Talk plus discussion/debate by Barghouti, organizer of PACBI (the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel). Filmed at the U of Minnesota, 11/2009.
World celebrates 20 years of wall-free Berlin, but what will it do about Israel’s wall?
By Sanna Towns and Joseph Towns, MinnPost, 12 November 2009
This week German Chancellor Angela Merkel, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, other world leaders and the people of Europe celebrated and commemorated the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989. We were reminded of President Ronald Reagan’s insistent provocation to Gorbachev in 1987: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
In a sense, Reagan was preaching to the choir. Gorbachev, with his Glasnost and Perestroika policies, had signaled a new “openness” and freedom within the Warsaw Pact nations of the Soviet empire, thus heralding the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But while the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago this week, today there is another wall rising more than double its height, creating the impoverished, degrading, prison-like ghettos of Israeli-occupied Palestine: the 25-foot tall Israeli wall. Yet neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration has spoken out against this wall.
People displaced, homes demolished
This wall, at times concrete, razor wire, and a no-man’s land, stretches over 400 miles (three times longer than the Berlin Wall) deep within West Bank cities, villages and neighborhoods, and zigzags throughout 10 out of the 11 West Bank districts. Several thousand Palestinian residents have been forced to leave their homes, several hundred houses and buildings have been demolished, and land has been stolen for the construction of this wall. On its path, the wall de facto annexes to Israel nearly 50 percent of the West Bank (the Palestinian state of the so called “two-state solution”) and destroys all continuity of life in the region.
As the Berlin Wall affected their Berliner counterparts, the Israeli wall splits Palestinian families but confines them to even greater abuses and indignities. Already suffering from land lost to massive Israeli settlements (housing as many as 500,000 Israelis), Israeli-only roads and military expansion, Palestinians are deprived of freedom of movement, work, agricultural land, hundreds of thousands of uprooted olive trees, water, roads, access to health facilities, educational institutions, markets, family connections and religious sites — all within the Palestinian territories. The Israeli military forces have established a complex, draconian permit system requiring Palestinians trapped by the wall to obtain and renew permits to remain in their homes, go to their jobs and other communities, obtain medical help, and gain access to their agricultural fields.
According to the recent Amnesty International report, “Israel Rations Palestinians to Trickle of Water,” the wall contributes to Palestinians being further deprived of water. Israel appropriates to its settlements and Israel proper large areas of the water-rich Palestinian land it occupies and bars Palestinians from accessing them. Palestinians must obtain permits from the Israeli military in order to carry out water-related projects in the territories. Applications for such permits are often rejected or subject to long delays.
Amounts to effective annexation
The Israeli wall, the Israeli-only settlements, and the occupation itself violate international law. A major United Nations Charter violation of the wall is the unilateral demarcation of a new border in the West Bank that amounts to effective annexation of occupied land. Furthermore, along with the settlements, the destruction for and building of the wall have amounted to numerous violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention. And because the wall divides populations on the basis of race and ethnicity and discriminates against the residents of the West Bank to benefit illegal Israeli settlers, thus complying with the definition of apartheid, the wall constitutes a violation of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Hence, many of us refer to the barrier as the Israeli Apartheid Wall.
This wall can be viewed as an expansion of the American empire in that U.S. governments and corporations invest billions into Israel’s military institutions and arsenals, thus ensuring it as a military stronghold in the Middle East and using its might in subjugating the Palestinian people. We saw Israel’s military might in action last December and January in its 22-day war on the more than two-year and still besieged, blockaded, and imprisoned people of Gaza, a war that killed 1,400 Palestinians.
Now, here we are, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, being led by an African-American president who, during his days at Harvard, protested South African apartheid. Will we one day hear Obama say, “Mr. Netanyahu, tear down this wall!”?
Sanna Towns of St. Paul is a retired St. Paul school teacher; Joseph Towns of St. Louis Park is a former University of Minnesota graduate student. They are members of the Coalition for Palestinian Rights.
A Talk by Cynthia McKinney: Breaking the Siege of Gaza (Nov 6th)
Friday, November 6, 7:00 p.m. Walker Methodist Church, 3104 16th Avenue South, Minneapolis.
Free and open to the public. Donations accepted. Sponsored by the Middle East Committee of WAMM , 612.827.5364, www.worldwidewamm.org.
Hear former Congresswoman and presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney tell the story of her three valiant attempts and final success at entering Gaza to show solidarity and provide humanitarian aid to its besieged people.
While attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, Cynthia McKinney was a passenger in the relief vessel Dignity when it was rammed by the Israeli army in international waters, December 30. The heavily damaged ship was forced to limp into a Lebanese port. In late June, McKinney and twenty other human rights activists were arrested when their boat, Spirit of Humanity, was boarded by the Israeli Navy.
McKinney spent days in an Israeli prison before being released, but within days was on her way to join the Viva Palestina U.S. caravan, organized by British Member of Parliament George Galloway.
While in Gaza, Cynthia McKinney witnessed the devastation and destruction caused by “Operation Cast Lead,” a military offensive against the people of the Gaza Strip launched by Israel(with U.S-supplied weapons).
After 22 days of unrelenting aerial attacks coupled with an intensive ground invasion that began on 3 January 2009, the death toll exceeded 1,400 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians including women and children. Over 5,000 more were wounded. Excessive civilian casualties were compounded by the unprecedented destruction of civilian infrastructure across the Gaza Strip including hospitals, schools, mosques, civilian homes, police stations and United Nations compounds.
Today, the siege of Gaza continues as Israel pursues an illegal policy of extreme collective punishment against the 1.5 million residents of Gaza—more than half of whom are children. Former US president Jimmy Carter called the blockade of humanitarian goods to Gaza “one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth.”
Israel’s Palestinian Prisoners: Addameer’s Ala Jaradat speaks (Nov 11th)
The $3 billion dollars of annual U.S. aid to Israel helps fund Israeli prisons and detention centers where 8,100 Palestinian prisoners — including 60 women, 390 children, and 550 administrative detainees held without charge — are imprisoned in substandard conditions and subject to torture.
Human rights activist Ala Jaradat, the program manager of Addameer, the Palestinian prisoners rights organization in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, and a former Palestinian political prisoner, will be sharing his experiences campaigning against political prosecution, for the rights of political detainees, actively working against the use of torture, arbitrary detention, the use of isolation, and other forms of political repression.
A Report on the Conditions of Palestinian Political Prisoners featuring human rights activist Ala Jaradat from Addameer – Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association.
Wednesday, November 11th @ 7PM
Blegen Hall 150, West Bank, U of M
Co-Sponsored by the Anti-War Committee and WAMM
Debating Academic Boycott with Omar Barghouti (Nov 4th)
Debating Academic Boycott: A Quest for Justice in Palestine
a presentation followed by open discussion and debate
Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian researcher, commentator, and founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
Omar Barghouti
7:00-8:30 pm
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Cowles Auditorium, Humphrey Institute, West Bank, University of Minnesota
(parking available in 21st ave or 19th ave ramps)
Sponsored by: Department of Asian Languages and Literatures | Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature | Department of Geography | Institute for Global Studies | Teachers Against Occupation
Israel/Palestine: Minnesota Students Confront the Occupation (Oct 28th)
Wednesday October 28, 2009
12:00 – 1 PM.
Social Sciences Building, Room 614
University of Minnesota (West Bank)
Please join us for a presentation by Amber Michel (St. Cloud University) as she shares her experience in Israel and Palestine where she conducted research together with several undergraduate students from Minnesota. Amber’s presentation will be followed by a discussion.
Sponsored by Teachers Against Occupation
www.teachersagainstoccupation.org
teachers.against.occupation@gmail.com
Conference: Israel/Palestine: Working Towards Change (Nov 21st)
Join us as we challenge the dominant paradigm and discuss a course of action to address the conflict.
November 21st at the Friends Meeting House, 1802 East 1st St, Duluth, MN
Conference Schedule
9a.m.-9:15 Welcome with Session I Moderator Mary B. Newcomb
9:15-11 a.m. Session I: Challenging the Dominant Narrative – Joel Sipress, Bret Thiele, Mayra Gomez
11:15-Noon Session II, Part One: Vocalizing Concerns, Moderator: Carl Sack
Lunch Provided
12:30-1:30 Session II, Part Two Workshop
11:45 -3PM Session III: The Activist Plan, Moderator: Bob Kosuth
Contact Information
Bob Kosuth: 724-4800
Jay and Mary B. Newcomb: 724-6141
Bret Thiele and Mayra Gomez: 525-5609
Joel Sipress: 724-4624
Documentary showing: “GAZA The Killing Zone” (October 16th)
Friday October 16th @ 5:30pm
Film Showing: “Gaza: the Killing Zone.” A British documentary on Israeli violence in Gaza against not only Palestinian civilians, but international aid volunteers and foreign reporters as well.
Bob Kosuth will be talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at 6:30pm.
The film showing is part of “Remember the Refugee Week”, sponsored by Amnesty International, St. Scholastica.
Series of three slideshow presentations by Bill McGrath (Oct 18th, 25th, 28th)
Bill McGrath lived with an Arab Palestinian family, and walked around in Nablus, Jericho, Bethlehem, Hebron, Jerusalem, Jenin, Ramallah and the Negev Desert of southern Israel.
McGrath is giving a series of talks to persuade Americans to go see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for themselves.
Sunday, October 18th
10:15 a.m. at Pilgrim House Unitarian-Universalist church in Arden Hills.
Sunday, October 25th
10:30 a.m. at the St. Cloud Unitarian-Universalist fellowship in St. Cloud.
Wednesday, October 28th
7 p.m. at Unity Unitarian Church in St. Paul.
Confronting Israeli Apartheid: A Film Series on Palestine – October 19-21
Join us for 3 full days of film, art, information and discussion!
Atwood Theater of Atwood Memorial Center on the SCSU campus. Directions.
This event is free and open to the public.
For a complete schedule as well as a brief description of films,
please visit www.confrontingisraeliapartheid.org