Category Archives: palestine

Yesterday a House was Demolished in a Village called Kafer Al-Deek

This article has now been published by Jews for Justice for Palestinians.

Yesterday a House was Demolished in a Village called Kafer Al-Deek

It's Tuesday morning on the 4th of October 2011. The sun is bright and everyone in the village of Kafer Al-Deek is busy in the fields. October is the time for the olive harvest. Most of the families who still have olive groves use this time to be together and to help each other with the harvest before the winter starts at the end of November or the beginning of December. Most families wake up early every day to go to the fields and come back late at night. Some of them have houses on the farms that they sleep in during this time. Some of them use these houses to prepare food and to rest while they work in the farm.

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Telling the untold stories: In West Bank

Telling the untold stories: In West Bank

From 'Mazet', an Umhlali doing solidarity work in Palestine

 



This world is still cut in two: Palestine, 2011

 

There are 2,5 million Palestinian living in West bank, 150 settlements and 100 outposts. There are 500,000 Israel settlers, 125 residential areas and 25 Industrial areas. Israel has constructed by passing roads for Palestinians which they use to move from one are to another. 80% of the West Bank is a danger zone. Palestinians needs permits to live in their homes. To reach their land for 70% of the Palestinians in West bank which is 3km away from them is impossible. Most of the times Israelis deny Palestinian the permits, they say its for security reasons. This then restrict Palestinians from using their land for farming which is the on the other side of the village and they need permits to move. In side the West Bank check points are being removed. There are 63 Permanent check points. Two major roads are controlled by two check points and Palestinians are unable to move freely. Jerusalem used to be a cultural, spiritual and commercial center and now Palestinians need special permits to access the city.

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Dismayed and angered as the Hilton Festival 2011 puts on Israeli state-sponsored productions

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Dismayed and angered as the Hilton Festival 2011 puts on Israeli state-sponsored productions

The state of Israel is guilty of oppression, injustice, illegal occupation, and apartheid-style discrimination on a massive scale. It’s actions provoke revulsion, protest and active resistance by decent people all over the world. One component of that protest is a global cultural and academic boycott.

The Hilton Arts Festival is in danger of irrevocably tarnishing its image by undermining that boycott and allowing itself to be used as an instrument of the Israeli state’s agenda. Festival Director, Sue Clarence, has repeatedly drawn attention to three productions at this year’s Festival that are being mounted through support from the Israeli state. On the Festival website for example, she says

“I would also like to draw attention to Roy Horowitz and his actors from Israel with three plays, The Timekeepers, Volunteer Man and My First Sony. Thanks are due to those who made this possible: the Embassy of Israel, the Ambassador – Mr. Dov Segev-Steinberg and the Cultural Attache, Mr. Yaakov Finkelstein; the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Mr Victor Gordon, the head of Tararam [‘South Africa Israel Culture Fund’].”

International Cultural and Academic Boycott

According to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel which was launched in Ramallah in 2004, boycotting Israeli academic and cultural institutions is an urgently needed form of pressure against Israel that can bring about its compliance with international law and the requirements for a just peace. In July 2004, the Campaign issued a statement of principles, addressed to the international community urging them to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions until Israel withdraws from all the lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; removes all its colonies in those lands; agrees to United Nations resolutions relevant to the restitution of Palestinian refugees rights; and dismantles its system of apartheid.

The Palestinian Campaign is inspired by the historic role played by people of conscience in the international community of scholars and intellectuals who have shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in their struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott2. The call for a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign of Israel has wide support in Palestine and has been actively supported by Israelis as well. British writer John Berger, Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, US poet Adrienne Rich, British film director Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty are just some of the prominent voices that have joined this call. In a movement that continues to gain momentum, a string of artists have recently either cancelled shows or pledged their refusal to be complicit in Israeli Apartheid. Some names include: Carlos Santana, Elvis Costello, Gil Scott-Heron, Dustin Hoffman, Meg Ryan, Faithless and Massive Attack.

The South African Campaign

In October 2010, Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu called on the Cape Town Opera to cancel its scheduled tour of Israel. A nationwide campaign was initiated and on 1 November 2010 the South African cultural boycott of Israel was launched with the ‘South African Artists Against Apartheid Declaration’.

In that Declaration, signatories commented that:

As South African Artists and Cultural Workers who have lived under, survived, and in many cases resisted apartheid, we acknowledge the value of international solidarity in our own struggle. It is in this context that we respond to the call by Palestinians, and their Israeli allies, for such solidarity. As artists of conscience we say no to apartheid – anywhere.

Specifically, the Declaration makes clear that “Collaborating with institutions linked to the state of Israel cannot be regarded as a neutral act in the name of cultural exchange”.

Action

We strongly urge:

*the Festival organisers to re-think this disastrous decision and pull the productions from the Festival programme immediately;
*the Festival sponsors4 and partners to join people of good conscience in protesting the decision and withdrawing their support for the Festival should the decision not be changed
*all cultural workers and artists, directly involved in this year’s Festival and around the country, to speak about their concerns, to support the boycott, and to take creative actions to highlight these issues
*the general public, especially those of us well-off enough to go to the Festival, to add our voices to the protest, to pressure the Festival organisers to reverse the decision; to protest at the Festival; and at minimum to boycott – if not the whole Festival as some of us will undoubtedly be doing, then at least those plays brought to us with Israeli-state money.

We urge our colleagues who have been active on issues of Palestinian solidarity and justice to take the protest action further in the coming weeks.

Signed on 8th September 2011, at the Church Land Programme, Pietermaritzburg:

Prof Steven Friedman, Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, Rhodes University and University of Johannesburg.
Ayanda Kota, Unemployed Peoples Movement
Prof Gillian Hart, University of California, Berkely, and UKZN
Rev Mavuso, Rural Network
Richard Pithouse, Politics Department, Rhodes University
Prof Michael Neocosmos, Department of Sociology, UNISA
Anne Harley, Centre for Adult Education, Paulo Freire Project, UKZN
Zodwa Nsibande, Abahlali baseMjondolo
Prof David Szanton, University of California, Berkely (retired)
Prof Richard Ballard, School of Development Studies, UKZN

Church Land Programme (CLP): Board, staff and associates:
Madalitso Ntine (Pietermaritzburg Agency for Christian Awareness, PACSA); Solomuzi Mabuza (Ujamaa Centre, UKZN); David Ntseng; Graham Philpott; Thulani Ndlazi; David Hallowes; Mercio Langa; Mark Butler; Lindo Dhlamini; Nomusa Sokhela; Zonke Sithole.

Witness: ‘We expect a lot from South Africans’

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http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=22906

‘We expect a lot from South Africans’
20 May 2009

PALESTINIAN anthropologist and grass-roots activist Ala Alazzeh remembers being sent as a 12-year-old boy to buy a packet of cigarettes and being scolded by a bystander for choosing a brand containing tobacco believed to be imported from South Africa.

That was 1988, when apartheid was in full force, and 12 years after South African prime minister John Vorster’s visit to Israel which laid the groundwork for an intimate and long-standing military collaboration between the two countries.

It was a decade in which, according to Guardian journalist Chris McGreal, the two countries were echoing each other “in justifying the domination of other peoples. Both said that their own peoples faced annihilation from external forces — in South Africa by black African governments and communism; in Israel, by Arab states and Islam”.

“So South Africa has always been a significant place for me,” Alazzeh told The Witness during a recent visit to the city to deliver the second annual Mzwandile R. Nunes Memorial Lecture hosted by University of KZN’s Ujamaa Centre for Biblical and Theological Community Development and Research.

“And when apartheid collapsed, it was an inspirational moment for Palestinians.”

Palestinians today look to South Africa for solidarity, he said. “People in South Africa were able to dismantle the most racist system in the world. We expect a lot from South Africans.”

Alazzeh said he believes the global economic downturn could precipitate a move towards fascism in countries such as Israel.

“The Great Depression of the twenties and thirties heralded the rise of fascism in Europe. I worry that this so-called ‘crisis’ of the world economy may give more power to authoritarian movements and produce painful consequences for Palestine in particular,” he said in his presentation on the implications of the global economic crisis for Palestine and the South.

Alazzeh said the global economic downturn was now being described as a “crisis” because it affected the interests of the ruling capitalist elite.

“The crisis is real, but it has nothing to do with financial matters. For a long time, there has been a crisis for the working classes, for landless people, refugees and farmers … profit over people is the baseline of the crisis,” he told an appreciative audience, made up of university staff and students, young people from a range of church-based organisations and members of the public.

Born, raised and still resident in the Azzeh refugee camp in Bethlehem, the smallest United Nations-registered refugee camp in the West Bank, Alazzeh lectures at Dar Al-Kalima College in Bethlehem and is pursuing PhD studies at the Rice University in Texas, United States.

In his spare time, he’s a volunteer for a grass-roots educational organisation working with refugee children in his camp.

In his speech, he said the phenomenon of settler colonialism is integral to understanding the situation in Palestine where the peace process, started in the 1990s, reinforced Palestine’s position as a consumer economy heavily dependent on aid.

He highlighted as a potential problem the growing trend towards what he called “NGO-ism” which sees grass-roots activists in Palestine increasingly moving into formal employment in non-governmental organisations, themselves increasingly accountable to their funders rather than the beneficiaries of their work.

In this context, grassroots volunteerism should be encouraged, said Alazzeh, who also praised the Islamic Movement in Palestine for their grass-roots work. “I’m not an outright supporter of the movement, but they are doing work on the ground,” he said.

After the lecture, Alazzeh was to fly to Johannesburg to be part of the Abahlali baseMjondolo delegation attending the Constitutional Court hearing into the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-Emergence of Slums Act (Slums Act), passed in 2007 by the provincial legislature.