Bushra al-Tawil, journalist, former Palestinian prisoner and prisoners’ rights activist seized at her family home on 1 November, was ordered on 7 November to six months in administrative detention without charge or trial. She joins five other Palestinian women and over 450 men imprisoned without charge or trial under so-called administrative detention orders, which are indefinitely renewable and based on “secret evidence” to which both the prisoner nor their lawyers are denied access. Palestinians have spent years at a time jailed under administrative detention.
Al-Tawil, 25, was ordered to administrative detention on a secret file without discussion. She was seized from the family home in Ramallah on 1 November, where she lives with her father, Jamal al-Tawil, a prominent Hamas leader and former prisoner.
Bushra al-Tawil was seized by the Israeli occupation in 2011 and ordered to 16 months in prison; she was freed five months later as part of the Wafa al-Ahrar prisoner exchange. In 2014, she was seized with over 60 more former prisoners and her prior sentence arbitrarily reimposed by a secret Israeli military committee; she served 11 months in Israeli prison before her release in May 2015.
She is also among nearly 60 Palestinian women prisoners in total held in Israeli prisons. Also on Tuesday, 7 November, the Israeli occupation court in Jerusalem extended the detention of Huda Odeh, 38, until next Thursday. Odeh is the wife of a Palestinian prisoner, Mohammed Odeh; she was seized from her home in a pre-dawn raid by occupation forces on Monday morning, 6 November, and taken to the Moskobiyeh interrogation center in Jeruslem.
Her husband, Mohammed, 44, has been imprisoned since 19 August 2002 and is serving nine life sentences in Israeli prisons.
Four Palestinian institutions that work on prisoners’ rights, the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, and the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, issued the below report on the arrests of 483 Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces in October 2017. English translation by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.
International law provides special protections to civilian populations under occupation. One aspect of such protection includes safeguards against arbitrary detention and other measures aimed at preserving and maintaining the human dignity of people inside and outside detention centers.
In violation of its most basic obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law, Israeli occupation forces continued their policy of arbitrary detention of hundreds of civilians from the occupied Palestinian territory in October 2017.
Arbitrary arrests and detention are serious phenomena that continue to be carried out by occupation authorities in various Palestinian governorates and affect all sectors of society, especially children and women.
Part 1: Statistics of arrests
(Note: the figures in this report are based on the monitoring and documentation by the institutions involved in its preparation.)
In October 2017, Israeli occupation forces arrested 483 Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT), including 125 children, eight women and four journalists.
According to the monitoring and documentation conducted by the four Palestinian institutions, the Israeli occupation authorities arrested 137 Palestinians from Jerusalem governorate, 80 from al-Khalil, 82 from Jenin, 52 from Ramallah and El-Bireh, 32 from Bethlehem, 28 from Qalqilya, 20 from Nablus, 15 from Tubas, 15 from Tulkarem, eight from Jericho, seven from Salfit and seven from the Gaza Strip.
In the context of the policy of administrative detention – imprisonment without charge or trial – the occupation authorities issued 86 administrative detention orders, including 35 new orders. Thus, the total number of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails reached 6300, including 59 women, among them 11 minor girls. There are approximately 250 Palestinian children in Israeli jails and 450 Palestinians held without charge or trial under administrative detention.
Part 2: Detention of Children
The Israeli occupation courts in Jerusalem continue to issue sentences of house arrest againt Jerusalemite children, which deprives these children of their right to education. A child who has been sentenced to house imprisonment is forbidden from leaving the home, except for approved medical visits with their guardian and after informing the authorities. This forces parents to become jailers of their children, causing them deep pain.
Even more, the Israeli courts do not hesitate to issue sentences of imprisonment for children under 15 in the “sheltering center,” where eight Palestinian children are currently held. (Shadi Farrah, Adam Mohammed Sub Laban, Burhan Mohammed Abu Shaker, Ahmed al-Zaatari, Ali Ehab Alqam, Mohammed Ayman Abdel-Razaq, Yazan Mohammed al-Husseini and Mahmoud Naim Ashayer.)
Isolated Childhood
The mother of the child Shadi Farrah, 14, from Kufr Aqab in Jerusalem, said that he has been held in what the authorities call a “sheltering center” since his abdution by occupation forces along with fellow child prisoner Ahmad al-Zaatari about two years ago as they returned from school. The Israeli court later claimed that they were found to have a knife when searched. The occupation court held over 20 sessions in the trial of her son and he was considered the youngest prisoner in Israeli prisons.
She added that her son suffers from very difficult and complex psychological conditions in prison at his young age and needs psychological and moral support in particular as he is held in a “reform” institution accompanied by “criminal” prisoners.
Part 3: Arrests and allegations of “incitement” on Facebook
The phenomenon of the arrest of Palestinians for posting on Facebook under the pretet of “incitement” constitutes a new, punitive policy of the occupation authorities to bring as many children and young people as possible in prisons. Since the beginning of 2017, 220 Palestinians have been arrested and imprisoned on charges of publication of articles and opinions on Facebook and social media pages.
The Israeli military courts in the West Bank base these charges of “incitement” on Article 85 (1)(f) and (g) of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945, which forbids the authorship or possession of any illegal book, account, journal, publication or advertisement.
In the event that Palestinians from Jerusalem are convicted of incitement, the occupation bases its charges on Article 144, section (d)(2) of the Penal Code of 1977, where paragraph (a) stipulates that:
Publishing publications for the commission of an act of violence or terrorism, or in sympathy or encouragement for acts of violence or terrorism, or displaying support for such acts, and in accordance with the contents and circumstances of the publication, being that there is a real possibility that this publication would lead to acts of violence or terrorism, can result in imprisonment for 5 years.
During October 2017, the prisoner Abdel-Salam Jihad al-Masri, 23, from the village of Aqaba near Tubas, was transferred to administrative detention for four months after serving a sentence of three months imprisonment. Al-Masri was seized by Israeli forces on 1 August 2017 and accused of incitement for posting on his Facebook page. He was sentenced to 3 months imprisonment and a fine of 2,000 NIS ($500 USD) for incitement. On 17 October 2017, he was taken once more to the Israeli military court, sent back to prison and told that he was transferred to administrative detention for four more months, on the grounds that he is a threat to the security of the occupation state, ostensibly because of his writings on Facebook.
The occupation authorities claim that the imprisonment of activists on the basis of writing on social media is the only means to prevent a danger to the security of the occupation, but it seems to have become a clear means by the occupation of silencing voices and violating the right of expression, and to create new policies to serve as a tool of arrests and repression in order to deny Palestinian freedom of expression. Facebook is an electronic space that does not reflect factual acts. It is a space where writers express themselves poetically and emotionally. It is not acceptable for this to be used as an excuse to restrict freedom of expression or muzzle Palestinian voices. It is not an acceptable or reasonable conclusion for occupation courts to interpret Facebook posts as actual acts rather than writing on screens; it is a wrongful and unfair comparison.
Section 4: Legal Analysis
This report presents the legal protections under international humanitarian and human rights law to detainees, related to the types of Israeli violations during the reporting period and the legal rules that prohibit such violations, as follows:
1 – The arbitrary detention of Palestinian citizens violates the legal guarantees related to the prohibition of arbitrary detention in international human rights law, including article 9 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and articles 9 and 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976).
2 – The policy of administrative detention by the occupation state, in which detention is carried out on the basis of secret evidence and without any charge against the detainee, constitutes a direct violation of fair trial guarantees under the following legal principles:
a) It is contrary to Article 11 (1) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that: “Everyone charged with a penal offense has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense.”
b) It constitutes a grave violation of articles 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1976, which guarantees everyone the right to a fair trial, to be informed of the charges against them and to be able to defend themselves. (Note: The Occupying Power acceded to the ICCPR in October 1991, and shall be bound by it.)
c) The failure to disclose any charges against the person detained under the administrative detention order precludes every possibility of verifying the compliance of the occupying state with Article 78 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which states that “If the Occupying Power considers it necessary, for imperative reasons of security, to take safety measures concerning protected persons, it may, at the most, subject them to assigned residence or to internment.” It is impossible to verify whether this detention is permitted without knowing what the reasons have been and are.
d) Failure to inform the detained person of the charges against them constitutes a violation of Article 71 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which obliges the occupying power to report charges without delay. They also constitute a violation of article 10 of the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons in Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment of 1988, which requires the same.
3. The use of home imprisonment against children deprives them of going to school, which is harmful to their right to education, guaranteed under article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social of Cultural Rights of 1976. Denial of that right violates article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1990.
4. The arrest of Palestinians for posting on social media is a violation of their freedom of expression under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Politicl Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Conclusions:
This report sustains a number of findings, through our analysis of the practices of occupation authorities and the reality of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons, as follows:
1) The occupying forces are continuing their gross and systematic violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.
2) These Israeli violations have resulted in severe suffering for Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.
3) The silence of the international community has encouraged the occupying power to increase their violations against Palestinian detainees.
4) The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions have failed to fulfill their duties and have in fact encouraged the occupation authorities to escalate their violations.
Recommendations:
At the conclusion of the report, this series of recommendations is based on the above-mentioned facts and the systematic and gross violations of international humanitarian and human rights law by the occupying power, as follows:
Recommendations at the international level:
1) Formation of a fact-finding committee by the UN Human Rights Council on Israeli violations against detainees.
2) Activate the mechanisms of accountability by the international community towards the perpetrators of violations in fulfillment of its legal and ethical obligations.
3) The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions must uphold their responsibilities and pressure the occupying power to respect international humanitarian law.
4) International contracting committees of the Conventions must activate their role to pressure the occupying state to respect the standards for prisoners’ rights.
Recommendations at the local level:
1) Activating local solidarity campaigns with Palestinian prisoners.
2) Media support for detainees through intensified media campaigns.
Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice An International Conference
Call for Proposals
Date: March 12-30, 2018 Deadline: November 15, 2017
Organized by: Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies San Francisco State University USA
Ibrahim Abu Lughod Institute for International Studies, Birzeit University Palestine Institute of Women Studies Birzeit University Palestine
& other Palestinian & International academic and research institutions
Concept/CfP:
Initiated by the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (SFSU) and co-sponsored by the Ibrahim Abu Lughod Institute for International Studies and the Institute for Women’s Studies at Birzeit University and a host of Palestinian and international universities and research institutions. Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice international conference will be convened in Palestine between March 12 and 30, 2018.
This academic year, 2017-2018, coincides with significant anniversaries in Palestinian history: the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, Sinai and the Golan Heights (June 5, 2017); the 35th anniversary of the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon and the Sabra and Shatila Massacre (September 17, 2017): the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration (November 2, 2017); and the 70th of the UN Partition of Palestine (November 29, 2017), Deir Yassin Massacre (April 9, 2018) and the Nakba (May 15, 2018).
The current political and historical moment is particularly significant. Israeli colonialism, racism and occupation is deepening and entrenching. By contrast, Palestinian resistance to the Zionist project is appropriately taking multiple/different shapes and forms in all the geographies of dispossession, displacement and precarious existence. Shaping Palestinian politics is a regional and international context that is characterized by deepening poverty, civil wars, imperialist interventions, unrestrained neoliberal economic policies, hostile alliances, and the recolonization of previously decolonized nations. Rooted in xenophobic, Orientalist, Zionist, and other supremacist Ideologies, the consolidation of global and regional alliances under the guise of the so-called “war on terror” has fueled an alarming rise in Islamophobic and anti-Arab racism as well as an escalation in targeting marginalized communities.
These political, social, economic and socio-cultural dynamics shape the learning environment within and outside the classroom and extends beyond campus grounds. The rise of the neoliberal corporate university has shrunk the emancipatory spaces expanded by the radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s in both the Global North and South, including anti-colonial national liberation movements. Epistemological and pedagogical transformations were particularly significant in challenging Eurocentric and colonial education as well as claiming community control over the curriculum. This was noticeable in the United States particularly in Oceanhill-Brownsville and at San Francisco State University where the 1968 Student Strike demanded a college for 3rd world studies. The 1968 SFSU student strike went beyond the free speech movement to produce a radical transformation of the curriculum. It also opened spaces for initiating and building the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies as a pedagogical, scholarly and communal site that challenges colonial, Islamophobic, Orientalist and Zionist hegemonic knowledge on Arab and Muslim communities, in general, and Palestine, in particular.
The emergence of Palestinian autonomous universities, their accreditation, and standards of excellence and innovation has been part and parcel of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle and liberation movement that impacted Palestinian education under Israeli colonial rule in both the ’48 and the ’67 areas as well in refugee camps and the Palestinian exilic Diasporas. Palestinian struggle for decolonizing the curriculum for future generations resonates with similar struggles elsewhere, such as the South African uprising against Bantu Education in 1976, the rejection by the American Indian Movement of Boarding schools in North America, and the insistence on resisting the “English Only” instruction in Puerto Rico and other colonized sites in the Western Hemisphere. Black Studies
Decolonizing the curriculum was effected by and contributed to the emergence of social movements that were in turn harshly suppressed by state apparatus. Examples are abound from Latin America to the Philippines, Indonesia to Mexico, and Central and South-West Asia to North Africa and Southern Africa. Palestine was not an exception. Throughout Palestinian history, Israel has targeted and harshly suppressed campus activism as well as the infrastructure of Palestinian education. For example, during the 2002 reinvasion, Israel destroyed several schools and educational institutions, including the buildings of the Palestinian ministries of Education and Higher education. During the 1987 Intifada, Israel closed Palestinian universities and schools for several years and proceeded to ban popular clandestine education and punish educators and parents who violated this ban. Not a single commencement at any of the Palestinian universities has ever enjoyed a full graduating class.
Targeting Palestinian education has been a strategic goal of the Israeli state and its research and academic institutions. Teaching Palestine –its history, geography, colonization, generations, and resistance–as an emancipatory pedagogical and advocacy project outside of Palestine has also been targeted. At San Francisco State University and elsewhere in the academy, educators of Palestine and advocates for justice in/for Palestine have been subjected to relentless campaigns that seek to silence, intimidate and bully teachers and students who study, research and engage in the praxis of Palestine. Aimed at creating a chilling effect of new McCarthyism, these campaigns are launched by a well-funded and politically connected Israel lobby network intent on stemming the expanding tide of support for justice in/for Palestine on US college campuses. These attacks are not divorced from similar campaigns in the US academy that target dissenting and critical voices of neoliberalism and the rise of Trump and his Alt-right administration.
Targeting Palestinian education has also been increasingly evident in pressures applied by U.S. and other international donor agencies, such as the World Bank, to impose revisions in Palestinian curriculum in return for funding Palestinian Authority institutions. The goal is to reverse the anti-colonial grounding of Palestinian education that accompanied the rise of the Palestinian liberation movement. Similarly, in its attempts to re-write history, the U.S. white supremacist industry has intensified its campaign to reinstate the pre-1960s Eurocentric and colonial education to normalize as “neutral” genocide, slavery, racism, exclusion and exploitation. In both cases (and many others) the goal is to erase resistance legacies, de-educate future generations and produce docile citizenry that does not question the unjust status quo.
Teaching Palestine will therefore bring together participants who will historicize and contextualize the praxis of Palestine in its multiple manifestations and nuanced dialectics. It will provide a much needed space to think through how to move between the inside of the classroom and the outside of campus, and above all hold ourselves accountable to a complex, nuanced and exciting intellectual line of inquiry. Building on multi-site conversations inside and outside the academy, scholars, advocates and activists will weave theory and praxis in pedagogical, intellectual and community imaginaries, teaching about justice-centered knowledge production on Palestine.
To insure reciprocity in intellectual/community exchange and deepen the sense of solidarities, Teaching Palestine conference participants will spend 1-2 days at each of the sites of the sponsoring universities in a formal conference setting and informal interaction with communities on and off campus (villages, refugee camps and town as well as faculty, students and staff). In the process, conference participants will visit geographies of Palestinian anti-colonial indigenous resistance.
We invite international participation that is historically contextualized and currently relevant to discuss justice-centered knowledge production in ways that intentionally invoke and take into account opportunities and limitations of comparative analysis. We particularly seek participants from the global North and South with the understanding that the North exists in the South and vice-verse to challenge the boundaries of what teaching and learning mean, in settings including but not limited to scholarly associations, university classrooms, other classrooms, prisons, formal and informal union/labor settings, social movement and activist contexts, and informal and formal teaching and learning spaces.
Please submit a 300 word abstract of individual presentations or 500 word proposals (along with individual abstracts) of pre-organized panels, roundtables, workshops or other creative format by November 15, 2017. Bios of 250 words of all participants are required by the time of submission.
For more information please email conference co-organizers:
From Israel’s apartheid Wall on Palestinian land to the US Wall of Shame on indigenous land at the border with Mexico – Walls are monuments of expulsion, exclusion, oppression, discrimination and exploitation. As people affected by these walls and as movements that pose justice, freedom and equality as our tools to resolve the problems of this planet, we join the call for the 9th of November as a Global Day of Action for a World without Walls.
Activists in New York City protested on Monday, 30 October to urge freedom for Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike. Bilal Diab, 32, and Hassan Shokeh, 29, have been on hunger strike since 17 October and 14 October, respectively. They have been joined on hunger strike by Hamza Bouzia and Musab Said. Diab, Shokeh and Bouzia are all refusing food to protest their “administrative detention,” imprisonment without charge or trial.
The protest, organized by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, took place outside the Best Buy electronics store in Union Square. It also demanded that Hewlett-Packard (HP) companies end their contracts with Israeli prisons, military and security forces and other occupation infrastructure, urging a boycott of HP consumer products, including computers, tablets, printers and ink, until the corporation stops its profiteering from the oppression and occupation of Palestinians. It comes as part of a growing global boycott campaign targeting HP for its complicity in Israeli occupation and apartheid.
The protest also took place the day following Israeli missile strikes that killed 12 Palestinians in Gaza in a tunnel near Khan Younis. Participants in the demonstration expressed their outrage at the occupation strikes, demanding an end to the siege on Gaza and the constant Israeli threat of war against Palestinians in the besieged Strip.
Protesters carried signs with images of Diab and Shokeh. Diab previously conducted a 78-day hunger strike along with fellow administrative detainee Thaer Halahleh, in 2012, winning his freedom. He was seized again by occupation forces on 14 July and ordered once again imprisoned without charge or trial. He launched his hunger strike after an Israeli court denied his appeal on 17 October.
Shokeh was also re-arrested on 29 September, less than one month after being released from Israeli prisons on 31 August, and ordered once again imprisoned without charge or trial. Along with Bouzia, Diab and Shokeh are demanding their immediate release from imprisonment without charge. They are among 450 Palestinians – out of a total of 6,200 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails – held in administrative detention.
Administrative detention orders, which are indefinitely renewable, were first introduced to Palestine by the British colonial mandate, and later continued by the Israeli occupation. The British origins of administrative detention were particularly resonant this week, as protesters also marked the 100th anniversary of the Balfour declaration in which British foreign minister Arthur Balfour expressed the official support of Britain for the Zionist movement in Palestine and put that support into action through the colonial mandate.
Samidoun activists joined many other organizations, including the NY4Palestine coalition of which they are a part, for a protest and march condemning British and Zionist colonization of Palestine on Thursday, 2 November, marking the 100th anniversary of the Balfour declaration. A full report on the #Balfour100 protest in New York is forthcoming.
Four Palestinian prisoners are continuing their hunger strikes in Israeli jails; three of them are demanding their release from administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial, and the other is protesting his conditions of confinement.
Bilal Diab, former long-term hunger striker from Kafr Ra’i near Jenin, has been on hunger strike for 20 days. He was transferred on Wednesday, 1 November from Ashkelon prison to Ohli Kedar prison, the second transfer since he began his hunger strike. Prison transfers are physically exhausting and arduous and are especially difficult for hunger striking Palestiian prisoners. Diab, 32, previously conducted a 78-day hunger strike with Thaer Halahleh in 2012. Seized again by Israeli forces on 14 July 2017, his appeal against his imprisonment without charge or trial was denied on 17 October, prompting him to launch his hunger strike.
He joined Hassan Shokeh, 29, from Bethlehem, on his 24th day of hunger strike against his own imprisonment without charge or trial. Shokeh was seized again by occupation forces in late September, less than one month after he was released from Israeli prison on 31 August, and ordered imprisoned without charge or trial.
Also on hunger strike is Hamza Bouzia of Salfit, held without charge or trial under administrative detention. He has been refusing food for 17 days to demand his release from imprisonment. Musab Sa’id, an imprisoned jounralist from Ramallah, is also on hunger strike for the ninth day, in protest of his conditions of confinement and the denial of his transfer.
Sheikh Khader Adnan, former long-term hunger striker, said that the hunger strikers are engaged in a battle of freedom and dignity that challenges the occupation. He said that Diab told him in a letter that he will not accept less than freedom. He urged greater action to support the hunger strikers and work to end their suffering, emphasizing that the hunger strike is a tool of action for the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.
Israeli occupation authorities issued 24 more administrative detention orders against Palestinian prisoners from 25 to 31 October, reported Palestinian lawyer Mahmoud al-Halabi on 2 November. Administrative detention orders imprison Palestinian prisoners without charge or trial on the basis of “secret evidence.”
These administrative detention orders were issued for three to six months; the orders are indefinitely renewable and Palestinians have been imprisoned for years at a time without charge or trial under administrative detention.
There are currently over 450 Palestinians jailed without charge or trial out of a total of over 6,200 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons.
The orders were as follows:
1. Tawfiq Ahmad Shalabi, Jenin, 4 months, extension
2. Sherif Khaled Hussein Khaddour, Ramallah, 4 months, new order
3. Khaled Mohammed al-Fasfous, al-Khalil, 6 months, extension
4. Lutfi Taher Malaysheh, Jenin, 6 months, new order
5. Murad Mohammed al-Gharib, Jenin, 6 months, new order
6. Moatassem Mahmoud Jibril, al-Khalil, 3 months, extension
7. Mohammed Hassan al-Darabiyah, al-Khalil, 6 months, extension
8. Fares Ahmed Zamara, Ramallah, 3 months, extension
9. Mehdi Najah Sharkawi, Jenin, 6 months, new order
10. Ibrahim Mohammed Dahbour, Jenin, 4 months, extension
11. Alaa Salem Houshia, Jenin, 6 months, new order
12. Ahmed Kamal Izzat al-Jabari, Jenin, 6 months, new order
13. Raafat Mohsen Asfour, Ramallah, 3 months, extension
14. Suhaib Adnan Moussa, Jenin, 6 months, new order
15. Musab Hussein Rabie, Ramallah, 6 months, new order
16. Rabie Abdel-Majid Hazna, Ramallah, 4 months, extension
17. Fathi Mohammed Hammad, Ramallah, 6 months, new order
18. Ayatallah Mohammed al-Tamari, Bethlehem, 6 months, new order
19. Kamal Suleiman Hamed, Ramallah, 4 months, new order
20. Alaa Ali Hamed, Ramallah, 6 months, new order
21. Issam Rashed Ashqar, Nablus, 3 months, extension
22. Abdel-Rahman Hussein Gleis, Ramallah, 6 months, new order
23. Yousef Bader Khalil, al-Khalil, 4 months, new order
24. Ashraf Riad Radi, Ramallah, 6 months, new order
DEFEND ACADEMIC FREEDOM!
DROP THE LAWSUIT!
STOP ISLAMOPHOBIA! DEFEAT HATE!
In June 2017, the pro-Israel group The Lawfare Project filed a lawsuit against San Francisco State University (SFSU) and Professor Rabab Abdulhadi falsely charging them with anti-semitism. On August 21, Dr. Abdulhadi filed a motion to dismiss this frivolous and specious lawsuit whose aim is to suppress and punish campus debate, scholarship and activism for Palestinian freedom. Dr. Abdulhadi maintains, “This will fail, because, as an educator, I have the right to seek truth and justice, and to study Palestine.”
On November 8, 2017, the Northern District of California Court will hear Dr. Abdulhadi’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
RALLY AT 1 PM AND ATTEND THE COURT HEARING AT 2 PM
To help plan the rally and for more information contact: defendrabab@gmail.com
On November 2nd 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour signed the Balfour Declaration, addressed to the Zionist Federation of Britain, expressing the British government’s support for ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’. This marked the beginning of a colonising project which would see over 750,000 Palestinians expelled from their homes when the state of Israel was established, the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and the suppression of Palestinian rights under an apartheid Zionist regime in alliance with British imperialism.
100 years on, the devastating effects of this alliance on the Palestinian people are still being seen today. Palestine remains occupied by the Israeli state which treats Palestinians as second-class citizens; demolition of Palestinian homes to make room for illegal settlements are commonplace; millions of refugees who were displaced from their land are still denied their right to return; and thousands of Palestinian political prisoners are locked up in Israeli jails, often indefinitely, without charge, and without access to basic rights and dignity. Britain provides unconditional political and military support to the Israeli state; in return, British companies like G4S and Barclay’s profit from the oppression of the Palestinian people through lucrative security and military dealings with the Israeli state, which also provides an important foothold for imperialist warmongering in the Middle East.
Despite the multiple, well documented atrocities unleashed upon the Palestinian people in the name of Zionism, there are those whose interests lie in the continuation of occupation and imperialist devastation of Palestine. Balfour 100, a self-described ‘Christian Zionist organisation’ are organising a concert in the Royal Albert Hall, the venue in which Lord Balfour celebrated with the Zionist leaders of his day Britain’s acquistion of the Mandate for Palestine.
Join us in voicing our support for the Palestinian resistance against Zionism and their call for a cultural boycott of Israeli and Zionist events, in conjunction with the wider campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). Protest the Balfour 100 concert!
This is part of a series of events we are holding to mark 100 years of the Balfour declaration. We are also organising a meeting and discussion on the historical and ongoing implications of the Balfour declaration.
NATIONAL MARCH AND RALLY, SATURDAY 4 NOVEMBER
Assemble 12noon Grosvenor Square W1K 6LF London.
For the past 100 years Palestinian rights have been disregarded. As we approach the centenary of the Balfour Declaration – on the 2nd November – which built the path for their dispossession, we are demanding justice and equal rights for Palestinians now.
Dr Mustafa Barghouti / Ken Loach / Andy Slaughter MP / Mick Whelan General Secretary ASLEF / Gail Cartmail TUC / Lowkey / John Pilger / Senator Paul Gavan Sinn Fein / Leanne Mohamad / Hugh Lanning PSC / Asad Rehman War on Want / Reem Kelani / Philipa Harvey NEU-NUT Section / Glyn Secker JFJFP / Daoud Abdalah MAB / Ajmal Masrour Imam & broadcaster / Prof Manuel Hassassian / Tariq Ali / Salma Yacoub / Lindsey German STW / Ismael Patel FOA / Walter Wolfgang CND / Dave Randall / Jenny Tonge / Hawiyya Dance Company / John Nicolson SNP / Leah Levane JVL / Rajab Shamlakh APCUK.
Organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB), Friends of Al Aqsa (FOA), Stop the War Coalition (STW), Muslim Association of Britain (MAB).
Supported by Unite the Union, UNISON, National Education Union- NUT Section, GMB, ASLEF, RMT, FBU, UCU, PCS, CWU, Europal Forum, CND, Pax Christi, APCUK, Kairos UK, Friends of Sabeel UK, ICAHD UK, Olive, Amos Trust, APCUK, Muslim Voice.
Contact us for more information: info@palestinecampaign.org
Organized by: Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies
From Israel’s apartheid Wall on Palestinian land to the US Wall of Shame on indigenous land at the border with Mexico – Walls are monuments of expulsion, exclusion, oppression, discrimination and exploitation. As people affected by these walls and as movements that pose justice, freedom and equality as our tools to resolve the problems of this planet, we join the call for the 9th of November as a Global Day of Action for a World without Walls.
Four Palestinian prisoners are 
Israeli occupation authorities issued 
DEFEND ACADEMIC FREEDOM!
On November 2nd 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour signed the Balfour Declaration, addressed to the Zionist Federation of Britain, expressing the British government’s support for ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’. This marked the beginning of a colonising project which would see over 750,000 Palestinians expelled from their homes when the state of Israel was established, the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and the suppression of Palestinian rights under an apartheid Zionist regime in alliance with British imperialism.
NATIONAL MARCH AND RALLY, SATURDAY 4 NOVEMBER