At the deep core of the struggle for justice in Palestine is an abiding refusal of a people to be wiped off the map, and written out of history.

Ghosts of Deir Yassin, a new music video by Firas Taybeh, features singer-songwriter Phil Monsour, poet Rafeef Ziadah, and generations of displaced Palestinians.

Deir Yassin has come to symbolize the ongoing pattern of ethnic cleansing on which Israel is built.  On April 9, 1948, some 120 Jewish fighters from two Zionist paramilitary groups (both designated ‘terrorist’ by the British colonial regime) attacked Deir Yassin, a Palestinian village of about 600 people near Jerusalem.  Some 107 villagers were killed, including women and children. Many were shot, others killed by hand grenades thrown into their homes.

News of the killings sparked terror among Palestinians, and a mass exodus from surrounding towns and villages as Jewish troops advanced.   Some historians, including Israelis, argue convincingly that this was the intended strategic goal of the Deir Yassin massacre.

From Ghosts of Deir Yassin:

…They change the names on the signs
But it’s in our hearts these words are written
Of the children who don’t know their homes
They will walk the streets from which they are forbidden.

You see that we are rising, our day is surely coming
No longer in the shadows
Of the ghosts of Deir Yassin.

“Our spring in Palestine is born shackled to a hospital bed.”  Rafeef Ziadah, Palestinian poet.

Photo: Activestills.org

Four recent glimpses of spring 2012 in Palestine:

1)  Hunger strike.

On May 8, close to 2,000 Palestinian prisoners entered the fourth week of a hunger strike, a mass campaign of peaceful resistance, to demand the most basic rights:  an immediate termination of the administrative detention policy and the excessive use of solitary confinement, humane living conditions, family visits, and reasonable access to educational materials.

Two prisoners, Tha’ir Halahleh and Bilal Diab, have now refused food for more than 70 days.  According to Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, both are at immediate risk of death.

On May 7, Israel’s High Court denied their appeals against “administrative detention,” under which people can be held indefinitely without charge or trial.  The presiding judge, Eliakim Rubenstein, acknowledged flaws in the investigations into both the Tha’ir and Bilal cases, casting doubt on information and sources used by the Israeli security service to obtain the administrative detention order.  Even so, the High Court judges refused to release either prisoner, or even to reduce their period of detention.  Instead they upheld the arbitrary power of the military commander who signed the orders.

2)  Britain’s largest supermarket boycotts companies exporting produce from illegal Israeli settlements.

The UK’s fifth biggest food retailer and its largest co-op business, the Co-operative Group has become the first major European supermarket group to disengage from “any supplier known to be sourcing from the Israeli settlements.”

Hilary Smith, Co-op member and Boycott Israel Network (BIN) agricultural trade campaign co-ordinator, said the Co-op “has taken the lead internationally in this historic decision to hold corporations to account for complicity in Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights. We strongly urge other retailers to take similar action.”

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which works to improve the conditions of Palestinian agricultural communities, commented: “Israeli agricultural export companies like Mehadrin profit from and are directly involved in the ongoing colonisation of occupied Palestinian land and theft of our water.  Trade with such companies constitutes a major form of support for Israel’s apartheid regime over the Palestinian people, so we warmly welcome this principled decision by the Co-operative.  The movement for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law is proving to be a truly effective form of action in support of Palestinian rights.”

More detail here.

3)  United Methodists endorse boycott.

In Tampa, Florida, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church voted to call for boycott of all Israeli companies “operating in the occupied Palestinian territories.”  This constitutes the majority of Israeli corporations.

In addition, the conference expressed strong support for the “Kairos Palestine” statement from Palestinian Christians, and called “for an end to military occupation and human rights violations through nonviolent actions,” actions which include boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). These measures provide the basis for further action by the Church to hold Israel accountable for its colonial and apartheid regime.

More detail here.

4)  Stop the Wall raided by Israeli military.

At 1:30am on May 8, ten armored jeeps of the Israeli Occupation Forces surrounded and raided the offices of Stop the Wall in Ramallah, West Bank.  The Israeli military stole 2 laptops, 3 hard drives and 10 memory cards containing files and photos as well as archive material.  This is yet another attack on Palestinian civil society and their struggle against the repression, land confiscation and ethnic cleansing policies of Israel.

For almost ten years Stop the Wall has been promoting civil resistance and advocacy campaigns against the Wall and in defense of Palestinian rights to self-determination.  This is not the first Israeli attack on Stop the Wall. In September 2009, the organization’s youth coordinator was arrested, and then in December, coordinator Jamal Juma’ was arrested.  Israeli authorities were unable to bring any charges against either of them.  After an international campaign, both were freed.  A few months later the Israeli military initiated an extensive raid at Stop the Wall.

Jamal Juma`comments:  “It is not surprising that the Israeli authorities have chosen to escalate their repression on the same day that the Israeli High Court rejected the appeals of Palestinian hunger strikers Bilal Diab and Tha’ir Halahleh, effectively condemning them to death.

Almost daily people are out in the streets to protest in solidarity with the Palestinian political prisoners, and their discontent with the fruitless and completely stalled diplomatic “process” is growing stronger.  This raid on the Stop the Wall offices is a clear message that the Israeli authorities fear widespread nonviolent action will challenge their policies effectively.  Israel is preparing for confrontation and more repression, clearly showing that it is not ready to allow any of the international sanctioned human rights that Palestinian people are struggling for.”

“Our spring in Palestine is born shackled to a hospital bed.”  Rafeef Ziadah.

Israeli human rights defender Meir Margalit is under attack.   Please add your name to the support petition, which follows below.  It matters.

Meir Margalit has been active in East Jerusalem for over two decades, in his dual role as an elected member of the Jerusalem City Council, and Field Coordinator with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).

As ethnic cleansing accelerates across Israel and occupied Palestine, Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem – in direct violation of international law – expand rapidly, while Palestinian residents are forbidden to build.  Unable to obtain permits from the municipal authorities, they are left with no choice but to build or extend their homes without permits.  As a result, thousands of Palestinian homes are under constant threat of demolition.

As a municipal councillor, Meir Margalit has been active in ongoing efforts to change these discriminatory building policies.  At the same time, in his work with ICAHD he also supports the rebuilding of homes demolished by the authorities in violation of basic human rights.  He does this work publicly and, together with others, has enabled the rebuilding of over 200 houses.

Recently the Israeli Ministry of Interior launched legal proceedings against Meir, claiming that he has engaged in illegal building.   He joins a burgeoning roster of Israeli human rights defenders who’ve come under government attack for legitimate non-violent protest actions.

Meir Margalit needs and deserves the support of anyone anywhere who is interested in building the grounds for a just peace in Israel-Palestine.

The life and work of this quietly eloquent, determined man are featured in a chapter of Our Way to Fight.  This brief excerpt begins with my own sense of home:

While I travelled in Israel and Palestine, I knew always that I would return to my home, a safe haven in Canada, a country well insulated from war and chaos.  That is, or should be, the nature of home, a place of comfort and refuge.  For Palestinians it can never be so as long as house demolitions remain standard policy for the Israeli government.

I asked Meir how ICAHD people measure success in their work.  He pauses, looks away, then back at me.  ‘This is something very difficult,’ he replies.  “The municipality has a long list of houses to be demolished, so when we freeze one, automatically the municipality goes to the next.  We may succeed to save the house of Mohammad, but for the municipality it’s not a problem because next they go to Ibrahim’s house.  If we save Ibrahim’s house, the municipality says, ‘Okay, Yusef is next.’  So we can feel happy for five minutes, but no longer because we have to run to another house.  We could only say that we have succeeded when we change this policy.”

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions estimates that the number of demolition orders in the West Bank and East Jerusalem reaches into the tens of thousands.

“But you know,” Meir resumes, “for us this question of success is not the most important one.  We feel that even if there is no chance of success in the immediate future, this is something we must do – not just to get results, but to be human.  We know that one day we will succeed, we are sure of that, because there is no other choice.  In the Talmud, the rabbis say something like maybe you will not see the results of your work, but you don’t have the right to stop working.”

Please:

• sign the petition in support of Meir Margalit
• give this message wings by passing it on to others.

If you would like to do more, contact: stopdemolitions@gmail.com.

Our Way to Fight, reviewed by Daniel Kerr, Assistant Professor, Department of History, American University, Washington DC.  Published in Oral History Review, Winter-Spring 2012.

With his latest book, Michael Riordon sketches the life stories of dozens of Palestinian and Israeli peace activists, each struggling against mighty odds to sustain hope and construct the foundation for a just future.  Riordon’s portraits interweave descriptions of the current endeavors of these activists with concise life histories, an approach that offers a dynamic sense of what motivates “normal” people to do extraordinary things.

As we learn about the life experiences of these individuals, the real and oftentimes unexpected personal costs of occupation for both Israelis and Palestinians become apparent.  At the same time each activist creatively seeks to move beyond the literal and ideological walls that isolate, fragment, and divide themselves from their neighbors, families, and their own sense of what it means to be fully human.

Riordon documents a surprisingly wide range of peace work by Israelis and Palestinians, both within the occupied territories and Israel.  His narrators include Nasser Abufarha, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology and co-founded the Canaan Fair Trade olive oil company.   Canaan Fair Trade has significantly increased the base price farmers receive for their olives and other agricultural products.  In doing so, the company has revived the economic stability of farming in the region around Jenin—an area that had been known more as a hotbed of suicide bombers than as a center of production for some of the finest olive oil in the world.

Eitan Bronstein, founder of Zochrot (the Hebrew word for remembering), documents and commemorates the remnants of former Palestinian villages within Israel.  He argues that “silencing or hiding” memory “is one of the most powerful, brutal ways to oppress people” – an oppression that distorts the lives of both Palestinians and Israelis (173).

Ruth Hiller co-founded New Profile, an organization that supports young people who are considering or who are in jail for refusing to join the Israeli Defense Force.  The group challenges the very foundation of Israel’s military culture.

Mohammad Khatib, a leader of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, has helped organize weekly non-violent demonstrations protesting the construction of the separation barrier through the Palestinian village Bil’in.  The protests eventually led to the issuance of an Israeli Supreme Court ruling that resulted in the moving of sections of the wall that encroached on the village’s land.  In addition to documenting these activities in the book, Riordon keeps readers apprised of the ongoing struggles of the activists and their organizations with his frequent and regular posts on his blog.

Each of the activists Riordon interviews face varying levels of suppression, including physical violence and criminalization.   The Israeli government is the source of much of this repression.  Our Way to Fight, however, reveals more complicated dynamics in these activists’ struggles.  As Israeli and Palestinian peace activists try to chart an alternative way forward, they find themselves in an uneasy relationship with their own “people”.   Jewish Israeli peace activists face condemnation from friends and family members, anonymous death threats, as well as pervasive efforts by other Israelis to delegitimize, pathologize, and marginalize their beliefs and actions.  Palestinian peace activists receive little support from the Palestinian Authority and find themselves oftentimes at odds with more traditional and conservative elements within their own communities.

In each of the portraits, each activist addresses how she or he persists in the face of despair.  While they face tremendous risks, the benefits of their activities seem unclear as hopes for real peace in the region seem more distant than ever before.  Nonetheless, Meir Margalit, who struggles to prevent the demolition of Palestinians’ homes, argues that peace activists “do not have the luxury to feel despair” (41).  Emily Schaefer, an Israeli lawyer who has supported the Palestinian campaign in Bil’in, reflects, “when we feel defeated, we are still preserving the humanity and the connection between two peoples for the future.  If this is all we accomplish, still it’s something.” (230).

This book is not an academic one; it is directed towards a popular audience.  Riordon omits any footnotes or references beyond those mentioned in the text.  He also does not portray his book as an “oral history.”  Nonetheless, there is a lot here that will be of interest to oral historians.  While Riordon rightfully maintains the narrative focus on his interviewees’ compelling stories, he always sketches a rich background context describing the interview process itself.  Riordon offers up enough about his own motivations and sympathies to provide insight into the interview dynamic.  Furthermore, Riordon repeatedly questions his own questions.  These moments of self-reflection give form to the context of power shaping the dialogue.

Where Riordon is at his best is in his acute observation of the small things that usually go unnoticed.  Throughout the book, he keenly observes and interprets the non-verbal forms of communication that give meaning to what is being said – the awkward moment of silence, the twinkle in the eye, the sarcastic intonation, or the subtle grin.

Our Way to Fight exemplifies the advocacy tradition of witness and testimony at its best.  Riordon seeks to build bridges between these activists and a North American audience that has little access to the world he documents.  In doing so, Riordon effectively counters the dominant narrative about the Middle East that fixates on violence, portrays Palestinians as terrorists, and defines Israelis as embattled victims.   He highlights the power of the question and demonstrates the subversive capacity of stories from below.  By introducing the reader to real people and organizations, he offers an essential guidebook for other North Americans interested in building solidarity with those working for a just peace.

Two recent items from Israel stand in stark contrast to each other, as alternate signposts to the future.  Already the norm, the first is far more likely, but the second is not impossible, not yet.

Noam Gur, with her refusal statement.  Photo: Activestills

First, a biting commentary on the Israeli military by Uri Avnery, titled The Iron Man: “Stupid and Mean and Brutal.”  It’s followed by a plea from New Profile to support Noam Gur, currently imprisoned for refusing to serve in the machine that Avnery describes so graphically:

“In blood and sweat / A race will arise to us / Proud and generous and brutal…”

Thus wrote Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, the founder of extreme right-wing Zionism, who was also a writer and a poet.  Present-day Likud leaders see him as their forefather, much as Stalin saw Karl Marx.

The world “brutal” stands out, because it seems implausible that Jabotinsky really meant it.  His Hebrew was not very good, and he probably meant something like “hard” or “tough”.

If Jabotinsky saw today’s Likud, he would shudder.  His was a 19^th century mixture of extreme nationalism, liberalism and humanism.

Paradoxically, brutality is the only one of the three traits that is prominent in our life today, especially in the occupied Palestinian territories.  There is nothing there to be proud of, and generosity is something associated with the despised leftists.

THE ROUTINE, everyday brutality that governs the occupied territories was caught on video this week.  A searing flash in the darkness.

It happened on Route 90, a highway that connects Jericho with Beth She’an along the Jordan River.  It is the main road of the Jordan valley, which our government aims to annex to Israel one way or another.  [Continue reading Uri Avnery here…]

At the same, this encouraging message arrived from New Profile, an Israeli feminist organization that tries to counter the ‘everyday brutality’ which, as Uri Avery argues, is inevitable under any colonial regime:

Conscientious objector Noam Gur refuses to join the Israeli Army.

Noam Gur, 18 years old, from Kiryat Motzkin near Haifa, arrived on Monday morning, 16 April, at the army Induction Base in Tel Hashomer.  There she declared her refusal to serve in the Israeli Army.

In her refusal declaration Noam wrote:

“For years I have been told that control over the Palestinian people is supposed to protect me, but information about the suffering caused due to the terrorizing of the Palestinian population was omitted from that story.  The road to dismantling this apartheid and achieving true and just peace is long, and hard, but as I see it, actions taken by the Israeli army only push it further away.  Over this past decade, the Palestinian people have been increasingly choosing the path of nonviolent resistance, and I choose to join this path and to turn to a popular, nonviolent struggle in Palestine, rather than to serve in the Israeli army and continue the violence.”  [Military refuser, activist and journalist Haggai Matar interviews Noam Gur here.]

Noam was immediately sentenced to 10 days in military prison for her refusal.  Normal practise is to renew such sentences until the person agrees to join the army, or is released for a variety of reasons.

Ruth Hiller of New Profile adds:  “Please note that Noam is being held in solitary confinement.  She really needs your support now.  Since the prison authorities often block mail from reaching imprisoned objectors, you can send support letters to: messages2prison@newprofile.org, or to shministim@gmail.com.  We will make sure she gets them.”

Recommended Action

1)  Please circulate this message and information as widely as possible, through e-mail, websites, social networks, conventional media, and word of mouth.

2)  For those who live outside Israel, it would be very effective to send protests to your local Israeli embassy or consulate.  You can find their addresses here.

Here is a generic sample letter, which you can use in sending appeals to authorities on the prisoners’ behalf.  Please feel free to modify it, or write your own:

Dear Sir/Madam,

It has come to my attention that Noam Gur (military ID 6084062), a conscientious objector to military service, has been imprisoned for the second time for his refusal to become part of the Israeli army, and is held in Military Prison no. 6 near Atlit.

The imprisonment of conscientious objectors such as Gur is a violation of international law, of basic human rights and of plain morals.

I therefore call for the immediate and unconditional release from prison of Noam Gur, without threat of further imprisonment in the future, and urge you and the system you are heading to respect the dignity and person of conscientious objectors, indeed of all persons, in the future.

3)  Writing op-ed pieces and letters to editors in Israel and other countries could also be quite useful in indirectly but powerfully pressuring the military authorities to let go of the objectors and in bringing their plight and their cause to public attention.

[It does help.  As Haggai Matar explained to me in Our Way to Fight, international attention helped win his release after two years in prison for refusing military service.  Ruth Hiller also notes: “I am pleased to let you know that Iliya Fox was successful in his appeal, and he has been released from doing military service on the grounds of pacifism.”

Nonviolent resistance.  It’s worth the fight.]

Contact details for the main media outlets in Israel:

 Ma’ariv: 
2 Karlibach Street
Tel-Aviv 67132
Israel
Fax: +972-3-561-06-14
e-mail: editor@maariv.co.il <mailto:editor@maariv.co.il>

  Yedioth Aharonoth: 
2 Moses Street
Tel-Aviv
Israel
Fax: +972-3-608-25-46

 Ha’aretz (Hebrew): 
21 Schocken Street
Tel-Aviv, 61001
Israel
Fax: +972-3-681-00-12

  Ha’aretz (English edition): 
21 Schocken Street
Tel-Aviv, 61001
Israel
Fax: +972-3-512-11-56
e-mail: letters@haaretz.co.il <mailto:letters@haaretz.co.il>

    Israel Hayom: 
2 Hashlosha Street
The B1 Building
Tel-Aviv
Israel
e-mail: hayom@israelhayom.co.il <mailto:hayom@israelhayom.co.il>

Jerusalem Post: 
P.O. Box 81
Jerusalem 91000
Israel
Fax: +972-2-538-95-27
e-mail: news@jpost.co.il <mailto:news@jpost.co.il> or
letters@jpost.co.il <mailto:letters@jpost.co.il>