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.

This message just arrived from Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American business consultant from Youngstown, Ohio, now living in Al-Bireh, a city in the occupied West Bank.  Sam is co-author of “Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians” (1994).  He can be reached via his blog.

Like the story about the olive farmers that I posted here a few days ago, this is just one more of the countless stories of injustice and cruelty that define how the Israeli military occupation strangles Palestine.  Why pass this particular one along?  Because, as Sam says, “Each life being destroyed by the Israeli revolving door policy of detainment is a person with a name and a family and a job.  And when the person is my friend or colleague, I refuse to swallow the fact that Israel has carte blanche to act above the law.”

In this case, the person affected is someone on whom a great many others depend, a reality which would certainly not be lost on the Israeli regime.

By the way, this is not a request for money.  It’s a call for justice and action.

Sam Bahour:

My friend is Walid Abu Rass.  He is the Finance and Administration Manager for the Health Work Committees (HWC), one of the largest community health service providers in the occupied Palestinian territory. HWC serves over 500,000 patients/beneficiaries per year.  More on HWC in a second.

I had not seen Walid for a while.  We are both knee deep in Palestine’s daily rat race.  About two months ago, Walid and his HWC colleagues called for a meeting of their circle of friends. They sought assistance.  HWC was going through some financial hard times, especially with the financial crisis in Europe, where many of their donors are based.

Given that it was close to the end of year, a season when I usually donate some time to assist a community based organization to fundraise, I offered to volunteer.  Walid was my counterpart.  During the past weeks, we were in daily phone and email contact, and every few days we met up to visit a potential local donor.  Progress was being made.  We then started to plan, with a few others, an end-of-year fundraising raffle.  Plans were coming together, and there was excitement among the team and staff that we were taking our fundraising needs to our local community to compensate for the loss in European institutional funding.  This is even more significant since HWC does not accept funding with strings attached (“conditional donor funds”), so they have to struggle just to keep the doors open in this tainted donor-driven market.

For nearly a week I was emailing Walid with no reply.  This was not like him.  He and I nearly live behind our keyboards.  The deadline for the raffle details was rapidly approaching and if we did not get started, we would miss the end of year opportunity for fundraising.  I started to think Walid was mad at me for some reason.  I rethought our last few weeks of working together. There was absolutely nothing there to cause him to just ignore my calls; after all, I was his volunteer counterpart.

Then, last night I learned why Walid stopped replying to me. Continue reading →

Amid all the routine horrors and brutalities of military occupation, this small news item caught my attention because I know two of the farmers, Mahmoud Issa and Awad Milhim.  More on them below.  First, here’s the item:

Saed Bannoura of the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) reports:

“Last week Israeli military authorities prevented thirty Palestinian farmers from Anin village from entering their olive orchards, which now lie beyond the Annexation Wall that cuts through their land.  Anin is a small village west of Jenin in the northern West Bank.

Local sources reported that soldiers stationed at one of the gates rejected thirty permits granted to the farmers in order to be able to reach their lands.  The villagers were trying to harvest their olive orchards.

The route of the Israeli Annexation Wall is designed to isolate Palestinians from their lands, requiring them to apply for special permits from the so-called Civil Administration, which is run by the occupying army. Permits are rarely granted, and when they are, they limit the dates and time when the residents are allowed to enter their land and their orchards.

The villagers appealed to human rights groups and the Palestinian Authority to intervene, and to pressure Israel into allowing residents to reach their own orchards and harvest their trees.”

I visited Anin with Nasser Abufarha, founder of the Palestine Fair Trade Association, the source of Zatoun olive oil.  Zatoun (Arabic for olive) is a Canadian grassroots fair trade project in which I’m involved.

In the village, Nasser introduced me to two farmers, Mahmoud Issa and Awad Milhim, whose stories are featured in Our Way to Fight.  They would certainly be among the thirty farmers denied access to their land last week.

Our Way to Fight is entirely made of stories like Issa’s and Milhim’s.  Here’s why: “Stories are one way of sharing the belief that justice is imminent.  And for such a belief, children, women and men will fight at a given moment with astounding ferocity.  This is why tyrants fear storytelling: all stories somehow refer to the story of their fall.”  John Berger.

Meet Mahmoud Issa and Awad Milhim:

In the tiny village of Anin I talked with two farmers, cousins, both of them weathered and strongly built.  Mahmoud Issa took over his father’s land a few years ago, and introduced organic farming to the village; his cousin Awad Milhim followed soon after.  Mahmoud also represents the local cooperative’s fifty member-families on the PFTA board.

Before the Palestine Fair Trade Association, Mahmoud and Milhim sold their oil to local merchants or to Israeli brokers, and were thankful if they could break even on their costs.  Has this changed?  The cousins look at each other and laugh.  “There is no comparison,” says Mahmoud, emphatically.  “Now we can support our families, and our kids will be able to go to college.”

Nasser Abufarha explains, “PFTA farmers are getting an average of about 25 percent above the market price for their oil.  This is what we promised to pay even if the market price fell.”

This feat is all the more remarkable for having been accomplished under military occupation, which is never far away.  While we stood on the roof of the new processing plant yesterday, an Israeli military helicopter hovered above.  Like many others here, Nasser hardly notices the war-jets any more, even when they break the sound barrier, but on the roof he stopped talking and watched the helicopter.  Why the difference?  “Unfortunately a helicopter often means they’re going to assassinate someone in the area.”

In Anin I ask how the occupation affects farmers.  By way of response they take me out to see where their land is, downhill from the village, more than half of it now cut off by the wall – a broad white slash through the landscape, wavering in the heat.

To reach their olive groves on the other side, the farmers need to request permits from the military authorities.  If a farmer is lucky enough to get one, it may allow him only one hour on the other side.  Whether farmers can plough, prune, maintain and harvest the trees when these functions need to be done depends entirely on the whim of the soldiers.

Olive groves throughout Palestine are also subject to attack by both settlers and the army.  Since the occupation began in 1967, it’s estimated that at least a million trees have been destroyed, and the wall threatens to destroy or cut off twice as many.  Even in a land so richly endowed with olives, the loss is catastrophic.

On the road to Anin, Nasser pointed out several large sheds on a hill across the valley – an Israeli agricultural settlement.  Mahmoud’s cousin Awad hasn’t spoken much today, but now he talks about his almonds.  “I didn’t have much experience growing them, but with help from the PFTA I began to produce quite good almonds.  When the settlers noticed this, they started to release pigs into our orchards.  Pigs like to eat almonds, and to reach them they pull down the branches, breaking them.  We chased them out, but the settlers keep letting them back in.  It’s terrible to see an almond orchard that’s been torn apart.  I’m starting to think I’ll have to stop growing almonds.  That’s what the settlers want, but what can you do?  If you try to defend yourself, the army will be here in a moment.”

My parting question to the farmers:  What keeps you going?  Mahmoud replies, “To support my family I have to work my land.  This is what I know how to do.”

(Anin village – Image: Palestine Remembered)

Our Way to Fight, on the road in British Columbia, Canada: in four days, five events and four radio interviews in three cities.   Throughout the journey I met lively, responsive audiences; enjoyed stimulating encounters with new and seasoned activists from a range of solidarity and peace action groups; reveled in generous hospitality and gorgeous country.

Now posted online are audio podcasts of the four radio interviews (different hosts, different questions), and a video podcast of my talk at the University of Victoria.  Here are the links:

Red-eye Radio, with Manuel Shulte, Co-op Radio, Vancouver.  15 minutes. Podcast here.

Gorilla Radio, with Chris Cook, CFUV, Victoria.   20 minutes.   Podcast here.

Changes Radio, with Jamie Brennan, CHLY-FM, Nanaimo.  50 minutes.  Podcast here.  Click on the Nov 22, 2011 program.

Voice of Palestine, with Hanna Kawas, Co-op Radio, CFRO, Vancouver.  20 minutes.   Podcast here.  Click on the Tuesday Nov 22 program.

Video of the talk at University of Victoria, recorded by videographer Linda Taffs of Pasifik.ca, a collective of concerned citizens aiming to foster direct democracy.   Podcast here.