Israel/Palestine, an anarchist analysis & articles from an anarchist perspective and of other radicals* 10/04/04

Palestine and the International Solidarity Movement The ISM has had a good deal of success in helping out in some of the day to day situations faced by ordinary Palestinians http://struggle.ws/wsm/ws/2003/ws78/ism.html
* Israel - Palestine, Tel Aviv - Zububa, 20m fence removed Tel Aviv-based "One Struggle"* anarchist collective initiative of "Anarchists Against Fences" action with the Zabuba people http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/11/12/3960548
* Israel/Palestine: Roots of the conflict
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/11/12/3960548 The historical roots of the current conflict in the Middle East
* Israel / Palestine is not a nice place to live in - it is a war zoneAn Israeli anarchist looks at the growing opposition to the occupation and why it has developed. In Italian as Israele/Palestina non è un bel posto in cui viverci - è zona di guerra http://struggle.ws/issues/war/afghan/pamwt/wt2/israel.html
* Interview with anarchist refusenik http://struggle.ws/issues/war/palestine/refuenik.html An interview with an anarchist jailed for refusing service in the IDF
* Five Convicted For Refusing to Serve in Israeli Military The five - Hagai Matar, Shimri Zameret, Adam Maor, Noam Bahat and Matan Kaminer - had claimed conscientious objector status on the grounds that they oppose serving in "an army of occupation." http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/12/16/2889888
* Rachels War http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,916299,00.html Letters from US activist murdered by IDF to her parents
* The occupation continues, the occupation will continue, is there any solution http://struggle.ws/issues/war/afghan/pamwt/wt2/israel.html#continues
* Courage to Refuse - Combatant's Letter http://www.seruv.org.il/ o international supporters of the Israeli Refusers
* Ta'ayush - Arab-Jewish Partnership http://taayush.tripod.com/
* Gush Shalom - Israeli Peace Bloc http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html
* The Electronic Infitada http://www.electronicintifada.com produced by a small network of pro- Palestinian activists with a history of Internet and media activism
* Indymedia Jersualem http://jerusalem.indymedia.org/
* Indymedia Israel http://israel.indymedia.org.
* Pogroms in Palestine http://struggle.ws/ws/61/emac.html An Israeli anarchist on Jewish resistance to the Israeli state
* Anarchism and nationalism http://struggle.ws/ws/2002/ws70/nation.html Almost all of our present nations, and the very idea of the modern nation itself, are relatively modern inventions. With the rise of the bourgeois state in the nineteenth century, ruling classes needed an ideology to make their subjects identify with the state in which they lived
* Protests against Israeli occupation in Dublin [with photos] http://struggle.ws/wsm/news/2002/occupationAPRIL9.html
* Second Palestinian solidarity march in Dublin [with photos] http://struggle.ws/wsm/news/2002/palestineAPR.html

PDF file of End the Occupation: Support Israeli Refuseniks poster In English, Hebrew and Arabic http://struggle.ws/pdf/posters/refusniks.html =============================== * This page provided as part of the Struggle collection http://struggle.ws/stw/palestine.html

Israel-Palestine, The latest from Biddu: army attacks nonviolent protesters 07/04/04

ISRAELI ARMY ATTACKS NONVIOLENT PROTESTERS IN BIDDU
Two Palestinian community leaders arrested and dozens villagers injured.
Israeli media report about the Israeli anarchists involvement - two of them anong the 15 injured to day. Police deny using rubber coated bullets blamed the army for this act. The Palestinian nationnalists and the ISM people - as printed below, try to hide the identity of Israeli activists who are mostly from the Anarchists against the wall initiative.
"[Biddu, NW Jerusalem] Before 6am this morning, Israeli army bulldozers started the construction of the wall in the outskirts of Biddu village again. They were confronted by villagers, Internationals and Israeli activists who tried to reach the worksite and stop the work. Israeli soldiers opened fire directly at the line of nonviolent protesters, shooting tear gas and concussion grenades and then rubber-coated metal bullets. Dozens of Palestinians are reportedly injured by eyewitnesses.

At 7:30am, the Israeli army arrested two Biddu community leaders, Mohamed Mansour and Ibrahim Saleh Bedwan, as they were protesting nonviolently the construction of the Wall through the village farmlands. They have been taken away to an unknown location.

The protesters are now completely surrounded by over 80 soldiers who are firing tear gas canisters, concussion grenades and rubber-coated metal bullets, targeting upper parts of the body.

The Popular Committee against the Wall and the activists are now trying to protect a house located at the outskirts of the village which is about to be demolished by the Israeli army. Some villagers are staying in the house to prevent its destruction while other are staying outside and are currently targeted with tear gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets.

For more information, please contact:"

Biddu Village Council: +972.22.47.12.20

Israel-Palestine, Urgent: protest tonight at jerusalem shalom court! 03/04/04

Dearest activists, The Jerusalem police are still holding Leila Mosinzon*, an Israeli activist arrested two days in a row at non-violent demonstrations, Friday in Budrus and Thursday in Hirbata. They have not offered release conditions and are demanding that these be determined by a (right-leaning) judge tonight, who might very well follow their recommendation for a 3 month entry prohibition to all the territories. Another example of the blatant escalation of their attempt to clamp down on our non-violent resistance to their crimes. Please, protest tonight at the Shalom court house in Jerusalem, the hearing takes place an hour or two after sundown.

For more details From: Ivy Sichel To: mashacamp@yahoogroups.com
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* [Ed. Note: Leila is affiliated to the Anarchists Against The Wall initiative.]

Israel, Palestine, Media (Walla), Just another day of ongoing struggle with Anarchists Against the apartheid Wall 02/04/04

Yonatan Polak, member of the Anarchists Against The Wall was injured with rubber wrapped metal bullet. Another Israeli protester described how 5 soldiers fell him on the ground and hit him with the bats of their weapons. The army spoke person justified it because there were disturbances. Few demonstrators were "slightly" wounded in a demonstration late morning at the building site of the "wrapping Jerusalem wall" at Bitunia in the Ramalla region. At noon, about 150 Palestinians and few dozen Israelis and internationals to the building site in order to have a peaceful demonstration. When they were 2 kilometers from the place the bulldozers the soldiers ordered to stop. The demonstrators set down and the soldiers started to disperse them by force - through on them shock grenades and shoot them with rubber wrapped metal bullets.

... An internationalist activist was injured in the feet and back by bullets. Eye witness said the soldiers shoot the demonstrators while they held their hands above their heads and asked to let them return to the village they came from. Among the injured internationalist "street medics" and Palestinian villagers.

Israel-Palestine, Media, As in Tiennamen square (On yassin assasination) by Tanya Reinhart 31/03/04

An extensive discussion has already taken place in Israel regarding the cost-benefit ratio of Yassin's assassination. But the question of justice has hardly been raised. According to international law, the execution of any person in an occupied territory is not allowed. The Geneva convention, born out of the horrifying experience of the second World War, sets limitations on the use of force even in times of war. The convention distinguishes between war and a state of occupation. Its fundamentals are, first, that occupied people are "protected", and that the occupier is responsible for their safety. Second, it determines that the occupied people have the right to fight for their liberation. International conventions are one of the means people have developed for self-preservation. Without them, there is a danger that the human race would annihilate itself - first the strong would wipe out the weak, and then each other.

During its 37 years of occupation, Israel has already violated every article of the Geneva convention. But what it did now is unprecedented. As Robert Fisk stated it in the British Independent, "for years, there has been an unwritten rule in the cruel war of government-versus-guerrilla. You can kill the men on the street, the bomb makers and gunmen. But the leadership on both sides - government ministers, spiritual leaders were allowed to survive." Even when the leader advocates violence and terror, the norm has been that he may be imprisoned, but not killed.

Ahmed Yassin viewed himself as struggling against the occupation. As reported in Yediot Aharonot, his demand was a full withdrawal of the Israeli army from the occupied territories, back to the borders of 1967. In 1993, Hamas agreed to the principles of the Oslo accords, but did not believe that Rabin would translate these principles into action, and urged the Palestinian people to remember that the occupation was not yet over. During the iron-fist period of Barak and Sharon, Yassin proposed a long term 'hudna' (cease fire), but he also believed that Israel would never end the occupation of its own will. "The enemy understands only the language of war, bombs and explosives" - he preached to his followers, and declared that "every Israeli is a target for us".

The Geneva convention recognizes the right of the occupied people to carry out armed struggle against the occupying army, but not to use terror against civilians. Terror has no moral justification, and is not defended by international law. But it is necessary that we Israelis examine ourselves in this regard as well. What other way do we leave open for the Palestinian people to struggle for their liberation? Along the route of the wall in the West Bank, a new form of popular resistance has been formed in the last few months. Palestinian farmers whose land is being robbed sit on the ground in front of the bulldozers, accompanied by the Israeli opponents of the wall - the veterans of the Mas'ha camp. What could be more non-violent than this? But the Israeli army shoots at sitting demonstrators, like in Tiennamen square.

The Israeli army blocks all options of non-violent resistance from the Palestinians. With the arrogant elimination of a leader and a symbol, as he was leaving a mosque, the army knowingly created a new wave of violence and terror. It is hard not to get the impression that terror is convenient for Sharon and the army. It enables them to convince the world that the Geneva protections do not apply to the Palestiians, because they have terrorists in their midst, and that, therefore, it is permitted to do anything to them.

Since September 11th, as part of its “war against terror,” the U.S. has Been pushing to destroy all defences provided by International law. But even the U.S. has not yet dared to publicly execute a spiritual-religious leader (of, for example, the Taliban in Afghanistan). Now Israel has determined, with the U.S. blessing, that even this is permitted. Under the military rule, Israel has become a leading force in the destruction of the very protections that humankind has established, out of World War Two, for its own preservation, protections that we too may need one day, as history has already shown us.

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* Ed. Note: Tanya Reinhart define herself as anarchist. She is a life long activist in the Israeli left. She is a linguist and proffesor in Tel Aviv university. have a regular "corner" in the Israeli main daily Yediot Aharonot, most Israelis read.
In previous elections she openly opposed the supporting of the lesser evil....
The article was printed March 30, 2004. Translated from Hebrew by Netta Van Vliet

Israel-Palestine, The common struggle against the apartheid wall continue 18/03/04

It is reported daily in the media about the struggle of the Palestinian villagers against the Israeli apartheid wall that confiscate their fields and put many of them into a Geto like conditions. In many of the confrontations between the vilagers and the Israeli army which "protect" the wall builders participate internationals and Israeli activists. Just now, the main public radio channel reported about such struggle near the village Harbata. They also inteviewd live from that action Raz from the Anarchists Against The Wall initiative. Raz say the army throw on them shock and gas grenades but refrain from shooting. He add that the army act in contradiction with a stay orders issued by the high justice court of Israel.

Israel-Palestine, Israelis needed to support popular resistance 15/03/04

Israelis needed to support popular resistance Construction of the wall continues around many villages (Deir Qadis, Beit Duku, Nialin and more), in some cases in violation of the supreme court injunction.
The impressive popular resistance also continues every day but the army responds with violence and attacks the demonstrators.
the presence of Israelis* greatly reduces the level of violence and increases the amount of attention given by the press. the current number of Israelis who come to demonstration is not adequate to support the amount of demonstrations happening these days. The people of the villages are doing their part, it is up to us to do our part and support them.
anyone who can make it to demonstrations in Palestine in the next few weeks please call:
In the http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mashacamp/
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*[Ed. Note: Anarchists Agaainst The Wall and others]