The refusal of the sky to shed rain on the coursed land on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean sea is in accord with the sums of the reasons to be optimist. The joint struggle of the anarchists against the wall and the other Israeli radicals with the Palestinian grass root activists is one of the remaining glimpses of hope.
Arakiv
The ongoing joint struggle with the Israeli Bedouins against the robbery of their lands focus on this village. Last week the village was destroyed the seventh time.
Beit ommar
Video of previous Saturday demo 20/11 http://www.youtube.com watch?v=3HnI36hMuAg
Bil'in
Military Incursions during the nights continue in the Occupied village of Bil'in. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuROwpAYZPU AAtW tried to have members present every night to deter the Israeli state forces from harshest activities.
The 300th or so Friday demonstration was without surprises. About 25 activists of the AAtW initiative joined with international supported the Friday demonstration. The march from the center of village expressed the the solidarity with Adeeb Abu Rahmah and Abdallah Abu Rahmah still in jail in spite of the fact they have already served their time. It was another expression of the Tsumud (persistence) in the face of nearly every night army invasion and new arrestees. As usual lately, when the first demonstrators entered the route of the separation fence through the gate (the army did not even bothered to shat) the commander gave the first warning. When the main body of the demonstration arrived, the shower of tear gas grenade was following.
As the wind was a bit on our side it took the state forces lot of shooting and even personal approach to drive all the demonstrators back to the village.
After about 45 minutes tens of soldiers were entering the gate and moving towards the village – forcing the last persisting protesters back. The demonstration lasted for about one hour.
Most of the AAtW activists returned to Israel while others continued to the Sheikh Jarakh Friday afternoon demonstration.
David Reeb Friday 26.11.2019 Bil'in video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0R4xXDqjBQ
Al Maasarah
Ni'lin
Ni'lin weekly demonstration 26.11.2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHs8ILaS_D4
Today our demonstration was in solidarity with our popular committee leaders,the peaceful activists, my father Ibrahim Amireh and Mr. Hassan Mousa and Zaydoon Srour.it was a message to the Israeli occupation forces ,that we didn't forget all our prisoners and the arrest of the peaceful activists Ibrahim amireh and zaydoon srour and hassan mousa will not Frustrate us But Increases our determination to continue the struggle until the attainment of freedom and all our rights.
For More Information about us please visit: http://supportibrahim.com/
Nabi Saleh
MEDIA Palestinian News Network accompany the AAtW to Nabi Saleh
Crossing the Line: Inside the Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall
Not ironically, the biggest problem for the Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall is organizing. With no functional leadership and no place to meet, they come together in Tel Aviv at vaguely agreed-upon times for bouts of organic, decentralized discourse and then disperse in borrowed cars and bicycles. The only reliable place to find the Anarchists together, it seems, is under a cloud of tear gas during one of the weekly anti-wall protests in the West Bank.
Though the Anarchists, formed in 2003, disdain position titles and spokespersons, it is seven-year veteran Dr. Kobi Snitz, 39, who functions as the group’s historian and figurehead. Imprisoned more times than he cares to count and hit in the head by at least one tear-gas canister, Snitz has credentials with the Anarchists that belie his academic background as a postdoctoral mathematics researcher. But no amount of experience can stop a flat tire.
“This is a metaphor for the popular struggle,” says Snitz, getting out of his battered Subaru to inflate the tire at a Tel Aviv gas station, on the way to a protest in the central West Bank village of al-Nabi Saleh. “Once you get to the demonstration, most of the work is already done.”
The work can be automotive, logistical, legal, or technological, but it usually boils down to the financial. “Everything is bad about money” for Snitz and the Anarchists between legal bills for arrested activists, much higher legal bills for Palestinians, the occasional gas mask, and replacement glass for the car windows that Israeli soldiers shoot out whenever they find a car used by the Anarchists, who they consider traitors. But high costs are just part of the job—to say nothing of injuries and arrests.
“It’s work and it’s very tiring,” says Snitz. “But in a way it’s liberating to have some kind of outlet for the frustration of being Israeli. Being arrested is a relief. It frees you from a certain kind of burden.”
Snitz, who is considered to be the first Israeli to be arrested and convicted in the occupied territories, says he admires the Palestinians who endure arrest, imprisonment and often torture without the privilege of judicial restraint exercised for Israelis like him. But beyond being an act of solidarity and redemption, arrest is part of Snitz’s reason for staying in Israel.
“The strongest reason for being here is the struggle,” he explains. “I could live comfortably somewhere else. The state is mostly an enemy, though I don’t want to say the same about Israeli society.”
The Anarchists are far from ideological lockstep about anything, much less about leaving the country whose government policies they protest so vigorously. Some, like 34-year-old software developer Ayala Shani, echo Snitz in saying that the resistance is the only reason to stay.
“I don’t define myself as a Jew, and I don’t like to see myself as part of a nation,” explains Shani, a practicing Anarchist of two and half years. “If I wasn’t actively resisting, I would leave. “
Israeli Anarchist Ayala Shani says she resisted identification with Zionism from an early age.
Others, like 27-year-old Tali Shapiro, rule out the option offhand.
“No, I won’t leave. I was born here,” says Shapiro, who has associated with the Anarchists for two years. “I found a community of people who are important to me. I’ve found my place.”
Nevertheless Shapiro admits that her place is among the like-minded in Israeli society, meaning that she goes out of her way to orient her actions within the state toward reform. She doesn’t vote but tries to “sway elections” toward socialism, shops and eats with a discriminating eye toward settlement products, and attends weekly protests against the wall. She says her latent resistance took on new urgency when she realized her job “typing up army gibberish” as army secretary implicated her in violence in the 2004 Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip.
“I happen to know for sure that something I typed ended in the blinding of a 12-year-old girl named Huda Darwish,” recounts Shapiro. “I saw it on BBC and connected the dots. I knew I was there.”
Tali Shapiro says she balances her activism and nationality by "making choices all the time."
Shapiro took up with the Anarchists a few years afterwards and began making weekly trips to the West Bank to protest. Though at first she was “scared shitless,” she quickly came to find solace in purpose.
“There’s no place I’d rather be on a Friday,” she says, though she admits it isn’t easy. “When I get home, I’m exhausted. I lie down on the floor, maybe take a bath.”
The fatigue factor depends largely on the protest in question: marches in Bil’in or Ni’lin typically last one or two hours, while a demonstration in al-Nabi Saleh, to which PNN accompanied the Anarchists, goes from around noon until sundown. Al-Nabi Saleh has been a flash-point for activists since Israelis from the neighboring settlement of Halamish started drawing water from—and denying Palestinians access to—a natural spring near the village in 2009.
On the Friday drive to al-Nabi Saleh, Snitz points to the red-roofed and isolated Israeli communities.
“I think of how beautiful it would be without the settlements,” he says. “It would be like Crete. Sometimes it seems like [the settlements] go out of their way to seem foreign, with the red roofs meant to have snow slide off them. What snow? It’s like they’re saying, ‘We’re European.’”
Suddenly the Subaru wheezes to a stop on a steep hill on the way to al-Nabi Saleh, and Snitz pokes around under the hood. A flock of sheep moseys through the scene. Then the Anarchists are back on the road, only to be forced to park near the home of a Palestinian farmer, a rousing half-hour hike from their destination: the Israeli military has designated al-Nabi Saleh a “closed military zone” as it does every Friday, blocking off all road access to the village.
The Anarchists dash across a patrolled road and pause in the shade of olive trees, waiting for Snitz’s all-clear. When the join their companions in al-Nabi Saleh, they become just seven Israelis in a crowd of roughly 80 other protestors, marching the length of the village to encounter heavily armed Israeli Border Police at either end.
Snitz is surprised at the relative calm. “Usually they’d have gassed us by now,” he remarks.
A Palestinian boy throws a stone at Israeli Border Police during the Friday protest.
Then it begins, but the first shot and the first stone are so close to each other as to rule out the question of how started. Israeli troops fire rubber bullets and lob tear gas grenades into the village, once into a house itself, and protestors sling rocks back. The home raids begin about two hours into the protest, resulting in at least two arrests. Other protestors escape to resume another violent round of hide-and-seek, with the Border Police attempting pincer movements to isolate them near a soccer field.
It doesn’t work. As tear gas clouds bloom in the olive groves and the air fills with cries in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, the protestors start to flee every which way. It would be, in a word, anarchy, but Snitz is on hand for a clarification of terms and deems it “chaos” instead. Everyone ends up in al-Nabi Saleh by sunset to watch the Israeli jeeps leave.
A Palestinian protester runs through a cloud of tear gas in al-Nabi Saleh.
The protest was, by al-Nabi Saleh standards, a light one. After a meal graciously provided by a Palestinian family, Snitz, Shani, and the other Anarchists head back to Tel Aviv—their Israeli passports will get them only curious looks at the checkpoint, through which most Palestinians cannot pass.
Snitz is happy about the result and appears to take the brutality in stride. He is only noticeably disappointed in the performance of his beat-up Subaru, which he says he may have to trade in before next week. But the Anarchists go with what works. Finances, modes of transport, even membership numbers may waver—for as long as the occupation exists, however, they will resist it.
Israel Puterman video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CetVBmg9CA
Sheikh Jarrah
Demonstration & Hip Hop - WeFromHere http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G75Zvu287ig
Local Palestinian Hip Hop duo WeFromHere performed in the weekly Sheikh Jarrah demonstration attended by hundreds of Israeli, Palestinian and international activists against evictions of Palestinian residents from their houses in their neighborhood by settlers, backed by Israeli courts.
More info: http://www.en.justjlm.org/ http://www.justjlm.org/
Silwan
On Saturday, a contingent of activists of the AAtW "toured" the Silwan occupied neighborhood of east Jerusalem hot spots of conflicts with settler colonialists. We met few of of our Jerusalem comrades and local neighborhood activists from whom we got advices about future joint struggles.
The Southern Hebron Hills
"This Saturday, November 27th, we will go again to The Southern Hebron Hills and help to ensure our Palestinian comrades are able to access their lands.
In the Southern Hebron Hills a policy aimed at separating the Palestinians from their agricultural lands is still in force. Farmers going to their fields are exposed to violence from the settlers. The military does nothing to prevent this, and at times actively prevents the Palestinians from reaching their lands. In addition to the immediate harm to the Palestinians' livelihood, this also creates the danger of the lands being appropriated due to prolonged disuse."
Tel Aviv
Boycott activists returned to the Cape Town Opera performing in Tel Aviv
This time, they did a flash-mob action in-front of the cast.
Watch and circulate! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDeNLAXKKxk
It was the second appearance of the counter apartheid Tel Aviv "Opartheid" troupe for the members of Sothern-African opera troupe: "Cape Town Opera Say NO, again!"
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See Previous reports at: http://ilanisagainstwalls.blogspot.com
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