Month: May 2004

The Surreal World of Campus Activism, Part II

Campus activists who work on Israel/Palestine issues will know about Hillel. Hillel is a group that ostensibly exists to promote Jewish cultural and religious life on campuses, but in fact promotes occupation and militarism in many cases. When the Hillel chapter President at University of Richmond objected to this, she was removed as President a day later. This is a story worth reading in full, so I’ve posted the entire story from the Chronicle of Higher Education below. The bare bones: Jillian Redford, the Hillel chapter president, had been receiving messages from the Israeli Embassy. She wrote to them:

“Could you please stop sending me email after email about radical zionist propaganda?… “I don’t know if you realize that Hillel’s mission statement is based on fostering religious life on college campuses and not organizing marches, protests, or listening to speakers who encourage us to hate our Palestinian neighbors.”

The next day, she was no longer President of Hillel U of R…

Wednesday, May 5, 2004
Student President of Hillel Chapter at U. of Richmond Is Ousted After Criticizing Israeli Embassy
By ERIC HOOVER

The organization that sponsors the University of Richmond’s Hillel chapter removed the group’s student president this semester after she sent a critical e-mail message to the Israeli Embassy, in Washington.

Jilian R. Redford, a junior, had served as the Hillel chapter’s president since the beginning of the fall semester. On February 12, after receiving an e-mail message from the Israeli Embassy’s office of academic affairs, Ms. Redford wrote in a response: “Could you please stop sending me email after email about radical zionist propaganda?”

In the message, a copy of which she gave to The Chronicle, Ms. Redford continued, “I don’t know if you realize that Hillel’s mission statement is based on fostering religious life on college campuses and not organizing marches, protests, or listening to speakers who encourage us to hate our Palestinian neighbors.”

She also asked to be removed from the embassy’s e-mail list.

In an interview on Tuesday, Ms. Redford said that the next day she was summoned to the Weinstein Jewish Community Center — a Richmond-based organization that oversees the university’s Hillel chapter — to discuss the e-mail message, which the embassy had forwarded to officials at the center

In a meeting, two staff members of the center asked Ms. Redford to apologize to the embassy, but she refused to do so, according to both Ms. Redford and Lisa Looney, the center’s director of university services.

Ms. Redford said that during the meeting Ms. Looney and another staff member told her that the embassy had demanded her ouster. She said that she was “grilled” about her opinions on Israeli policies, and also that one of the two staff members mentioned that Ms. Redford, who had been raised as a Southern Baptist, had converted to Judaism only after coming to the university.

But Ms. Looney disputed those assertions.

“The embassy had absolutely, unequivocally nothing to do with the decision,” Ms. Looney said in an interview.

“Her political views never came up” during the meeting, Ms. Looney said. “All I wanted to see happen was for her to apologize for the tone of her letter, not the content.” She said she had had a good working relationship with Ms. Redford before the incident.

Ms. Looney said that if Ms. Redford had not included her title in her e-mail message to the embassy, the center’s staff would not have objected to it.

In a February 18 letter to Ms. Redford, Orly Lewis, the center’s director of adult services, suggested that Ms. Redford’s goals were “in conflict” with those of Hillel. “While all of us are entitled to our own opinions, in this instance you are representing the Hillel organization and not yourself,” Ms. Lewis wrote.

The letter also referred to Ms. Redford’s refusal to invite to a Hillel event a speaker the center had mentioned earlier in the semester. Ms. Redford said she had told a staff member at the center that the speaker, a faculty member at Richmond, was a “racist.”

After Ms. Redford again declined to apologize, Ms. Looney informed her of her dismissal in a letter, dated March 3, that called Ms. Redford’s conduct “both unprofessional and disrespectful.”

Ms. Redford said Tuesday that she had mixed feelings about her ouster. “It feels good not to be a part of an organization like that,” she said. “After the way they treated me, it made me want to completely distance myself from them.”

Richmond’s Hillel chapter receives its financing from the center. Previously, the chapter did not have a clear policy governing the election and removal of student leaders, according to Leonard S. Goldberg, Richmond’s vice president for student affairs. But following the incident, the university helped students and the center draft bylaws.

“I questioned whether an outside organization should be able to fire or terminate a student leader,” said Mr. Goldberg, who met with staff members of the center this spring to discuss the new policy. “We had a cordial conversation, but I made it quite clear that we can’t have an outside organization removing students.”

Officials at the Israeli Embassy did not return calls requesting comment on Tuesday.

The Surreal World of Campus Activism, Part I

I assume that a (small) part of my (humble) readership consists of campus activists working on Israel/Palestine issues. These very strange stories will be of interest to that demographic and others. First is the tale of Daniel Freeman-Maloy, one of the En Camino co-conspirators, a member of OCAP, and a very principled activist. He has done work on anti-poverty issues and anti-occupation/war issues, which has brought him into conflict with the organized right-wing ‘zionist’ groups on the York University campus where he studies, and also with the administration on that campus.

He’s been expelled by York for 3 years for ‘unauthorized use of a megaphone’ on two incidents. Lucky for us, today’s activists are often armed with cameras, and some activists put together a film of the two incidents. The film shows Daniel getting shouted down and roughed up by zionist activists who far outnumber the anti-occupation group in both instances. But Daniel was the one who was ‘disrupting the academy’ and hence expelled. Just a little story to indicate the hypocrisy and double standards on campuses in North America. The story made national news, in the National Post and the Toronto Star, today. Below is Daniel’s initial statement.

My Expulsion from York University: an appeal for support and reconsideration

On April 30, 2004, I received a letter signed by York University President and Vice-Chancellor Lorna Marsden declaring that I “will have no purpose on campus” after May 1, 2004. If I set foot on York’s campus at any point in the three years following this date, she threatens, I will be charged for trespassing. My expulsion comes in the context of escalating repression of student dissent by York’s administration, and sets an ominous precedent regarding student rights to freedom of speech, expression and assembly.

The administration’s declaration that I now “have no purpose on campus” is baffling. I am a full-time student at York, and May 1 was both the very day I formally started my job as an editor at York’s main student paper, Excalibur, and nearly three weeks before my last exam. I am being treated as if I have acted dangerously and criminally, even in the absence of any allegations of criminally dangerous conduct.

In fact, those looking for a description of my behavior as dramatic as the administration’s response to it are likely to be disappointed. The alleged crime for which I have been exiled from my school for three years is use of “an unauthorized sound amplification device” (that is, a megaphone) on two separate occasions: October 22, 2003, and March 16, 2004. While general issues of freedom of expression and procedural fairness lie at the heart of this matter, I still feel compelled to address the specific allegations in turn.

Firstly, the events of October 22, 2003. On this date, the administration provided space for “Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Appreciation Day,” an event at which people sporting Israeli military paraphernalia congregated in one of York University’s principal public spaces to celebrate Israeli militarism. The mayor of an illegal Israeli settlement led the event, which was attended by many people who have served in the forces. In this situation, as a Jewish anti- nationalist and an avid anti-militarist, I did use a megaphone to highlight the event’s glaring impropriety. But vocal opposition to militarism, even expressed loudly, is far from criminally threatening.

The second instance cited, March 16, was the first anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie, a US peace activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer as she tried to block it from demolishing a Palestinian family’s home in the Gaza Strip. What happened on that day was without precedent in my experience. While approximately thirty of us set up a mock check-point, some dressed as soldiers and some as civilians, a crowd of some 150 militant Zionists that had been congregating nearby in preparation proceeded to rush our display. We had postponed our action for a period to avoid a clash, but were unsuccessful. We were surrounded, and for nearly an hour faced physical and verbal intimidation.

In this context, I was one of many students organizing the mock check-point who tried, through chants and small speeches, to let confused onlookers know the purpose of the display that was being aggressively swarmed. President Marsden is contending that this somehow “contributed to the threat of harm to the safety and well-being of York University community members.” If this is the case, why am I not being charged criminally? Why did the administration wait so many months to paint my conduct as dangerous?

When I was informed in early November by Ms. Ridley from the Office of Student Affairs (OSA) that I needed to review the student code of conduct, which she alleged I had broken on October 22, I told her that I would do so and then get in touch with her. That same month, I visited her to set up an appointment (I was in and out of the OSA office throughout this period regarding the status of Students for a Critical Consciousness, a campus club of which I am President). She informed me that she would need to coordinate the meeting with the security personnel who had been present on the day in question. I told her that the meeting had been called at her request, and that I was in no rush to meet – Ms. Ridley smugly responded that she was not surprised, and that she would contact me in the near future. She never followed through.

The administration had every opportunity to contact me. Again, I am the President of a recognized student club, my York University email account is listed online as the group’s contact information (and is used readily by York’s library to notify me of late fines), and I even had a minor debate in late February/early March in the pages of Excalibur with Nancy White, York’s director for media relations (regarding some of our school’s questionable corporate connections). Plainly, it is hardly as if I had gone underground.

Over the past year, as a York-based social justice activist who is both Jewish and anti-Zionist, I have been called a “self-hater” and a “terrorist”; I have received death threats. Now, the administration of Lorna Marsden is topping all of this off with a summary suspension order. York University’s mission statement describes the school as “a community of faculty, students and staff committed to academic freedom [and] social justice.” In the hope that this is truly the case, I appeal to the administration to allow me to return to my studies and to my job without any further harassment.

To everyone else reading this (in case the administration’s response is not immediately favorable), the York Free Speech Committee, which recently formed to deal with this situation, will be circulating an important call-out shortly. Please keep posted on this situation, and consider providing your personal support to our campaign if you get the chance.

Sincerely,

Daniel Freeman-Maloy

More Haiti Evidence

It’s not clear how much evidence it would take to convince people about what is going on in Haiti. But on the assumption that more evidence is better, here is the preliminary press release of a 9-member delegation of unionists who visited Haiti to look at the problems Haiti is facing under its new democratatorship/occupation. Some notes:

-Lavalas can’t have demonstrations or open political action. They’ve been driven underground by massacres and repression.
-Living conditions are worse than before the coup; basic food prices have skyrocketed.
-Unions are under attack. The transport workers report a hundred attacks on their buses.
-Sweatshop lord Andre Apaid is one of the coup-makers and is being rewarded now.

More details below. Also, the “Let Haiti Live” Coalition has prepared a human rights report, dated April 30. You can get a copy by writing to haitihumanrights@yahoo.com.

An Initial Statement on the Current Situation of Workers, the Labor Movement, and Human Rights in Haiti – Tuesday, May 4th, 2004

From: The International Labor/Religious/Community Fact-Finding Delegation to Haiti (April 26-May 2nd) organized by the San Francisco Labor Council

A nine-member international labor/religious/community fact-finding delegation has just returned from a week spent in Haiti. Its objective was to assess and report on the current situation of Haitian workers, the Haitian labor movement, and the state of human rights in that country. Within this mandate, particular attention was given to understanding the new realities following the coup d’etat that deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on 29 February 2004. The brief statement, which follows, is an initial report on our findings.

The delegation’s work focused on interviews with Haitian trade unionists and workers, as well as political leaders and activists. Part of this time was spent attending the National Congress of the CTH (the Confederation of Haitian Workers), the largest labor federation in Haiti composed of 11 different union federations. Based on these interviews and discussions, we can report that in the labor movement is in significant crisis, brought on in large part by the decade-long economic and political destabilization campaign orchestrated in Washington. The crisis has become much worse since 29 February, with the campaign of violence by the US-backed opposition that preceded and followed the coup. Facing a massive problem of unemployment (estimated at some 70% in the formal economy), the turmoil and economic difficulties of recent years has only been worsened with the change of government.

The coup regime was formed by a coalition of the unelected political opposition; the governments of France and the United States; former Haitian military and paramilitary death squads (FRAPH); and the Haitian business elite – particularly the “Group 184”, led by Andre Apaid. Mr. Apaid, a US citizen who is known by Haitian workers as the single most notorious owner of Haitian sweatshop factories, has been a virulent opponent of unions organizing in his factories. The delegation heard reports of extremely dire working conditions in the Apaid-owned sweatshops, with little or no access to safe drinking water, and wages at the legal minimum of 70 Haitian gourdes (approximately US$1.80) per day – or less. Those workers courageous enough to attempt the organization of trade unions face dismissal. Clearly, Mr. Apaid and his clique are no supporters of Haiti’s workers or their labor movement.

The coup also led to serious attacks on Haiti’s trade unions. The delegation heard reports from one union, the FTPH (Federation of Public Transport Workers of Haiti), of criminal attacks on over 100 of the buses that they had purchased for use in the bus cooperative operated by the union. These attacks involved the torching and destruction of the union co-op’s buses, yet went unreported in the North American media, despite having taken place in the days immediately following the 29 February coup d’etat (the peak period of international media presence). Given their timing, and the fact that the union bus cooperative’s success had been viewed as a positive symbol of social advances under the Aristide government, such attacks were seen by the union as acts of political reprisal by supporters of the coup. No arrests have been made in association with these attacks.

The general living conditions of Haitian workers and the general population have drastically worsened since the coup of 29 February. The delegation heard that the price of rice has jumped dramatically, as much as doubling. Other vital foodstuffs have seen even more serious price inflation. Several witnesses testified that whereas before the coup, Haitians were able to eat at least once per day, the cost of food has reduced this to as little as 3 meals per week. Even those Haitians fortunate enough to have a job are barely subsisting.

As for human rights, things are even more serious. The coup which deposed President Aristide has led to a serious wave of attacks and persecutions of supporters of President Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas Party. The delegation heard testimony from an elected member of Parliament for the Fanmi Lavalas who is living in hiding, having been driven out of his town under gunfire. Other political leaders and known activists have also been forced into hiding, living underground, fearing the death threats and violence directed at supporters of the ousted government. Despite its obvious popularity, the Fanmi Lavalas movement is not currently able to have political demonstrations or otherwise take open political action due to the threat of attack. The coup regime, supported by an international military coalition led by the US, France and Canada, has not provided security for those currently most at risk. The names of Lavalas supporters – and even those suspected of being Lavalas supporters – are being read off on right-wing radio stations as an implicit threat. Neither the coup regime nor its international backers have taken action to contain what many Haitians refer to as an anti-Lavalas “witch hunt” that continues to this day.

Based on six days of interviews, meetings, recorded testimony, and on-site examinations, the International Labor/Religious/Community Fact-Finding Delegation has collected extensive material to compile and report. We wanted to provide this brief summary as soon as possible for immediate use. A more detailed written report will soon be published and circulated which will contain a more detailed overview of our findings.
Participants
* Reverend Dr. Kwame O. Abayomi, is the Baltimore City Council 6th District Representative and Senior Minister of Unity United Methodist Church in Baltimore.
* Dave Welsh, a San Francisco Labor Council delegate, was for many years Executive Vice President of Golden Gate Branch #214 of the Letter Carriers Union. He has been active in Haiti support work since 1991, and speaks French. He was part of a Pastors for Peace delegation to Haiti in 1997.
* Johnnie Stevens is an activist with the International Action Center. He represented Ramsey Clark on a recent delegation that met with Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the Central African Republic, where the Haitian President had been taken after his abduction. Their meeting paved the way for press interviews with Aristide, and his return to the Caribbean region. He also attended the World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, and is a co-founder of Labor for Reparations.
* Sharon Black Ceci, a Registered Nurse, is Labor Coordinator for the Haiti Commission of Inquiry. She is a shop steward with United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local #27, and was a founding member of the All Peoples Congress, a community organization in the Baltimore area.
* Charlie Hinton is a member of the Printers Union (GCIU) and a member of a worker-owned cooperative, the union printing company Inkworks in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a long-time solidarity movement activist and member of the Haiti Action Committee.
* Sister Maureen Duignan, is a Franciscan nun who runs the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, which has a long history (as does Sr. Maureen) of solidarity and sanctuary work with Central American and other refugees, from the 1980s to the present. Sister Maureen has been to Haiti a number of times and speaks French.
* Michael Zinzun is director of the Los Angeles-based Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA), which he co-founded in 1975. He was also a founding member of Police Watch and Communities in Support of the Gang Truce, and recently attended Haiti’s Bicentennial celebrations in Port-au-Prince. As a result of his activism around police issues, he suffered a police beating which left him blind in one eye.
* Kevin Skerrett is Research Officer for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Canada’s largest union. He has done significant research on the international trade union movement, and speaks French.
* Dr. Adrianne Aron is a clinical psychologist who works with victims of political repression. She has worked in the solidarity movement for many years, and served as an election monitor in Haiti during the 2000 elections there.

Today’s reason Palestinians have to die

By now readers will know that Sharon’s famous ‘Gaza pullout plan’ was voted down by the settlers. Jon Elmer of FromOccupiedPalestine.org once told me of the many conversations he had with settlers in the Occupied Territories. They were virtually all against the wall and against ‘disengagement’. Palestine, ALL of Palestine, is theirs, by god-given right, it is their backyard, and why would you build a fence through your own backyard? Why would you leave your own backyard?

And so it was that logic that brought down the plans of Sharon, the ‘bold leader’ (and child-killer and war criminal and corrupt crook). Apparently some of the protests had the slogan: “We love Sharon but we hate his plan”.

So, when you’ve just had your bizarre move shot down from your own right wing constituency and you’re a politician with what might be a shaky hold on power, what do you do?

Kill Palestinians, of course.

The media, with an eye for irony, described in great detail the killing of a settler family, including four children and a pregnant woman, by two Palestinian fighters who were killed by the Israeli Army afterwards. The victims were humanized, the family’s photo was shown, quotes from the husband were provided. None of this was done for the over 40 Palestinians who were killed in the days leading up to this vote. There was some cursory discussion of the Palestinians who were killed in Nablus in ‘reprisal’, and the ‘Hamas radio station’ that was blown up in ‘reprisal’ for the attack.

Here is a little more detail, by the ISM, in Nablus, on the Israeli killings today: the price Palestinians paid because the Likud party voted against Sharon’s plan.

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
May 3, 2004

Targeted Assassination Hits Nablus, Siege is Further Tightened, Kole/ISM Nablus

NABLUS (West Bank) – Last night death came quickly in Nablus. 2 missiles within moments of each other crashed into a car driving by the Watani Hospital. Within minutes the scene was surrounded by ambulances, medical volunteers, and curious onlookers. An Israeli military helicopter had unleashed its lethal payload, claiming the lives of three men from the Balata refugee camp and one from Qalqiliya in the latest extrajudicial execution carried out by the occupation forces.

Witnesses at the scene described utter pandemonium as medical personel attempted to gather the scattered remains of Nadar Abu Leyl, Hashem Hamdan, Nael Abu Hasaneyn, and Mohamed Abu Hamdan. Today the men were buried in the Balata cemetary. More purple and white faces of dead Palestinians being carried through the narrow streets of the refugee camp. More chants, more flags, more prayers, more stunned and dejected expressions today.

People trying to get in and out of Nablus since the killings were also confronted with a full closure on the city, and many found themselves stranded at checkpoints like Beit Iba and Huwara. Both male and female friends trying to cross these checkpoints were turned back by the Israeli soldiers manning the checkpoints and reports are filtering in that the military buildup in surrounding villages has been stepped up.

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
May 2, 2004

Casualty Toll Mounts as Sharon Turns up the Heat, by Kole/ISM Nablus

NABLUS (West Bank) – In Rafidia Hospital last night there were two sets of people in two different hallways displaying two different emotions. Sameh and I were in the first hallway where Jamal Shadeh Hamdan (21) from the Old City in Nablus was lying in critical condition. His friends and family were in the hallway, wet eyes and slouched forms. One friend recalled how just the night before they had been joking with Jamal, when a friend had stopped them and said, seemingly out of the blue, “We can’t joke like this, we have to respect ourselves even if no one on the outside cares.”

Jamal was downtown at ‘the duwar’ last evening, at around 18h30, when the Israeli military came into the Old City firing live rounds and tear gas to disperse a crowd of rock throwing youth. From two occupied houses, military snipers where targeting people in the crowd seemingly at random. Jamal was shot in the back by a live bullet. We were just returning from a photography exhibition put on by the Women’s Union – about the destruction imposed on the Old City by the Israeli military in April 2002 – when we arrived upon the scene. There were no armed men visible, only stone throwers, some press people and a handful of medical volunteers. At 23h43, the announcement was made over the loudspeakers at the Jamaah Kbire (Big Mosque) that Jamal had joined the ranks of Nablus’ innocent civilian martyrs. 12 hours later Jamal was buried at the local cemetery near the Old City.

Despite this, Haaretz correspondent Arnon Regular – who was nowhere near the clashes, let alone Nablus at the time – recounted the incident today in the following terms:

“In the West Bank city of Nablus, troops shot dead 22-year-old Jamal Hamdan, who was participating in stone-throwing attacks on Israeli soldiers on Saturday. The military said soldiers in a patrol vehicle identified the man as being armed and fired towards him, but Palestinian witnesses said the man was unarmed and was shot by troops who took position in a nearby building to observe the clashes.”

The paragraph itself is revealing of the inherent biases of the Israeli media. The euphemisms employed underscore how the reality of the situation here on the ground is often masked from mainstream Israeli society by even ‘liberal’ dailies like Haaretz.

Thus it is not the Israeli soldiers entering Palestinian cities who are the aggressors, but the symbolic resistance of the Old City’s youth with rocks that is portrayed as initiating “attacks on Israeli soldiers.” The IDF goes around in ‘patrol vehicles’ and not armored, stone-proof military jeeps and hummers. Likewise, Israeli military snipers, who were firing into the unarmed crowd, are instead described as “troops who took position in a nearby building to observe the clashes.” Such a cumbersome euphemism for the word ‘sniper’ isn’t the product of journalistic convention – which normally seeks to minimize long-winded expressions – but of a desire to hide the reality from the Israeli public of who the real aggressors are.

HOSPITAL OVERFLOWING

In the hallway parallel to that were Jamal’s family and friends where huddled, there were distinctly different expressions. Two days ago Zeiad and I had come here to visit the family of Ahmed Samir Abu Fidah (10) who lives next to the Tulkarem refugee camp. The boy had been shot in the head during a bloody Israeli military raid on the city that left at least three dead. Parts of his brain had to be held together by first aid medical personnel as the boy was evacuated to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, 2hrs away (including checkpoints), for a craniotomy. Many of the casualties from this, and other raids in Jenin and Qalqilya in the past week, have been evacuated to Rafidia given the specialists for various forms of injury and trauma on hand.

When I first saw Ahmed, he was completely unconscious and in critical condition. Jihad Bani Ouda, the Staff Nurse at the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital, explained to us that if Ahmed survived he would be paralyzed on the right side of his body, would have a speech impediment and memory troubles, all probably for the rest of his life. According to Ouda, Ahmed would have to be transferred to Beit Jala for rehabilitation if his condition stabilized – this would mean further separation from his family.

Yet today, Rami, a friend from Tulkarem, who was injured in the hand and was also brought to Rafidia Hospital, is beaming with joy. He takes me to Ahmed’s family. His father, whose expression was blank when I first met him, is now smiling warmly. We go together to visit the boy’s bedside. Rami tickles his feet and Ahmed moves his left leg. What seemed impossible a few days ago is now a reality. The boy faces a hard road to recovery, but everyone is momentarily relieved that he will live.

As we leave the Intensive Care Unit, we pass by the body of Khaled Kharawish (30), also from Tulkarem, who is still in critical condition. Rami doesn’t say anything, not wanting the good mood to dissipate. Khaled was targeted for assassination by the Israeli army; he is now lying in a coma. The words of Khaled Mattour, the director of the Rafidia Hospital echo in my head, “We are under funded, overworked, understaffed. We have skilled personnel but we have so many cases it’s often hard to deal. We service the whole northern West Bank for so many things, we have great doctors but it’s too much to cope with. The occupation is overburdening our health workers.”

Evidence of this was everywhere last night. From the trauma ward for children shot by soldiers, to that for older men lying in hospital beds, bloodied hands, legs, etc. wrapped in bandages. We meet Mohamed (8) from the village of Jamoun in the Jenin Governorate, who was shot in the leg a few days ago. Today the boy is smiling big smiles with his round eyes. He is happy he gets to go home soon. He shakes my hand and we talk, while his mother looks on relieved. In another room, we talk to older men, some from Balata, some from Tulkarem, one from Jenin. They were all brought here by the bullets of the Israeli military. They have all become friends over the last few nights. Intense moments of pain shared collectively between the injured and their worried families. I return to the hall where Jamal’s friends are worrying.

The doctors can’t save everyone these days, not all families are so ‘lucky’ as Ahmed’s, and the casualty toll mounts as the hospital beds fill out. A few days ago, the Palestinian National Information Center released a report claiming that 3531 Palestinians have been killed by the occupation forces since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada and over 40,000 have been injured. The casualties of the last few days of stepped up Israeli military activity in occupied Palestine will add more numbers to the toll.

I think back to the ‘shaheed’/martyr pictures from the exhibition put on by the Women’s Union. For some reason I keep going back to the installation of a red-died waterfall surrounded by roses and candles, symbolizing the blood of those killed in Nablus, which struck me as odd and out of place with the poignancy of the rest of the photographs and installations at the exhibit. Today, there is dust kicked up by shuffling feet in the sunlight during the Jamal’s funeral procession. Flags and chanting among the Old City walls, amidst butcher shops and falafel stands. The rhythms of the occupation continue unabated as Jamal’s body is silently lowered into the brown earth of the grassy cemetery. The men are praying, they wipe their faces with both hands, and disperse quietly.

For more information contact:

Kole – 059737118 / 066458978
Sameh – 059325257

And, because US troops are doing such good elsewhere…

… The US and Colombia want more of them in Colombia, in addition to the hundreds that are there now (openly) and however many ‘contractors’ and covert forces are there now (there are reports that there are plenty). See these little briefs.

———–

KIM HOUSEGO

Thu Apr 29, 9:11 PM

BOGOTA, Colombia – U.S. troops advising Colombia in its war against rebels and paramilitary forces are hampered by Congress’ cap on the number of American soldiers, a senior U.S. military commander asserted Thursday.

Continue reading “And, because US troops are doing such good elsewhere…”