Boek over Gaza: Inge Neefs

Op donderdag 20 maart om 20u wordt het boek “Gaza op mijn hoofd” voorgesteld in CC Oratoriënhof, Mechelsestraat 111 te Leuven.

Er zullen fragmenten uit het boek worden voorgelezen, door twee bijzonder fijne mensen, en dichter des Vaderlands Charles Ducal zal ook present zijn. Hij zal schrijfster Inge Neefs interviewen en dat interview zal hij inleiden aan de hand van één van zijn gedichten over Palestina.

Organisatie: LAP – Leuvense Actiegroep Palestina in samenwerking met CC Oratoriënhof, EPO vzw, Intal Leuven, Masereelfonds, Noord-Zuidstudenten Leuven, Oxfam-Wereldwinkels regio Leuven, Palestina Solidariteit en Vrouwen in ‘t Zwart.

Gratis toegang. Hou u eveneens niet in om de uitnodiging verder te verspreiden!

Info: leuvenseactiegroeppalestina@gmail.com – http://www.leuvenseactiegroeppalestina.be

Latest News Palestine: continuous rise of Israeli repression

Very savage arrests in Nilin village, one Palestinian shot and arrested by Israeli occupation soldiers

January 25th, 2014 

At 8 am on the morning of January 21st the entrance to the village of Ni’lin was blocked off. A special car carrying armed Israeli special forces dressed up as Palestinians entered the village and they proceeded to surround the house of Murad Srour, 32 years old. The soldiers entered the house by force and the married 32 year-old tried to fend off the intruders as he did not understand who they were. He fled the house as the soldiers opened fire but was shot in the stomach with a live bullet. Trained dogs where set after Murad and bit down on his hands and feet.

Around 30 military jeeps entered the village and cleared the streets by firing live ammunition towards the civilians. As the people of Ni’lin struggled to save the life of Murad Srour by bringing him medical attention the soldiers kept them away by firing live bullets and tear gas at the people and the houses. Murad was denied medical attention and was instead arrested and taken away to an unknown location.

In this video you can see the soldiers arresting the injured Murad. The one taking these pictures were fired directly upon with live ammunition.

There has been a continuous rise is Israeli repression against the people in Ni’lin. Beside the night raids, three villagers were arrested this Thursday as they were farming their land. Two weeks ago Israeli soldiers set up sniper towers to use against peaceful protestors during Friday demonstrations. Villager Khamis Amireh was shot in his foot with a live bullet during a demonstration last week.

Friday the 24th the people of Ni’lin protested brutality of the Israeli occupation. The village hopes for the support of the PA and the rest of the world in speaking out against the everyday brutality of the Israeli occupation.

http://www.nilin-village.org/2014/01/25/very-savage-arrests-in-nilin-village-one-palestinian-shot-and-arrested-by-israeli-occupation-soldiers/

http://youtu.be/imiAPWSzp8Q

Since 2001, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs and leader of Israel’s far right party, Avigdor Lieberman, proposes to establish four townships in the occupied West Bank, hermetically sealed, which would be grouped the Palestinians. He sees it as a solution for the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are more than one million, to move the vast majority of the group in tightly closed, self-administered areas.
Thus would arise a State ethnically homogeneous from the Mediterranean Sea until the Jordan, sheltering in its midst Palestinian “Bantustans”.

Noam Chomsky, Jewish Voice for Peace: Donate NOW !

Join Noam Chomsky: become a donor to Jewish Voice for Peace

Dear Sir,

One of JVP’s strengths is our incredible Advisory Board – which includes activists, artists, and writers like Naomi Klein, Tony Kushner, and Michael Ratner. Legendary author and activist Noam Chomsky is also a founding member of our Advisory Board –  and he wrote this note to explain why he thinks so highly of JVP, and to ask you to join him by making a tax-deductible year-end donation. Right now, it will be matched dollar-for-dollar by a group of our most committed donors.

I was raised in Philadelphia in a world of Jewish immigrants, immersed in Hebrew culture—and through my extended family—introduced to radical working class politics.

In the 1940s, I supported equal rights for Jews and Arabs, a view that today would be considered practically treasonous. Then again, a lot of my views on war, empire, capitalism and so forth have been viewed as treasonous. At least they were at first.

These days, there are really only a handful of Jewish organizations that honor the traditions of universal equality that inspired me to be an activist so many years ago.

Jewish Voice for Peace is one of them, and I hope you’ll join me and become a JVP donor with a $36 tax-deductible contribution – especially now when every dollar you give through midnight, December 31 will be matched.

I know first-hand how rough it can be to speak out about the terrible consequences of unconditional U.S. support for Israeli policies.

Policies that violate international law, and the human rights of Palestinians and also Israelis, like the Bedouin.

The truth is, none of us can do this work alone. To shift the balance of power, we have to build a grassroots movement that can challenge the status quo.

And this is why I support Jewish Voice for Peace—because they’re doing just that.

JVP is fearless – they regularly go toe-to-toe with organizations with 10 and 50 times their budget.

They’re principled – their commitment to international law and justice is unwavering.

They’re smart – they have built a large grassroots base, are strategic in their campaigns, and know how to leverage limited resources to make big impacts.

Groups like Jewish Voice for Peace don’t get big donations from foundations or billionaire donors. They exist because thousands of people just like you and me chip in what we can.

So please join me. Make a gift now. The impact will be doubled if you give before midnight, December 31st.

Becoming a JVP donor is something tangible you can do, today, to change the world.

Please click here to chip in a $36 or even $50 tax-deductible gift today.

Sincerely,

 

Noam Chomsky
JVP Advisory Board member

Contact Info:
Jewish Voice for Peace
1611 Telegraph Ave, Suite 550
Oakland, CA 94612
510.465.1777
info@jewishvoiceforpeace.org

Donate NOW:
https://org.salsalabs.com/o/301/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page_KEY=140&track=YEA13ProspectsNoam

End the Israeli Occupation

Dear Sir,

I was honored when my dear friend and inspiring colleague Anna Baltzer asked me to write a few words on what the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation means to us in the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee (BNC). As the largest coalition of U.S. organizations working for the comprehensive, UN-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people and towards ending U.S. complicity in Israel’s regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid which denies those rights, the US Campaign is simply the BNC’s most important strategic ally and partner in the U.S.

The widely recognized growth of the BDS movement and its impact across the U.S. today can be largely credited to US Campaign-affiliated organizations and groups. The US Campaign and its affiliates are home to many of the brightest, most principled and sophisticated human rights activists promoting Palestinian freedom, justice and equality in everyday U.S. towns and cities, churches and interfaith groups, in academic associations, on campuses, among cultural workers and far beyond.

In a few days, as we receive the New Year, many of us will look back at 2013 and remember the horrors of Israel’s ongoing siege of Gaza; loved ones who were victimized by Israel’s relentless belligerence and criminal actions; homes that were demolished; and whole Palestinian communities who were ethnically cleansed and others who are waiting for the all-too-familiar yet still chilling guillotine to fall.

But many of us in the BDS movement will also remember 2013 as the year when Stephen Hawking decided to respect our boycott picket line and boycott a conference in Israel and the Asian-American Studies Association, the American Studies Association, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and the Association for Humanist Sociology joined the academic boycott of Israel; when SodaStream felt the heat of boycotts and protests worldwide, including by the first U.S. interfaith boycott coalition; when the French company and occupation profiteer Veolia was compelled to both terminate its settlement bus lines services on West Bank apartheid roads and to withdraw from a major project in the U.S. under pressure from a broad coalition of groups in St. Louis, and retirement giant TIAA-CREF divested its own Social Choice Fund from Veolia; and when Students for Justice in Palestine across the U.S. succeeded in passing student council resolutions supporting divestment from companies involved in Israel’s occupation and violations of human rights.

In so many of these bright instances, the US Campaign helped provide critical leadership and/or supported its affiliates holding the torch. But the US Campaign cannot continue its work without the support of people like you.

Read more at: http://www.endtheoccupation.org/

US CAMPAIGN TO END THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION | PO BOX 21539 | WASHINGTON, DC 20009
202-332-0994 | USCAMPAIGN@ENDTHEOCCUPATION.ORG | WWW.ENDTHEOCCUPATION.ORG

Israeli ‘Peace Talks’: Aggression continues in Ni’lin

27.11.2013

Israeli mid-night invasions and aggression continues in Ni’lin; four guys arrested.

+++

For a while the village of Ni’lin almost believed that the nightly raids had stopped. Last week there was only one invasion. But now it seems like the Israeli occupation is planning to try to break the resistance in Ni’lin by New Year’s Eve.

Wednesday morning at 02:30 am the village was invaded by 20 jeeps and four people were arrested.

Ibrahim Kawaja, 22, Waleed Srour, 22 and Mohammed Khawaja, 25, and Mohammed Ratib, 25, who is also the brother of Arafat Nafi who was killed during a peaceful demonstration in 2008.

Three other young men were sought by the soldiers but not found. The soldiers left interrogation papers demanding that the men surrender themselves to Ofer military prison.

http://www.nilin-village.org/2013/11/27/israeli-mid-night-invasions-and-aggression-continues-in-nilin-four-guys-arrested-27-11-2013/

No censorship

We had some problems with our blog http://brusselbruxellesbrussels.skynetblogs.be/

The problems appear provisionally resolved.

Nobody will censor us.

===

The Pentagon Papers

The massive military study titled United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, later known as the Pentagon Papers, was supposed to be classified. But when excerpts of the document were leaked to the New York Times in 1971, which published them, all hell broke loose–with President Richard Nixon threatening to have journalists indicted for treason, and federal prosecutors attempting to block further publication. (They had reason to do so; the documents revealed that U.S. leaders had–among other things–specifically taken measures to prolong and escalate the unpopular war.)

In June 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Times could legally publish the Papers.

 

Photo: Daniel Ellsberg, outside a federal courthouse in 1971, faced 12 felony counts as a result of his leak of the Pentagon Papers; the charges were dismissed in 1973.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/us/08pentagon.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Middle East ‘Peace Talks’

Avigdor Lieberman, the ultranationalist Israeli politician, holds the future course of politics in the Middle East in his holds…

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He was born in 1958 in Moldovia, one of the poorest and most obscure of the old Soviet republics. On leaving school, Mr Lieberman worked as a nightclub bouncer and a radio broadcaster in Baku. 

In 1978, he was lucky enough to leave the former Soviet Union and emigrate to Israel, where he served in the IDF, and then studied for a B.A. in International Relations and Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Lieberman was among  the founders of the Zionist Forum for Soviet Jewry, and a member of the Board of the Jerusalem Economic Corporation and the Secretary of the Jerusalem branch of the Histadrut Ovdim Le’umit. He joined the Likud party and served as Director-General of the Likud Movement from 1993-1996. Lieberman was then Director-General of the Prime Minister Mr Netanyahu’s Office (1996-1997). Lieberman also served as the editor of the Yoman Yisraeli newspaper. For a time, Lieberman was a member of the National Union Party (Ichud Leumi) party.

But the arrival of one million Russian-speaking immigrants after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 created an immense opportunity for Mr Lieberman. This huge constituency was waiting for a party to represent their interests and, spotting his chance, he left Likud to found Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) in 1999. Yisrael Beytenu advocates “the complete cutting of ties with Gaza and its separation from the West Bank”.

Avigdor Lieberman was elected to the Knesset in 1999, he served as a member of the Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee and State Control Committees, and as Chairman of the Israel-Moldova Parliamentary Friendship League.

In March 2001, Avigdor Lieberman was appointed Minister of National Infrastructures in the government of  Ariel Sharon. He resigned his post in March 2002.

He served as Minister of Transportation from February 2003 until June 2004.

In the government of Ehud Olmert, Avigdor Lieberman served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs from October 2006 until his resignation on January 16, 2008, where he was supposed to focus on the threat posed by Iranian nuclear weapons.

Lieberman’s party forced him to leave the government when Olmert began peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.

Lieberman rose to international prominence because of outspoken and often offensive and aggressive statements about Arabs and Palestinians. For example, in March of 2002, during the second Intifadah, Lieberman said “”if it were up to me I would notify the Palestinian Authority that tomorrow at ten in the morning we would bomb all their places of business in Ramallah, for example.” This caused some outrage, but at the end of March, Israel launched ‘Operation Defensive Shield’.

Lieberman advanced a peace plan under which Arab areas of Israel including Umm El Fahm would become part of a Palestinian state. Though many Israeli Arabs identify themselves as “Palestinians,” they nonetheless objected to this plan as racist. Only about 15% would be willing to live under Palestinian rule according to various surveys.

Lieberman questioned the loyalty of Israeli Arab politicians, some of whom openly sided with the Hezbollah in the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and with the Hamas during Operation Cast Lead in 2008/9. He called for denial of citizenship for those where are unwilling to take a loyalty oath.

In the elections of 2009, Lieberman’s aggressive approach and attacks on supposed disloyalty of Israeli Arabs won him support from Israelis. His support was especially strong in southern towns like Ashdod.  His great success was to mobilise Israelis who believe that concessions to the Palestinians lead nowhere – and events in Gaza have helped him. Yisrael Beiteinu received 15 mandates.

Since 2001 Lieberman proposes also to establish four townships in the occupied West Bank, hermetically sealed, which would be grouped the Palestinians. He sees it as a solution for the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are more than one million, to move the vast majority of the group in tightly closed, self-administered areas.

Thus would arise a State ethnically homogeneous from the Mediterranean Sea until the Jordan, sheltering in its midst Palestinian “Bantustans”.

Avigdor Lieberman has been the subject of several police investigations, several of which are currently ongoing, for money laundering and allegations of bribery. According to Israeli journalists he spends a good deal of his time in the former USSR on business that is unaccounted for, and may involve illegal activities.

===

November 10, 2013 – ‘Israeli cabinet approves Avigdor Lieberman’s return as foreign mininster’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10439150/Israeli-cabinet-approves-Avigdor-Liebermans-return-as-foreign-mininster.html

November 12, 2013  – Israel plans ‘unprecedented’ settlement expansion, 20,000 new units in the West Bank:
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/11/unprecedented-settlement-expansion.html

Obama receives the highest Israeli award

1) On November 15, 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for urging his cabinet to accept a U.S. proposal to extend a freeze on West Bank settlement building for 90 days. Under the plan, Washington would block UN resolutions critical of Israel, and supply Israel with fighter jets worth $3 billion. The US government also promised Israel that after the 90-day moratorium, they would not seek an extension, and settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (all of which is illegal under international law) could continue unabated.

2) In February 2011, more than 100 nations voted for a U.N. resolution that would have condemned illegal Israeli settlements and halted any new construction. The United States vetoed it.

3) On February 19, 2011, Israel said it was deeply grateful to the United States after it vetoed a United Nations resolution put forward by the Palestinian leadership condemning Israeli settlement activity.

4) On  Oct 27, 2011, Israeli jetfighters engaged in aerial bombing of the Palestinian city of Khan Yunes in the Gaza Strip.

American diplomacy: ‘Peace Talks’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 10, 2013 – ‘Israeli cabinet approves Avigdor Lieberman’s return as foreign mininster’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10439150/Israeli-cabinet-approves-Avigdor-Liebermans-return-as-foreign-mininster.html

November 12, 2013  – Israel plans ‘unprecedented’ settlement expansion, 20,000 new units in the West Bank:
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/11/unprecedented-settlement-expansion.html

‘Peace Talks’: US power centers back Israel settlements

Israel intelligence minister says settlement building in the occupied West Bank must continue in a “coordinated manner.”

Nov 13, 2013 3:3PM

On Wednesday, Yuval Steinitz said Tel Aviv should continue the construction activities in “an intelligent and coordinated way.”

Steinitz made the comments one day after Tel Aviv announced plans for the construction of some 24,000 new settler units in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The plans drew international condemnation, including from Israel’s longtime ally, the United States.

the criticism prompted Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reconsider the decision, noting that at a time when Tel Aviv is trying to persuade the West and Russia to take its interests into consideration, Israel must be coordinated in its actions.

The presence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle for the efforts made to establish peace in the Middle East.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem) in 1967.

The United Nations and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/11/13/334532/settlement-construction-must-continue/

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All centers of power in US lined up behind Israel: Norr

Nov 13, 2013 8:6AM

Press TV has conducted an interview with Henry Norr, with the Palestine Solidarity Movement, in Berkeley about the illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian lands.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/11/13/334475/all-us-centers-of-power-back-israel/

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is cancelling plans to build thousands of new illegal settler units in the occupied West Bank.

Nov 13, 2013 1:33AM

Netanyahu made the announcement late on Tuesday, hours after acting Palestinian Authority chief Mahmud Abbas threatened to end the so-called peace talks with Israel if it would go ahead with its illegal settlement expansion plans in the occupied Palestinian territories.

“If Israel does not go back on its latest construction plans for the settlements, that will spell a formal declaration of the end of the peace process,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat quoted Abbas as saying on Tuesday.

Erekat added that Abbas has passed on his ultimatum to the Arab League and the Middle East Quartet — the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States.

Earlier in the day, anti-settlement group Peace Now revealed that Israel’s Housing Ministry has planned to build a “record” 20,000 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/11/13/334436/israel-cancels-new-settlement-plans/

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US power centers back Israel settlements: Analyst

Nov 13, 2013 3:20PM

All influential bodies in the United States are supporting the continuation of illegal Jewish settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian lands, an analyst tells Press TV in an interview.

“All the centers of power in the United States are lined up behind Israel no matter what it does,” Henry Norr said on Wednesday.

“The power of the pro-Israel forces in this country, the so-called Israel lobby, the power of the pro-Israel American media and the US Congress,” he added.

Norr noted that it would be an “illusion” to think that the US “is somehow a disinterested broker, a neutral party to bring the two sides together.”

“It’s the American government and the Israeli government lined up together against the poor powerless Palestinians. That’s the way it’ been since before the Oslo agreement and more so today,” he stated.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/11/13/334533/us-power-centers-back-israel-settlements/