Friday, 15 December
7:00 pm
53 Chaussee de Haecht
1210 Brussels
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1521832817902341/
An evening of solidarity with Palestinian prisoners featuring Abla Sa’adat, the wife of Ahmad Sa’adat, imprisoned Palestinian leader, and a Palestinian women’s organizer as well as a performance by Raj’een dabkeh group.
Organized by the Palestinian Community of Belgium and the European Alliance to Support Palestinian Prisoners.
Saturday, 16 December
12:00 pm
Piccadilly Gardens
Manchester
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/370327460076955/
The Trump government’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem is the latest attempt of the imperialists and Zionists to destroy the Palestinian resistance. Join us on the streets to build the movement to boycott Britain’s links with apartheid Israel and support Palestinian self determination! British banks like Barclays and HSBC are collaborating with the occupation regime, funding massive arms sales and supporting May and Trump’s pro-Israel policies. December also marks 50 years since the founding of the PFLP, a revolutionary organisation facing repression from the Zionist state and its supporters, with many activists imprisoned and assassinated. We stand in solidarity with their struggle and with the whole movement for Palestinian liberation.
Hands off Jerusalem!
Victory to the Palestinian people!
Sanctions on Israel!
All supporters of Palestine welcome, bring flags, banners, placards and voices!
Manchester Boycott Israel Group – Victory to Palestine!
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! (FRFI) Manchester
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
UoM Action Palestine
Manchester Palestine Action
A call to action from Al-Awda NY, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition and Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network:
DOWNLOAD THE FLYER FOR DISTRIBUTION
Abdul-Khalik Burnat, 17 years old, the son of Palestinian activist Iyad Burnat, an active leader of the Nonviolent Resistance Movement in the Palestinian village of Bil’in, was kidnapped, beaten and detained on the night of December 10, 2017 while getting pizza along with his friends Hamzah Al-Khatib and Malik Rahdi.
Their whereabouts were unknown until Abdul-Khalik’s mother and father recently learned that he and his friends are in Ofer Prison near the city of Ramallah.
Abdul-Khalik’s village of Bil’in is heavily targeted by Zionist colonizing forces for arrests, repression and persecution, especially because the people of the village continually and consistently organize well-coordinated weekly peaceful demonstrations which include visits and support from international activists to defend their land from illegal Israeli settlements and the infamous apartheid Wall.
Abdul-Khalik is a senior in high school. He was focused on completing his finals before his kidnapping. He is planning on going to college abroad after graduating high school.
This is not the first time that Abdul Khalik has been targeted by Israeli colonizing forces. The last time was in January of 2017, when he was shot with a rubber bullet in his head. They also detained him in another night-time raid in March 2017, while he was under treatment for his injuries.
Iyad Burnat’s family has been repeatedly targeted and injured by the Israeli Occupation Forces. Burnat states, “All this violence that they use against me and my family is trying to stop us from what we’re doing [Nonviolent resistance].”
Abdul Khalik’s court date is this upcoming Thursday December 14, 2017. This arbitrary hearing is crucial and likely to determine whether to extend their detention (for interrogation), impose an administrative detention order or put charges in the military courts.
The family of Abdul-Khalik Burnat have urged international action and publicity to help them obtain justice for their son and his immediate release.
**
Unfortunately, Abdul-Khalik’s story is all too common. Every year, over 700 Palestinian children face military trials and military imprisonment at the hand of Israeli occupation soldiers. Palestinian children are subject to torture and abuse under interrogation, arbitrary military trials, denial of their right to education, physical and psychological violence and imprisonment without charge or trial on a regular basis.
Israel’s impunity and gross violations of the rights of Palestinian children continue with the silence and complicity of governments around the world, including the U.S. government that not only provides $3 billion in military funding each year to the Israeli occupation state but also recently declared Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel, putting its stamp of approval on ethnic cleansing, settlement construction, land confiscation and blatant violation of international law.
Canada and Europe continue to maintain free trade pacts and association agreements with the Israeli occupation. It’s time for real international pressure to defend Palestinian children like Abdul-Khalik Burnat – and all Palestinians – from apartheid, war crimes and brutal, racist injustice.
TAKE ACTION TO FREE ABDUL-KHALIK BURNAT!
Call your country’s officials urgently:
Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop: + 61 2 6277 7500
Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland: +1-613-992-5234
European Union Commissioner Federica Mogherini: +32 (0) 2 29 53516
New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully: +64 4 439 8000
United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson: +44 20 7008 1500
United States President Donald Trump: 1-202-456-1111
Contact information:
Minister of Defence
Avigdor Liberman
Ministry of Defence
37 Kaplan Street
Hakirya
Tel Aviv 61909, Israel
Fax: +972 73 323 3300
Email: minister@mod.gov.il
Salutation: Dear Minister
Minister of Justice
Ayelet Shaked
Ministry of Justice
29 Salah al-Din Street
Jerusalem, 91010, Israel
Fax: +972 2 640 8402
Email: sar@justice.gov.il
Salutation: Dear Minister
Attorney General
Avichai Mendelbilt
Ministry of Justice
29 Salah al-Din Street
Jerusalem 91010, Israel
Fax: +972 2 530 3367
Email: ClassActionFiling@justice.gov.il
Military Judge Advocate General
Brigadier General Sharon Afek
Hakirya, Tel Aviv, Israel
Fax: +972 3 569 4526
Email: Mag@idf.gov.il
Salutation: Dear Judge Advocate General
Commander of the IOF – West Bank
Major-General Roni Numa
GOC Central Command
Military Post 01149, Battalion 877
Israel Defense Forces, Israel
Fax: +972 2 530 5741, +972 2 530 5724
Salutation: Dear Major-General Roni Numa
Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan
Kiryat Hamemshala
PO Box 18182
Jerusalem 91181, Israel
Fax: +972 2 584 7872
Email: gerdan@knesset.gov.il
Salutation: Dear Minister
Sample Letter:
Dear Ministers,
I write today to demand the immediate release of Palestinian child prisoner Abdul-Khalik Burnat, the son of Iyad Burnat, nonviolent popular movement leader in the Palestinian village of Bil’in.
Abdul-Khalik and two of his friends were beaten and abducted by Israeli soldiers as they ate pizza on the evening of December 10. A dedicated high school student, Abdul-Khalik was in the middle of studying for his final exams when he was ripped away from his home and his studies.
Abdul-Khalik is 17 years old, and in his short life he has been detained and interrogated by armed Israeli soldiers, shot with a metal-coated rubber bullet, and suffered from severe traumas due to ongoing Israeli violence targeting his home village and his family.
Abdul-Khalik and his friends Hamzah Al-Khatib and Malik Rahdi are being held in Ofer military prison. They are not alone but are among approximately 300 Palestinian children held in Israeli military detention. Military detention and imprisonment of children violates their rights and creates lifelong trauma.
These boys have been targeted for nothing more than being Palestinian. I demand their immediate release.
Sincerely,
Prominent Palestinian leader, organizer and former prisoner and hunger-striker Khader Adnan was seized on Monday morning, 11 December, by Israeli occupation forces at his home in Arraba, Jenin. He immediately launched an open hunger strike to demand his release.
Randa Moussa, his wife, told Palestine Today that he had announced an immediate strike on food, drink and speech after his arrest. She said that four patrols, an armored troop carrier and a jeep surrounded their home at 2:30 am and invaded the home violently, trying to break down the door of the home, and that they hit Adnan on the back and hand, throwing him on the ground before handcuffing him. He was then interrogated in a closed room of the house before being taken away to an undisclosed location.
Adnan, prominent political activist from the town of Arraba near Jenin, has been arrested 10 times and spent six years in Israeli prison, all in administrative detention – imprisonment without charge or trial. In 2012 and 2015, he carried out 66-day and 56-day hunger strikes, respectively, winning his liberation from arbitrary Israeli imprisonment.
The Islamic Jihad movement said in a statement that “the arrest of leaders and popular and national symbols will not weaken our people or break their will….this is a desperate attempt to suppress the uprising of Jerusalem,” as Palestinians inside and outside Palestine have risen up against US President Donald Trump’s declaration that Jerusalem is the “capital of Israel” in the eyes of the US.
Khader Adnan is a Palestinian and international symbol of steadfastness within the prisons who has inspired widespread international solidarity. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network demands the immediate release of Khader Adnan and will announce further actions as we receive more news and information from Palestine on Adnan’s detention. The struggle for the freedom of Palestinian political prisoners is at the forefront of the struggle to defend Jerusalem and liberate Palestine.
Monday, 11 December
7:00 pm
W Institute
5232 Oakman Blvd, Detroit
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/336869746788733/
Building off of the energy from our Emergency Rally, join us on MONDAY, DECEMBER 11th AT 7 PM to take ACTION!
Israel is the only government in the world that systematically prosecutes between 500 and 700 Palestinian children every year in military courts, and it uses our tax dollars to do that.
For the first time ever, a bill (HR4391) is being introduced to the floor that recognizes Israeli human rights violations against Palestinian children and holds the U.S. accountable for its role in those violations.
We will be working together to phone bank, letter write, and urge our reps and local governments and politicians to sponsor and/or show support for this bill.
For more info or questions, contact Dana Mohammad at (313) 829 2447 orJulia Kc at (248) 719 4250. You can reach either via messenger.
To learn more about HR4391, visit: https://
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is reproducing below the statement of the Philippines-Palestine Friendship Association on Jerusalem and the Trump Declaration that aims to legitimize the colonization of Jerusalem and all of Palestine – and which has sparked a powerful response from the Palestinian people, Arab movements and supporters of justice around the world.
We also express our solidarity with the people of the Philippines in their struggle against imperialism and exploitation, and in particular with the popular movements of the Philippines which are being subjected to arrests, extrajudicial killing and extensive repression, escalating shortly after Philippine President Duterte’s meeting with Trump, along with threatening proclamations attacking the Left and people’s movements. Stop the US war machine, from Palestine to the Philippines!
U.S. Imperialism and Zionist Israel Hands off Jerusalem!
10 Dec 2017
MANILA – The Philippines-Palestine Friendship Association strongly condemns US President Donald Trump’s declaration recognizing Jerusalem as capital of the apartheid settler state of Israel. In the same vein, we denounce the attempt of President Rodrigo Duterte to follow his imperialist master and move the Philippine embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
On Wednesday, ignoring international warnings, Trump announced that the US was formally recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and would begin the process of moving its embassy to Jerusalem. The international community has never recognized Israel’s claim to the entire city.
Trump and Duterte’s plan to construct their respective embassies in Jerusalem is a blatant display of their total disregard for peoples’ rights and international humanitarian laws.
Following US declaration, Israeli forces have already killed 4 Palestinians, including 2 civilians, and wounded 259 others, including 32 children and 4 women in Gaza Strip and West Bank. In a blatant display of mockery of international humanitarian law, Israeli forces obstructed medical crews by targeting ambulances with rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas canisters.
Trump’s imperial declaration comes at a time when thousands of Palestinians in Jerusalem are being imprisoned and countless more dislocated and face settler violence in an ethnic cleansing project that has gone on with impunity for 70 long years. The declaration also coincides with the 100th year of the Balfour Declaration and recalls the time when British imperialist power promised historic Palestine to the Zionist movement against the wishes of the Palestinian indigenous peoples.
US imperialism and Israel attempt to erase the Palestinian history of Jerusalem is the height of the Zionist policy of occupation, apartheid, and land grabbing in Palestine. This move exposes the lie of any so-called “peace process” under US auspices and the reality of US imperialism as the main partner of Zionism in carrying out the colonization of Palestine.
Trump’s declaration further increases the already tensed atmosphere in the region. This is not surprising since US imperialism is driven to provoke wars to carve up territories and markets to boost its military industrial complex and to plunder resources to prop up its crisis-ridden economy.
Duterte, by aping his imperialist sponsor Trump becomes complicit in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. His slated visit to Israel and expression of interest to follow Trump and move the Philippine embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem are all part of the Zionist effort to normalize Israel’s colonial domination over Palestine and to whitewash the gross human rights violations and crimes that go along with it.
Israel stands guilty too in the brutal killing spree happening in the Philippines under Pres. Duterte. Israel supplies the weapons to Philippines for Duterte’s brutal anti-insurgency and anti-drugs campaign that has seen tens of thousands of innocent and poor civilians dead.
President Duterte is now in league with fascist figureheads Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu as the world’s most notorious war criminals. They are the enemy of the Filipino and Palestinian peoples. We will fiercely resist their reign of terror.
STAND WITH PALESTINE! HANDS OFF JERUSALEM, THE CAPITAL OF PALESTINE!
US IMPERIALISM AND ISRAELI ZIONISM ARE TERRORISM!
DUTERTE, LAPDOG OF IMPERIALISM AND ZIONISM!
Two Palestinian youth organizers and human rights defenders were released on Thursday, 7 December after being held without charge or trial in Israeli prisons for lengthy periods. Hasan Safadi, the Arabic-language media coordinator for Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, was released after 19 months of imprisonment without charge or trial.
Yassin Sbeih, Jerusalemite activist, was also released on Thursday after over eight months imprisonment without charge or trial under administrative detention. Sbeih was seized from occupied Jerusalem during a demonstration in April and ordered to administrative detention, said his wife Lama Ghosheh upon his release.
Safadi was seized on 1 May 2016 at the Karameh crossing as he returned from an Arab youth conference in Tunisia. His administrative detention was extended on multiple occasions; in June his detention was extended for the third time in a row for six months.
Both were among over 450 Palestinians imprisoned without charge or trial and nearly 6,200 total Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network congratulates Hasan, Yousef, their families and friends and communities upon their freedom and demands the release of all of their fellow Palestinian prisoners behind Israeli bars.
As massive marches grow around Palestine, throughout the Arab world and internationally in defense of Jerusalem after US President Trump’s declaration purporting to “recognize” the city as the capital of Israel, there are also two Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli jails.
Palestinian prisoner Rizk Rajoub, 61, from the village of Dura, al-Khalil, is on his fourth day of hunger strike after he was ordered to administrative detention without charge or trial. Ofer military court offered him the choice of deportation to Sudan or administrative detention, prompting him to launch his strike after he refused deportation and was ordered imprisoned without charge or trial.
Rajoub has faced this battle in the past including ongoing attempts to deport him or pressure him to accept deportation to Sudan through years of imprisonment without charge or trial. A leader of the Hamas movement in al-Khalil, he has spent 23 years in Israeli prisons, and 10 of them have been under administrative detention over various repeated arrests.
At the same time, Salah Khawaja, from the village of Nil’in, is on his 24th day of hunger strike in protest of his administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial. Khawaja launched his strike when his detention was renewed one day before he was scheduled for release.
Khawaja was seized by Israeli occupation forces on 23 July 2017 and ordered to four months in administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial. These detention orders are indefinitely renewable; Palestinians have spent years at a time jailed under administrative detention orders. Khawaja is one of over 450 Palestinians jailed without charge or trial and a total of nearly 6,200 Palestinian political prisoners. Over the years, he has spent nearly 12 years in Israeli prisons through multiple arrests and detentions.
He is carrying out his hunger strike despite his own deteriorating health. He walks slowly and has lost significant weight, and he suffers from high blood pressure, diabetes and poor vision in his left eye.
Monday, 11 December
7:00 pm
Solidarity Center
147 W 24th St, NYC
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/382705875485753/
A seminar on the 50th anniversary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Featuring
A recorded address by Leila Khaled, a member of the PFLP political bureau
And
A livestreamed conversation with Khaled Barakat, international coordinator of the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat
Monday, 11 December
5:00 pm
Best Buy – Union Square
52 E 14th St, NYC
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1696870457010107/
Stand with Palestinians mobilizing under Israeli occupation, throughout the refugee camps and across the diaspora against Zionist settler-colonialism in occupied al-Quds/Jerusalem and United States support for it.
Call for the freedom of Ahmad Sa’adat (freeahmadsaadat.org), Khalida Jarrar (samidoun.net/khalidajarrar), and 6,196 other Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli detention (addameer.org/statistics).
Demand that Hewlett Packard companies end their contracts with Israeli prisons and detention centers, occupation and security forces, and checkpoints and settlements (investigate.afsc.org/
Build a growing international campaign to boycott HP (bdsmovement.net/boycott-hp) over the companies’ support for Israeli crimes.
Support the Palestinian people, the Palestinian prisoners, the Palestinian Resistance, and the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.
