EDITOR: Israeli fascism on the march!
The attacks by fascist groups in Israel are far more blatant and on the increase, and are likely to intensify further. The police is on the whole relauctant to defent Palestinians under attack, and sometimes even joins in attacking them when they try to defend themselves.
Police, protesters clash in Umm al-Fahm amid right-wing rally: Haaretz
Police fire stun grenades, tear gas to scatter crowd; extreme rightists protest in Arab town and call for the Islamic Movement to be outlawed in Israel.
Dozens of extreme rightists held a protest against the Islamic Movement in the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm on Wednesday, which resulted in clashes between Arab residents of the town and police forces stationed at the scene.
Several Arab protesters hurled rocks at the rightists, and police forces fired tear gas and stun grenades at them in order to scatter the crowd. Several people have been arrested, though no serious injuries have been reported.
Hundreds of police officers were sent to Umm al-Fahm to try to prevent clashes between the two sides after an Israeli court allowed the right-wing activists to march in the city.
About 30 right-wing demonstrators traveled in buses from Jerusalem to Umm al-Fahm on Wednesday morning, led by far-right activists Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir, in order to hold a protest march calling for the Islamic Movement to be outlawed in Israel.
The rightists also protested the participation of a prominent leader of the Islamic Movement, Sheikh Raed Salah, in last May’s Gaza-bound flotilla.
“I don’t understand why, when Peace Now comes to demonstrate at my house in Hebron, it’s for the glory of freedom of expression, but when we want to fulfill our legitimate right, suddenly it’s a provocation,” said Ben-Gvir on Tuesday. “We will teach the left what democracy is and we will demand: Outlaw the Islamic Movement.”
On Tuesday, hundreds of people participated in a ceremony in Jerusalem marking the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was banned from the Knesset for inciting racism.
Arab leaders decided this week not to declare a general strike, as they did when a similar march took place in the city last year. Instead, the leaders called on residents to go about their daily routines, urging students to attend school and store owners to open shop.
Umm al-Fahm Deputy Mayor Mustafa Ghalin said Tuesday that the plan was for city representatives and political activists, but not regular citizens, to face the marchers.
Clashes as Israeli nationalists march through Arab town: BBC
Police used tear gas and stun grenades to try to disperse the protesters
Israeli police have clashed with Arab protesters in the northern town of Umm al-Fahm, ahead of a planned protest by Israeli far-right activists.
Police fired tear gas and stun grenades to try to disperse the protesters.
The Jewish activists are followers of a far-right movement, Kach, which believes Arabs should be expelled from Israel and the West Bank.
Dozens of people were wounded when clashes erupted during a similar march in March 2009.
Tensions were running high in Umm al-Fahm after the Supreme Court authorised the march by ultra-nationalist Jews through the mainly Israeli Arab town.
The organisers say they want Israeli authorities to outlaw the Islamic Movement, whose leader Sheikh Raed Salah, comes from the northern town.
“The Islamic Movement is part of the international Islamic jihad,” Michael Ben Ari, a rightwing lawmaker who took part in the protest, was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
He accused the movement of having ties to Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Some 20 to 30 Jewish demonstrators travelled from Jerusalem to Umm al-Fahm, under heavy police protection.
Riot police, some on horseback, charged about 200 Arab demonstrators who threw stones at them before retreating.
Several people have been arrested, though no serious injuries have been reported.
Clashes between police and protesters in Israel: The Independent
Reuters
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Israeli police fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse Arab protesters at an Israeli-Arab city today in an effort to prevent a clash with ultranationalist Jews planning to march there.
About 30 Jewish demonstrators travelled from Jerusalem to Umm el-Fahm in northern Israel, the seat of an Islamic movement whose leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, has alleged that Israel endangers Jerusalem’s Muslim holy sites.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said officers were sent to Umm al-Fahm to try to prevent clashes between the two sides after an Israeli court allowed the right-wing activists to march in the city.
Riot police, some on horesback, charged about 200 Arab demonstrators who threw stones at them before retreating.
The Jewish protesters want Israeli authorities to outlaw Salah’s movement. One of their leaders said that as Umm el-Fahm was a part of the Jewish state they had the right to march there unhindered.
“We’re coming to protest in the city of Umm el-Fahm, that’s in the heart of Israel,” organiser Baruch Marzel told supporters before the march.
“We have there a cancer of the Islamic Movement that wants to destroy the state of Israel…from the inside and we want to protest that the government will outlaw the Islamic Movement.”
When Marzel and his group held a similar march in the city in March 2009 clashes erupted and dozens were wounded.
Salah, an Umm el-Fahm resident, was jailed by an Israeli court for disorderly conduct and assault after scuffles with police who confronted protesters during engineering work near at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site in 2007.
New bill targeting Israeli Arabs is prejudiced and unnecessary: Haaretz Editorial
New bill aims to preserve communities’ ‘Jewish purity’ by means of willful exclusion that traduces Israel’s Basic Laws.
This morning, the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee will discuss a proposal to amend the law relating to small communities’ absorption committees. Ostensibly offering admission candidates a right of appeal, the law would effectively ratify and institutionalize the committees’ right to accept candidates according to criteria of “suitability to the community’s fundamental outlook, as defined in its regulations,” and “social suitability with regard to the community’s way of life, spirit and social fabric.”
This is an outrageous proposal that crudely attempts to bypass the High Court of Justice’s Ka’adan ruling, in which the court ruled that an Arab citizen can buy a house in a Jewish community. The communities are located on public land and offer candidates a high-quality lifestyle for relatively cheap prices, for the purpose of fulfilling the controversial goal of “Judaizing” regions around the country.
In its 2003 ruling, the High Court deemed the absorption committees’ classifications of candidates “a grave blow to equality;” yet since then, the communities, whose well-to-do residents are eager only to admit “people like us,” have persisted with their admission policies.
Single mothers, physically challenged persons and others who deviate from the communities’ conservative norms are rejected on sophistic pretenses. Arab candidates are categorically rejected on the hazy grounds of “unsuitability.”
Some residents of the communities are uneasy about these trends.
Now MKs Shai Hermesh, Israel Hasson, Uri Ariel, Moshe Matalon and Yitzhak Vaknin want to enshrine this blatant discrimination in Israeli law.
This is woefully unnecessary litigation: The seventh amendment to the Israel Lands Administration Law, which was recently passed, provides the administration the right to designate restrictions on the sale of land plots in communal villages. It is best that a state authority, that is devoid of local interests and committed to maximal transparency, conduct the admissions process.
It is hard to resist the conclusion that the aim of the proposed law is to preserve the communities’ “Jewish purity” (the villages’ regulations are formulated in a way that constructs non-Jews as being inappropriate to their “community spirit” ), by means of willful exclusion that traduces Israel’s Basic Laws.
Should this atrocious amendment be authorized by the committee, it will join other discriminatory laws that have been accepted recently, and will proffer to the Knesset yet another ignoble stain.
As Israel fires on activists, BDS movement claims victories: The Electronic Intifada
Report, 25 October 2010
At least fifteen Palestinians were injured in the occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on Friday, 22 October, when Israeli forces opened fire at a demonstration against the wall and ongoing land confiscation.
Villagers “marched alongside Israeli and international supporters towards the village lands, where Israel is building the wall,” the Palestinian News Network (PNN) reported. “Soldiers fired rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas at them, injuring 15 civilians, one critically. Troops also fired tear gas into homes, burning three houses. Soldiers took a fourth house and told the owner they would use it as a military post for 45 days” (“Fifteen injured, Three Homes Burned In Nabi Saleh Village,” 22 October 2010).
That same day, in the village of al-Masara near Bethlehem, one international activist was wounded and two others were arrested by Israeli soldiers during a similar weekly protest against the planned construction of the wall. “Israeli soldiers stopped the protesters near the local school and used tear gas and sound bombs to force them back. A French activist sustained head injuries from a tear gas bomb and soldiers arrested two other internationals,” according to PNN. (“One Injured, Two Arrested, During Wall Protest Near Bethlehem,” 22 October 2010).
Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, PNN reported that three Palestinian youths were injured that same day by Israeli-fired tear gas canisters during a protest in the village of Bilin. Villagers have waged regular, nonviolent demonstrations for several years against the encroaching Israeli wall and the nearby settlement colonies. Eight-year-old Lamma Abu Rahma, 17-year-old Muhammad al-Khatib and 17-year-old Ahmad Burnat were hit in the legs and feet by the tear gas grenades. (“Three Civilians Injured During Weekly Bil’in Anti Wall Protest,” 22 October 2010).
In related news, EU representatives and consuls general in Jerusalem released a statement on 20 October condemning the imprisonment of Abdallah Abu Rahme, a leader of the nonviolent resistance movement in Bilin who was recently sentenced by a military court to one year in Israeli prison. “The EU considers Abdallah Abu Rahme a human rights defender who has protested in a peaceful manner against the route of the Israeli separation barrier through his village of Bilin,” said the statement. “The EU considers the route of the barrier where it is built on Palestinian land to be illegal. The EU supports the key role of human rights defenders in promoting and furthering of human rights” (“EU Representatives Regret Israeli Military Court Sentence,” 20 October 2010).
Meanwhile, around the globe, solidarity activists accelerated efforts to hold Israel accountable for its repressive policies, as well as corporations that profit from Israel’s human rights abuses.
Ireland
The Irish government has officially refused to grant weapons manufacturer Israel Military Industries a contract to supply 10 million bullets to the Irish Defense Forces, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) confirmed. Organizers had waged a seven-month campaign of lobbying, letter-writing and protesting outside the constituency offices of Ireland’s defense minister Tony Killeen.
In an 11 October press release, the IPSC National Chairperson Freda Hughes stated “We commend the Irish government’s actions in this instance. For the Irish government to have bought bullets from Israel — the same bullets that have been used to murder thousands of Palestinians over the past decade — would have given succor to that rogue state, and given the impression that it can do what it likes to the Palestinian people and not suffer any consequences. The IPSC is proud of our campaign around this issue, and have no doubt that it played a role, albeit unacknowledged, in bringing about this decision” (“Victory as Palestine campaigners welcome Government scrapping of ‘Israeli bullets’ deal, warn against future deals,” 11 October 2010).
Scotland
On 6 October, student activists in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh were able to shut down a career fair at Edinburgh University in protest of the inclusion of a major weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems, which produces and sells arms and equipment to the Israeli military. According to a press release issued by Edinburgh University Students for Justice In Palestine, a dozen students entered the career fair, holding the Palestinian flag and banners that read “BAE – Blatant Absence of Ethics” and “BAE sells – Israel kills” (“Students Shut Down Careers Fair in Protest,” 7 October 2010).
“Upon being asked to leave by security, the students held a ‘die-in’ in front of the stall, to symbolize all the people killed by BAE’s weapons,” the press release stated.
“BAE Systems is the world’s second-largest arms producer,” the the students’ statement added. “It makes fighter aircraft, armored vehicles, artillery systems, missiles, munitions and much more. In 2008, company sales exceeded £18.5 (USD $29) billion, with about 95 percent of these being for military use. BAE has been under investigation for corruption and was, as a result, forced earlier this year to pay a £30 (USD $40) million fine in the UK and one of $400 million in the US. BAE’s arms are sold indiscriminately around the world, with military customers in over 100 countries. These countries include Israel.”
Norway
In Norway, a petition calling for a widespread institutional cultural and academic boycott of Israel has quickly gathered a hundred signatories, following major divestment actions by the Norwegian government (“Call for an academic and cultural boycott of the state of Israel”). Norway’s state sovereign wealth fund — which is the third-largest in the world, holding more than $300 billion — recently moved to divest from both Elbit Systems and Africa Israel. The two Israeli corporations are deeply involved with the construction of Israel’s wall and the ongoing settlement industry in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in violation of international law.
The Norwegian petition, drafted by academics and activists in support of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, has been signed by academics, writers, musicians, cultural workers and sports figures, including Egil “Drillo” Olsen, the coach of the Norwegian national soccer team. Following the Israeli commando raid and deadly attack on the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla in May, a national public opinion poll found that approximately 40 percent of all Norwegians had already begun to boycott Israeli products or were in favor of doing so.
Spain
After a broad-based grassroots campaign in the town of Cigales, a town in Spain’s Valladolid province, the city council voted to remove bottled water produced by the Israeli company Eden Springs Ltd. from all municipal buildings.
In a press release, activists with the Platform for Solidarity with Palestine-Valladolid stated that with this decision, “the City Council joins the international movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel. The City Council of Cigales has taken this decision after a strong mobilization of its [residents], including demonstrations, signature event and public awareness campaigns” (“El Ayuntamiento de Cigales retira la marca israelí de agua embotellada Eden de sus dependencias,” 21 October 2010).
Activists say that this is the third successful boycott campaign against Eden products this year in the Valladolid province. In June, teachers and workers at a nursing school at the University of Valladolid pressured the administration to remove Eden water from vending machines; and the City Council of Villanueva de Duero, a nearby town, removed Eden from its municipal buildings as well.
Asia
The Asia to Gaza Caravan, a group of approximately five hundred activists from seventeen different Asian countries, plans to gather in New Delhi, India, on 1 December. Activists intend to march through 18 cities in Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt in an effort to pressure Israel to lift the siege and blockade on Gaza.
Organized by Asian People’s Solidarity for Palestine, activists will be carrying humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, with the march culminating at the Rafah crossing into southern Gaza.
According to the campaign’s website (www.asiatogaza.net), organizers say that the caravan will coordinate with existing and new solidarity groups during the march. “The aim of this campaign is to build a diverse and inclusive Asian solidarity for the Palestinians and against the blockade that denies the Palestinians their rights,” state the organizers on the website.
Egypt
In Egypt, more than three hundred activists affiliated with the “Viva Palestina” organization arrived in the port town of al-Arish with humanitarian aid — including more than $5 million worth of medical equipment and food supplies, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz (“Viva Palestina Activists Deliver Tons of Aid to Gaza Strip,” 21 October 2010).
United States
At Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the university’s undergraduate council, representing 6,700 undergraduate students, voted on 18 October to approve a bill calling on Harvard President Drew Faust “to establish a commission of concerned faculty, students and administrators to investigate” their decision to honor Martin Peretz. The council also “fully condemned” Harvard’s decision to accept a $650,000 fund for undergraduate social studies research named after Peretz.
Martin Peretz, a former Harvard professor, is the editor-in-chief of the Washington DC-based New Republic magazine, and recently wrote in an op-ed that “Muslim life is cheap,” and that Muslims should not be afforded free speech rights under the US Constitution. Peretz has also opined that Palestinians are “unfit” to govern their own country, and that Arabs in general are “genetically” predisposed to violence.
Peretz also wrote that many African-Americans “are afflicted by cultural deficiencies” and that “in the ghetto a lot of mothers don’t appreciate the importance of schooling.” He also claimed that “Latin societ[ies]” exhibit “characteristic deficiencies” such as “congenital corruption” and “near-tropical work habits.”
Protesting Peretz’ honoring by the university, more than four hundred students and faculty signed a letter written by student organizations including the Harvard Islamic Society, the Black Students Association, Latinas Unidas, the Society of Arab Students and the Progressive Jewish Alliance. “Such an invitation lends legitimacy and respectability to views that can only be described as abhorrent and racist in their implication that the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution should be withheld from certain citizens based on their religious affiliation,” the organizations stated (“Student Letter Criticizes Marty Peretz,” The Harvard Crimson, 20 September 2010).
The bill gained the support of both the university student president and vice president, and passed two council committees before reaching the student union floor and passing by a wide margin: 26-7, with four abstentions.
Canada
And finally, Palestine solidarity activists and groups convened last weekend in Montreal, Canada, for the BDS Conferénce Montréal. The conference, organizers state on the website bdsquebec.org, “aim[ed] to regain the momentum of the international BDS campaign in Quebec, and bring together organizations that stand in solidarity with the plight of Palestinians. Through a collaborative approach, organizations can work together to start building a popular BDS movement in order to educate and inform the Canadian public.” Community and international activists, such as Omar Barghouti, coordinator of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and the Palestinian Boycott National Committee, and members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions presented panel discussions and workshops over the weekend to hundreds of attendants.