Sunday, December 29, 2013

Israeli Occupation Forces shoot Palestinan woman at close range in Nabi Saleh

Manal Tamimi being carried to safety after being shot by IOF


Dear friends,

last Friday (27 December 2013), my friend Manal Tamimi from village of Nabi Saleh was shot at close range by a soldier from the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).  Since 2009, Manal, her family and the rest of her village have been protesting the stealing of village land by the nearby illegal Israeli colony of Halamish. 

Manal's village, An Nabi Saleh, consists of approximateley 550 people and is located approximately 20 kilometres northwest of Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank. 
The Israeli colony of Halamish (aka as Neveh Tzuf ) was established on lands belonging to the villages of An Nabi Saleh and Deir Nidham in 1976.   In response, the residents of An Nabi Saleh and Deir Nidham began holding demonstrations in opposition to the stealing of their land and the establishment of the colony, which violates international law.    The residents of An Nabi Saleh and Deir Nidham  lodged a court case against the colony in Israel’s high court, but were unable to stop the construction the illegal settlement.

Since 1977, Halamish has continued to expand and steal more Palestinian land.   In 2008, the residents of An Nabi Saleh challenged the building of a fence by the colony on private Palestinian land, preventing them from accessing their land.  The Israeli courts ruled that the fence was to be dismantled  Despite the Israeli court ruling, the colony continued to illegally annex more Palestinian land.  In the summer of 2008, the Israeli colonists from Halamish seized control of a number springs, all of which were located on private Palestinian land belonging to residents of An Nabi Saleh.

In December 2009, the village began weekly non-violent demonstrations in opposition to the illegal Israeli colony of Halamish annexing of the  fresh water springs and stealing of more of the village’s land.  Since An Nabi Saleh began its demonstrations, the Israeli military has brutally sought to repress the non-violent protests, arresting men, women and children.  Israel's occupation forces regularly invade Nabi Saleh, fire teargas, rubber coated bullets an live ammunition.

This is not the first time Isael's occupation have shot someone at close range and has resulted in both death and numerous injuries:

In 2011, Israel's Occupation Forces (IOF) fired a teargas canister from the less than 1 metre away at the head of 28 year old Mustafa Tamimi.  Mustafa died the next day (see my blog posts from the time, including eyewitness accounts here and here and here).

The following year in November 2012, the IOF also opened fire from a close distance and shot Rushdi Tamimi who died two days later.   Rushdi was Manal's brother and had been protesting, along with the rest of the village, Israel's most recent bombing of Gaza  (see my blog posts about what happened here)

In July this year, Israel's occupation forces open fire on Sarit Michaeli from the Israeli Human Right's Organisation, B'Tselem as she was filming the Friday demonstration in Nabi Saleh.  She was shot in the leg with a rubber coated steel bullet (see the archived articles on the Nabi Saleh Solidarity website about Sarit's shooting here )




 Manal being evacuated after being shot.

I have included below video taken by Manal's husband, Bilal Tamimi of Manal being shot.  Bilal is a videographer who regularly documents life in Nabi Saleh and Israel's repressive violence against the village.  I have also the press release from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee on what happened.  


In addition, I have also posted a note from Manal, which she has given permission for me to share, which she posted to her friends, family and supporters to let them know what happened and that she was okay.

You can support the people of Nabi Saleh  and keep up to date with their struggle against Israel's occupation and apartheid practices by joining the Nabi Saleh Solidarity page on Facebook and/or following the Nabi Saleh Solidarity webpage/blog.

Click here: Nabi Saleh Solidarity (Facebook page)


Click here: Nabi Saleh Solidarity (webpage/blog)

in solidarity, Kim 






NOTE FROM MANAL TAMIMI ON HER SHOOTING

Dear friends,
many if you asked me about what's happened yesterday and here is the story:

As every Friday we made our protest, soldiers were every where in the village ( in the hill, near the spring and at the entrance) they began to use a lot of year gas when the skunk car entered and directly went to my cousin Sae'ed house, Sae'ed is in jail since 21 years and enshalah gonna be released in two days, they began to skunk the house when my cousin and my friend went out and stand in front of the car trying to prevent it from skunking the house, that's when I reached and began to shout at them, the car came closer to me then two jeeps were after it, suddenly I saw one of the soldiers opening the jeep door and have a gas canister and want to shot it at the house when I remembered that my paralyzed aunt is inside the house with other old woman and children, at that minute I lost my mind because I was pretty sure that my aunt won't make it if she inhale gas.

I went towered [toward] the soldiers shouting and screaming at them to leave the village and not the shoot the canister because there are sick woman and children in the house.

When I was 1.5 or 2 meters the soldier without any warning shot the bullets at my legs , they were 15 bullet 4 of them hit me in my two legs , two in my left knee and two in my right foot ,
Luckily my injuries wasn't so serious , I still have pain when I try to walk.

These Zionist tried to terrifying us because they think this way we will be afraid and stop our protest , they don't know that after Rushdy's and Mustafa's martyrdom now nothing can stop or terrifying us.

We are here, we will still here , we will keep resisting till freedom doesn't matter what price we have to pay."



PRESS RELEASE FROM THE POPULAR STRUGGLE COORDINATION COMMITTEE ON THE SHOOTING OF MANAL TAMIMI


Nabi Saleh: Occupied Palestine     27 December 2013

Israeli forces shot a local female activist from Nabi Saleh Manal Tamimi today with rubber coated steel bullets from a close range. In addition to Manal, two more Palestinians and two journalists Abbas Momani and Maath Mash'al were lightly injured.

Manal was hit with 4 rubber coated steel bullets in her knees and legs and was later taken to a hospital in Ramallah. Another girl from Nabi Saleh was also taken to hospital after being hit with skunk water. Dozens protestors have also suffocated from tear gas shot at them during the protest.

Israeli forces attacked the protestors in the village who protest weekly against the settlements with tear gas canisters, sound grenades, rubber bullets, rubber coated steel bullets and skunk water.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Images of Resistance: Christmas in Occupied Palestine




The Apartheid Wall in Occupied Bethlehem.

 A sign hung by activists on a tree in Bethlehem’s Manger Square among used tear gas and concussion grenades reads, “This is the USAid to the Palestinians.” (photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org) 

A Bethlehem-area activist hangs U.S.-made tear gas grenades, used by the Israeli military in nearby Aida Refugee Camp, on trees decorated for Christmas in Bethlehem’s Manger Square, West Bank, December 2, 2013. (photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)

 A sign hung by activists on a tree in Bethlehem’s Manger Square among used tear gas and concussion grenades reads, “This is the USAid to the Palestinians.” (photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)

A Palestinian child examines a peace sign made of used tear gas cartridges and grenades on display in Manger Square, Bethlehem as part of an activist art exhibit. (photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)

A Christmas tree made of razor wire and tear gas grenades is displayed in Manger Square, Bethlehem as part of an activist art exhibit, December 21, 2013. (photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)

 Photo by Anne Paq

Palestinians in al Maasara demonstrate against Israel's apartheid wall and occupation, 
20 December 2013

Free Palestine, Occupied Bethlehem 2011

Free Palestine, Occupied Bethlehem 2011

 Free Palestine, Occupied Bethlehem 2011





Monday, December 23, 2013

Christmas in Occupied Bethlehem: a living call for freedom and dignity

By Kim Bullimore: 24 December 2013

**An edited version of this article has also been published by Red Flag on 25 December.  You can access the edited version by clicking here: Christmas in Bethlehem

Photo: al Maasara, South of Bethlehem.  
Photo by Sahar Vardi, 20 December 2013

The festive season is once again here. Nativity scenes abound in public squares, churches and even shopping centres, depicting the birth of Christ in a little town called Bethlehem. Throughout out the month of December, Christmas carols and songs of joy will be sung remembering this little town. The Bethlehem, that exists in the popular consciousness, is the one we see on the front of Christmas cards or the one Christians read about in the bible or heard about at church services – it is one of a peaceful little pastoral village, awash with shepherds and sheep. Today, however, the real Bethlehem is very different, it is a city under Israeli siege and occupation.

After forty-six years of brutal military occupation by Israel, Bethlehem resembles nothing like the image that exists in popular consciousness. Instead, it is a town transformed. It is a town where Israeli soldiers can and do roam the streets with impunity; it is a town where 10 and 12 year old children can be arrested by Israel's military without rhyme or reason; it is a town scarred by razor wire, steel cages, checkpoints, watchtowers with snipers nests and an eight metre (28 feet) wall – three times the height of the Berlin Wall - which divides and cuts Bethlehem's residents off from 70% of their land.

Today's Bethlehem is a city, where its residents, whether Christian or Muslim – like their sisters and brothers in the rest of the Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza – are subject to arbitrary arrest and detention without charge or trial. Like their brethren in the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories controlled by Israel, Palestinians in Occupied Bethlehem also suffer frequent home invasions, house demolitions and have their freedom of movement severely curtailed.

 
Far from being the quiet pastoral village in popular imaginings, today's Bethlehem is a graphic example of the Israel’s settler-colonial, apartheid and ethnic cleansing polices. As with the rest of the Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, since Israel seized control in 1967, Bethlehemites have lost hundreds of thousands of dunams of land to Israel's settler-colonialism. 


 Bethlehem Palestine Situation - National Geographic Magazine, 2007
 
Over the last forty years, Israel has established 22 Israeli only colonies, all of which are illegal under international law, on land stolen from the residents of Bethlehem. Over the years, the Zionist state has continued to expand these settlements, taking more and more Palestinian land. In recent times, Israel has consfiscated approximately 22,000 dunams of land (22 square kilometers) to expand the illegal colonies of Gilo, Giv'at Hamatos and Har Homa, while an additional 4,000 dunams has been effectively annexed by Israel's apartheid wall. As a result, of the illegal colonies and wall, most of Bethlehem's northern land has been lost to Israel's illegal settlements and the city has been effectively cut off from and isolated from Occupied East Jerusalem. 
 
Israel's occupation and apartheid policies has also impacted severely on the city's economy, as well as the ability of Bethlehemites to work and gain employment. As a direct result of Israel's occupation and apartheid wall, the unemployment rate in Occupied Bethlehem today sits at approximately 25%. Not only is Bethlehem's local economy, which is predominately reliant on tourism, severely impacted and damaged by Israel's occupation, Palestinian residents of the city are unable to travel freely to Jerusalem or other areas of Palestine for employment. In April 2011 alone, approximately 15,000 Palestinian Christians applied for permits to enter Occupied East Jerusalem but only 2,500 were granted a permit. 

As Bethlehem's first woman mayor, Vera Baboun has noted in her Christmas Greetings issued on 1 December, "Bethlehem is not a museum, nor a wooden grotto. It is a living experience of daily struggle for existence, for a just and lasting peace, and this is the Bethlehem we also share with the world". Baboun went on to note that today, Bethlehem is "home to thousands of refugees who have been waiting for the fulfillment of their rights since 1948" and that as a result of Israel's occupation and apartheid policies, "Bethlehem is a living call for freedom and dignity".

Like Occupied Bethlehem, the rest of the West Bank, Occupied East Jerusalem and Gaza are also a living call for freedom and dignity.  In the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as with Bethlehem, Israel has continued to demolish homes, steal and annex land, carry out mass arrests, restrict freedom of movement, impose curfews and carry out home invasions. Between November 28 and December 18 alone, Israeli Occupation Forces killed five Palestinian civilians, including at least one child. During this period Israel conducted 143 military invasions into Palestinian villages and towns in the Occupied West Bank and arrested 63 Palestinians, wounding dozens of other Palestinians, including children. Another 11 Palestinians, including at least 3 children were arrested at checkpoints in the Occupied West Bank. 

 
In the three weeks between November 28 and December 18, Israeli occupation forces also used systematic and excessive force against peaceful unarmed demonstrations organised by Palestinians against Israel's occupation and apartheid policies in the Occupied West Bank. In the both the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli military forces have also regularly opened fire on unarmed Palestinian civilians, farmers and fisherman attempting to reach farmland or fishing grounds. 

Over these last three weeks, as part of its relentless seven year siege on Gaza, Israel has also continued to impose a total blockade on the region, resulting in essential goods being in extreme shortage. In particular, Israel's blockade has resulted in essential items like fuel and cooking gas being severely limited. According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, currently the amount of cooking gas being allowed by Israel into Gaza is meeting less than half the daily requirement needed by 1.5 million civilian population of Gaza during winter.

This year, as in years gone by, Christmas in Bethlehem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories will be one where the living experience of daily struggle for existence and self-determination will continue. This Christmas in Bethlehem, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, will be one marked by Palestinian sumoud (steadfastness), resistance and struggle against Israel's occupation and apartheid policies, with Palestinians continuing to demand their human rights, as well as justice and freedom.




2 December 2013: Palestinian protest drawing 
attention to US funding of weaponry used by 
the Israeli military against Palestinians


Occupied Bethlehem


Sunday, December 22, 2013

African Refugees stand up to Israeli racism

Dear friends,
please find below my latest article published in Red Flag about the Freedom Marches and the struggle of African refugees in Israel.

In solidarity, Kim 


***

African refugees stand up to Israeli racism

Kim Bullimore | Red Flag 23-Dec-2013

More than 3000 Sudanese and Eritrean refugees and their Israeli supporters took to the streets of Tel Aviv on 21 December, chanting “No more prison! We are Refugees! We want Freedom!”

The protest comes in the wake of two unprecedented acts of civil disobedience in which hundreds of African refugees staged “Freedom Marches” in opposition to Israel's indefinite incarceration of asylum seekers, denial of work permits and failure to process asylum claims.
On 15 December more than 150 African refugees from the Sudan and Eritrea marched hundreds of miles in the bitter cold and snow from Holot prison, an “open prison” facility in southern Israel, to Jerusalem.

Due to the bitter cold and long trek, a number of refugees collapsed from exhaustion when they reached Jerusalem. One man was hospitalised after suffering a seizure. The asylum seekers, joined by Israeli supporters, marched to the Knesset (parliament building) chanting “Freedom, yes! Prison, no!”

Israeli police and immigration authorities surrounded the protesters, violently forcing them onto buses and returning them to prison in the Negev desert. Refugees then staged a second Freedom March from Holot on 19 December.

Currently there are more than 50,000 African refugees in Israel, the vast majority from Sudan and Eritrea. Israel, however, has refused to examine their circumstances or grant any of them refugee status. According to Refugees International, since 1953 Israel has offered refugee status to “less than 0.01 percent of all applicants” – approximately 200 people. Since June 2012, Israel has jailed all asylum seekers without trial, for a minimum of three years.

The Freedom March protests come in the wake of a new amendment to Israel's anti-Infiltration Law, passed by the Israeli Knesset earlier this month, which established “open” prisons to indefinitely incarcerate refugees. The passage of the amended law comes just three months after the High Court denied the Israeli state the right to incarcerate asylum seekers indefinitely.

Under the law struck down in September nearly 1700 asylum seekers, mainly from Eritrea, were detained in Sharonim or Ktziot internment camps in the Negev desert. The High Court ruling ordered the state to release the asylum seekers within 90 days. In response, the Knesset passed a new amendment to the law on 10 December to try to circumvent the High Court ruling.

Refugees will still be jailed for one year in prisons such as Sharonim under the new amendment but will then be moved to Holot prison, a specially constructed “open” prison operated by the Israeli Prison Service. Holot prison began operating within days of the December amendment being passed. It is located near the Egyptian border, in the middle of an Israeli military firing zone, more than 65 kilometres from the nearest urban centre.

While refugees can “leave” the detention centre, they are not allowed to seek employment and they are required to appear for roll call three times a day and are forbidden to leave the facility between 10pm and 6am. The primary role of the facility is not to aid African refugees seeking asylum but to be a “revolving door” which will facilitate the deportation of refugees or their “voluntary” return to their country of origin.

The Prevention of Infiltration Law is not new. It was first enacted in 1954 to prevent 750,000 Palestinian refugees who had fled Zionist terror gangs in 1947 and 1948 from returning to their homes in the territory claimed by the newly established state of Israel.

The 1954 law deemed anyone who “entered Israel knowing and unlawfully” after 29 November 1947 to be an “infiltrator”, despite the fact that Israel was not established until six months later. Under the law, an “infiltrator” could be jailed for up to 15 years. The 1954 law worked hand in glove with Israel’s “absentee” property laws which allowed the state to legally take control of property and land belonging to Palestinian refugees and prevent their return to their homes.

The introduction of the law resulted in more than 30,000 Palestinian refugees being either deported to neighbouring Arab countries or jailed and then expelled when their prison sentence ended. In addition, many internally displaced Palestinian refugees who remained in the borders of what was to become Israel, but had been unable to gain Israeli citizenship, were rounded up and deported.

As part of the attempt to prevent Palestinian refugees from re-entering Israel, Palestinian villages along the newly established Israeli border were razed. In their place, Israel established new Jewish only settlements, which adopted a “free fire” policy allowing for any Palestinians attempting to return to their homes to be shot.

Today, as in 1954 when it was first enacted, the primary role of the law is to maintain Israel as an exclusivist Jewish state. While Israel has absorbed millions of Jewish immigrants and refugees over the past six decades, it has actively sought to repel both Palestinian and other non-Jewish refugees and migrants. According to independent Israeli journalist and activist, David Sheen, the African asylum seekers are “the first large group of immigrants to Israel who are not Jews” and  this “is the real reason that the government is trying to drive them out”.

Writing for Al Jazeera on 17 December about the Freedom Marches, Sheen argued, “Israeli society rejects asylum seekers because they’re new, they’re poor and they’re darker-skinned ... The reason for the disparity in the treatment of Jewish immigrants and non-Jewish would-be immigrants runs to the very heart of Zionism”.

The drive for “Jewish exclusivity” in Palestine has been a central tenet of Zionism since its inception. Such exclusivity was first advocated by the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, who in 1895 wrote, “We shall try to spirit the penniless [indigenous] population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own”.

Israeli Zionist historian Benny Morris, in his 2004 book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, noted that while Herzl and other Zionist leaders did not discuss or write publicly about “transfer” (i.e. the ethnic cleansing) of Palestinians, there were extensive internal discussions within Zionists circles about the necessity of such action in order to establish and maintain an exclusivist Jewish state.

Israel's refusal to process African asylum seeker claims and its indefinite incarceration of Sudanese and Eritrean refugees is a continuation of its racist ethnic cleansing and apartheid policies, which have been implemented against Palestinians since the establishment of the Zionist state in 1948.

African refugees stand up to Israeli racism

More than 3000 Sudanese and Eritrean refugees and their Israeli supporters took to the streets of Tel Aviv on 21 December, chanting “No more prison! We are Refugees! We want Freedom!”
The protest comes in the wake of two unprecedented acts of civil disobedience in which hundreds of African refugees staged “Freedom Marches” in opposition to Israel's indefinite incarceration of asylum seekers, denial of work permits and failure to process asylum claims.
On 15 December more than 150 African refugees from the Sudan and Eritrea marched hundreds of miles in the bitter cold and snow from Holot prison, an “open prison” facility in southern Israel, to Jerusalem.
Due to the bitter cold and long trek, a number of refugees collapsed from exhaustion when they reached Jerusalem. One man was hospitalised after suffering a seizure. The asylum seekers, joined by Israeli supporters, marched to the Knesset (parliament building) chanting “Freedom, yes! Prison, no!”
Israeli police and immigration authorities surrounded the protesters, violently forcing them onto buses and returning them to prison in the Negev desert. Refugees then staged a second Freedom March from Holot on 19 December.
Currently there are more than 50,000 African refugees in Israel, the vast majority from Sudan and Eritrea. Israel, however, has refused to examine their circumstances or grant any of them refugee status. According to Refugees International, since 1953 Israel has offered refugee status to “less than 0.01 percent of all applicants” – approximately 200 people. Since June 2012, Israel has jailed all asylum seekers without trial, for a minimum of three years.
The Freedom March protests come in the wake of a new amendment to Israel's anti-Infiltration Law, passed by the Israeli Knesset earlier this month, which established “open” prisons to indefinitely incarcerate refugees. The passage of the amended law comes just three months after the High Court denied the Israeli state the right to incarcerate asylum seekers indefinitely.
Under the law struck down in September nearly 1700 asylum seekers, mainly from Eritrea, were detained in Sharonim or Ktziot internment camps in the Negev desert. The High Court ruling ordered the state to release the asylum seekers within 90 days. In response, the Knesset passed a new amendment to the law on 10 December to try to circumvent the High Court ruling.
Refugees will still be jailed for one year in prisons such as Sharonim under the new amendment but will then be moved to Holot prison, a specially constructed “open” prison operated by the Israeli Prison Service. Holot prison began operating within days of the December amendment being passed. It is located near the Egyptian border, in the middle of an Israeli military firing zone, more than 65 kilometres from the nearest urban centre.
While refugees can “leave” the detention centre, they are not allowed to seek employment and they are required to appear for roll call three times a day and are forbidden to leave the facility between 10pm and 6am. The primary role of the facility is not to aid African refugees seeking asylum but to be a “revolving door” which will facilitate the deportation of refugees or their “voluntary” return to their country of origin.
The Prevention of Infiltration Law is not new. It was first enacted in 1954 to prevent 750,000 Palestinian refugees who had fled Zionist terror gangs in 1947 and 1948 from returning to their homes in the territory claimed by the newly established state of Israel.
The 1954 law deemed anyone who “entered Israel knowing and unlawfully” after 29 November 1947 to be an “infiltrator”, despite the fact that Israel was not established until six months later. Under the law, an “infiltrator” could be jailed for up to 15 years. The 1954 law worked hand in glove with Israel’s “absentee” property laws which allowed the state to legally take control of property and land belonging to Palestinian refugees and prevent their return to their homes.
The introduction of the law resulted in more than 30,000 Palestinian refugees being either deported to neighbouring Arab countries or jailed and then expelled when their prison sentence ended. In addition, many internally displaced Palestinian refugees who remained in the borders of what was to become Israel, but had been unable to gain Israeli citizenship, were rounded up and deported.
As part of the attempt to prevent Palestinian refugees from re-entering Israel, Palestinian villages along the newly established Israeli border were razed. In their place, Israel established new Jewish only settlements, which adopted a “free fire” policy allowing for any Palestinians attempting to return to their homes to be shot.
Today, as in 1954 when it was first enacted, the primary role of the law is to maintain Israel as an exclusivist Jewish state. While Israel has absorbed millions of Jewish immigrants and refugees over the past six decades, it has actively sought to repel both Palestinian and other non-Jewish refugees and migrants. According to independent Israeli journalist and activist, David Sheen, the African asylum seekers are “the first large group of immigrants to Israel who are not Jews” and  this “is the real reason that the government is trying to drive them out”.
Writing for Al Jazeera on 17 December about the Freedom Marches, Sheen argued, “Israeli society rejects asylum seekers because they’re new, they’re poor and they’re darker-skinned ... The reason for the disparity in the treatment of Jewish immigrants and non-Jewish would-be immigrants runs to the very heart of Zionism”.
The drive for “Jewish exclusivity” in Palestine has been a central tenet of Zionism since its inception. Such exclusivity was first advocated by the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, who in 1895 wrote, “We shall try to spirit the penniless [indigenous] population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own”.
Israeli Zionist historian Benny Morris, in his 2004 book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, noted that while Herzl and other Zionist leaders did not discuss or write publicly about “transfer” (i.e. the ethnic cleansing) of Palestinians, there were extensive internal discussions within Zionists circles about the necessity of such action in order to establish and maintain an exclusivist Jewish state.
Israel's refusal to process African asylum seeker claims and its indefinite incarceration of Sudanese and Eritrean refugees is a continuation of its racist ethnic cleansing and apartheid policies, which have been implemented against Palestinians since the establishment of the Zionist state in 1948.
- See more at: http://redflag.org.au/article/african-refugees-stand-israeli-racism#sthash.j8yWY2f7.dpuf

African refugees stand up to Israeli racism

More than 3000 Sudanese and Eritrean refugees and their Israeli supporters took to the streets of Tel Aviv on 21 December, chanting “No more prison! We are Refugees! We want Freedom!”
The protest comes in the wake of two unprecedented acts of civil disobedience in which hundreds of African refugees staged “Freedom Marches” in opposition to Israel's indefinite incarceration of asylum seekers, denial of work permits and failure to process asylum claims.
On 15 December more than 150 African refugees from the Sudan and Eritrea marched hundreds of miles in the bitter cold and snow from Holot prison, an “open prison” facility in southern Israel, to Jerusalem.
Due to the bitter cold and long trek, a number of refugees collapsed from exhaustion when they reached Jerusalem. One man was hospitalised after suffering a seizure. The asylum seekers, joined by Israeli supporters, marched to the Knesset (parliament building) chanting “Freedom, yes! Prison, no!”
Israeli police and immigration authorities surrounded the protesters, violently forcing them onto buses and returning them to prison in the Negev desert. Refugees then staged a second Freedom March from Holot on 19 December.
Currently there are more than 50,000 African refugees in Israel, the vast majority from Sudan and Eritrea. Israel, however, has refused to examine their circumstances or grant any of them refugee status. According to Refugees International, since 1953 Israel has offered refugee status to “less than 0.01 percent of all applicants” – approximately 200 people. Since June 2012, Israel has jailed all asylum seekers without trial, for a minimum of three years.
The Freedom March protests come in the wake of a new amendment to Israel's anti-Infiltration Law, passed by the Israeli Knesset earlier this month, which established “open” prisons to indefinitely incarcerate refugees. The passage of the amended law comes just three months after the High Court denied the Israeli state the right to incarcerate asylum seekers indefinitely.
Under the law struck down in September nearly 1700 asylum seekers, mainly from Eritrea, were detained in Sharonim or Ktziot internment camps in the Negev desert. The High Court ruling ordered the state to release the asylum seekers within 90 days. In response, the Knesset passed a new amendment to the law on 10 December to try to circumvent the High Court ruling.
Refugees will still be jailed for one year in prisons such as Sharonim under the new amendment but will then be moved to Holot prison, a specially constructed “open” prison operated by the Israeli Prison Service. Holot prison began operating within days of the December amendment being passed. It is located near the Egyptian border, in the middle of an Israeli military firing zone, more than 65 kilometres from the nearest urban centre.
While refugees can “leave” the detention centre, they are not allowed to seek employment and they are required to appear for roll call three times a day and are forbidden to leave the facility between 10pm and 6am. The primary role of the facility is not to aid African refugees seeking asylum but to be a “revolving door” which will facilitate the deportation of refugees or their “voluntary” return to their country of origin.
The Prevention of Infiltration Law is not new. It was first enacted in 1954 to prevent 750,000 Palestinian refugees who had fled Zionist terror gangs in 1947 and 1948 from returning to their homes in the territory claimed by the newly established state of Israel.
The 1954 law deemed anyone who “entered Israel knowing and unlawfully” after 29 November 1947 to be an “infiltrator”, despite the fact that Israel was not established until six months later. Under the law, an “infiltrator” could be jailed for up to 15 years. The 1954 law worked hand in glove with Israel’s “absentee” property laws which allowed the state to legally take control of property and land belonging to Palestinian refugees and prevent their return to their homes.
The introduction of the law resulted in more than 30,000 Palestinian refugees being either deported to neighbouring Arab countries or jailed and then expelled when their prison sentence ended. In addition, many internally displaced Palestinian refugees who remained in the borders of what was to become Israel, but had been unable to gain Israeli citizenship, were rounded up and deported.
As part of the attempt to prevent Palestinian refugees from re-entering Israel, Palestinian villages along the newly established Israeli border were razed. In their place, Israel established new Jewish only settlements, which adopted a “free fire” policy allowing for any Palestinians attempting to return to their homes to be shot.
Today, as in 1954 when it was first enacted, the primary role of the law is to maintain Israel as an exclusivist Jewish state. While Israel has absorbed millions of Jewish immigrants and refugees over the past six decades, it has actively sought to repel both Palestinian and other non-Jewish refugees and migrants. According to independent Israeli journalist and activist, David Sheen, the African asylum seekers are “the first large group of immigrants to Israel who are not Jews” and  this “is the real reason that the government is trying to drive them out”.
Writing for Al Jazeera on 17 December about the Freedom Marches, Sheen argued, “Israeli society rejects asylum seekers because they’re new, they’re poor and they’re darker-skinned ... The reason for the disparity in the treatment of Jewish immigrants and non-Jewish would-be immigrants runs to the very heart of Zionism”.
The drive for “Jewish exclusivity” in Palestine has been a central tenet of Zionism since its inception. Such exclusivity was first advocated by the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, who in 1895 wrote, “We shall try to spirit the penniless [indigenous] population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own”.
Israeli Zionist historian Benny Morris, in his 2004 book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, noted that while Herzl and other Zionist leaders did not discuss or write publicly about “transfer” (i.e. the ethnic cleansing) of Palestinians, there were extensive internal discussions within Zionists circles about the necessity of such action in order to establish and maintain an exclusivist Jewish state.
Israel's refusal to process African asylum seeker claims and its indefinite incarceration of Sudanese and Eritrean refugees is a continuation of its racist ethnic cleansing and apartheid policies, which have been implemented against Palestinians since the establishment of the Zionist state in 1948.
- See more at: http://redflag.org.au/article/african-refugees-stand-israeli-racism#sthash.j8yWY2f7.dpuf

Saturday, December 21, 2013

UPDATE ON MY OTHER BLOG: Red Butterfly Effect - Politics, pop culture, life, the universe and everything


Dear friends,
 
in August, after many months of procrastination, I finally set up a supplemental blog to allow me to blog on other political issues, pop culture and other issues that interest me.  As I noted at the time, I will continue to blog about Palestine at Live from Occupied Palestine as I have always done but  I will also blog about "politics, pop culture, life, the universe and everything" on my secondary blog, Red Butterfly Effect. 

When I first set up Red Butterfly Effect, I decided to try using Tumblr as my main platform. After four months, I have decided I am much more use to full text blogs/platforms, similar to this one used for Live from Occupied Palestine.  I will retain my RBE tumblr page, but I have now now also set up a standard text blog which the tumblr page will redirect too.  I have begun updating the text platform with posts already existing on tumblr platform and posted some new entries. 

As I noted at the time, Red Butterfly Effect, is an outlet for me to ramble, muse and rant about politics and pop culture, as well as anything else that may take my fancy (to read my full "about" page for the blog, please click here). Some posts will offer a more substantial political analysis about current political happenings, social phenomenon, pop culture or whatever else takes my interest, while other posts will not be as substantial and might just be about taking the piss, having a laugh and sharing things I love and enjoy, warts and all. 


While I will occasionally post material on Palestine at Red Butterfly Effect - it will mainly be related to cultural issues. I will continue to primarily blog about Palestine at Live from Occupied Palestine. 

 
Red Butterfly Effect is still a very new project but you will find there already a number of posts, including:

  • short piece on Art as Resistance in Palestine  
  • a comment piece on the Zionist appropriation of Palestinian culture
  • news on the "Annyeong" (Are you well?) anti-privatisation protests in South Korea
  • The Left and Russell Brand
  • a brief review of the new Angela Davis documentary: Free Angela and All Political Prisoners
  • Nothing to Prove: Women, geekdom and sexism
  • stuff I love from the world of geek (with more to come)
  • some of my favourite poems and music (with more to come)

Please continue to visit me here at Live from Occupied Palestine and as mentioned previously, if you have time  I would love it if you would occasionally come and visit me over at Red Butterfly Effect.


in solidarity, Kim

Friday, December 20, 2013

David Sheen: Israel violates international norms over African refugees

Dear friends,
Please find below David Sheen's very good article published by Al Jazeera on the Freedom Marches and African refugees in Israel.  Sheen, an Israeli independent journalist and activist, has been documenting Israel's racist treatment of African asylum seekers for the last 3 years.  Please see my blog post from October which includes a 10 minute video made by Sheen on the subject (click here).  The post also includes a link to Sheen's excellent blog/webpage, which has other articles, videos and information on the situation faced by African refugees in Israel.

I have also included a links to a number of other good articles on the current Freedom Marches, as well as on Israel's "Infilitration" laws, which are used to incarcerate African asylum seekers.


In solidarity, Kim 


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LINKS TO ARTICLES:

After Fleeing War and Genocide, African Refugees in Israel March for Freedom 17 Dec 2013

Knesset passes revised law for detention of African asylum seekers 10 Dec 2013

Despite landmark High Court ruling, asylum seekers are only cautiously optimistic 17 Sept 2013

PHOTO ESSAY: A sprawling desert prison, for thousands of refugees  3 Nov 2012

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Israel violates international norms over African refugees

by   December 17, 2013  Al Jazeera
Asylum seekers from East Africa deserve fair treatment



African refugees


African migrants on a highway near Beer Sheva, walking to Jerusalem in protest after abandoning a detention facility in the Negev Desert, Dec. 16, 2013.
Uriel Sinai/Getty Images
Today Israeli immigration officers forcibly removed more than 200 African asylum seekers from outside the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, who showed up to protest their forced detention. The protesters, refugees from east Africa, had marched from an indefinite-detention facility in the Negev Desert, a two-day journey by foot. They will reportedly be jailed for up to three months before being returned to detention.

Tensions began on Dec. 10, when the Knesset passed an amendment to the Anti-Infiltration Law, which authorized the detention without trial of approximately 55,000 Africans currently living in Israel. On Dec. 12, Israeli prison officials began transferring Africans from the Saharonim prison to the brand-new Holot facility, which is still under construction only a few hundred meters away in southern Israel. Once the first 1,000 beds are filled with Africans from Saharonim, the government plans to move another 2,000 Africans now in Tel Aviv to the detention center.

Last week’s amendment was rushed through committee to replace the January 2012 amendment that authorized the incarceration of asylum seekers for up to three years. In September, Israel's Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the legislation violated Israel's quasi-constitutional Basic Laws. In order to avoid another judicial rebuke, the government is contending that the newly built detention facilities are not jails because they permit two daytime furloughs of a few hours each.


After only one weekend at the new facility, many of the asylum seekers who were transferred did not see it the same way. On Dec. 15, the African migrants left the complex and set off toward Jerusalem to demand freedom and refugee rights. They said there are no significant differences between the old jail and the new one. Of those who remained behind bars, most have gone on a hunger strike.


The asylum seekers’ demands — to have their applications for refugee status considered and to be allowed to live freely without major restrictions while they are under review — are supported by international law. But Israel wants them all gone, regardless of the persecution they experienced before entering the country and their stated fear of being returned to their countries of origin, because they are not Jews.

The Israeli government has shown itself willing to make a mockery of international agreements and to mistreat long-suffering refugees whose only crime is not being born Jewish. If the world accepts the Israeli government’s demand that the state have a Jewish ethno-religious character, they will enable Israel’s flouting of international norms and green-lighting all of these abuses as well as the many more that will inevitably follow.

Roots of the crisis

The detention of the Africans on its soil was not the government’s preferred solution. As the high court deliberated about what to do with the migrants, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed an envoy to negotiate with a number of African countries, hoping to persuade them to take in the asylum seekers in exchange for money, agricultural technology, weapons and military training. To Netanyahu's chagrin, no African nation agreed to the terms.

By forbidding most asylum seekers to work and criminalizing wiring money out of the country, the government hoped that migrants who arrived to make money more easily would give up and go home. By imprisoning asylum seekers who had not been convicted of crimes, the government sought to persuade the Africans to accept the state’s offer of $1,500 upon release if they leave the country.


The U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) protested the government’s carrot-and-stick offer to asylum seekers who were sitting in Israeli jails. Then–UNHCR head William Tall blasted the secret deal, saying repatriation from prison “can’t be considered voluntary by any criterion. It is explicitly not voluntary return.” He added that most Africans in Israel “don’t receive full access to the refugee apparatus, and when there’s no access to the refugee apparatus that can lead to their release, then there is no voluntary return.”


So far, about 1,500 asylum seekers have left the country in this manner. The government now hopes that others will follow after it increased the fee for self-deporting to $3,500 last month. Unless the detention center is expanded — there are no plans to do so at present — its maximum capacity is only about 10,000 people. Even if every bed in the facility were filled, that would leave more than 40,000 asylum seekers living among Israelis.
These asylum seekers from Africa constitute the first large group of immigrants to Israel who are not Jews.

International obligations

A careful analysis of the asylum crisis shows that Israel is not meeting its international obligations in the treatment of refugees.

About 85 percent of the asylum seekers in Israel are from Eritrea and Sudan, two countries with human-rights records so abominable that even the Israeli government is loath to force those who fled to return. The other 15 percent arrive from African countries further afield, such as the Congo and the Central African Republic. But of the African asylum seekers living in Israel, only a tiny fraction, less than 0.2 percent, have received refugee status.

In every one of these countries, there exist serious threats to physical safety and political freedom. Not every person who hails from these countries is automatically accepted as a refugee, however. State signatories to the U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees — 145 countries, including Israel — may review each applicant’s case on an individual basis. However, the convention states that people cannot be punished for entering a country without permission if they did so to escape persecution in the country of origin and if they present themselves to the relevant authorities without delay. Thus Israel is violating international norms by detaining asylum seekers fleeing genuine persecution.


To enter Israel, refugees from eastern Africa pass through Egypt, the only African country that shares a border with Israel. Until last year, the desert border between the two nations was easily passable by foot. To cut off this method of entry, the Israeli government authorized the construction of a fence running the length of the border, and it was completed earlier this year. Since then, the number of asylum seekers entering the country has been reduced to a trickle.


The Egyptian passage has become a source of contention as well as anger and sadness. Israelis opposed to the arrival of asylum seekers claim that the Africans cannot be refugees in Israel, that they could have been refugees only if they had remained in Egypt. Advocates for the asylum seekers say that the migrants faced persecution in Egypt, noting that Egyptian forces attacked asylum seekers in Cairo in 2006 as they protested for refugee rights, killing dozens.


The Egyptian territory that abuts Israel, the Sinai Peninsula, has become treacherous territory for foreign Africans. In recent years, gangs that smuggled asylum seekers to the Israeli border for a fee realized that they could keep the foreign Africans against their will and threaten them with torture unless their families wired ransom payments. To ensure the continuation of this source of income — $600 million in the past four years, according to European External Policy Advisors, an NGO — after Israel’s fence was finished and the number of Africans passing through the Sinai dropped sharply, the gangs began to kidnap, torture and hold for ransom Africans who had no intention of trying to reach Israel in the first place. 

Israel’s share

According to the UNHCR, 479,300 people around the world submitted refugee-status applications in 2012 — more than in any other year in the last decade. Of these applications, 355,500 were made in Europe, and 83,400 were made in the United States, the country that had the most applicants. Asylum seekers in Norway, Sweden and Switzerland account for more than 1 percent of those nations’ populations. In Israel, asylum seekers account for less than 0.5 to 1 percent of the population, similar to the figures for Greece, Belgium and Austria.

Ironically, developing nations host a far greater share of the world’s refugee population than do industrialized nations. For example, Iran and Pakistan each host over 1 million refugees, as do Jordan and Syria, two countries that border Israel. In Africa, Kenya, Chad and Ethiopia each host hundreds of thousands of refugees, and eight other African nations host over 100,000 refugees each.

As of last year, more than a quarter million people have fled Eritrea seeking asylum, and over half a million people have fled Sudan. Since 85 percent of the 55,000 African asylum seekers in Israel are from Eritrea or Sudan, that means the country has received 6 to 7 percent of the refugees who fled those two countries.

To be sure, their numbers are not insignificant, and their integration poses challenges for the government and for Israeli society. There are also about 84,000 foreign workers in Israel and some 93,000 tourists who have overstayed their visas.


Israel has absorbed millions of immigrants in the 65 years since since it was founded. Twenty-five years ago, it took in over a million people from the former Soviet Union as that empire was disintegrating. But in all those cases, the people it absorbed were Jews, loosely defined as having at least one Jewish grandparent.


Jewish people all over the world are encouraged by the government to immigrate to Israel, and they are offered attractive financial incentives to do so. As soon as they arrive in the country, they are automatically granted full citizenship, with all the benefits that entails and then some. These privileges follow from one of the first laws passed in Israel, the 1950 Law of Return.

The reason for the disparity in the treatment of Jewish immigrants and non-Jewish would-be immigrants runs to the very heart of Zionism.


Israeli society rejects asylum seekers because they’re new, they’re poor and they’re darker-skinned. But over the decades, successive waves of Jewish immigrants also encountered hostility from native Israelis because of the same prejudices. The asylum seekers from Africa constitute the first large group of immigrants to Israel who are not Jews. That is the real reason the government is trying to drive them out.


Editor's note: This story has been updated to account for the latest developments.

David Sheen is an independent journalist and film maker living in Dimona, Israel. Sheen began blogging when he first moved to Israel in 1999 and later went on to work as a reporter and editor at the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. His full-length documentary on ecological architecture, "First Earth," was translated into a dozen languages and published by PM Press in 2010. He is currently writing a book about African immigrants to Israel and the struggles they face.