Saturday, 4 March
4:00 pm
Immigrant Worker Center
4755 Van Home Ave Bureau 110
Montreal, Quebec
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1634444446863284/
Community dinner and presentation!
From Palestine, to Ireland, to the Philippines, free all political prisoners.
Souper communautaire et présentation!
De la Palestine, à l’Ireland, aux Philippines, liberté pour tous les prisonier-e-s politiques!
Friday, 3 March
5:30 pm
Best Buy Union Square
52 E. 14th St, NYC
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/353278718405343/
Before International Women’s Day – and the International Women’s Strike US/ Paro Internacional de Mujeres EUA – demand freedom for Lina Jarbouni, the longest-held of 52 female Palestinian political prisoners, including 12 minor girls, detained by Israel.
Lina al-Jarbouni is from Arabba al-Batouf village, near the Palestinian City of Akka (Akko – Acre), in the north of the country.
She was born to a Palestinian family on January 11, 1974 and holds Israeli citizenship.
On April 18, 2002, al-Jarbouni was arrested and interrogated for more than 30 days at the al-Jalama interrogation facility where she was tortured and abused.
She was subsequently sentenced by an Israeli court to 17 years imprisonment, accused of “aiding the enemy.”
Israel refused to release al-Jarbouni during the Shalit Prison-Swap deal with the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.
Stand with Lina to demand that Israel release her and all 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners immediately, and that Hewlett Packard companies end their contracts with Israeli prisons and detention centers, occupation and security forces, and checkpoints and settlements now.
Help build a growing international campaign to 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.
Israeli Apartheid Week began in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy on Monday, 27 February with an event on the Right to Education and Academic Freedom in Palestine, focusing on the Palestinian call for academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions as well as the campaign to end the partnership with Israeli military-linked university, the Technion, at the University of Cagliari.
Part of the global week of action highlighting the struggle for Palestinian rights, the event panel included Charlotte Kates of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and Angelo Stefanini, retired professor of economics, management and statistics at the University of Bologna, as well as a video from the Right to Education Campaign at Bir Zeit University in Palestine. Professor Andrea Pubusa of the University of Cagliari moderated the event.
Kates spoke about the institutional denial of the Palestinian right to education, focusing on arrests, raids and imprisonment targeting Palestinian students and faculty. She reviewed the current statistics on Palestinian prisoners, noting that there are approximately 7,000 Palestinians currently imprisoned in Israeli jails that represent all sectors of Palestinian society. She noted the array of military orders that constantly regulate Palestinian life under occupation, as well as the occupation military courts with a 99.74% conviction rate. She also discussed the Israeli policy of administrative detention, currently imprisoning nearly 600 Palestinians without charge or trial, in clear violation of international law.
Video:
[fbvideo link=”https://www.facebook.com/IAWcagliari/videos/1257302867681590/” width=”800″ height=”” onlyvideo=”1″]
She also spoke about Israeli raids on Palestinian academic institutions, noting, among other occasions, that “raids at Bir Zeit University have targeted academic departments and student council headquarters; while the raids often take place at night and at times in the day, what is left behind is destruction as glass is shattered, belongings ransacked and computers and documents seized and disassembled. At Al-Quds University in Abu Dis, the Islamic Studies department was invaded and ransacked, with books, materials and documents confiscated by the Israeli military. In a daytime attack on Al-Quds University in Abu Dis, over 50 students were injured due to massive use of tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets.”
Kates highlighted the vibrancy of student political life in Palestine and the concerted, violent campaign of raids and arrests seeking to shut down that process. Involvement with Palestinian student organizations, councils and blocs is criminalized as those blocs are labeled “prohibited” or “hostile organizations,” and student elections are met with increased raids, repression and imprisonment of student organizers.
“As a colonial mechanism, imprisonment is used in an attempt to undermine indigenous resistance and prevent indigenous organizing, development and liberation. Thus, the disruption of Palestinian education, the denial of Palestinian academic freedom and the constant attacks on Palestinian students and faculty are not mere individual incidents or accidents of history. Instead, these examples are representative of a broader structure of repression, occupation and settler colonialism that has been developed over 70 years over the Palestinian people and the land of Palestine. In order to support Palestinian freedom and Palestinian rights, including the right to education, it is critical to support Palestinian prisoners,” she concluded.
Angelo Stefanini provided a thorough introduction and overview of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) and the call for academic boycott of Israeli institutions. He laid out the reasons for academic boycott, including the involvement of Israeli academic institutions in the structures of occupation, their involvement in military research and development – particularly noting the Technion’s role in this regard – as well as the ongoing violations of Palestinian academic freedom carried out over decades of occupation, colonialism and oppression.
Video:
The panel concluded with a video from the Right to Education Campaign at Bir Zeit University, in which university students spoke about their own experiences with Israeli occupation and oppression, urging students and faculty internationally to support BDS and the academic boycott of Israeli institutions. Presentations were followed by a lively discussion highlighting the situation of military bases and testing in Sardinia, including the participation of US and Israeli forces in weapons testing on the island.
Israeli Apartheid Week in Cagliari is continuing over the coming week. Events continue on Wednesday, 1 March at 5:00 pm with documentary presentations at Aula Arcari at the Faculty of Economic, Juridical and Political Sciences at the University. The event will include screenings of “The Living of the Pigeons” by Baha’ Abu Shanab and “Shujayya” by Mohammed al-Mughanni. On Thursday, 2 March at 5:00 pm, in the same room, there will be a presentation of the Italian-language translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s “1936-39 Revolt in Palestine,” with presentations by Giuseppe Pusceddu of the Associazione Amicizia Sardegna Palestina and Samed Ismail of the Collettivo Universitario Autonomo Casteddu. On Friday, 3 March in Aula A, an event at 4:00 pm. will highlight “Military Occupation from Sardinia to Palestine,” with Alessia Ferrari of BDS Sardegna and Nicola Piras of the Committee Against Military Occupation of Sardinia. The week of action will close with a concert at Scalette Magistero, featuring hip-hop performances. Cagliari will also soon host the 14th Al-Ard Documentary Film Festival, highlighting documentary films on Palestine and the Arab world.
Two Palestinian prisoners are continuing on hunger strike against their administrative detention, Israeli imprisonment without charge or trial. Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qeeq, 35, is currently on his 23rd day of hunger strike, demanding his release from administrative detention, while Jamal Abu Leil is on his 13th day of hunger strike for his release.
Raed Mteir ended his strike on the 12th day after reaching an agreement for his release in April 2017 and that his administrative detention will not be renewed.
Al-Qeeq’s health has continued to deteriorate, said his lawyer Khaled Zabarqa. He has lost weight significantly and is having difficulty speaking; he has had to use a wheelchair to move and cannot walk. Zabarqa visited al-Qeeq on Monday in the Ramle prison clinic, and reported that his health continues to deteriorate as his health is weaker due to his 94-day hunger strike last year that won his May 2016 release from administrative detention.
A secret session was held in Israeli military court on Tuesday, 28 February with the military prosecution on al-Qeeq’s case, Zabarqa said, which confirmed his three-month administrative detention order.
Abu Leil met with lawyer Jawad Boulos in Ashkelon prison, where he is held in isolation after being transferred on Monday from Eshel prison. He has lost nearly 10 kilograms.
Palestinians rallied in Ramallah and in Ramle outside the prison hospital in support of the hunger strikers, demanding their immediate release.
As Al-Qeeq and Abu Leil continue their hunger strikes, they are among approximately 600 Palestinians imprisoned without charge or trial under administrative detention. Administrative detention orders are issued for one to six months at a time and are indefinitely renewable, which means that Palestinians can be imprisoned for years without charge or trial.
17 administrative detention orders were issued between 19 and 26 February, reported Palestinian lawyer Ashraf Abu Sneineh, all of them renewals of existing administrative detention orders:
1. Yacoub Imad Turki, from al-Fuwwar camp, 4 months extension
2. Hasan Husni Shawkat, from Bethlehem, 4 months extension
3. Samer Mahmoud Hanani, from Beit Furik, 4 months extension
4. Kamal Mazen Boustah, from Arabah, 4 months extension
5. Ashraf Ghassan Jibril, from Qalqilya, 4 months extension
6. Majdi Abdel-Qader Oweidat, from Jericho, 6 months extension
7. Saadi Mohammed Khaddeirat from al-Zahiriya, 4 months extension
8. Saif Bassam Abu Eisha, from al-Khalil, 4 months extension
9. Nour Shaker al-Atrash, from al-Khalil, 6 months extension
10. Jadallah Abdel-Alim Da’na, from al-Khalil, 6 months extension
11. Musab Manasrah, from Bani Naim, 6 months extension
12. Bakr Mohammed Kharyoush, from Tulkarem, 4 months extension
13. Ahmad Mahmoud Kharoush, from Qaryout, 4 months extension
14. Raafat Khalil Abu Rabie from al-Mazria al-Qablia, 4 months extension
15. Baha’ Taha al-Najjar, from al-Khalil, 4 months extension
16. Ramzi Tawfiq Qarini, from Jenin camp, 6 months extension
17. Ashraf Mohammed al-Jouda, from Burqin, 4 months extension
Samidoun’s Charlotte Kates participated in a conference in Milan, Italy on Saturday, 25 February, speaking about Palestinian political prisoners, Zionist repression and the internationalization of repression and resistance. The conference, organized by Fronte Palestina, brought together Italian activists from various cities to speak about repressive legislation designed to suppress Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activism, including the BDS movement, and the Israeli role in the export of repressive technology internationally.
Kates began her remarks at the conference by speaking about Omar Nayef Zayed, the former Palestinian prisoner killed one year earlier in Sofia, Bulgaria, and found dead outside the Palestinian embassy where he had taken refuge from an Israeli attempt to extradite him. Her remarks echoed the event’s opening, as the conference began with a salute to Nayef Zayed, recalling his struggle for freedom. Kates discussed Nayef Zayed’s imprisonment, escape in 1990 and his life in Bulgaria with his family as a leader in the Palestinian community, noting that the extradition request came after years of increased security coordination between the Bulgarian government and the Israeli state. She noted that there is a “triangle of responsibility” for the death of Omar Nayef Zayed, the Israeli state, the Bulgarian state and the Palestinian Authority, who pressured Nayef Zayed to leave the embassy, denied him visitors and discouraged international campaigners on his behalf rather than supporting his efforts to fight Israeli extradition.
She then discussed the role of “anti-terror” legislation and the use of lists of so-called “terrorist organizations” to separate exiled Palestinians from their national liberation movements and cut off international solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle, as well as the ways in which these lists replicate and mirror Israeli lists of “prohibited” or “hostile” organizations for which thousands of Palestinians have been imprisoned for membership, affiliation and support, remarking on the case of the Holy Land Five in the United States. She also noted other key international cases relating to the Palestinian struggle, including the case of Rasmea Odeh in the US and the imprisonment for 32 years in French prisons of Arab struggler for Palestine, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.
Kates spoke about the importance of international solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners and the work of Samidoun, highlighting the role of Palestinian prisoners as examples of Palestinian national unity, leaders of the Palestinian liberation struggle and representatives of Palestinian resistance, on the front lines confronting Israeli occupation. She noted that supporting Palestinian prisoners is part and parcel of supporting Palestinians’ right to resist occupation and oppression, and highlighted specific cases, such as the current hunger strike of imprisoned journalist Mohammed al-Qeeq, and the struggle of imprisoned Palestinian leader and PFLP General Secretary Ahmad Sa’adat against isolation.
The talk also addressed the role of Palestinian prisoner solidarity as part of an international struggle against imperialism and repression. She noted European complicity in the imprisonment of Palestinians and highlighted programs such as LAW-TRAIN, funded by the Horizon 2020 research grant program, which brings European and Israeli police agencies together, along with several universities including Bar-Ilan University and KU Leuven, to study interrogation techniques. The project also includes the Israeli Ministry of Public Security, headed by far-right figure Gilad Erdan, who also holds the portfolio for fighting BDS organizing around the world.
“Building solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners is a way to support Palestinian national unity, real Palestinian struggling leadership, support Palestinian resistance and build alliances of mutual support and solidarity to fight the alliance of imperialism, Zionism and reactionary regimes that threatens us all. This is why we build campaigns to boycott and internationally isolate Israel and the corporations that are part of its prison infrastructure…This is why we organize protests and actions and come together ever more strongly with domestic movements against racism, against fascism, against repression and imprisonment,” concluded Kates.
The event included a number of interventions; Italian lawyer Ugo Giannangeli spoke about DDL 2043, a proposed anti-BDS law making its way through the Italian legislature, contrasting the attempts to suppress Palestine solidarity activism with Israel’s own egregious violations of international law. Enrico Bartolomei spoke about the university as a site of capitalist research and development, and how this drive towards profit works together with militarization and partnerships with Israeli universities, such as the Technion, for repressive industries locally and globally.
Several students from the University of Torino spoke about their work as part of Students Against Technion, working to expose the Israeli university’s involvement in the development of military technologies that oppress Palestinians, including drone technologies and tunnel detection. The university, along with other Italian universities, maintained a partnership with the Technion that expired in November 2016; no official word has been issued on its resumption, and the students are demanding an end to this partnership and all future such partnerships. They also spoke about the repression of their own activities on campus, including the cancellation of a speaking event with Israeli pro-BDS activist Ronnie Barkan.
Diana Carminati spoke about another proposed Italian law, DDL 2186, to implement increased bilateral agreements between Italy and Israel in military, security and defense matters, as well as the importance of a political and anti-imperialist approach to Palestine solidarity organizing. Silvano Falessi of Fronte Palestina spoke about the use of law to serve far-right and imperialist interests in Italy while suppressing the exposure of the genocide against the Palestinian people, while youth activists with Fronte Palestina in Padua addressed their organizing against anti-BDS legislation alongside anti-NATO and anti-imperialist organizing. Activists from Soccorso Rosso (Red Aid) spoke about the case of Georges Abdallah and the importance of supporting Palestinian political prisoners.
The event concluded with lively discussion and political analysis presented by Fronte Palestina organizers, as well as strategizing to build campaigns to confront repression in Palestine, in Italy and internationally.
New York City activists protested on Friday, 24 February in response to the re-sentencing of longest-held Palestinian prisoner Nael Barghouthi, demanding his freedom and urging a boycott of HP products for its complicity and involvement in Israeli imprisonment, occupation and settler colonialism.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network gathered outside the Best Buy electronics store in Union Square, carrying signs and chanting for freedom for Barghouthi and his fellow Palestinian prisoners. They distributed leaflets and information about the involvement of Hewlett-Packard (HP) corporations in contracting with the Israel Prison Service as well as other Israeli state entities for technology that enables the running of checkpoints, settlements, prison and other infrastructure of colonialism and occupation.
On Wednesday, 22 February, the Israeli occupation Ofer military court reimposed the original prison sentence of life plus 18 years against Palestinian prisoner Nael Barghouthi. Barghouthi has spent 36 years in Israeli prison and is the longest-held Palestinian prisoner, originally released in October 2011 as part of the Wafa al-Ahrar prisoner exchange with over 1,000 fellow Palestinian political prisoners. At the time of his release, he had been the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner after 34 years of imprisonment.
He was re-arrested by Israeli occupation forces in June 2014 alongside dozens of former prisoners released in the exchange; under Israeli military order 1651, former Palestinian prisoners released in such an exchange can have their former sentences reimposed on the basis of “secret evidence” by an Israeli military commission.
Nearly 60 Palestinian prisoners have had their original sentences reimposed, mostly on the basis of association with members of “prohibited organizations,” which include every major Palestinian political party. However, Barghouthi was sentenced to 30 months in Israeli prison. On 17 December, Barghouthi’s 30-month sentence expired, yet he was denied release on the basis of an appeal filed by the Israeli military prosecution calling for the reimposition of his original life sentence plus 18 years. He was originally imprisoned on the basis of participating in a commando operation with fellow Fateh fighters that killed one Israeli settler near the illegal West Bank settlement of Halamish.
Barghouthi’s wife, Iman Nafie, a fellow former prisoner, his family and his lawyers have pledged to continue the struggle. The Samidoun protest is part of an international campaign to demand the release of Barghouthi and his fellow re-imprisoned Palestinian prisoners.
Samidoun activists also joined a protest on Sunday, 26 February in New York City’s Grand Central Station denouncing the sentencing of Israeli soldier Elor Azaria, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison for murdering a wounded Palestinian in his custody, Abdel-Fattah al-Sharif; his killing was captured on video by Palestinian human rights activist Imad Abu Shamsiyeh. The brief sentencing of Azaria, who openly murdered a captive Palestinian, has been widely contrasted to the sentencing of Palestinians, including children sentenced for several years for stone-throwing. The protest denounced the sentencing of Azaria as part of the Israeli apartheid settler-colonial system of racist injustice.
The next Samidoun protest in New York City will take place on Friday, 3 March, highlighting the struggles of Palestinian women prisoners and in particular the case of Lena Jarbouni, the longest-held Palestinian woman prisoner, at 5:30 pm outside the Best Buy in Union Square. Other upcoming actions include the International Women’s Strike and a protest on Tuesday, 14 March outside the New York Hilton Midtown against the “Friends of the Israel Defense Forces” annual gala, where fanatical Zionists gather each year alongside Israeli soldiers to raise tens of millions of dollars to support Israel’s political imprisonment and other war crimes against occupied Palestinians. The protest will take place at 5:30 pm outside the hotel and is endorsed by a number of organizations, including Al-Awda NY, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, the Committee to Stop FBI Reception NYC, International Action Center, Jews for Palestinian Right of Return, NY4Palestine and the United National Antiwar Coalition.
Former Palestinian prisoner Ihsan Dababseh was seized by Israeli occupation forces in a pre-dawn raid on her home in the town of Nuba south of al-Khalil on Monday, 27 February; they took her to the Etzion interrogation center, reported Asra Voice.
The home of Dababseh, 30, has been raided on multiple occasions over the last weeks with demands that she report for interrogation. During these raids, her family home was ransacked and belongings torn apart.
Dababseh is one of ten Palestinian women prisoners whose story is featured in “For the Love of Palestine: Stories of Women, Imprisonment and Resistance,” created by members of the Prison, Labor and Academic Delegation to Palestine.
Dababseh was released after 21 months in Israeli prison on 10 July 2016; she had been imprisoned since 13 October 2014 on charges of membership in a prohibited organization, in her case the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement. She previously spent two years in Israeli prison from 2007 to 2009 on similar charges. All major Palestinian political parties are labeled prohibited organizations by the Israeli occupation. During her imprisonment she had been isolated with four other Palestinian women as punishment for raising the Palestinian flag on the anniversary of the Nakba.
In 2014, Reham Alhelsi reported, “Israeli occupation soldiers raided her house several times, sent her 4 summons and threatened to blow up her house of she didn’t come to interrogation center. She went with her mother to detention center and was detained and her personal computer was confiscated, while her mother told to leave.”
During her prior arrest from 2007 to 2009, the Israeli occupation soldiers who had arrested and blindfolded her made a video of themselves dancing around her as she was blindfolded and held against the wall, which they distributed.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network marks the one-year anniversary of the loss of Omar Nayef Zayed with a renewed call for justice and accountability for the death of this struggler for Palestine and former Palestinian political prisoner whose life was taken as he struggled once more for his freedom.
Nayef Zayed, 52, was a former Palestinian prisoner who was imprisoned in 1986, as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, accused with his brother Hamza and Samer Mahroum of being part of an attack on an Israeli extremist settler in Jerusalem. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he escaped in 1990 after a 40-day hunger strike. His escape from Israeli prison is almost legendary, securing his freedom amid close and intense repression.
After traveling in the Arab world for 4 years, he arrived in Bulgaria in 1994. Nayef Zayed was married to Rania, a Palestinian Bulgarian; they had three children. He owned a grocery store and was a leader in Sofia’s Palestinian community. In December 2015, moments before the expiration of the statute of limitations, the Israeli state demanded he be arrested and turned over to them by the Bulgarian police, after years of escalating “security cooperation” and security agreements between Bulgaria and Israel. He took sanctuary in the Palestinian embassy in Sofia while internationally, Samidoun and others campaigned against the extradition demand. Throughout this time, he was constantly subject to pressure by PA representatives to leave the embassy.
On 26 February, Nayef Zayed’s bloodied body was found on the ground of the garden of the embassy. Since that time, Samidoun has joined his family and comrades in an ongoing struggle to hold those responsible for Nayef Zayed’s death accountable and uncover the truth.
During Omar Nayef Zayed’s 70 days within the Embassy, he struggled for his freedom, facing a triangle of injustice and responsibility – the Israeli state, the Bulgarian state and also the Palestinian Authority, whose embassy and ambassador did their best to push Omar from the embassy and make his life there difficult or impossible, denying him visitors and threatening to remove him at any time.
Today, despite several investigations, one year on, there has still been no justice or accountability on the death of Omar Nayef Zayed. His family recently won an appeal in Bulgarian courts against the original autopsy findings and are securing a new investigation into his death. Today, we revive the demand for truth, justice and accountability for Omar Nayef Zayed. This demand for justice is also being heard, resoundingly from Palestine; a mass march in Gaza on Saturday, 25 February demanded justice for Nayef Zayed, while events are being organized elsewhere in Palestine, in the refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria, and in events around the world, in Sofia, Bulgaria, Milan and Cagliari, Italy, and elsewhere.
Throughout his life, Nayef Zayed struggled for Palestine and for the Palestinian people; he was loved by his family, his friends and his comrades. We pledge to continue to organize and demand justice in this case and to remember his life, his struggle and his commitment to freedom, justice and liberation for the land and people of Palestine.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network actively supports and endorses the International Women’s Strike being organized on March 8, International Women’s Day, and the #WomenStrikeUS taking place on that day. The program for the strike highlights the centrality of anti-imperialist, anti-racist and anti-colonialist principles in the struggle for women’s liberation. As the platform states, “movements such as Black Lives Matter, the struggle against police brutality and mass incarceration, the demand for open borders and for immigrant rights and for the decolonization of Palestine are for us the beating heart of this new feminist movement. We want to dismantle all walls, from prison walls to border walls, from Mexico to Palestine.”
One of the original authors of the article urging an international women’s strike on March 8 is Rasmea Yousef Odeh, former Palestinian political prisoner, survivor of torture and current struggler against repression and persecution in the United States. Every day, Palestinian women inside and outside Palestine are on the front lines of struggle for the liberation of Palestinian women, Palestinian people and Palestinian land. Palestinian women prisoners have long been leaders in the prisoners’ movement, and today continue to play a leading role in the struggle for Palestinian freedom.
As Khalida Jarrar said in 2016 from HaSharon prison on International Women’s Day, “On this day, we affirm that we are Palestinian prisoners of struggle, and part of the Palestinian women’s movement, and that the national and social struggle goes on constantly and continuously until we win our freedom from occupation, and our freedom as women from all forms of injustice, oppression, violence and discrimination against women….We stand as part of a global struggle with all the world’s women freedom fighters: against injustice, exploitation and oppression.”
We encourage all supporters of Palestine and the Palestinian liberation struggle to get involved with the Women’s Strike. The platform is below:
The International Women’s Strike on March 8th, 2017 is an international day of action, planned and organized by women in more than 30 different countries.
In the spirit of solidarity and internationalism, in the United States March 8th will be a day of action organized by and for women who have been marginalized and silenced by decades of neoliberalism directed towards working women, women of color, Native women, disabled women, immigrant women, Muslim women, lesbian, queer and trans women.
March 8th will be the beginning of a new international feminist movement that organizes resistance not just against Trump and his misogynist policies, but also against the conditions that produced Trump, namely the decades long economic inequality, racial and sexual violence, and imperial wars abroad.
We celebrate the diversity of the many social groups that have come together for the International Women’s Strike. We come from many political traditions but are united around the following common principles.
All women deserve a life free of violence, both domestic and institutional. Working women, trans women, and women of color face the worst aspects of direct institutionalized violence, be it in the form of police brutality, immigration raids, or day-to-day violence in the form of state policies that create and consolidate poverty in our communities. Against all such state and personal violence, we demand that our lives and labor be treated with dignity for they form the basis of this society.
We stand for full reproductive justice for all women, cis and trans. We want complete autonomy over our bodies and full reproductive freedom. We demand free abortion without conditions and affordable healthcare for all, irrespective of income, race or citizenship status. The history of sterilization of women of color in this country goes hand in hand with the attack on abortion rights. Reproductive justice for us means the freedom to choose both whether to have children and when to have them.
Labor rights are women’s rights because women’s paid labor in the workplace and unpaid labor at home is the basis of wealth in our society. All over the world millions of women are forced to work for slave wages in dangerous sweatshops and other ‘hell factories’ that kill thousands every year. In the United States 46% of union members are women and a majority of them are women of color. All women, irrespective of citizenship status, sexuality or race, must have equal pay for equal work, $15 minimum wage, including for caregivers, free universal child care, paid maternity leave, sick leave, paid family leave and the freedom to organize a fighting union in the workplace. As working women who hold up half the sky we refuse to be divided over the kind of labor we perform, whether skilled or unskilled, formal or informal, sex work and domestic work.
Decades of neoliberal policies have seen the violent dismantling of social provisioning that has affected all women. While our working lives have been made increasingly precarious, social services that might have provided a safety net against such harsh exploitation of labor, have either been attacked or removed completely. Against these attacks, we demand an expansive restructuring of the American welfare system to serve the needs of the majority, such as universal healthcare, robust unemployment and social security benefits, and free education for all. We demand that the welfare system work to support our lives rather than shame us when we access such rights.
Against the open white supremacists in the current government and the far right and anti-Semites they have given confidence to, we stand for an uncompromising anti-racist and anti-colonial feminism. This means that movements such as Black Lives Matter, the struggle against police brutality and mass incarceration, the demand for open borders and for immigrant rights and for the decolonization of Palestine are for us the beating heart of this new feminist movement. We want to dismantle all walls, from prison walls to border walls, from Mexico to Palestine.
We believe that both social inequality and environmental degradation are due to an economic system that puts profit before people. We demand instead that the earth’s natural resources be preserved and sustained to enrich our lives and those of our children. The struggle of Water Protectors against the Dakota Access Pipe Line inspires us. The emancipation of women and the emancipation of the planet must go hand in hand.
Mohammed Zeidan Mahmoud, 39, of Issawiya in Jerusalem, was released on Wednesday evening, 22 February from detention after 15 years in Israeli prison. While he had been scheduled for release one day earlier and his family was awaiting his release, instead he was taken from Gilboa prison to the Moskobiya interrogation center in Jerusalem by Israeli occupation intelligence agents.
Upon his release, he was ordered to the city of Jericho for three days and any celebration of his release was prohibited. Earlier in the day, police and intelligence agents had raided Issawiya, arresting several youth and destroying the reception tent set up for Mahmoud. Two youth from Issawiya were expelled from the village for seven days and an order was issued to forbid any gathering of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine as a “terrorist” organization.
The seizure of Mahmoud upon his arrest and the extreme measures to prevent celebration upon his release are reminiscent of the detention of recently released prisoners Sufian Fakhri Abdo and Daoud Ghoul, both Palestinian Jerusalemites re-arrested – and then released with repressive conditions – after their release from Israeli prison in an attempt to shut down celebrations of their freedom.
