Michael Riordon

Good news, bad news and an appeal from the wonderful Freedom Theatre, under siege in the Jenin refugee camp, West Bank, occupied Palestine.

( The Freedom Theatre, after Israeli military raid.  Photo: Global Times.)

First, the bad news:

“Jenin refugee camp has recently suffered a higher number of arrests than usual.  Over thirty arrests have been made in the past month alone.  Last night (December 20), at least eight new arrests were made during a major Israeli military invasion of the refugee camp.  Among the people arrested were three members of The Freedom Theatre, a cultural centre for children and youth.

One of the arrested was Mohammed Saadi, light and sound technician at The Freedom Theatre.  He describes the experience: ‘At around midnight soldiers broke down the door to my house, they didn’t even knock.  They blindfolded me and my brother and took us up to the mountain behind Jenin camp.  There we were shoved into an army jeep.  During the approximately half-hour drive to the army base we were constantly abused, physically and orally.  The soldiers hit us with their fists and the butts of their machine guns.  In the early morning we were released after having been interrogated throughout the night.’

The reason for these arrests remains unclear.

To bring attention to Israel’s systematic  practice of military rule and arbitrary arrests, the Freedom Theatre will give a street performance on December 21 in Jenin refugee camp.  We will use Playback Theatre* to enact the stories of those who were arrested.  The performance is also a publicity event for The Freedom Bus project.  (See good news, below).”

*Playback Theatre is an interactive theatre approach used in over 50 countries as a tool for community building and community dialogue.  In a Playback Theatre performance, audience members volunteer life experiences and watch as a team of actors and musicians transform these accounts into improvised theater pieces.  Playback Theatre helps to foster community strength through the sharing of experiences that remind us of our common humanity and our capacity for courage, creativity and resilience.”

Then comes a brief report on the street performance:

“On the afternoon of the 21^st, The Freedom Theatre held a street performance in Jenin refugee camp, to bring attention to Israel’s systematic practice of military rule and arbitrary arrests.

The performance was attended by children, youth and adults from the camp as well as internationals.  Actors used Playback Theatre to enact the accounts of those who were impacted by recent invasions and harassment.  Stories were told by people recently arrested, tortured and harassed by the Israeli military.  Other residents of Jenin refugee camp also shared their thoughts and feelings about Israeli military violence and the increasing number of arbitrary arrests that have occurred over the past months.

Kamal Abu Awad, who lives in the Jenin refugee camp, is a student in The Freedom Theatre acting school.  He was recently arrested, then released from Israeli prison without charge. ‘Today’s event gave me a chance to tell my story,’ he says.  ‘Having others listen to my experience helped me feel connected to my community.   It also helped to know that my story was being heard by an international audience.’”

Then, more bad news: Continue reading →

This message arrived yesterday from Mohammed Khatib, one of 22 people arrested by Israeli border police last week in Nabi Saleh at the funeral for Mustafa Tamimi.

Mohammed Khatib is a village leader in the village of Bil’in [see chapter 18, Our Way to Fight], and coordinator of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, which links grassroots protest movements across the occupied West Bank.  He writes:

“I have just been released from jail, after three days inside.  I was arrested last Friday, together with 22 others, in the village of Nabi Saleh, during a demonstration commemorating the murder of Mustafa Tamimi.  Our arrest took place as we peacefully protested near the entrance to the Jewish-only settlement of Halamish, which is built on lands stolen from Nabi Saleh.

Minutes after we got to the gate, Israeli Border Police officers moved in to remove us from the scene.  Palestinians, Israeli and international activists, we were all shackled and dragged away into military jeeps that transported us to the adjacent military base, which is in fact part of the settlement.

In the military base, still shackled, I was assaulted by a settler who hit me in the face, leaving me with a bloody nose.  Shortly after, the settler also attacked a female Israeli activist who was by my side.  The soldiers and policemen present did not prevent the attack, nor did they bother to detain the settler after the fact.  Instead, the zip-tie locks on my hands were removed, only for my arms to be bound again, this time behind my back.

Hours later, at the police station, I learned that to cover up their responsibility for my attack, the soldiers have laid a bogus complaint against me for assaulting them.  My hands were tied, my face was bleeding, but it was I who spent the night in the inside of prison cell.

Mohammed Tamimi from Nabi Saleh was also arrested during that same demonstration.  While the police decided to release all the others, he and I were to remain in jail.  During our demonstrations, soldiers often take pictures, to later use them as “incriminating evidence”.  This time, the soldiers used one such picture to accuse Mohammed of throwing stones during a demonstration a few weeks or months back. The man pictured in that photograph is not Mohammed Tamimi from Nabi Saleh; regardless, he remains in jail.  [MR: Mohammed Khatib is familiar with this false-photo tactic, which was also used against him in military court.]  Military law allows Israel to keep us Palestinians in jail for eight days before seeing a judge, and even then, it is a soldier in uniform who is the so called neutral arbitrator.

As the prison doors closed behind me, my happiness was clouded by the fact that Mohammed Tamimi was not released.  The battle for his freedom is only beginning, as our lawyers prepare the petition for his release.  If you can, please help us fund legal aid for him and for the countless others who are regularly arrested protesting the Israeli occupation.

I would also like to extend my gratitude to Ayala Shani, an Israeli comrade who was arrested with me.  She refused the injustice of being released while both me and Mohammed Tamimi were still detained.  As these words are written, she is still in jail, despite having been offered her freedom twice already by Israeli courts.

Sincerely,
Mohammed Khatib.”

Please give his message wings by passing it on, far and wide.

Across the West Bank and in Gaza, Israeli soldiers and police continue to beat, gas, imprison, torture, and kill unarmed Palestinians.  [See posts 65 and 66 on  this blog.]

In Cairo, Egyptian soldiers and police continue to beat, gas, imprison, torture, and kill unarmed Egyptians.  The dirty work they used to do for Mubarak, they do now for Mubarak’s generals and their corporate backers.

In Washington, Congress has just passed a law that will entrench in US law “indefinite detention without trial,” and broaden the role of the military in holding “terrorism suspects.”  At the same time, the definition of terrorism continues to get wider, accommodating more and more people.  In a moment, this law wipes out several centuries of hard-won gains in fundamental legal protection and civil rights.

Simultaneously, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced measures this week that will broaden the use of Israeli military detention without charge and military trials.  These ‘measures,’ which have long been used against Palestinians under military occupation, will now also be used, selectively, against Israeli citizens.

Usually in my work I identify and amplify voices of people who resist such measures, often risking their own safety, sometimes their own lives.  Such people need to be heard; their stories offer inspiration, an antidote to despair.  This is why I choose – or try – to keep my attention not on the headlines, the war room, the cabinet office, the CEO’s penthouse where the 1% live with their acolytes, servants and drones, but on the ground where most of us, the 99%, live.

But sometimes – now – the ‘measures’ being constructed over our heads and behind our backs become too overwhelming, too frightening to ignore.   Some connectable dots:

On December 15, Joel Brinkley, former Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, wrote in the Washington insider journal Politico:  “Administration officials are seething over Israel’s refusal to negotiate with its neighbors — even as the tumult of the Arab Spring imposes increasing and unprecedented isolation on Israel.  Still, said Martin Indyk, who twice served as US ambassador to Israel, the Netanyahu government can do more or less what it wants ‘because they know they have Congress in their back pocket.’”  [The same can be said of elected parliaments in Canada, Britain, Australia, and far too many other countries that claim to be democracies.]

In Washington, the carrot/stick that keeps the US Congress firmly lodged in Netanyahu’s back pocket is the Israel lobby.  Others far more learned than I have argued this for some time, with mountains of evidence.  But any attempt to challenge the lobby’s unparalleled power to dictate US political careers and policy is met with instant, ferocious and well-orchestrated charges of anti-Semitism.  Not so much denials, which would be hard to sustain, just very sharp reminders that the lobby is sacred and untouchable in the land of the free.   [In fact its tentacles reach far and wide.  For example, See Fight continues for academic freedom in the US, by Nora Barrows-Friedman, December 15.]

Even star Israel-booster Thomas L Friedman is not immune.  On December 13 he wrote in his New York Times column:  “I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics.  That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”  Of course Friedman came under immediate attack.   His recanting and apology are awaited.

At the same time, as if to confirm his assessment, on December 15 the US House of Representatives passed, by a margin of 410-11, the “Iran Threat Reduction Act,” a ‘measure’ long demanded by Israel’s backers in Washington, among others.  Its stated purpose is to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, its background agenda to ensure that Israel retains its monopoly on weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.  But behind it is a deeper purpose: to reduce Iran to a client state by destroying its economy and subjecting most of its people to abject misery.  As with Iraq, and now Libya. Continue reading →

Yesterday more than 2000 Palestinians, Israelis and internationals gathered in the village of Nabi Saleh to mourn Mustafa Tamimi, who was killed last Friday during unarmed protest against the theft of village land and water.

This morning, Holly Rigby, a British volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, posted a searing eyewitness account of a funeral under attack:

“This has been one of the darkest and most disturbing days I have ever had to experience.  The funeral of Mustafa Tamimi, murdered by the IOF [MR: Israeli Occupation Forces] at a demonstration at Nabi Saleh on Friday, ended with the IOF shooting endless rounds of the teargas canisters that killed Mustafa at unarmed mourners, beating and arresting people with impunity as they walked across Nabi Saleh village after the funeral.

Nabi Saleh, a small village of only 550 people, has been organising non-violent protests against the theft of their land since 2009.  The illegal Israeli settlement of Halamish has continued to grow and expand since 1976, and the tiny village has been holding the demonstration for two years protesting against the confiscation of the village’s main water supply, the Kaws Spring.  Nabi Saleh has become infamous for army violence and arrests against Palestinians, but until yesterday nobody had been killed there by the IOF.

Mustafa, a 28 year old Palestinian activist, died on Saturday morning after being critically injured when a tear gas canister was shot directly at his face from the inside of an armoured Israeli jeep only ten meters from where he was standing.  The tear gas canister ripped through one side of his face causing a massive brain haemorrhage, and despite initial optimism he would survive on Friday night, he tragically passed away on Saturday morning.

I was initially supposed to be going to the Golan Heights today with the other volunteers, but when a funeral march was organised from the hospital where Mustafa died back to his village, I knew there was no way I could go and enjoy the tourist trappings of the Golan Heights on this terrible day for Palestine.  Having always followed the tragic events that happen here, I had heard many times of Palestinians murdered by the IOF, but since being here the Palestinian struggle has become my struggle – when Mustafa died I felt my heart breaking at this unnecessary and cruel loss of life, and wept last night as if he were my own.

Around 200 people marched through the streets of Ramallah this morning carrying Mustafa’s body, wrapped in a Palestinian flag with a kuffieyeh to cover his head.  As his body was laid in the ambulance, we got into a service [MR: small van, a group taxi] to follow it to the village.  On the way there, I called an activist friend of mine to let her know where we were going, and she warned me to be careful.  I assured her that there was surely no way that the IOF would be able to unashamedly devastate the funeral of a young man with violence.  I now realise just how naive that was, and how deeply I underestimated the savagery of the Israeli army.

By the time we arrived in the village of Nabi Saleh, there were more than 2000 people who had joined the funeral procession, the men carrying his body above their heads with cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘God is Great’) and the chilling howls of the village women calling Mustafa’s name echoing through the tiny village streets.

We saw Mustafa’s sister walking distraught but defiant, with tears wracking her face, and his father being held by both arms by men around him, almost unable to walk, crippled by his grief. This was the death of a martyr for the Palestinian struggle, and the devastating effects of his death could be seen in every face I turned to.

His body was carried through the streets to his home for a final goodbye, to the mosque where the funeral prayers were spoken, and then eventually to the grave overlooking the beautiful Palestinian valleys on the outskirts of the village.  My flatmate wanted to say some prayers for Mustafa so we walked back towards the mosque, but when we returned to the cemetery I was surprised to see the mourners had dispersed, when suddenly I recognised the acrid smell of tear gas fill my nose and my stomach turned as I realised what was taking place. Continue reading →

(Photo: Activestills.org)

Mustafa Tamimi, a 28 year old resident of Nabi Saleh died from injuries sustained after an Israeli soldier shot him in the face with a tear gas canister, which blew off half of Tamimi’s face.

In this short video, posted by the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, Mustafa Tamimi lies unconscious after being shot.

Why are Israeli soldiers attacking his village, Nabi Saleh?  This pungent article on Nabi Saleh by American writer Max Blumenthal is worth reading in its entirety; it’s not long, but contains in microcosm the whole history of the Israeli colonization of Palestine.  Here’s a relevant excerpt:

“The village has been besieged by its neighbors from the religious nationalist Israeli settlement of Halamish since Halamish was constructed in 1977 on land privately owned by Nabi Saleh’s residents.  Recently, the settlers seized control of a fresh water spring that has belonged to Nabi Saleh since the village was built in the 19th century.  In December 2009, the settlers uprooted hundreds of the village’s olive trees in an attempt to re-annex land awarded back to Nabi Saleh in an Israeli court case.  Since then, farmers from Nabi Saleh have been subjected to routine attacks by settlers and prevented from working their land.  The Israeli army has come down firmly on the side of Halamish, suppressing the demonstrations with disproportionate force while doing little, if anything, to prevent settler violence.  But if the spirit of Nabi Saleh’s young demonstrators are any indication, the army has a long way to go before it breaks the villagers’ will.”

For decades across Palestine, people have been risking their lives in non-violent resistance to the theft of their land, and the occupation of their lives.  In the concluding chapter of Our Way to Fight, Lamyaa Yassin explains why Israeli violence keeps escalating against unarmed protestors.  Though she’s speaking of her own village, Bil’in, the same vicious pattern applies throughout the occupation, including Nabi Saleh.  “As time goes on,” says Lamyaa, “the soldiers get more violent.  I think they see that everyone here is still strong, still struggling, and this bothers them very much.  They must think that by now, after so many home invasions, jail and beatings, people would be too afraid, but this is a struggle for our land and our lives, so we continue.”

(Photo: Lazar Simeonov)

So many good people, many of them young, die under Israeli military attack.  Because the governments of the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, France, Germany, Italy and others support Israel unconditionally, ensuring that it remains comfortably immune from international law, they are accomplices in crimes against humanity.  Essentially these crimes are committed in our name.

What can we do?  In the introduction to Our Way to Fight, I quote an eloquent Greek blogger: “We have a duty to move here, there, anywhere but back to our couches as mere viewers of history, back home to the warmth that freezes our conscience.”

We can refuse to be helpless.  We can inform ourselves, and refuse the lies.  We can tell others what we know and think, refusing to be silent.  We can pass along information like this as widely as possible, to counter the tidal wave of misinformation fed to us non-stop by the mainstream media.  And:

BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel – remains one of the most effective non-violent tools available to us.  A good place to start on the whys and hows is here, at the portal of the BDS Movement for freedom, justice and equality.

Thousands of international, national, and local campaigns are in progress world-wide.  There are countless ways to get involved.  To connect with what’s happening where you are, here is a list of solidarity organizations.

For Mustafa Tamimi and so many others still living, still struggling, please take action.