Sunday, March 30, 2008

[ePalestine] Al-Ahram Weekly: Gaza's suffering children

Al-Ahram Weekly Online

Gaza's suffering children 

The Israeli occupation and its relentless attacks destroy the mental health and lives of children of Gaza, writes Saleh Al-Naami 

Every once in a while Ibrahim Hawash, 42, calls his wife Noha from his nightshift job to make sure that she has followed the treatment course prescribed by their family doctor for the involuntary urination of their four children, who are in primary school. The doctor says that the four children lost their ability to control urination due to the fear they underwent when Israeli army jets bombed a home near theirs in the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip during the "Warm Winter" military campaign three weeks ago. The four children still remember the terrifying night when they woke frightened up to the sound of a thundering explosion in the area and found that the glass of their home's windows had fallen onto their bed. Hawash, who works in one of the Palestinian security agencies, says that his children refuse to sleep alone, insisting on sleeping in the same room as their parents because they are scared of the night. He adds that he exerted great efforts to convince two of his children to go back to school, for they were afraid that they would be killed in an Israeli bombing operation on their way there, or while at school. Thousands of Palestinian children have experienced what Hawash's four children are undergoing. Mohamed Kharsa, 10, lives in the Tufah neighbourhood northeast of Gaza City, which has been subject to severe Israeli attacks. He runs away to his family home whenever he hears the roar of Israeli planes in the sky. 

"Whenever I hear the sound of a plane I feel it has come to bomb me," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. Aish Samour, director of the Psychiatric Hospital in Gaza, says that 30 per cent of Palestinian children under 10 years of age suffer from involuntary urination due to deep-seated fear, and mentions other nervous problems such as nail- biting, nightmares, bodily pains of unknown cause, crying and introversion. 

"A child exposed to this much violence becomes violent in his interactions with his peers and siblings, and his condition lowers his educational level and weakens his ability to concentrate," Samour told the Weekly. He says that Palestinian children who undergo shocking experiences during invasions and Israeli bombings become less obedient to their parents and families. 

Samour reports that his hospital currently receives 33 children a month, a 30 per cent increase over the previous year. Samour notes that 47 per cent of children are afflicted with psychological shock without their families realising it. "The children of Gaza are not children who live normal lives. They live with difficult psychological suffering from the practices of the Israeli occupation, and this has a negative impact on their lives, their psychological wellbeing, and their acclimatisation to life," he said. 

Samour adds that the scenes and images of death, destruction, tanks, ambulances, children bombed, bulldozers uprooting trees, the funerals of the killed, and planes that drop missiles over homes and the smoke rising from them -- all of which are shown on television as well as witnessed in the events that take place around them -- seriously affect the psychological and nervous conditions of Palestinian children. 

Samour holds that the only guarantee for alleviating Gazan children of this "wretched" reality is to end the occupation. According to a study conducted by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, each Palestinian child has been exposed to more than nine shocking events. The study says that 95.6 per cent of children have seen images of the wounded and killed, and 95 per cent have been affected adversely by hearing the sounds of explosions as a result of shelling. 

Further, a total of 60 per cent of children have undergone moderate psychological shock, 6.7 per cent have undergone minor psychological shock, and 33.3 per cent have undergone major psychological shock. The study notes that 15.6 per cent suffer from minor post- traumatic syndrome disorder, while 62.2 per cent suffer moderately and 20 per cent severely. 

Eyad Al-Sarraj, director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, says that Palestinian children have lost the two most important pillars in their lives: a sense of security that has been lost due to raids, bombings and destruction, and a sense of joy and happiness that is a staple of childhood. He says that when a child sees his father, "impotent and incapable of providing security", the child feels immediately "estranged". He adds that according to data gathered in a study his institution undertook, 45 per cent of children studied said that they had seen occupation soldiers beat their fathers and insult them before their eyes. 

"The fact that Palestinian children take refuge in Palestinian organisations reflects their desire to gain a new, strong identity that can protect them," Al-Sarraj says. 

Al-Sarraj points out that matters are made more complicated by the fact that due to the Gaza siege, Palestinian children suffer from a chronic state of malnutrition that affects their intellect. This is reflected in the fact that 15 per cent of Gaza's children suffer from impairments in their intellectual abilities due to malnutrition. He adds that repression and violence accumulated within the lives of Palestinian children affect their creative capacities and push them to resort to extreme acts that reflect the pain and frustration they feel. 

Al-Sarraj adds that nearly 36 per cent of male children between the ages of eight and 12, and 17 per cent of females, wish to die in attacks on the occupation army. 

Faten Shekshek, a social guidance counsellor working in a programme offering psychological support to children affected by shelling, says that the scenes of violence, killing and destruction the children have experienced in the northern Gaza Strip, and particularly during the Operation "Warm Winter" campaign, have left serious psychological, behavioural, and physical marks on most children. This is particularly clear in the behaviour of children at the primary school stage. 

Shekshek says that scenes of violence remain strong in the minds of students, and that this surfaces in their drawings, most of which depict jets, tanks, bulldozers, martyrs and destroyed homes and trees. 

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved 

Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/890/re1.htm  


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Saturday, March 29, 2008

[ePalestine] Help Break the Silence on Gaza

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U.S. LABOR AND GAZA 
New York City Labor Against the War 
March 23, 2008 

New York City Labor Against the War joins the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions in denouncing Israel's recent massacres in Gaza, the victims of which include at least 130 Palestinians -- half of them civilians, including dozens of women and children -- since February 27.  


WHO ARE THE TERRORISTS?  

Israel claims that it is fighting "terrorism" in Gaza. This is the same hollow excuse with which the U.S. seeks to justify war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the erosion of civil liberties and labor rights at home.  

In fact, Israel's attacks are part of a relentless, U.S.-orchestrated campaign of collective punishment -- with complicity of the corrupt Palestinian Authority -- to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas government.  

Long before its latest massacres, Israel had turned Gaza into the world's "largest open air prison," assassinating activists, and cutting-off essential goods and services to 1.5 million people. Only as a result did Hamas abandon a unilateral two-year truce.  

Even now, Israel seeks to derail Hamas truce offers by escalating arrests, home demolitions, settlements and murder in the West Bank -- from which no rockets have been fired.  

Despite media portrayals, this violence is overwhelmingly one-sided against Palestinians, who have no aircraft, artillery or tanks.  

Thus, while only one Israeli has been killed by rockets launched from Gaza since May 2007, Israel's modern arsenal killed 60 Palestinians on March 1 alone.  

On February 29, Israel's Deputy Defense Minister, Matan Valnai, threatened a bigger "Shoah" -- a reference to the Nazi Holocaust.  

As UN official John Dugard has pointed out, Palestinian rockets are not the cause, but the "inevitable consequence," of Israeli state terror in Gaza, the slow-motion genocide which human rights organizations describe as "worse than at any time since the beginning of the Israeli military occupation in 1967."  

Following the latest attacks, a Council on Foreign Relations expert explained, "You have Palestinians who wouldn't necessarily support the violence but they are saying, 'Well, what choice do we have?'"  


SIXTY YEARS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING AND GENOCIDE  

Israel's war on Gaza can only be understood as an attempt to stamp out all resistance -- including nonviolent protest -- to Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.  

Indeed, most of Gaza's population are survivors of Zionist expulsions since the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, when 13,000 Palestinians were massacred, 531 towns and villages erased, 11 urban neighborhoods emptied, and more than 750,000 (85 percent) driven from 78 percent of their country.  

In 1967, Israel seized the remaining 22 percent of Palestine -- including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza -- which, in violation of UN resolutions, remains under Israeli military rule.  

Today, as a result of these policies, at least 70 percent of the 10 million Palestinians are refugees -- the largest such population in the world. Despite other UN resolutions, Israel vows that it will never allow them to return.  

Palestinians who managed to remain within the 1948 areas -- today, 1.4 million (or 20 percent of the population in Israel) -- are permanently separated from their families in exile, subject to more than 20 discriminatory laws, treated as a "demographic threat," and threatened with mass expulsion.  

In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, 140 illegal, ever-expanding Jewish-only settlements and road systems dominate the water resources and control 40 percent of the land. Palestinians are confined, separated, denied medical treatment, and degraded by an 8- meter-high separation wall, pass laws, curfews and 600 military checkpoints.  

From 2000-2007, 4,274 Palestinians in these 1967 territories were killed, compared with 1,024 Israelis. The military has seized 60,000 political prisoners; it still holds and tortures 11,000.  

All of these conditions have dramatically worsened since the Annapolis "peace conference" in November.  


U.S. SPONSORSHIP  

Israel's war on Palestine depends completely on U.S. money, weapons and approval.  

Since 1948, Israel -- the top foreign aid recipient -- has received at least $108 billion from the U.S. government. In the past ten years alone, U.S. military aid was $17 billion; over the next decade, it will be $30 billion.  

Israel's recent assault on Gaza was endorsed by a Congressional vote of 404-1. Democratic and Republican presidential candidates fall over themselves to offer more of the same.  

On March 22, Dick Cheney reassured Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of "America's. . . . commitment to Israel's right to defend itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other threats," and that the U.S. and Israel are "friends -- special friends."  

This "special friendship" means that, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is U.S. aircraft, cluster bombs and bullets that kill and maim on behalf of the occupiers. Just one of many targets was the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions headquarters in Gaza City, destroyed by F-16s on February 28.  

Such support bolsters Israel's longstanding role as watchdog and junior partner for U.S. domination over the oil-rich Middle East -- and beyond. In that capacity, Israel was apartheid South Africa's closest ally.  

After 9/11, it helped intensify the demonization of Arabs and Muslims. It has 200 nuclear weapons, but helped manufacture "evidence" of Iraqi WMD. With U.S. weapons and support, it invaded Lebanon in 2006.  

Together, these wars and occupations have killed, maimed and displaced millions of people, thereby creating the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Now, Israel is the cutting edge of threats against Syria and Iran.  

In other words, oppression and resistance in Palestine is the epicenter of U.S.-Israeli war throughout the Middle East. These stakes are reflected in the ferocity of Israel's attacks against Gaza.  


LABOR'S ROLE  

In Palestine, South Africa, Britain, Canada and other countries, labor has condemned Israeli Apartheid.  

Workers in the United States pay a staggering human and financial price, including deepening economic crisis, for U.S.-Israeli war and occupation.  

But through a combination of intent, ignorance and/or expediency, much of labor officialdom in this country -- often without the knowledge or consent of union members -- is an accomplice of Israeli Apartheid.  

Some 1,500 labor bodies have plowed at least $5 billion of union pension funds and retirement plans into State of Israel Bonds.  

In April 2002, while Israel butchered Palestinian refugees at Jenin in the West Bank, AFL- CIO President John Sweeney was a featured speaker at a belligerent "National Solidarity Rally for Israel." In 2006, leadership of the American Federation of Teachers embraced Israel's war on Lebanon.  

These same leaders collaborate with attempts by the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) to silence Apartheid Israel's opponents -- many of whom are Jewish.  

In July 2007, top officials of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win signed a JLC statement that condemned British unions for even considering the nonviolent campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.  

Just days ago, the JLC and the leadership of UNITE-HERE bullied a community organization in Boston into revoking space for a conference on "Zionism and the Repression of Anti- Colonial Movements."  

Even the leadership of U.S. Labor Against the War, which receives funding from several major unions, remains adamantly silent about U.S. government, corporate and labor support for Israeli Apartheid.  

Labor leaders' complicity parallels infamous "AFL-CIA" support for U.S. war and dictatorship in Vietnam, Latin America, Gulf War I, Afghanistan and elsewhere. It strengthens the U.S.- Israel war machine and labor's corporate enemies, reinforces racism and Islamophobia, and makes a mockery of international solidarity.  


A NECESSARY STAND  

More than forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came under intense public attack for opposing the Vietnam war. Even within the Civil Rights Movement, some dismissed his position too "divisive" and "unpopular."  

In his famous speech at the Riverside Church in April 1967, Dr. King answered these critics by pointing out that "silence is betrayal," and that "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today . . . [is] my own government."  

At the National Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace in November 1967, he reiterated the most basic principles of labor solidarity: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. . . . Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus."  

These principles are no less relevant today.  

Yes, the Israel lobby seeks to silence opponents of Israeli Apartheid. All the more need for trade unionists to break that silence by speaking out against Israeli military occupation, for the right of Palestinian refugees to return, and for the elimination of apartheid throughout historic Palestine.  

Therefore, we reaffirm our support for an immediate and total:  

1. End to U.S. military and economic support for Israel.  

2. Divestment of business and labor investments in Israel.  

3. Withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces from the Middle East.  

------------- 

Issued by NYCLAW Co-Conveners (Other affiliations listed for identification only): 

Larry Adams
Former President, NPMHU Local 300

Michael Letwin
Former President, UAW Local 2325/Assn. of Legal Aid Attorneys

Brenda Stokely
Former President, AFSCME DC 1707; Co-Chair, Million Worker March

-------------

New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)
nyclaw01@gmail.com
PO Box 620166, PACC, New York, NY 10129



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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

[ePalestine] Financial Times: Palestinian fund breaks the mould

Financial Times  FT.com

Palestinian fund breaks the mould
By Tobias Buck in Ramallah
Published: March 24 2008 18:29 | Last updated: March 24 2008 18:29

Mohammad Mustafa runs perhaps the world’s most unusual sovereign wealth fund.

While his counterparts in China, Dubai or Qatar have made headlines by shovelling billions of dollars into troubled banks in the US and Switzerland, Mr Mustafa must think carefully before committing even a few million dollars.

There are no oil revenues or soaring export earnings to inflate his fund, and no western executives beating a path to his door.

The television in his office is not tuned to international business channels, but shows burning US tanks on al-Jazeera, the Arabic news channel.

Mr Mustafa, a veteran economist who spent much of his career at the World Bank in Washington, is in charge of the Palestine Investment Fund , or, as he puts it, “the wealth of the Palestinian people”.

The chief executive and his 25 investment professionals manage assets worth about $850m (€550m, £430m). It is a small sum compared with the vast fortunes at the disposal of other sovereign funds in the Middle East. But Mr Mustafa says he is determined to make it count.

“We are not just investing. We are on a mission,” he says. “We want to build on the little we have.”

The PIF was founded in 2000, soon after the creation of the Palestinian Authority, when the quasi-government started selling concessions to telecom and electricity providers.

It was initially seen as yet another outlet for the shady financial transactions of Yassir Arafat, consolidating and managing the various pots of money accumulated by the former Palestinian leader.

However, the fund has since escaped its murky past, Palestinian and international experts say, and its books are now audited by Ernst & Young.

Until Mr Mustafa took over as the PIF’s chief executive three years ago, the fund operated much like any other sovereign wealth fund: 75 per cent of its capital was invested abroad, reflecting the conviction that higher returns could be found outside the shaky Palestinian economy.

“Since then we have been working on a new strategy. We want to play a different role, to move from being a financial vehicle to a vehicle for sustainable development in Palestine,” says Mr Mustafa.

By the end of this year the fund expects to have at least half its capital invested in the Palestinian territories, and by 2012 that share is set to rise to 70 per cent.

Many of the PIF’s new flagship projects are joint ventures with businesses from abroad. Wary of the violence and instability, foreign investors have generally shunned the territories in recent years. But Mr Mustafa believes the fund’s capital, contacts and expertise are starting to make a difference.

“This is not the most simple and straightforward investment environment in the world,” he remarks with understatement, “so, for someone sitting in Doha or Qatar, this is not an easy choice.”

But by investing PIF money and providing a local partner with close ties to the Palestinian Authority “we can bring projects to a point where the investment does become attractive”.

One of the PIF’s biggest projects is the creation of a second mobile phone operator in the Palestinian territories. It started a joint venture with Wataniya , a Qatar-owned telecommunication provider, in 2006.

The launch of services, Mr Mustafa says, has been delayed by squabbles with Israel over the provision of spectrum, but is now due later this year.

Another flagship project is a loan guarantee programme for small and medium-sized businesses in the territories. “About 95 per cent of businesses here are SMEs with less than 10 employees. These companies are very resilient – we went through a very difficult period, and the fact that they are still here is tremendous,” says Mr Mustafa.

However, small Palestinian businesses have little access to fresh funding. “The banks tell them: You don’t have the experience to draw up a proper business plan, you don’t have collateral,” says Mr Mustafa.

Since January the PIF and two US partners have offered Palestinian banks guarantees covering 70 per cent of individual loans to small businesses. The take-up so far – both by banks and companies – is encouraging, with five loans already agreed, and 10 more in the pipeline.

Behind these and other projects, says Mr Mustafa, lies a much broader ambition. “Despite all the difficulties, we are trying to lay the foundations for a new Palestinian economy – one that is private sector-driven, not donor-driven.”

With the heavy hand of the Israeli military still felt throughout the West Bank, and even more so in the isolated and impoverished Gaza Strip, that is a tall order.

Mr Mustafa admits that building a thriving private sector economy amid the chronic violence and instability of the Palestinian territories is tantamount “to trying to do the undoable”. But, he adds, “we have no other option”.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008



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Monday, March 24, 2008

[ePalestine] The Jewish Advocate: This land was theirs (By Hannah Mermelstein)

The Jewish Advocate 

This land was theirs

By Hannah Mermelstein - Sunday March 23 2008  

On March 20, 1941, Yosef Weitz of the Jewish National Fund wrote: “The complete evacuation of the country from its other inhabitants and handing it over to the Jewish people is the answer.” On this day in 1948, almost two months before the first “Arab-Israeli war” technically began, the 1,125 inhabitants of the Palestinian village Umm Khalid fled a Haganah military operation. Like their brethren from more than 500 villages, they likely thought they would return to their homes within a few weeks, after the fighting blew over and new political borders were or were not drawn.  

Instead, more than 6 million Palestinian people remain refugees to this day, some in refugee camps not far from their original towns, others in established communities in Europe and the US, all forbidden from returning to their homeland for one reason: they are not Jewish.  

Yosef Weitz’s wish was granted. In my name, and in the name of Jewish people throughout the world, an indigenous population was almost completely expelled. Village names have been removed from the map, houses blown up, and new forests planted. In Arabic, this is called the Nakba, or catastrophe. In Israel, this is called “independence.”  

Last month I went with a man from Umm il Fahm (a Palestinian city in Israel) to his original village of Lajun, only a few miles away. Adnan’s land is now a JNF forest “belonging” to Kibbutz Megiddo. As we walk the stone path he points to each side of the road, naming the families that used to live there: Mahamid, Mahajne, Jabrin…. The land there is not naturally rocky; the stones that we walk on are a graveyard of destroyed houses. Adnan was only six years old when the Haganah’s bullets flew over his head and he and his family fled. But he remembers. He tears up as we stop at the site of his destroyed house and says, “Welcome to my home.”  

Adnan is an Israeli citizen, yet the land that was stolen from him has been given to a body that refuses to let him live on it. As an American Jew, I could move to Lajun/Megiddo tomorrow, gain full citizenship rights, and live on the land that Adnan’s family has tended for centuries. Adnan, who lives just a few minutes away, is forbidden from doing so.  

As we approach the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel, the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, let us remember Adnan. Let us remember the inhabitants of Umm Khalid. Let us remember more than 6 million people whose basic human rights have been deprived for 60 years, and let us, as Jewish people with a history of oppression and a tradition of social justice, work for the right of indigenous people to return to their land. This is our only hope for true peace and security in the region.  

Hannah Mermelstein is a co-founder of Birthright Unplugged and lives in Boston, Philadelphia and Ramallah. 


FOR MORE INFO ON Birthright Unplugged see: http://www.birthrightunplugged.org/


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Saturday, March 22, 2008

[ePalestine] Entering the Holy City - Then and Now - First Congregational Church - Long Beach, California

Dear friends, 

I invited Rev. Stinson to lunch two weeks ago in Ramallah along with my family.  His sermon, upon returning to California, sheds some hope from the U.S. side.  Take 24 minutes to hear this eyewitness report.  Half way through the sermon he addresses his trip here.

Happy Easter, to those who can celebrate it,
Sam 

---

First Congregational Church - Long Beach, California


Entering the Holy City - Then and Now

March 16, 2008 - The Rev. Jerry Stinson





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[ePalestine] Deb Reich: The renegade lexicographer

16 March 2008                                     
The renegade lexicographer  
By: Deb Reich  

Israel / Palestine 

People continue to refer to Israel as Israel, no matter onto whose land it expands or how far, as if Palestine could be made to disappear by neglecting to mention it, ever again. In fact, at this writing (March 2008), Palestine is alive and well, if excruciatingly battered and beleaguered, just beneath the surface of Israel, and is rising up all over the place, through the cracks in the sidewalk, in the most unstoppable manner imaginable. Palestine will not be suppressed. Whether we stand for it or against it, Palestine is unsuppressable. However new or not new the Palestinian identity may be, however indigenous or imported the name itself, Palestine is a fact, and Palestinians likewise. We Jews are not the only ones here. However long we have been here, in numbers large or small, we have never been alone here! Get used to it! I deal with this problem by referring to the country as Israel/Palestine, for now. Sometimes (for parity) I call it Palestine/Israel. Not a perfect solution, but not bad.  

FOR FULL TEXT CLICK HERE  and learn more about: 

Aliya / Yerida
A Jew / an Israeli
Zionism / Zayyinism
A new dream in search of a name 

* Deb Reich debmail@alum.barnard.edu  is a writer and translator in Israel/Palestine.  


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Friday, March 21, 2008

[ePalestine] IHT: US State Dept tells Israel to stop discriminating against Arab-Americans

FOR MORE INFO ON THIS ISSUE:  http://www.righttoenter.ps/

International Herald Tribune     

US State Department tells Israel to stop discriminating against Arab-Americans      

The Associated Press     

Thursday, March 20, 2008     

WASHINGTON: The United States has told Israel repeatedly that Arab- American Palestinians must be treated as American citizens at border crossings or anywhere else, the State Department said Thursday.     

FULL STORY AT:



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Saturday, March 15, 2008

Test

[ePalestine] New Palestine-based Professional Translation Service (Arabic-English)

Dear friends,     

Please excuse the commercial nature of this message.  As many of you are long time subscribers to ePalestine, you are aware that I refrain from commercializing this list. However, this specific message has more to do with economic resistance to the Israeli occupation than it does marketing.  

The attached notice is announcing the launch of a new service being offered via my consulting firm: a Professional Arabic-English & English-Arabic Translation Service.  The service has been in a soft launch mode since the start of 2008 and we are now pleased to make the service available to all today.   

Our translators are based in the Israeli-occupied territory (including the Gaza Strip) and the majority are women.  Using our translation service will provide you with quality translations, as well as an opportunity to concretely contribute to sustaining Palestinian economic activity under extremely difficult conditions.     

Please feel free to contact me at aim.word.factory@gmail.com if you have any questions and we look forward to serving your translation needs.  If you don't have a need (or even if you do) for such a service, please pass this on to someone or company you think may. 

Rgds,
Sam


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[ePalestine] Al-Jazeera: documentary film called 'Two Schools in Nablus' (A MUST SEE)

Dear friends,

Education  is a RIGHT!!

I highly urge you all to watch this documentary about how Palestinians are struggling, NON- VIOLENTLY, to get a basic education and remain sane in this insane reality of Israeli occupation.  Nablus is in the West Bank.  Multiply what you see here by 100 and you can start to imagine the Gaza and Hebron reality.

Sadly, my American subscribers would never have had the chance to see this when it was aired because the US' "free" media does not allow Al-Jazeera International to air in the US.

Consider showing this in a public venue (local library, city council, to your local newspaper editorial board, etc.) in your city.

Saluting teachers worldwide and free media,
Sam

P.S.  Second item is a correction to my last post.

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Al-Jazeera International
PROGRAMMES WITNESS
Two Schools in Nablus
Filmmakers: Tom Evans and George Azar

Al-Jazeera has made it available on YouTube. This is the link:

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The Al-Haq YouTube clips I sent out 2 days ago was in the wrong order...please see the correct order in the below list: 

In the Spider´s Web 

English Subtitles: 






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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

[ePalestine] Al-Haq's Documentary: In the Spider's Web now can be watched on YouTube!

Dear all,

I just would like to draw your attention that Al-Haq’s documentary, In the Spider’s Web, is available online on YouTube with English and French subtitles. 

In the Spider's Web is a total of 47-minute long documentary produced in 2004 by Al-Haq and directed by Hannah Musleh. The film is part of Al-Haq's campaign to stop collective punishment practiced by Israeli occupying forces against Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Through In the Spider's Web Al-Haq provides an overview of these punitive measures against the Palestinian civilians. While the film mainly addresses the accounts of two women, it also highlights the impact that collective punishment has on the whole civilian population. The film also takes the audience to a girls' school in Hebron, where it shows a typical day in the lives of these students. The documentary also seeks to capture and relay some of the disastrous implications of the continuing construction of the  Annexation Wall and the further expropriation of land for its construction.  

In the Spider’s Web 

English Subtitles:






French Subtitles:






The case must be told,
Sam


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Friday, March 07, 2008

[ePalestine] Vanity Fair:The Gaza Bombshell (AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ, especially if you're American)

Dear Friends,

The US Magazine Vanity Fair just pre-released online an earth-shattering investigative report on the USA's role in Gaza which brought Hamas to power.  It was released the same day Sec. Condoleezza Rice arrived in Israel/Palestine, surely embarrassing her, along with other US officials on the ground here and in DC.

This is the kind of report that should provide a platform for every person who reads it in the US to make a personal effort to inquire from their government officials about the wisdom (or more like stupidity) in these types of actions.  EVERY US Senator and Congressperson should be lobbied to make a formal inquiry to the State Department and White House on this fiasco.

The US demands accountability from everyone around the world, but when will the Bush Administration be held to the same yardstick that they pay lip service too.

This is USA failure in action.  Sadly, Palestinians and Israeli civilians are daily paying the price for the failure of these politicians and diplomats.  When will diplomacy have repercussions when those playing the game utterly fail, or promote war crimes? 

Vanity Fair
April 2008
The Middle East
The Gaza Bombshell

To get all files (including documentary evidence) in one PDF file, click on the link below:

Note: to link to the online recorded interview with the author click here:

Ashamed at the ignorance of power,
Sam


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