obama pwned on palestine: a play-by-play

Annoying thing about town hall meetings with the president: sometimes someone asks a real question. In this case, that someone was University of South Florida student activist Laila Abdelaziz, who had the great honor of delivering Obama one of the more embarrassing moments of his presidency.

You know (I sigh with a bit of nostalgia), there was a time when a presidential fumble like this wouldn't have even registered. But now that Americans have become used to a commander in chief who can, you know, conjugate verbs and stuff, it's almost painful to watch Obama tie himself in knots trying to defend US support for Israel. Nevertheless, he manages! And it ends up going something like this:

[rush transcript]

0:00: Young woman of color who says she campaigned for me? This can't possibly go wrong!
0:05: Human rights, sweet, I got this.
0:12: Oh crap.
0:27: $!#@%&, I didn't practice this one.
0:30: Stall by talking about "the Middle East in general." Cause they're all really the same over there, right?
0:35: Stall some more by talking about that dude's beads. Wow, I got 20 seconds out of that?! Win!
0:55: "The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries." Oh jeez, I sound like Bush. Well, at least I've made the point that any conflict in the Middle East is the result of age-old intractable religious strife, not colonialism or imperialism. Man, that part of the world's just fucked up.
1:17: ISRAEL IS ONE OF OUR STRONGEST ALLIES. I know that one! Whew, back on track.
1:27: Israel is a democracy!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:30: Israelis are like us, unlike those crazy Arabs surrounding them.
1:52: Did I mention they're surrounded by crazy Arabs?
2:03: The Palestinians deserve our attention, not because they're, you know, people, but because they're DANGEROUS to the US and to Israel, ONE OF OUR STRONGEST ALLIES.
2:23: Oh and btw Palestinians are uneducated.
2:29: Shit is really complicated over there, so don't expect anything to improve any time soon, and HEAVEN FORBID don't try to understand it yourself. But both sides are equally at fault. And by that I mean mostly the Palestinians.
2:42: [lay out peace plan that Israel has ensured will never come to pass]
3:00: Both sides must compromise. Palestinians: you first.
3:10: Palestinians must stop resisting occupation and ethnic cleansing. Israel must "acknowledge their grievances" (no actual action required).
3:50: [required to say something nice about Netanyahu here under terms of Netanyahu-Obama "I totally pwned you on that settlement thing" agreement]
4:03: Abbas, our unelected puppet in the West Bank, has to deal with Hamas, the people the Palestinians actually elected to lead them, and it's causing some kinks in the pipeline of the Palestinians completely negotiating away the last shreds of their dignity.
4:30: In conclusion, ISRAEL IS ONE OF OUR STRONGEST ALLIES. Next question, please.

book review: safe area gorazde by joe sacco

I don't think there is anyone else in the world who does quite what Joe Sacco does. Part graphic novelist, part investigative journalist, Sacco has traveled to some of the world's most broken and abandoned places and produced extraordinary volumes of war reportage in comic book form. Ari Folman, director of Waltz with Bashir, has listed Sacco as a major influence. As for his own influences, Sacco puts George Orwell at the top of the list, and it's not hard to see why. Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's incomparable book of participant journalism about the Spanish Civil War, is perhaps one of the few precedents for Sacco's work.

His two books from the Occupied Territories, Palestine and the newly released, devastating Footnotes in Gaza, are brilliant--rare, astute and compassionate looks at the tragic and absurd reality of daily life under Israeli occupation. So I feel almost sheepish admitting that Safe Area Gorazde, Sacco's comic about the Balkan War, has become my favorite of his full-length works.

Sacco took four trips to Gorazde, a majority Muslim town in eastern Bosnia, in the waning days of the Balkan War. Gorazde was an enclave: a UN-designated "safe area," although the epic irony of that phrase was not lost on anyone who visited there. Surrounded by hostile Serb forces for the better part of four years, Gorazde teetered more than once on the brink of the ethnic cleansing and genocide that eventually swamped all the other "safe areas" around it, including Srebrenica, where an estimated 8,000 people were slaughtered in the largest mass killing in Europe since WWII. And yet, miraculously, Gorazde survived--although the reasons had far more to do with luck than with any actual effort on the part of the so-called peacekeeping forces.

I'm not exactly sure what I find so compelling about Safe Area Gorazde. Perhaps it is Gorazde itself: the scrappy little industrial town on the Drina River whose name few western journalists could pronounce (go-RAJH-duh). Besieged, shell-scarred and starving, its population swollen with desperate refugees from areas already overrun by the Serb army (a constant reminder of the fate than many believed awaited Gorazde itself) and yet still, somehow, grimly and humbly clinging to life. This is certainly what drew Joe Sacco there and what kept him coming back. In fact, he dedicates his book to the town, "where I spent some of my happiest moments." After reading the book, one understands that this is not sarcasm.

Safe Area Gorazde also has the benefit of coming as close as any of Sacco's books do to having a single protagonist, although he emerges quietly. If there's a hero in Safe Area Gorazde, it's Edin, Sacco's tireless guide and translator. Grad student, conscripted math teacher and occasional soldier, Edin is as unassuming, war-weary and battered as his home town, and, it turns out, just as much a survivor.

We don't realize quite how much of the story we've been seeing through Edin's eyes until nearly the end of the book, when, suddenly, we find ourselves following him almost uninterrupted through twenty-six harrowing pages of the 1994 Serb offensive that nearly overran Gorazde. Turns out Edin participated (while nursing a head wound, no less) in the grim guerrilla defense of the city organized by a handful of soldiers and local residents. The front line, as it were, ran practically through his front yard. He sometimes fought alongside family members and neighbors; other times with strangers, refugees retreating from towns that had already fallen.

While we've known all along that Edin is a soldier, that he's been going back and forth to the front for most of the war, we're not quite prepared for the image of this seemingly mild-mannered school teacher crouching in bombed-out houses with his father and brother under withering tank and artillery fire, sniping at invading soldiers with a Kalashnikov while blood seeps through the bandages on his forehead. This guy--an engineering grad student who lives with his parents and complains about his students' poor test scores--doesn't seem like a likely resistance fighter. He could be anybody. He could be one of us. And yet Edin is revealed to be a reasonably competent strategist of urban guerrilla warfare and becomes sort of a leader, in his characteristically modest way, trying to keep the line organized and talking people out of retreating when he can. It is, after all, his home he's fighting for.

The pages describing the '94 offensive, circumscribed by a claustrophobic black border from beginning to end, are some of the most vivid and striking in the book. Sacco employs every trick of framing and perspective in his arsenal, often drawing Edin and his comrades from an over-the-shoulder angle, as if we're crouching there right along with them, in that gutted house, against that wall, flat on the ground behind that pile of bricks that seems ludicrously insufficient cover from an advancing tank.

(I couldn't help thinking, as I read these pages, if that tank had been an IDF tank and that guy with the Kalashnikov had been a Hamas fighter and that town had been Gaza and not Gorazde, how the perception might have changed. Would he have become a cowardly terrorist deliberately hiding himself among civilians, instead of just a guy defending his neighborhood against vastly better armed invaders?)

Edin's is a true story, of course; all he did was live through it. Sacco's genius is to present it to us with no preparation (even though the entire comic is told in flashback), letting it unfold matter-of-factly and without warning, as it did for the participants. We understand the terror on the faces of the men hiding in rubble, because we've heard the same horror stories of mass murder, mutilation and rape that they have, and because we've come to know Gorazde a bit, and we don't want to see it destroyed.

While the villains of Safe Area Gorazde are clearly the Serb nationalists--and not without reason--there are some other forces for whom Sacco reserves a hefty dose of bile. One is the "international community," particularly NATO and the US, who callously muttered about "neutrality" when besieged people needed food and civilians needed protection from genocide, then intervened only when there was something to be gained in the post-Cold War pissing contest.

During the '94 offensive, Edin remembers NATO planes constantly flying over Gorazde, taking surveillance pictures as he and his neighbors fought for their lives on the ground. How hard would it have been for the biggest, most advanced military in the world to take out the murderous artillery batteries in the hills above Gorazde? Certainly not very hard--half the world had seen the United States' precision-guided bomb porn broadcast on CNN during the Gulf War. But somehow, in those rare cases when bombing something could actually save lives (see: Auschwitz railroad tracks) the world's biggest military has a tendency to be mysteriously unavailable.

The other targets of Sacco's contempt are the "hack pack," the swarm of mainstream media journalists who breeze into Gorazde in the morning with the UN aid convoys to snap up a few sound bites and thirty-second clips, then pile back on the convoy trucks to be back in Sarajevo in time for dinner, and deadline. Sacco sees the type of oversimplified, context-free, ahistorical journalism that's become the norm in the rapid-fire twenty-four-hour news cycle, in which conflicts are neatly packaged to be consumed like the latest fashion trend, as exactly what he's rebelling against. He counters it with two weapons: a keen respect for history (he goes back to WWII to untangle the roots of this conflict) and a genuine sense of compassion for the people and places that become the subjects of his books. With these tools, he seeks to answer the most important question in the journalist's litany, the one most frequently ignored by sound-bite journalism: Why?

Joe Sacco has a great gift for revealing the sparks of kindness, humor, courage and solidarity that dwell in dark places, for finding the humanity amongst inhumanity that makes war-torn places simultaneously the best and worst places on Earth. Perhaps the best praise I can give his book is that after reading it, I kind of wanted to visit Gorazde. And when I found this photograph of the town from 2006, patched up and with all its lights back on, I recognized it instantly, and I smiled.

floodgates

It has been raining quite heavily here in LA, which it usually does around this time of year, but not usually with quite this intensity or duration. Despite the fact that it does rain really hard at least a couple of times every fall/winter, Los Angeles's desert-city infrastructure is woefully unprepared. After just a day of rain, the storm drain on the street behind my building, which I cross on my way to school, had completely backed up under a clot of pine needles and dead leaves, flooding the street with up to a foot of water.

Israel, it seems, has the same problem. But what an elegant solution they have found! When a dam in southern Israel came dangerously close to overflowing due to heavy rains, the Israelis simply opened the floodgates, sending a wave of water up to five meters deep pouring without warning across the central Gaza Strip into the Mediterranean Sea. People who live along the coast (and fishermen who depend on the sea for their livelihood) woke up to find the waves brown with silt. And hundreds of families in Johr al Dik and Nuseirat, already some of the poorest areas in Gaza, had to flee and watch helplessly as homes, possession and agricultural lands were swamped by rising floodwaters. Because clearly what Gaza needs is more homeless, dispossessed and economically ruined people.

The low-lying central part of Gaza used to be the main area of agricultural production, and the land that was flooded was once planted with fruit and olive trees, which, like all trees, would have slowed the flood waters and prevented soil erosion. But most of this agricultural land has been destroyed by Israel--trees uprooted, irrigation systems torn up by passing tanks, and farmers shot at when they try to replant.

The current debate in Gaza is whether the flood was a calculated move to further punish the population--reminding them, on the anniversary of the end of Operation Cast Lead, that they still live and die at the whim of the Israelis--or just a case of callous disregard for Palestinian life and property. Personally, my money's on the latter, but the former would certainly not surprise me.

Certainly the flood was intentional, in the sense that Israeli civil engineers must have known that when they opened the floodgates, the water would flow downhill into the Mediterranean, and that in between the dam and the Mediterranean was the Gaza Strip. I don't know which disturbs me more: the idea of someone consciously planning new and innovative ways to punish the Gazans, or the idea that any people who happened to live in the path of the water, because they are Palestinian, were seen as nothing more than so much dead leaves clogging Israel's storm drain.

gazans donate to haiti relief

Ma'an News reports: Gazans Raise Money for Haiti

Of course they do.

Because despite 60+ years of dispossession and 40+ years of occupation--or perhaps because of it--Palestinians remain some of the most generous people on the planet.

Because who knows rubble, destruction, despair, the stench of death, the pain of sudden loss, and the terror of being without food, shelter, clean water and medical care during an emergency better than them?

The idea of Gazans lining up to donate blankets and milk, in the middle of Gaza's cold, rainy winter, when many are still homeless from the war the year before, is inspiring and humbling. But as usual, there's a cruel twist, courtesy of the siege:

"The Red Cross director was only able to accept financial donations as transferring goods out of the Strip is near impossible."

resistance lessons

"The first thing you have to understand is how power works."

We are sitting on a sidewalk in Cairo outside the US embassy--seven women, surrounded by a tight ring of riot cops and closely watched by the ever-present mukhabarat, the Egyptian secret police. (Someone called them "refrigerators in suits," because that's how they're built, and that's how I'll think of them forevermore.)

We're in the middle of a week in which we 1,300 internationals, most of whom come from western "democracies," got a very mild taste of what it's like to organize in a police state--a real, permanent, and very well-developed one, not the collapsible police state that the US government like to trot out during big demonstrations.

We are sitting down because a few minutes ago, the refrigerators in suits started violently shoving us toward the entrance to the embassy grounds, where another group of about 30 people are also penned in by riot police. We decided we weren't going, so we linked arms and sat down, blocking the entrance. It was a brilliant use of nonviolent civil disobedience tactics, de-escalating the situation immediately, and now we are sitting in a circle, getting an impromptu lesson on resistance from Lisa Fithian, who's been at this game longer than I've been alive.

"The people who have power over us get to keep it because we let them--because we're afraid of what they'll do to us if we don't cooperate," Lisa says. "We start to get power back when we refuse to cooperate with them."

Three hours later, I know she is right. The sit-in has dispersed with no arrests and no serious injuries. And what's more, I feel great. Fantastic, actually. Best I've felt since landing in Egypt. The bitter disappointment at not getting into Gaza and the worry about what the Egyptian government might do to us are gone as if they never existed. And I'm not alone. Shae and Dara, my two travel companions, feel it too. Even Lisa is grinning. Everyone realizes now: this is what we have come here to do. We challenged the police, we refused to be intimidated, and we won.

What's more, we gained valuable intelligence about how these particular police behave. They're physically intimidating, and there are a lot of them, but they are not ready--yet--to beat us or arrest us. That means we have space to keep pushing and escalating our tactics.

From that moment on, I am fearless. Walking through downtown later that day, I realize I have learned how to cross the street. It may seem silly, but crossing the street is the biggest challenge many tourists face in Cairo. There are no traffic rules, and where there are crosswalks and signs cars generally ignore them. You have to learn to just step out into the street without fear, trusting that that cars will stop. And I am doing it like a native.

The sit-in has transformed everyone who participated in it, and our confidence is contagious. At the nonviolence training the next day, our affinity group, which contains three people who were in the sit-in and two people who were not, is one of the few that decides we are willing to risk arrest in the model scenario we are working with. When asked to arrange ourselves in the room based on the level of risk we are willing to assume at the protest the next day, we are right in the front. We're not trying to show off. We're just not afraid.

When Lisa asks for female volunteers to be at the front of the demonstration on the 31st, Shae, Dara and I all volunteer without hesitation. I'm ready to be on the front lines. I decide fearlessness is the most valuable thing I have to offer at the moment, especially since some people are clearly freaked out by Mick's pre-protest speech when he tells people in his thick Scottish accent that they should be prepared to be beaten and arrested. I personally don't think we're going to be arrested, although I'm willing to be if it comes to that, and I decide I'm not afraid of a little police brutality.

I've already written about the spectacular beginning of the demonstration here, so I won't repeat myself. But when we sit down in the street in Tahrir Square, I can tell there's going to be violence. I can feel it coming. The uniformed riot cops are reluctant to touch us, but the secret police, they've had it. They're used to being feared. They are not used to people defying them, and it annoys the hell out of them. They've decided now is the time to reassert their power-over, and they're going to make sure we get the message.

Soon there is grabbing, dragging, kicking, punching, hair-pulling, and it gets pretty hectic. I do my best to stay in the street as long as possible. Finally four guys pick me up and carry me out of the street. For some reason I find this kind of funny. It's just absurd, the fact that four refrigerators in suits are exerting themselves over a 5' 1" woman. I almost start laughing.

Turns out one of them grabbed me hard enough to leave a bruise on my arm a week later. What's that about? They could have gotten me out of the street without the bruise. But they want to remind you of their capacity for violence.

One of the goals of nonviolence training, Starhawk tells us, is to help people realize that they have power, and the ability to exert some control over a situation, even when all the force is on the other side. If people realize that they are in control of their actions, they can avoid panic and remain empowered even in situations where violence is being used against them. (Personally, I believe this is true even in situations of extreme violence, like torture, although it is certainly much harder to remember this when the violence is that intense.)

I'd love to say I was scared and faced off with the cops anyway, but I can't claim any such bravery. In truth I wasn't scared at all, because I felt in control of my actions the whole time, and I never felt the consequences got beyond what I had prepared myself to accept. Behold, nonviolence training works!

Without fear in the mix, something interesting happens. You kind of see through the game. The whole thing becomes transparent and almost comical, because the cops are so aggressive, and they clearly think they're intimidating you. And the fact that you're not scared of them becomes kind of like a private joke or a secret weapon--aha, I know you're trying to frighten me by using violence, but it's not working, which means I win. I WIN. Joke's on you, asshole. You may have the monopoly of force, but it turns out it ain't worth shit.

The point of relating all this is not to make myself look badass. It's to make a point about resistance.

Toward the end of last semester, working on the rewrite of Gaza Sunrise, I started getting really frustrated, because I couldn't seem to effectively communicate why people would engage in resistance when the price of doing so was very high. Now I understand the piece of information I was missing. It's not just that there isn't any other way to win, because power concedes nothing without a demand, etc., etc. It's that sometimes resistance is the only way to claim any power in an oppressive situation.

It should be stated that the situation we were in in Cairo was a very, VERY low-stakes environment compared to what Palestinians face and what Egyptian citizens face from their own government when they protest. At the end of the day, it can be a fun war story and not a genuinely terrifying experience for us because, as internationals, the consequences for us are still relatively mild. There is a scale of political repression, and--let's be honest--we are still operating at the low end here. None of us were going to be imprisoned, tortured or killed for our actions. Obviously, as you go up the scale of increasing consequences, it becomes a lot harder to get to that state of fearlessness. At some level it may become impossible, and that's when real courage--of the scared-shitless-but-doing-it-anyway variety--is required. But I think the same fundamental dynamics of power and resistance apply.

There is something amazing, deeply subversive and delightful about realizing you have power in a situation where the other side would like you to believe you have none. I'm starting to understand that that is true even in the most extreme conditions of repression. As Lisa said while we sat on the sidewalk outside the US embassy: "If you know what the consequences are and you're willing to accept them, there is nothing anyone can do to stop you."

haiti/palestine

Leave it to Mondoweiss to have the best thing to say about Haiti, and so simply and succinctly, too.

On October 17, 1989, an earthquake registering 7.1 on the Richter scale hit the San Francisco Bay area. 62 people died. The earthquake that hit Port-au-Prince, Haiti, yesterday was the same intensity, 7.1. But the death toll is already estimated in the thousands [at least].

And as a bonus, it led me to this interview with Haitian photojournalist Daniel Morel, who has great things to say about so many things I'm interested in.

some good news: mohammad othman and jamal juma' are free!

There has not been a lot of good news on the Palestine front as of late.

After Viva Palestina 3 successfully defied an epic obstacle course of bureaucratic intransigence, broken promises, and serious police violence to reach Gaza, Egypt deported convoy leader George Galloway and announced that all further aid convoys would be banned from its territory.

So far, all of the Gaza Freedom March participants who have tried to reach Gaza independently have been turned back...except perhaps for one Indian man who had a letter of support from his embassy, something no American or Canadian can expect to get.

And, inconceivably cruel as it may seem, terrifying rumors of another war on Gaza continue to circulate.

So it is with great joy that I report a victory for our movement: Mohammad Othman and Jamal Juma', two prominent nonviolent activists with the Stop the Wall coalition in the West Bank, have both been released from Israeli prison.

Mohammad was arrested on September 22 and Jamal on December 16. Both were held without charges or trial, solely because of their participation in nonviolent resistance activities.

Another prominent nonviolent West Bank activist, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, is still imprisoned...along with up to 11,000 other Palestinians who are not famous, many of whom have never been charged with any crime. And the coordinated crackdown on the nonviolent resistance movement continues--one of the latest victims is Czech citizen Eva Novakova, the ISM media coordinator in the West Bank, who was arrested "Palestinian style" in a 3am night raid on her home in Ramallah and deported to Prague.

But there is no mistake that the release of these two activists is a victory extracted by the significant international solidarity campaigns that have been built around their cases. "The massive support and actions of international civil society clearly made my imprisonment too uncomfortable for the Israeli authorities," said Jamal Juma' upon his release. "This international solidarity has given our popular struggle against the Wall further strength. We are deeply thankful for all the efforts."

solidarity with haiti

A bit off topic from the destroyed places I'm usually concerned with, but as I'm sure everyone knows, the worst earthquake in 240 years struck the impoverished nation of Haiti on Tuesday.

While the 7.0 earthquake is certainly a natural disaster, there is nothing natural in the slightest about Haiti's poverty. Haiti can claim the title of the first independent nation in Latin America, the first post-colonial free Black nation, and the only modern nation to have gained independence through a successful slave rebellion.

And for that it has paid a steep price--literally. First to the French, the former slave masters, to whom Haitians were required to pay reparations in exchange for their independence...until 1947. (Um...isn't it supposed to work the other way around?) Then to the United States, through savage neoliberal policies enforced by the IMF and World Bank, which trapped Haiti in an inescapable spiral of out-of-control debt and destroyed the indigenous economy, as they have in so many developing nations. And don't get me started on the US's role in the 2004 coup d'etat.

So, once again, a natural disaster is made worse by the malignant neglect and often intentional de-development forced on poor nations by rich ones. So you can understand the skepticism with which many Haitians, and many of us here in the US, might view Barack Obama's claim of "unwavering support" for Haiti...which will supposedly be administered through four institutions no Haitian in their right mind would trust: the US State Department, Defense Department, USAID, and the UN "peacekeeping force" already in Haiti.

Those who want to help are encouraged to donate directly to independent, grassroots relief organizations that are trusted and respected in Haiti. Many of these groups already had people on the ground before the quake struck and have started to set up relief efforts, but are badly in need of funds. Three organizations that have been recommended by sources I trust are:

1. Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. Well-regarded by many activists and progressive Haiti experts in the US. Many links with independent, democratic grassroots forces on the ground in Haiti.

2. Partners in Health. Direct relief and community development organization founded by Dr. Paul Farmer. "At its root, our mission is both medical and moral. It is based on solidarity, rather than charity alone," begins this organization's "Vision" statement.

3. Doctors Without Borders. Their team on the ground in Haiti had emergency medical facilities set up while the American Red Cross was still writing its press release.

beautiful cairo

When I first visited Cairo last May, on my way into Gaza, I hated it. Hot, crowded, noisy, dirty, full of insane traffic, it is not a city that necessarily welcomes the foreign visitor on first arrival. (In fact, the cab ride from the Cairo airport to downtown was way scarier than anything I encountered in war-torn Gaza.)

But after spending a week there this time around, I started to really like Cairo. On one of the last days of our trip, we went out and did some touristy things, wandering through Islamic Cairo and up to the ancient Citadel, from which you can see all the way across the city to the pyramids on the other side, and whose walls enclose, among other things, the magnificent Mohammed 'Ali mosque.

These pictures from that excursion are, I think, some my favorite pictures I've ever taken. I'm amazed by the quality of light my non-professional digital camera was able to capture. If I had to do that Guardian "My Best Shot" thing right now, I think I'd pick the first one of these pictures. It looks like postcard.

new year's resolution

I didn't really put much thought into any this year, but now I have one.

Make an effort to make it out to as much Palestine-related political stuff in LA as I can, even though much of it's on the west side, an hour-plus trip in each direction by public transportation.

This is really a resolution born out of desperation, because, inconceivable as it may seem, it feels like another "war" may be coming to Gaza, and if I don't feel like I'm doing something I will seriously lose it. Besides, I tell myself that if Palestinians can queue up at checkpoints at 3am every day for work, I can take a bus.

I'm starting with this. I'm one of the speakers, so I have no excuse not to be there :-).

CODEPINK LA Gaza Freedom March Reportback
Thursday, January 14, 6-8pm
Venice United Methodist Church
1020 Victoria Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90291

the cairo declaration

By far the most significant thing to come out of the week-long convergence of the Gaza Freedom March is the Cairo Declaration. Initiated by the South African delegation, it provides a unifying framework for continued, internationally coordinated action against Israeli apartheid (their choice of words.)

I think this document is enormously important, and if used correctly could be a turning point for the global Palestine solidarity movement. For now I'll let it speak for itself, except to add that you can add your endorsement (individual or organizational) here.

End Israeli Apartheid
Cairo Declaration
January 1, 2010

We, international delegates meeting in Cairo during the Gaza Freedom March 2009 in collective response to an initiative from the South African delegation, state:

In view of:

• Israel’s ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the illegal occupation and siege of Gaza;
• the illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and settlements;
• the new Wall under construction by Egypt and the US which will tighten even further the siege of Gaza;
• the contempt for Palestinian democracy shown by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and others after the Palestinian elections of 2006;
• the war crimes committed by Israel during the invasion of Gaza one year ago;
• the continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within Israel;
• and the continuing exile of millions of Palestinian refugees;
• all of which oppressive acts are based ultimately on the Zionist ideology which underpins Israel;
• in the knowledge that our own governments have given Israel direct economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allowed it to behave with impunity;
• and mindful of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (2007)

We reaffirm our commitment to:

• Palestinian Self-Determination
• Ending the Occupation
• Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine
• The full Right of Return for Palestinian refugees

We therefore reaffirm our commitment to the United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to compel Israel to comply with international law.

To that end, we call for and wish to help initiate a global mass, democratic anti-apartheid movement to work in full consultation with Palestinian civil society to implement the Palestinian call for BDS.

Mindful of the many strong similarities between apartheid Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, we propose:

1. An international speaking tour in the first 6 months of 2010 by Palestinian and South African trade unionists and civil society activists, to be joined by trade unionists and activists committed to this programme within the countries toured, to take mass education on BDS directly to the trade union membership and wider public internationally;
2. Participation in the Israeli Apartheid Week in March 2010;
3. A systematic unified approach to the boycott of Israeli products, involving consumers, workers and their unions in the retail, warehousing, and transportation sectors;
4. Developing the Academic, Cultural and Sports boycott;
5. Campaigns to encourage divestment of trade union and other pension funds from companies directly implicated in the Occupation and/or the Israeli military industries;
6. Legal actions targeting the external recruitment of soldiers to serve in the Israeli military, and the prosecution of Israeli government war criminals; coordination of Citizen’s Arrest Bureaux to identify, campaign and seek to prosecute Israeli war criminals; support for the Goldstone Report and the implementation of its recommendations;
7. Campaigns against charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

We appeal to organisations and individuals committed to this declaration to sign it and work with us to make it a reality.

new year's at the israeli embassy

This is the first of what I think will be several posts of reports and analysis of the remainder of our actions on the Gaza Freedom March, which I would have loved to have written more promptly, but was too busy and/or tired to do so.

On New Year's Day we staged one final large group protest at the Israeli embassy. This was a location we had not yet targeted during the five days of protest that the Gaza Freedom March morphed into. Many people thought we should have gone there on the first day, but as it played out, we ended up there on the first day of 2010, pledging our commitment to a new year of resistance.

I feel a bit ashamed to admit I almost didn't go. It was our fifth day of protest (after two days of flying for most of us from the US) and I was exhausted. Between waking up early to sneak out of our hotel before we were barricaded in by riot police, staging mass civil disobedience and resisting the cops in downtown Cairo, and then staying up until 3:30 in the morning to report it all, my adrenaline reserves were completely spent. It sounded like it might be a high-risk action and I didn't think I had another one in me.

As it turned out, for whatever reason, the cops were chill--maybe because we'd publicly announced that we would only be there for two hours and were planning to stay on the sidewalk. For whatever reason, they were back to their earlier strategy of just containing us, and the action ended up being comparatively low-key, although very important.

The Israeli embassy in Cairo is in a nondescript residential high-rise apartment building overlooking a busy bridge over the Nile. For years it was referred to as "the secret embassy" and not even marked by a flag. (They have a flag now, because they ultimately can't resist putting flags on shit.)

We were a bit late in arriving due to some adventures with the Cairo metro, which is fast, clean, and very cheap but unfortunately did not let us out anywhere near where we needed to be. So we missed the initial flash-mob convergence, but apparently it worked great, again, and the cops didn't arrive in force for 20 minutes. By the time we got there several hundred people (I've heard estimates between 250 and 400) were holding a very long stretch of sidewalk right on the on-ramp of the bridge directly across the street from the embassy. As on previous days, hanging places for flags and banners were found in conveniently located trees, fences and lamp posts. There was spirited chanting led by a great contingent of the French, and as it was Friday, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb led a Shabbat service for the Jews among our group, of which there are many.

But the highlight of the demonstration by far was seeing people who lived in the apartments on the floors below the embassy come out on their balconies to watch, to wave, and in one case to give us an enthusiastic victory sign (as did one speedy taxi driver who tooted his horn in rhythm with our chants as he zipped over the bridge.) I have some good picture of the demo, but they're currently trapped on my other computer which doesn't seem to want to recognize the modem in my apartment. I'll upload them once I schlep over to campus where there's wireless.

I'm really thankful that Mateo, one of our new friends who was staying at the same hotel as us, was there to convince me and my two protest buddies that it was important to go, even when we were all running on empty. "It feels good not to give up, even when you're tired," he said when we were at the demonstration. And it did.

This protest in particular has apparently had a significant impact in Egypt. "First ever protest at the Israeli embassy" announced the headline of a major Egyptian newspaper, and folks who are still in Egypt are reporting that the impact of our protests is still being felt. There are activists in Egypt, who organize at great personal risk and under far, far more dangerous conditions than most of us have ever faced. There is nothing we need to teach them about organizing--and indeed, much we have to learn from them--but if anything we did in any way helped them, by creating political space or simply some minimal protection due to the presence of internationals, then that is worth the whole trip to me. It wasn't what we set out to do, but in the end I think it may end up being even more important that what we could have done in a few days in Gaza.

"no army, no prison and no wall can stop us"

Letter from Abdallah Abu Rahmah, high school teacher, nonviolent activist, and coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements in the village of Bil'in, in the West Bank. Abu Rahmah is currently in Israeli prison after being arrested in a 2am night raid last month.

January 1, 2010

To all our friends,

I mark the beginning of the new decade imprisoned in a military detention camp. Nevertheless, from within the occupation′s holding cell I meet the New Year with determination and hope.

I know that Israel’s military campaign to imprison the leadership of the Palestinian popular struggle shows that our non-violent struggle is effective. The occupation is threatened by our growing movement and is therefore trying to shut us down. What Israel′s leaders do not understand is that popular struggle cannot be stopped by our imprisonment.

Whether we are confined in the open-air prison that Gaza has been transformed into, in military prisons in the West Bank, or in our own villages surrounded by the Apartheid Wall, arrests and persecution do not weaken us. They only strengthen our commitment to turning 2010 into a year of liberation through unarmed grassroots resistance to the Occupation.

The price I and many others pay in freedom does not deter us. I wish that my two young daughters and baby son would not have to pay this price together with me. But for my son and daughters, for their future, we must continue our struggle for freedom.

This year, the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee will expand on the achievements of 2009, a year in which you amplified our popular demonstrations in Palestine with international boycott campaigns and international legal actions under universal jurisdiction.

In my village, Bil’in, Israeli tycoon, Lev Leviev and Africa-Israel, the corporation he controls, are implicated in illegal construction of settlements on our stolen land, as well as the lands of many other Palestinian villages and cities. Adalah-NY is leading an international campaign to show Leviev that war crimes have their price.

Our village has sued two Canadian companies for their role in the construction and marketing of new settlement units on village land cut off by Israel’s Apartheid Wall. The legal proceedings in this precedent-setting case began in the Canadian courts last summer and are ongoing.

Bil’in has become the graveyard of Israeli real estate empires. One after another, these companies are approaching bankruptcy as the costs of building on stolen Palestinian land are driven higher than the profits.

Unlike Israel, we have no nuclear weapons or army, but we do not need them. The justness of our cause earns us your support. No army, no prison and no wall can stop us.

Yours,

Abdallah Abu Rahmah
From the Ofer Military Detention Camp

You can send Abdallah Abu Rahmah a letter of support here.

video of gaza freedom march in tahrir square

2 minutes of police brutality + 1 minute of our awesomeness afterward.

I was sitting in the street pretty much directly in front of this cameraperson. You can see my head pop into the frame briefly around 1:20.

viva palestina 3 finally makes it to gaza!

From the Reading (UK) Palestine Solidarity Campaign website. No additional commentary needed.

Reading PSC Salutes Viva Palestina Convoy

Reading PSC salutes the Viva Palestina ‘Return to Gaza’ convoy partnered with the PSC who have finally broken the blockade of Gaza with their entrance into the Gaza Strip.

After 31 days of an inspiring journey, followed by more than 250,000 people on this website from around the world the goal has been achieved. This, despite a journey which at times seemed to be frustrated at its every turn.

We would like to thank the following:

• The many thousands of you who have followed and willed this inspiring convoy to succeed.
• The organisers of the convoy for their persistence and determination to force it through.
• The heroic crews of the vehicles for their grit and resolve to achieve their goal.
• We would like to thank the peoples of the many countries they have travelled through who have provided unstinting support, both moral and material.
• We would like to thank the Governments of those countries that facilitated this convoy, especially the Turkish Government and its peoples for its help at so many levels.
• We also thank those unknown and unseen from many countries around the world who have ensured diplomatic pressure to ensure the success of this convoy.
• Most of all we salute the heroic people of Gaza who have endured beyond what most of us can only imagine, whilst the political elites of the world turned their back on them.

video of viva palestina convoy being attacked in el arish

VIVA PALESTINA CONVOY ATTACKED IN EL ARISH

The Viva Palestina convoy, after finally making it en mass to El Arish, 25 miles from Gaza, was attacked by up to 2,000 Egyptian riot police with tear gas and water cannons just a few minutes ago. The full-scale riot has apparently died down for now, but the situation is very tense. Perhaps because El Arish is more isolated than downtown Cairo, or because VP has so far refused to give in to any of the Egyptian government's attempts to stop them, they faced a police attack that makes what we experienced in Cairo look like a slap on the wrist.

Please contact the Egyptian government to express your disapproval with this unprovoked police attack and attend any protests in your area. Good live updates can be found here and here, or follow viva_palestina on Twitter (or search for the #vivapalestina tag.)

back in the states

After 24 hours of travel I am back safely in the US. Look for more updates, including a report on our January 1 protest at the Israeli embassy in Cairo, in the coming days, as well as some personal reflections on the experience of the Gaza Freedom March. In the meantime, check out my article summing up the week's events on SocialistWorker.org.

And if you haven't yet, please read the full text of the Cairo declaration, a fantastic statement and framework for future action that came out of the Gaza Freedom March convergence. To endorse, either individually or as an organization, email cairodec@gmail.com.