In the early hours of March 19, Israeli soldiers took Mustafa Sheta from his home. Sheta’s arrest came a few days before the Freedom Theatre’s annual General Assembly in Jenin.
This is the latest in a long series of assaults by the Israeli occupation forces on personnel of the Freedom Theatre, a vibrant cultural centre in the Jenin refugee camp.
Thirty-five, father of three children, Mustafa Sheta is secretary of the Theatre’s board. He is also a researcher and journalist, with a well-known commitment to social and humanitarian activism. He works with the United Nations, and is currently studying for a Masters degree. Recently he won an honours award and plans to pursue further studies in London, England later this spring.
“Since Mustafa joined the board last year he has been a tremendous resource for the theatre”, says Jonatan Stanczak, managing director of The Freedom Theatre. “His dedication, involvement and communication skills have meant a lot to us. We are doing all we can to follow his case. Until recently there was no information at all available but we just learned that there will be a court hearing in a few days.”
“It’s not a big claim to fame but I have been saying for years that Israeli society is crazy. I escaped from Israel largely because of that…
“Phil Weiss’s analysis is correct except for one point, and that is that those sentiments he describes have always been there. It’s not like it’s something new that just sprang up recently. I have grown up with this all around me. I recognise the language. I was brought up (I was born in 1964) to believe that the ‘Arabs’ (the word ‘Palestinian’ was largely not used in my childhood) could not be trusted, that ‘they’ are not like ‘us’, that they are treacherous and would stab me in the back if I relaxed and trusted them. We were always kept apart from the Palestinian citizens of Israel, let alone the Palestinians living in the West Bank or in Gaza.
Gaza in fact was a symbol of a cursed, hellish place. When someone annoyed you, you said to them Lech le’Aza, ‘Go to Gaza’, the equivalent of ‘go to hell’. That was part of normal day-to-day Hebrew in my youth. Like I mentioned in the past, the first time I met a Palestinian as an equal human being was in Australia, in my early thirties…
“Without knowing it, I grew up with classic colonial rhetoric. Colonisers motivated by fear and possibly guilt, have always demonised the people they have hurt. For some people it is easier to inflict suffering if they don’t see the other as a fellow human being. Dehumanisation helps to reduce empathy and shut down the conscience. It is being done everywhere where there is injustice and abuse.
“The difference now is that that these largely informal but widespread social attitudes to the colonised have now found themselves back in power. Drunk with their newfound freedom, coming out of the shadows with no need to hide themselves any longer, free from the tyranny of worrying about ‘world public opinion’, they are out celebrating and feasting, politicians outdoing one another acting out and giving life to their most depraved, murderous fantasies. And they are out-of-control. Continue reading →
As the Israeli attack on Gaza and the suffocating military occupation of the West Bank grind on, and resistance continues on both sides of the apartheid wall, Canadian publisher Between the Lines is featuring Witness, a chapter from Our Way to Fight: peace-work under siege in Israel-Palestine, on the front page of their website.
These war crimes could not continue without enablers, accomplices.
On July 23 the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) met in special session to consider the matter of war crimes, and decided “… to urgently dispatch an independent, international commission of inquiry, to be appointed by the President of the Human Rights Council, to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, in the context of the military operations conducted since 13 June 2014, whether before, during or after….”
The 47-member council voted 29-1 in favor of the resolution. 17 members (11 of them European) abstained. Only one country voted to oppose the commission of inquiry: the United States. (Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are members of the council.) Despite the US, the commission of inquiry will proceed.
This is the latest in a long series of assaults by the Israeli occupation forces on personnel of the Freedom Theatre, a vibrant cultural centre in the Jenin refugee camp.
Michael Riordon 