to his lawyer. Even the judge ordered the lawyer out of the courtroom while Jamal came before the judge. The Israeli jailers blindfolded Jamal in his only meeting briefly with his lawyer several days ago. They likewise blindfolded him when his brother entered the courtroom to see him briefly at this morning’s hearing. The judge refused to allow observes from European Consulates and the Habitat International Coalition from entering the court.

Jamal’s file remains “secret” and under no known charges.

In Counterpunch, Neve Gordon answers once and for all the daft question, “why haven’t the Palestinians established a peace movement like the Israeli Peace Now?”

Here’s an article on the same theme, by Amira Hass of Haaretz: Danger: Popular struggle. Hass also mentions the repressive tactics being used against Israeli demonstrators against Jewish settlement in Sheikh Jarrah (Jerusalem).

Also “Cracking Down on Peace”, a blog post on Palestine Note by Nadia Hijab

And: Israeli repression wave targets activists

And Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the Stop the Wall Campaign, in Israeli jail

And Haaretz editorial.

An article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz carried the story of how ultra-orthodox rabbis “in a desparate bid keep flock away from Web,” are denouncing even ultra-orthodox Jewish web sites. The page carried a scary banner ad for a video seeking to expose radical Islam: “Obsession: radical Islam’s war against the west”.

“The Art of Resistance: Culture and the Boycott of Israel.”

Long, but interesting. With Omar Barghouti and Ahdaf Soueif. From March 2009

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For the people in Gaza it was a war that threatened to destroy life in a split second or slow agony. For the rest of us it was a war of words and images; a testing ground that showed us where friends and nations stood. We will never forgive some of these, just as those who have been maimed or traumatized by falling bombs may never forgive those who have launched them.

I cannot speak of the pain of the victim – it is unintelligible to me. I can only speak of my own, lesser pain – that of being able to do nothing while the dealers in death are having their market day. Of living among people made blind by what? By hatred, paranoia or indifference? I don’t even fully understand what lies behind it. My assumption is that the motivation really isn’t any of these, but a kind of mass psychosis that affects people in times of war. Perhaps those of us who are not so affected have no right to judge those who have been. After all, the roots must be in human qualities that we all share and if conditions had been a little different, it might have caught us too. There are other kinds of mass hypnosis affecting all of us, some of the time. It just happens that war fever is one of the worst.

With all of that, there are some people who are not actually taken over and occupied by the national spirit. They just quietly succumb to it, or retreat into themselves, asking to be woken up when it’s over. The Middle East is mad againe – nothing to do about it.

But there are no private havens and no way that our spirits cannot be affected by war. It is inside and outside. When people are dying, a part of us is being killed; a part of us is doing the killing. Hey, this is crazy talk! No wonder they gave me my exemption.

Naomi Klein has an interesting article in The Nation, January 7: “Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction”. The idea just reiterates what has been said for years – that if the policy worked in South Africa, it could work here. Klein deals in the article with the main reasons for boycott and the main objections. She doesn’t go very much into the psychology; about how this might affect Arab-Jewish relations, for instance, or how Jews react to what they see as a contemporary example of age-old antisemitism.

Perhaps, in order to be effective, boycott and sanctions could be more enthusiastically adopted by Jewish and Palestinian peace organizations, working together. That sounds like a contradiction in terms, but doesn’t have to be. Klein does give the example, in her article of the Free Gaza Movement, which also has a letter calling for sanctions and signed by Israelis. Gush Shalom, the Israeli “peace block” has long advocated a boycott of produce from Israeli settlements. Today I received an email from Juliano Merr Khamis (dramatist and co-director of Arna’s Children) an invitation to sign an open letter to Mira Awad. Awad has been chosen to represent Israel together with Noa (Ahinoam Nini) in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. The letter calls upon Awad to rescind her decision because “The Israeli government is sending the two of you to Moscow in order to propagate a false image of Israeli-Arab “co-existence” and obfuscate its daily massacre of Palestinian civilians.” (for more, see the letter itself). Mira Awad is a Christian Palestinian with Israeli citizenship. On the other side of the Green Line, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel has long been active, with partial success. In 2006, the organization was responsible for persuading ex-Pink Floyd artist Roger Waters to move his performance from Tel Aviv to Wahat al-Salam – Neve Shalom. That Waters made the concession of moving the concert to the Arab – Jewish peace village satisfied Palestinians at the time. Would it today?

By converting Gaza into a blood bath, Israel has convinced the whole world that when it comes to “self-defence” it means business. Today the body count stood at 914 Palestinians for 13 Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens. The world needs to show Israel that it too means business, if it wants to reverse a pattern of steadily escalating regional violence. And unfortunately there may be a need for some form of sanctions.