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.
Friday, 8 December
4:30 pm
Times Square
42nd St and 7th Avenue
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/161976337888822/
Protest the Trump Administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital!
Organized by the NY4Palestine Coalition and a broad array of organizations.
Following a wide campaign by a faculty action group, student organizers and a variety of community organizations, the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium (KULeuven) announced that it will not continue future participation in the LAW-TRAIN project, a joint cooperation program with the Israeli police to study interrogation techniques, funded by the EU under the Horizon 2020 program.
Newly elected KULeuven rector Luc Sels released a statement on Wednesday, 6 December stating that no follow-up projects will be pursued in the future, because “The Israeli Ministry of Public Security’s participation does indeed pose an ethical problem in view of the role played by this strong arm of the Israeli government in enforcing an unlawful occupation of the Palestinian territories and the associated repression of the Palestinian population.” While the statement commits to continue the current project until the end of April 2018, it also calls for the creation of a human rights charter to govern the assessment of future proposed projects to avoid such situations.
This is the latest achievement of the international campaign against LAW-TRAIN. The project seeks to develop software to simulate interrogations in a hypothetical international drug trafficking case. The involvement of the Israeli police, headquartered in occupied Jerusalem and including the Border Police that regularly enforce occupation against Palestinians, engage in mass arrests and killings of Palestinians, and are an integral part of the occupation security forces, has sparked resistance to the program in several countries, among activists, scholars and lawyers who note that the program produces a European license for Israeli torture and abuse.
The Israeli police are also known for the use of torture during interrogation as well as the arrest, interrogation and violation of the human rights of Palestinian children. The Israeli police and Tel Aviv University are partners in the project with the Belgian federal police and prosecutor’s office as well as KULeuven and the Spanish Guardia Civil.
Earlier, Portugal was also a partner in the project, but pulled out citing budgetary issues after an extensive and successful campaign by Portuguese and Palestinian organizations highlighting the project’s clear links to human rights violations and the torture and imprisonment of Palestinians. Over 40 Belgian organizations – including Samidoun – joined the campaign to stop LAW-TRAIN, working hand in hand with a campaign on the university’s campus to bring an end to the project and future such collaborations.
Thousands of Belgians signed a petition to stop LAW-TRAIN, while on the university’s campus, dozens of academics participated in protests and appeals, including an intervention in the annual opening academic procession by gowned professors who presented the rector with a cake and the petition signatures. The Leuven academics’ working group on Palestine led campaigns within the University on scholarly and human rights grounds, and the LAW-TRAIN issue was made a significant one on campus, including leading up to the election of Sels as the university’s new rector earlier in 2017.
Students on campus joined with faculty to hold campus protests, including a street theater action highlighting the realities of interrogation and the human rights abuses of the Israeli police. LAW-TRAIN was a major focus of Israeli Apartheid Week 2017 on Belgian campuses, which highlighted the situation of Palestinian prisoners and featured a number of talks and presentations by French-Palestinian lawyer and former political prisoner Salah Hamouri, currently jailed once more without charge or trial by the Israeli occupation.
Protests in Leuven, Charleroi and elsewhere highlighted LAW-TRAIN as human rights experts urged not only the university but also the Belgian Ministry of Justice to immediately pull out of the program. A delegation of Belgian lawyers and human rights scholars traveled to Palestine to investigate torture by the Israeli police and published an open letter upon their return, urging Belgium to withdraw from the project. In addition, hundreds of Belgian academics and cultural workers joined an open letter organized by BACBI, the Belgian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, calling on the government to “withdraw the Belgian Ministry of Justice from this highly contentious project. Such a withdrawal would signal to the Israeli politicians that Europe, and especially Belgium, will no longer tolerate the misdemeanors of their order and security forces against the Palestinian population.”
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network congratulates the Leuven faculty and students and all organizations that have worked on this campaign in achieving this important step from KULeuven. We redouble our call upon the Belgian ministry of justice, federal prosecutor’s office, and police, as well as the Spanish Guardia Civil, to immediately withdraw from this project and to the European Union to end its funding of such programs in collaboration with the Israeli occupation and its security forces. Such programs are an attempt to legitimize the very forces that daily carry out repression, torture and colonization and maintain apartheid and occupation against the Palestinian people. Participation in or funding of LAW-TRAIN or similar programs means direct complicity in the torture and imprisonment of Palestinians. It is long past time to hold the Israeli state accountable and subject it to boycott, divestment and sanctions for its flagrant, decades-long violations of fundamental Palestinian rights, rather than provide it with funding and support that allows it to continue its deadly and devastating attacks on the Palestinian people and their rights with impunity.
Israeli occupation forces seized three Palestinian lawyers well-known for their involvement in defending Palestinian human rights and particularly the rights of Palestinian prisoners in armed, overnight, pre-dawn raids. The three lawyers are:
All three of the lawyers’ homes was stormed at night by police and intelligence agents who ransacked the home before taking him. The three were taken to the Petah Tikva interrogation center.
Zabarqa is one of the most prominent lawyers defending Palestinian political detainees and prisoners in occupied Palestine ’48. Most recently, his advocacy on behalf of imprisoned Sheikh Raed Salah has highlighted the sheikh’s solitary confinement and political targeting. Zabarqa has been targeted in the past, barred from entering Jerusalem in 2015. Misk is also the former legal director for Defence for Children International – Palestine and, as current director of legal work for the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, has a leading role in defending many Palestinian prisoners before Israeli occupation courts.
Al-Sabbah is the director of al-Meethaq Foundation, which offers public legal services to the Jerusalemite population, including dealing with Israeli occupation entities like insurance officials, the municipality, and the interior department. The foundation also works together with Physicians for Human Rights to document abuses against child prisoners and support parents in filing complaints about their children’s treatment.
The targeting of the three lawyers comes hand in hand with the ongoing attacks on Palestinian human rights defenders such as Salah Hamouri, new Palestinian lawyer and field researcher for Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association; Hasan Safadi, Arabic-language media coordinator for Addameer; Issa Amro, al-Khalil organizer against settlements; Khalida Jarrar, Palestinian parliamentarian and Addameer board member; Abdallah Abu Rahma, coordinator of Bil’in’s Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements.
“Human rights defender” is a term used to describe people who, individually or with others, act peacefully to promote or protect human rights. These three Palestinian lawyers are human rights defenders who serve as a first line of defense for Palestinian civilians under occupation targeted for arrest, detention and persecution by Israeli occupation forces.
This is also a specific and targeted attack on Palestinian legal work and Palestinian lawyers, in what appears to be an attempt to deprive Palestinian prisoners of even the barest legal representation which is in and of itself frequently barred from providing any meaningful defense in a colonial system meant merely to legitimize the ongoing detention of Palestinians. It also appears to be an attempt to intimidate and suppress Palestinian lawyers from engaging public work to defend Palestinian political prisoners and people under attack.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges international organizations, especially lawyers’ and legal organizations, to take a stand and pressure the Israeli state and international governments to take a stand against the escalating attacks on Palestinian lawyers and other human rights defenders.
On 29 November 2017 in the late afternoon, the Coordinamento Lombardo per la Palestina, a group that includes Fronte Palestina, BDS Milan , Salaam Ragazzi dell’Olivo Milano and other organizations and individuals committed to supporting the Palestinian struggle, organized a protest outside the entrance of RAI Television Studios (the Public Italian broadcasting company) to protest during the official presentation of the world-class cycling event Giro d’Italia. The Giro d’Italia is subject to international protests and an escalating Palestinian, Italian and international campaign to move the race, which has been scheduled to start in occupied Jerusalem under the auspices of the Israeli occupation.
The rally started at 5pm during a working day and despite the race officials’ strategic choice of time and place (narrow dark street), as most of protesters were at work and could not join the rally, there were about 40 people carrying speakers, signs, and banners loudly and clearly denouncing the holding of the “Big Start” of the 2018 race in Israel. This action by the Giro d’Italia serves not only to cover up Israel’s military occupation and racist policies against Palestinians, it will also exacerbate Israel’s sense of impunity and encourage it to continue denying the Palestinian people their UN-stipulated right.
Most recently, Giro d’Italia further conceded to Israeli control after Israel officially threatened to block financial aid to Giro d’italia if they will not remove from its web site and official social media channels the word “West Jerusalem“, claiming that even occupied East Jerusalem is part of Israel and as its unified capital. Now, Giro d’Italia has even removed the word “West” so the official world class cycling event will start in “Jerusalem,” with no designation of its occupation.
Events, actions and protests are continuing throughout Italy, with events on Saturday in Milan as well as in other Italian cities. The events included a bike race rally across Milan streets with Palestinian flags banners and speakers. Protesters against the Giro d’Italia’s involvement with Israeli occupation also have highlighted the exclusion of Leila Khaled from Italy as part of the ongoing collaboration of the Italian government with the Israeli occupation and the Zionist movement and their attempt to silence Palestinian organizing in Italy.
Palestinian prisoner Salah Khawaja is on his 21st day of hunger strike after his imprisonment without charge or trial was renewed. Khawaja, from the village of Nil’in, has been on strike since his administrative detention order was suddenly renewed one day before he was scheduled for release from Israeli prison.
Palestinian lawyer Karim Ajwa reported that fellow Palestinian prisoner Ali Barghouthi, 45, suspended his own hunger strike on Saturday, 2 December after prison officials promised to conduct health tests prescribed for him, including a heart scan, no later than two weeks from the suspension of his strike. From the village of Abboud near Ramallah, he is serving a life sentence for resisting the occupation with Fateh and has been imprisoned since April 2004.
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.
Samidoun organizers in New York City will protest outside Best Buy electronics store in Union Square in Manhattan on Monday, 4 December in solidarity with Khawaja and all Palestinian prisoners. They will also work to build the boycott campaign against HP (Hewlett-Packard) due to the corporation’s involvement in and contracts with Israeli occupation forces, including the Israel prison service and the Israeli occupation navy imposing a siege on Gaza.
Israeli occupation forces have issued 48 administrative detention orders for the imprisonment of Palestinians without charge or trial between 16 and 30 November. This follows on 24 more administrative detention orders issued in the first two weeks of the month.
Palestinian lawyer Mahmoud al-Halabi said on Sunday, 3 December that 15 of the orders were newly issued while the remainder were renewals of the orders against Palestinians who had already spent years or months detained without charge or trial.
Administrative detention orders are used to imprison Palestinians without charge or trial. Issued for one to six months at a time, these orders are indefinitely renewable. Palestinians have spent years at a time jailed under administrative detention. There are over 450 Palestinians out of a total of over 6,200 Palestinian political prisoners jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention.
Among the orders issued were those against former long-term hunger striker Ayman al-Tabeesh, also ordered held in isolation. He has been imprisoned without charge or trial since August 2016. An order was also renewed against Salah al-Khawaja, of the village of Nil’in, one day before he was to be released. Khawaja has now been on hunger strike for the past 21 days against his imprisonment without charge or trial.
The orders were issued against the following Palestinian prisoners:
1. Wa’ad Arafat Hadmi, al-Khalil, 4 months, extension
2. Musa Ahmad Bulbul, Jenin, 4 months, extension
3. Alaa Hassan Abu Abi, Ramallah, 6 months, extension
4. Shaher Jamil al-Hih, al-Khalil, 6 months, new order
5. Thaer Jihad Abu Sundus, al-Khalil, 4 months, extension
6. Ayman Mohammed Abu Eid, Jerusalem, 4 months, extension
7. Yahya Hani Jaddu, Bethlehem, 4 months, extension
8. Jamal Ibrahim Maslamani, Tubas, 4 months, extension
9. Abdel-Rahman Shawki Shuaibat, Bethlehem, 6 months, new order
10. Ahmad Khader Hroub, al-Khalil, 2 months, extension
11. Ismail Taleb al-Natah, al-Khalil, 4 months, extension
12. Salah Mohammed al-Khawaja, Ramallah, 6 months, extension
13. Hamouda Akram Jaber, al-Khalil, 6 months, extension
14. Mohammed Hashem Khader, Qalqilya, 4 months, extension
15. Abdel-Muhsin Ali Zamara, al-Khalil, 2 months, extension
16. Shaker Hasan Amara, Jericho, 4 months, extension
17. Issa al-Sanadiya, al-Khalil, 4 months, extension
18. Bajis Khalil Nakhleh, Ramallah, 4 months, new order
19. Hussam Omar Abu Khalifa, Bethlehem, 4 months, new order
20. Ahmad Awad Srour, Ramallah, 4 months, new order
21. Majdi Mohammed Abu Fara, al-Khalil, 6 months, extension
22. Raed Abed al-Admu al-Amda, al-Khalil, 4 months, extension
23. Mahmod Jibril Shehadeh Makhamra, al-Khalil, 6 months, extension
24. Ahmad Mohammed Abu Nasr, Ramallah, 4 months, extension
25. Jaafar Abdallah Arouj, Bethlehem, 4 months, new order
26. Mahmoud Abdel-Halim Talahmeh, al-Khalil, 4 months, extension
27. Mohammed Adnan Maliki, Ramallah, 4 months, new order
28. Suhaib Mohammed Qafisha, al-Khalil, 4 months, extension
29. Nael Jihad Abu al-Asal, Jericho, 4 months, extension
30. Taqi al-Din Abdel-Fattah Fahajan, al-Khalil, 4 months, new order
31. Mohammed Monjed Khalaf, Bethlehem, 6 months, new order
32. Ahmad Musa al-Khalayleh, al-Khalil, 4 months, new order
33. Ibrahim Naji al-Keilani, Jenin, 6 months, new order
34. Ahmad Azmi Hanatsheh, al-Khalil, 4 months, extension
35. Mohammed Nazmi Mohammed Jamal, al-Khalil, 4 months, new order
36. Alaa Musa Za’ik, al-Khalil, 4 months, extension
37. Yousef Abdel-Malik Saadi, Jenin, 3 months, extension
38. Mahmoud Abdallah Atwan, Bethlehem, 3 months, extension
39. Karam Nasr Abed Rabbo, Bethlehem, 4 months, extension
40. Hammad Ahmad Abu Maria, al-Khalil, 4 months, extension
41. Yousef Ismail Hamdan, al-Khalil, 4 months, extension
42. Ayman Ali al-Tabeesh, al-Khalil, 4 months, extension
43. Jawad Mohammed Jabari, al-Khalil, 6 months, extension
44. Nidal Mohammed Abu Sneineh, al-Khalil, 4 months, extension
45. Nasim Fadl al-Rifai, al-Khalil, 6 months, new order
46. Ayman Rouhi al-Atrash, al-Khalil, 3 months, extension
47. Mahmoud Yousef Safadi, Nablus, 3 months, new order
The ongoing attack on Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Gaza by Israeli occupation naval forces continued on Sunday, 3 December as they attaccked a fishing boat and seized five Palestinian fishers, confiscating the boat, said Zakaria Bakr, head of the union of fishers’ committees in Gaza.
The five detained fishers are Sami Abu al-Sadiq, Ahmad Abu al-Sadiq, Sayyid al-Halabi, Ayman Tolbeh and Ehab Tolbeh. Their boat was also taken to the Israeli occupation port of Ashdod.
According to statistics from the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, two fishermen were killed, 10 fishermen had been wounded and at least 32 have been arrested by Israeli occupation forces since the beginning of 2017; 11 fishing boats were confiscated and fishers were fired upon over 142 times. These attacks on Palestinian fishery are part of a comprehensive physical, military and economic war against the entire Palestinian people and their ability to sustain their economy and independent, indigenous agriculture and fishery.
Gaza has been under Israeli occupation since 1967, and under a tight and brutal siege since 2006, denying people and goods access and movement from the small coastal strip, one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Over 70% of the people of Gaza are refugees who have lived in Gaza since the 1948 Nakba – the occupation and ethnic cleansing of most of Palestine. The naval closure imposed on Gaza and the cordoning off of the fishing zone has created massive poverty in Gaza’s once-wealthy fishing industry, upon which 70,000 Palestinians rely. Boats are rarely returned to their Palestinian owners after being confiscated by the occupation navy. Palestinian fishermen have repeatedly been shot by gunboats, causing death and serious and sometimes life-altering injuries, and further contributing to economic and social devastation.
HP, the same corporation that sells database services to the Israeli prison system and the military occupation checkpoint network, also administers the IT system of the Israeli Navy that enforces the naval blockade of Gaza. It is subject to a global campaign for boycott.
Monday, 11 December
11:30 am – 1:30 pm
14 Avenue de la Joyeuse Entree
Brussels, Belgium
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/184835458761008/
EN:
This December 11, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of 28 member states of the European Union will meet in Brussels. A notorious guest will guest will also be present among the European ministers: the Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu!
War criminals are not welcome in Brussels!
FR :
Le 11 décembre prochain, les ministres des Affaires étrangères des 28 pays membres de l’Union européenne se réuniront à Bruxelles. Un invité de marque sera également présent parmi les ministres européens : le premier ministre israélien Benyamin Netanyahou !
Les criminels de guerre ne sont pas les bienvenus à Bruxelles !
! Informations supplémentaires à venir !
NL:
Zeer binnenkort, op 11 december zullen de ministers van buitenlandse zaken van de 28 lidstaten van de Europese Unie samenkomen in Brussel. En bij de genodigden zal deze keer ook de Eerste minister van Israël zijn Benjamin Netanyahu!
Oorlogsmisdadigers zijn niet welkom in Brussel !
Meer info volgt nog.
Organisaties die mee oproepen: (lijst wordt nog aangevuld)
Liste des premiers signataires :
Association belgo-palestinienne Abp Asbl
Palestina Solidariteit
ECCP – European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine
Plate-forme Charleroi Palestine
Antwerp For Palestine
Mouvement Ouvrier Chrétien
Mouvement Présence et Action Culturelles
Plateforme Watermael-Boitsfort Palestine
Union des Progressistes Juifs de Belgique – UPJB
La Coordination Paix Juste au Proche – Orient Brabant Wallon
ViaVelo Palestina
Solidarité Socialiste
Checkpoint Singers
Mouvement Citoyen Palestine
Bruxelles Panthères
Intal Globalize Solidarity
M3M Médecine pour le Tiers Monde / G3W
Union des femmes Palestiniennes de Belgique et au Luxembourg
Comac, (Mouvement étudiant du PTB – PVDA studentenbeweging)”
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
Vrede vzw
écolo j
PJPO Mazrine
