The Never Before Campaign have produced an excellent stylised video clip of just over 2 minutes, distilling the essence of the struggle for justice.
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صلح Pax سلام שלום Pace Hasîtî Barış 和平 Мир Peace Mir Friede Paix
Wanted for War Crimes And Crimes Against Humanity
22 January, 2009 — peoplesgeography.com
At least 3 Israeli generals have feared arrest warrants waiting for them when landing in a foreign airport. A former US-based campaign had Dan Halutz and a UK campaign Doron Almog in its sights, while Avi Dichter has also cancelled visits to the UK to elude arrest (click on image for further info)
While the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) has apparently been prevaricating on whether it can exercise jurisdiction, there are increasing calls for the creation of a specific ad hoc tribunal to try Israeli war criminals.
Established in 2000, the ICC is the world’s first permanent court set up to investigate and prosecute war crimes. Israel and the United States are not among the 108 countries that have signed the Rome Statute creating the court, but that does not prevent the ICC from acting.
A Belgian Court has reportedly undertaken to arrest Tzipi Livni should she visit Brussells; the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission have demanded an investigation into war crimes; Bolivia has pledged to take Israel to the Hague, the Beirut-based ICAI-HOKOK Coalition Against Impunity has lodged a Letter of Referral, and others have also joined the chorus for action by the ICC for Israel’s flagrant mass killing of civilians who made up most of the 1300+ killed in Gaza. These war-crimes include the bombing and shelling of schools, hospitals, supply convoys, media and UN facilities, even after assurances; shooting at medical crews; the use of illegal munitions against a civilian population, including white phosphorus shells; the prevention of the evacuation of wounded, and more.
Olmert, who led the rampage in two unnecessary and immoral wars of choice in his brief tenure, Ehud Barak with longer and even more horrifying criminal baggage, and Tzipi Livi, who was most prominent in attempting to justify these war-crimes in international media and who helped spearhead the campaign, are arguably at the forefront of this round of Israeli war criminality. Read the rest of this entry »
Nakba Day 2008 (يوم النكبة Yawm al-Nakba)
19 May, 2008 — peoplesgeographyPalestinians mark the 60th anniversary of the Nakba with, among other things, large symbolic keys and black balloons over Al Quds-Jerusalem.
This video clip comes from our good friends over at the great Italian Guerrilla Radio site (4.36)The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation also has this striking poster and terrific advertisement (click on thumbnail for larger image).
The Campaign will be placing more than 1,000 of these posters on the streets of Manhattan, educating New Yorkers about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Enfant Terrible Turns Into Terrible Tyrant: Why Israel At 60 Is No Cause for Celebration
2 May, 2008 — peoplesgeography.com
Mazin Qumsiyeh of the excellent Wheels of Justice peace initiative has drafted this list furnishing facts about why good people of conscience everywhere will not be celebrating Israel at its 60th anniversary this month, just as apartheid-era South Africa was not accepted or celebrated. There are many more reasons, and he invites people to add to it.Israeli psychologist and exile Avigail Abarbanel notes, “If a day comes, and I hope it does, when Israelis decide to stop living in denial, they will have to realise that real peace will only come through justice. Justice in this context means one thing, that the ideal of an exclusively Jewish state at the cost of an entire people might have to be abandoned. Only a bi-national state and a right of return for the Palestinian refugees will come close enough to rectifying some of the injustices committed in 1948 and since. Having been ethnically cleansed, this is also what the Palestinians are entitled to under international law and common human decency.“
- Ethnic cleaning and ongoing genocide: Between December 1947 and December 1950, over 530 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed. Half of the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by underground Zionist forces even before Israel was unilaterally declared a state. Palestinians call these events of the late 1940s the Nakba (Catastrophe).
- The Palestinian refugees are the largest remaining refugee population in the world. Seven million of the ten million Palestinians are refugees or displaced people. They are prevented from returning to their homes and lands even though International law and UN resolutions demand it. Read the rest of this entry »
Dissent Among Australian Federal MPs on Israel Motion
15 March, 2008 — peoplesgeography.com
Alan Ramsey provides an interesting write-up of Wednesday’s parliamentary motion ‘commemorating’ Israel (Blinkers off for the other side of story, SMH). “The whole affair”, he writes, “carefully orchestrated, carefully bi-partisan, lasted just 15 minutes.” Significantly, dissent came not just from a split Labor Party on this issue (most notably from MP Julie Irwin, pictured right, and others who absented themselves during the motion), but also came from the Opposition ranks, with Liberal (right-of centre party in Australia) MP Sussan Ley, pictured left, the only MP to speak up for the Palestinian people in Federal Parliament in this session. The motion was carried on voices and not put to a vote. Ramsey writes:At 11.58am on Wednesday one half of the Australian Parliament “celebrated” the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel. More than a third of that one-half was absent, whatever their reasons. A number of MPs deliberately excluded themselves. Labor’s Kevin Rudd, as the host, did not. He spoke for eight minutes. “Celebrate” was the word Rudd used to begin his remarks. “Congratulations” was the word he used to end them. The Liberals’ Brendan Nelson spoke for seven minutes in supporting the Prime Minister. He concluded: “Shabat shalom forever.”
Nobody else spoke. The whole affair, carefully orchestrated, carefully bi-partisan, lasted just 15 minutes. The press gallery was almost empty. Read the rest of this entry »
Not In Our Name: We the People Respond To Australian Parliamentary Motion On Israel At 60
15 March, 2008 — peoplesgeography.com
In response to PM Rudd’s Motion on Israel’s 60th Anniversary year, many Australians, including this blogger, supported and signed an advertisement that appeared prominently on page 7 of The Australian national broadsheet on Wednesday 12 March. The statement reads:Not in Our Name
We, as informed and concerned Australians, choose to disassociate ourselves from a celebration of the triumph of racism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since the al-Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948. As we write, Israel continues to expand illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank including Arab East Jerusalem.
Australia and Australians should not give the Israeli people and its leaders the impression that Australia supports them in their dispossession of the Palestinian people. Israel has poisoned our (the West’s) relations with the whole of the Arab and Muslim world. Rather than celebrating the creation of the State of Israel, we should be recognising the people of Palestine, those who were dispossessed, those who lived and died as refugees, those who continue to live and die and suffer at the hands of the State of Israel, and those who will continue to suffer and die in the future until justice is done. Read the rest of this entry »
Australian National Reconciliation Starts With Sorry
12 February, 2008 — peoplesgeography.com
On the 13th of March, at 9am Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST), Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivers the long awaited public apology to our indigenous Australians, and in particular the Stolen Generation as a central part of reconciliation with Australia’s past. This welcome landmark comes after his Prime Ministerial predecessor, John Howard, expressed regret but refused to say the word sorry. This simple yet powerful act means so much to indigenous Australians, traumatised by being stolen from their parents and for a whole raft of historical injustices. While there is a long way to go, with possible compensation, social indicators and federal intervention in remote central Australian Aboriginal communities still weighty issues, this is a good start.It is fitting that the famous “If you have come to help me …” quote highlighted below is from an Australian Aboriginal woman, Lila Watson, who wishes it to be attributed collectively.
The PM tabled and subsequently delivered the following text of the apology in Parliament.
RESOURCES: Audio, video and transcript (.pdf here) of speech (just after the fold) Read the rest of this entry »
The Wall: impact and consequences, video
10 February, 2008 — peoplesgeography.comdoneWhile the introduction and conclusion of the narration leaves something to be desired (it is not “democracy” that is being installed in the Middle East, it is being actively subverted and sabotaged in the OPT, for a start), this eight minute ChromoVision video is a very worthwhile production overall: it is a very good overview of what the illegal separation wall in Israel means in terms of partitioning off from Palestinians the most fertile agricultural land and water supplies for use by Israel.
The narration also is correct in noting that all the wall is not in fact along the 1967 Green Line: 157,800 acres2 – or about 11.5 percent – of West Bank land (excluding East Jerusalem) will actually lie between the Barrier and the Green Line, according to the revised route announced in 2004. Read the rest of this entry »
Warsaw Ghetto 1941, Gaza 2008
22 January, 2008 — peoplesgeography.comA short and succinct letter to the editor in today’s Sydney Morning Herald from Zaid Khan puts things into perspective:
Nearly 70 years ago, in a small eastern European city, an oppressed and occupied people were under siege, living under atrocious and brutal conditions, lacking food, medicine, electricity, water, and slowly being strangled in the hope they would just disappear.
Warsaw Ghetto 1941 – Gaza 2008. Israel, you are a disgrace.
Zaid Khan
What is to be done? Chances are that if you reading this, you already have a good grasp of what is happening. Also avail yourself to first hand accounts from residents in Gaza, such as Tabula Gaza, Raising Yousef–A Mother From Gaza and Dr Mona El Farra’s blog. Spread the word and discuss it with people who may not even know all this is happening or who may uncritically accept the Israeli neocon worldview propagated in some of the major media outlets. Israel is committing slow genocide and ethnic cleansing. A simple yet powerful letter like the one above can ricochet around the world.
Here are some other ways you can help: Read the rest of this entry »
For Want of An Honest Broker … Genuine Peace in Palestine Needs Washington’s Willingness To Curb Israeli Hubris and Aggression
20 January, 2008 — peoplesgeography.com
It was JFK who said that “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Our thoughts are with Gaza, where GWB’s recent visit to the region has seen Israel only ratchet up its violence and airstrikes upon a territory from which it only nominally withdrew and in fact continues to choke, killing dozens of people in the space of a few days.Let us recall that after maintaining a ceasefire or hudna for eighteen months, the democratically elected government of Hamas was subject to nothing but economic siege, divide and rule, sabotage and targeted killings. Let us also recall that Israel rejected the offer of a truce, instead continuing its collective punishment of a whole population already brutally repressed and assassinating leaders and civilians alike, including the son of Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar.
The criminal strangulation of a whole population of a million and a half people in one of the most densely populated places on the planet is being committed on the pretext of rocket attacks on Israel using primitive weapons like Qassams; with pretext being the operative word. As Uri Avnery recently observed in Help! A Ceasefire: “If the Qassams were really bothering our political and military leaders, they would have jumped at the cease-fire offer. But the leaders don’t really care … [it] has an important positive side: it provides an ideal pretext for the actions of the army. The Israeli strategic aim in Gaza is not to put an end to the Qassams. It would still be the same if not a single Qassam fell on Israel.” Israel’s policy is to deliberately destroy Gaza. Read the rest of this entry »
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