 |
 |
|
|
Home
| Friday 5th April
2002 | Issue 349
HOLY SHIT! IT'S YER FAITHFULSchNEWS
|
|
||
|
|||
 |
STATE OF TERROR“History is repeating itself…This is fascism, how
they [the Israeli soldiers] are dealing with people, detaining them
in big schools and interrogating each one, writing numbers on them…people
are terrified. The Israeli soldiers are shooting everything. Life
here has totally stopped; it’s dead. This is terrorism against
civilians. It is organised terrorism by the state…this is an
organised war against a whole people who have no weapons to resist
tanks, and helicopters and F16s.” - Ashraf, a Palestinian
imprisoned in his home in Ramallah. It’s Monday in Beit Jala, a small town near Bethlehem and
150 people from the International Solidarity Movement and dozens
of Palestinians are marching peacefully in the deserted streets.
They are attempting to visit families besieged in their homes, before
Israeli tanks block their path. Two of the marchers start to move
towards the tanks with their hands up in order to negotiate, but
soldiers open fire at both the crowd and the reporters that are
there. Eight people are injured, one seriously. Other activists are holed up with Yasser Arafat in his headquarters.
Mario Lill from Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST)
is one of those who are acting as a human shield and has become
a sort of war correspondent broadcasting live to Brazil. Others
such as anti-globalisation French farmer Jose Bove were arrested
in the compound by Israeli troops. Wednesday and two thousand people including internationals, Israeli and Arab civilians gather at a checkpoint near Ramallah trying to get humanitarian aid delivered to the besieged town. Soldiers fire tear gas and baton charge people. One of the protestors was Yehudith Harel “Two Israeli faces surfaced today. One is the decent and humane face of the Israeli Anti-war movement – an alliance of Israeli citizens - Jews and Arabs, adamant to struggle together for Justice for the two peoples. The second is the ugly and brutal face of the Occupation mentality and practices threatening to crush us.” CASUALTIESPeople from around the world have been volunteering in the occupied
territories of the West Bank for over a year, taking non-violent
direct action like clearing roadblocks and acting as willing human
shields to protect the Palestinian people. Invited by Palestinian
activists, these international supporters live and work in solidarity
with them – a similar call out to the one made by the Zapatistas
in Chiapas, Mexico. People from abroad can often get away with a
lot more when protesting, partly because they have the eyes of the
international press on them - until Monday that was, when live ammunition
was fired at the international observers for the first time. As for the Palestinians, even the doctors, nurses and paramedics
are being used by the Israeli army as human shields or forced to
strip and sit on their knees at gunpoint in the streets. Israeli
forces have stopped ambulances delivering aid or picking up the
wounded and are detaining the Palestinian Red Crescent society and
aid workers. 120 Palestinian paramedics have been killed in the
last 18 months. As Israeli tanks roll in to Palestinian settlements, they destroy
telephone lines and cut electricity and water supplies. All men
between the ages of 16 and 50 are rounded up. Some homes are destroyed,
others have their windows blown out and walls dynamited as soldiers
move from home to home. Soldiers occupy other homes forcing the
residents to live together in a single room, with little or no access
to telephone lines, news coverage or even food and water. An entire civilian population is being openly terrorised after
over 50 years of occupation by the Israeli State. Michael Ben-Yair, former Israel attorney general said, “The
Intifada is the Palestinian people’s war of national liberation.
We enthusiastically chose to become a colonist society, ignoring
international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers
from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding
justification for all these activities…we established an apartheid
regime.” Lev Grinberg (Director of the Humphrey Institute for Social Research at Ben Gurion University) sums up the situation: “Suicide bombs killing innocent citizens must be unequivocally condemned; they are immoral acts, and their perpetrators should be sent to jail. But they cannot be compared to State terrorism carried out by the Israeli Government. The former are individual acts of despair of a people that sees no future, vastly ignored by an unfair and distorted international public opinion. The latter are cold and “rational” decisions of a State and a military apparatus of occupation, well equipped, financed and backed by the only superpower in the world.” * Boycott Israeli goods protests happening around the country
this Saturday (6th) including: Waitrose, Western Road, Brighton
11am; Sainsbury’s, Queens St. Cardiff 10am; Marks and Spencers
Oxford St, Swansea Midday. To order boycott leaflets and stickers
and find out events happening in your area email: big@palestinecampaign.org
or call the Palestine Solidarity Campaign 020 7700 6192 * Saturday 13th April National rally and demonstration for Palestine.
Assemble 2pm, Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square. Tel 020 7272 2888. * To find out about more about the International Solidarity
Movement www.freepalestinecampaign.org * Bypass the corporate media * Nearly 400 Israeli Defence Forces reservists are refusing to serve in the occupied territories. Read their reasons why www.yesh-gvul.org
CRAP ARREST OF THE WEEK For selling saucy postcards * Bournemouth has become the latest city to open a Dutch-style cannabis café . Police are yet to act, go down fast and leave real slowly. www.whspliff.net/Bournemouth.html * There will be cannabis festivals all around the world in over 200 cities on 4th May www.schmoo.co.uk/cannabis/
OUTBACK FIGHTBACK“Before we knew it we were all inside the perimeter
fence… face to face with the detainees, only a few metres of
steel railing and razor wire separating us. This was an incredibly
emotional moment, people were crying, reaching through to touch
hands, I will never forget those peoples’ faces. …Then
quite suddenly some of the men managed to break some of the fencing,
it seemed to actually be quite weak. One by one they clambered out,
stage diving down onto the excited mob of protesters. Still the
police seemed to be paralysed, maybe they couldn’t believe
what was happening. The escapees melted quickly into the throng
of people, swapping t- shirts and hats and running with us in big
groups back to camp.” – Miranda. Last weekend an asylum seekers’ detention centre in the Australian
desert was broken into by 1000 protesters, 50 ‘detainees’
managed to escape – and a few are still unaccounted for. This
was part of the Woomera 2002 Festival Of Freedom – a tour of
actions held around the desert town of Woomera 500kms north of Adelaide
which was to call in on the detention centre, then move onto nearby
uranium mines. Working with the local Kokatha and Arabunna peoples,
this ‘festival’ was to combine the issues of uranium,
refugees and indigenous land rights: Rebecca Bear Wingfield of the
Kokatha people said that aboriginal people did not want the refugees
to be imprisoned on their land, and also pointed out the connections:
‘the uranium mined ends up as bombs and depleted uranium weapons
is used in wars which create more refugees’. In the days leading up to the protest a camp had built up near
the detention centre and on Friday protesters took cutting tools
to the centre and passed them to the detainees to help free themselves.
That night the campers were huddled in tents with asylum seekers
and heard horror stories about both Woomera and the places the people
had come from. The next day protesters tried to move detainees out,
some succeeded, but others were caught and are up on charges of
aiding and abetting escapees – and bizarrely found themselves
sharing cells with asylum seekers. Detainees claim that tear gas
is used in the centre, and after the breakout some who had contact
with the protestors were tortured and beaten. Since 1994 the Australian asylum policy has been to bang up all
asylum seekers – kindly housing them mainly in remote desert
centres such as Woomera where people can wait for years for a verdict,
and many are now prepared to risk possible deportation and death
rather than suffer the conditions. Already this year Woomera has
seen riots, hunger strikes, suicide attempts and people sewing their
lips together in protest about their treatment. Check out the following web sites for more info: |
||
|
@nti copyright - information for action - copy and distribute! |
|||
