Omar Hassan: “Activists all across the world are being targeted for their campaign against Israel and I think this is just the latest step in that process. I think it’s because Israel is worried that BDS is delegitimising what is an illegitimate state.”
Rachel Sztanski: “We’re not going to be bullied out of protesting in support of Palestine.”
… defendant Jerome Small said there was nothing anti-Semitic about protesting for Palestinian rights. “To throw the anti-Semitic card is the oldest trick in the Zionist book,” he said.
As the only Jewish defendant, Crafti said misinformation created by the State of Israel generated anti-Semitism.
“Anti-Semitism is caused by a false connection between Jewish people and the State of Israel,” he said.
Defendant Omar Hassan said Max Brenner was targeted because it provided care packages to the Israeli Army.
The trial is expected to last two weeks.”
The Givati brigade, whose members were just let off the hook by the Israeli military for their murder of 21 civilians from the Samouni family during Israel’s Cast Lead massacre of the people of Gaza in January 2009, is one of the beneficiaries of the Strauss Group-owned Max Brenner chocolate shop chain largesse.
Boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli businesses like Max Brenner who support war crimes against Indigenous Palestinians will mount internationally until justice is brought to Israel, and Palestinians achieve their human rights guaranteed under international law.
In the wake of BDS Maroc’s successful campaign against the orientalist Mediterranean Delight Belly Dance Festival in Marrakech, more anti-normalisation initiatives are in train. BDS Maroc is calling for cancellation of an Israeli company [HP Indigo] printing industry exhibition and associated sales activities, while Moroccan Palestinian solidarity organisations are demanding the Moroccan government criminalise normalisation with Israel.
Google translation of the BDS Maroc press release follows:
Moroccan activists critical of the high pace of normalization with the Jewish state under the Islamic government ‘Quds Al-Arabi’:
by BDS Maroc on Monday, 23 April 2012 at 08:07 ·
Rabat ‘Quds Al-Arabi’: embracing Hotel in Casablanca, Morocco’s special exhibition to produce an Israeli company in the industry of printing machines, to be held on the sidelines of the exhibition for the meetings with the actors, trade and economic specialists in the marketing of these products, and introduce them to Bmostagdadtha and urged them to market their goods advanced.
The law enforcement Moroccan activist Sion Osadon that the exhibition due to open next Monday ‘a big scandal, but a stab in the back of our Palestinian brothers who are in dire need of at this exact time to support and do what is necessary for a boycott of the Zionist entity’.
In a time of escalating protests of Morocco on the activities of normalization with the Jewish state, it is noted that there are points of deliberately raising the pace of normalization fields of multi-which explains Baharj government led by the ruling Justice and Development with reference Islamic and adopt a hard-line positions and participate Kiedjoh in the bodies of anti-normalization with the Jewish state.
Received Abdelilah Benkirane the prime minister and leader of the party last Wednesday, both of Khaled Sufiani coordinator of the work of national support Iraq, Palestine, Mohammad Alandlosa Ben Jelloun Secretary General of the Moroccan Association to support the Palestinian struggle and handed them a memorandum calling for the criminalization of normalization with the Jewish state legally and to issue instructions to all government institutions and sub- government of not doing any activity Ttabiei.
Although the company incubator of the exhibition Israel, has said that it deals with the ‘Belgian company and the other Spanish’, it recorded a web page allocated by the Moroccan company incubator of the show Israel that within the officials of the four representatives of the Israeli company HP Indigo, Vice President and General Manager of ‘Alon Barchana’, Israeli incumbent control of the Headquarters Central to the company in ‘Rehovot’, near Tel Aviv.
The newspaper ‘News Today’ Moroccan official source at the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and modern technologies it is not responsible for such events and not have the power to license or deny that the ‘ministry did not organize this meeting was not called for by any one, and since it is organized by the contractor Morocco, the the ministry does not intervene in the partnerships and relationships Moroccan businesses and imports of products’.
He considered that any official source product coming directly from Israel will not be able to enter the Moroccan market, ‘but if they have other ways to import the product factory in another country for example, there is no authority for us to prevent it from entering the Moroccan market.’
The ‘news of the day’ that the Israeli company’s products bear the stamp of ‘Made in Israel’, and that the first breakthrough achieved by the Israeli company was the Arab markets through the sale of one of the printers of the National Office of Airports of Morocco during the reign of former general manager.
The newspaper added that ‘serious in the policy of this company, it draws its marketing to the public procurements to provide ministries and public administrations Btabatha advanced, and turn in to the different methods to get those deals, knowing that the public administrations of Morocco does not need high-tech which is characterized by the HP Indigo ‘.
The date of the establishment of the Israeli company to the year 1977, by ‘Penny Wanda’, the slope of the Israeli parents for Jia to Poland during World War II, specializing in imaging and printing since his childhood, he joined through the studio of his father. He then continued his postgraduate studies in London before heading to Israel, and establishes the company ‘Indigo’ that after the success achieved over the years, attracted the attention of company ‘HP’ world famous in 2000, and invested $ 100 million to become the HP Indigo. The ‘Alon Barchana’, the mastermind of the company in the past two decades, and the man who took over planning for its partnership with HP and seeks to achieve a wider spread her world, armed with university Bashhadath obtained from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
The move comes in the context of initiatives normalization of sync, where he attended the Israelis in the parliamentary conference Mediterranean held in the Moroccan capital of the end of March last and the station broadcast the Moroccan second anniversary of the massacre of Deir Yassin, a documentary entitled Tinghir Gerazlem about the Jews in Palestine Mahtaatlh and the establishment of four officials Moroccans visit to Israel this week the past, and the Declaration of human rights Moroccan Sion Osadon that a delegation from the Moroccan farmers Moroccans will pay a visit to occupied Palestine to participate in the exhibition peasants of Israel, in the month of May next also organizes dancer Israel in the middle of May next in the city of Marrakech Festival of Dance-east.
The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is maintained and preserved by daily practices of surveillance and control. In recent years, these practices have increasingly relied on technological mechanisms provided by international and local corporations. Hewlett-Packard (HP) is one of the companies that unable this technological supervision and oppression.
Through its subsidiary EDS Israel, HP is the prime contractor of the Basel System, an automated biometric access control system installed and maintained by HP in checkpoints throughout the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt).
Another control mechanism with which HP is involved, is Israel’s ID card system, which reflects and reinforces the state’s political and economic asymmetries as well as its tiered citizenship structure. HP was charged by the Ministry of Interior with the manufacturing of biometric ID cards for the citizens and residents of Israel (Jewish and Palestinians). In addition, HP also provides services and technologies to the Israeli army.
Furthermore, two of HP’s technological service providers in Israel are Matrix and its subsidiary, Tact Testware, which are located in the illegal West Bank settlement of Modi’in Illit. HP further participates in the “Smart City” project, implemented in the illegal West Bank settlement of Ariel, providing a storage system for the settlement’s municipality.
BDS Maroc also is urging exclusion from an Agriculture Exhibition at Meknes for products of companies with Zionist origins from stolen Palestinian land, and also the participation of a Moroccan delegation in the gallery of Agriculture Tel spring (on land 1948 ) between 15 and 17 May 2012.
A Google translation of this press release follows:
Marrakech, organized by the dancer from the Zionist entity brazenly defending the positions of Zionism,
– Expresses its satisfaction with the retreat of those responsible and salutes all those who contributed from near or far in the pressure on these bodies expose in its attempts to deepen relations with the Zionist racist regime at all levels, this time under the banner of art.
– Reflect the initiative of my DS Morocco in particular, has expressed its condemnation to display some brokers and unscrupulous merchants – the exhibition of international of Agriculture to be held in Meknes during this week – for the products produced by companies Zionist origins of Palestinian land stolen, and also the participation of a Moroccan delegation in the gallery of Agriculture Tel spring (land 1948 ) between 15 and 17 May 2012,
– Condemning the initiative my DS Morocco multiplicity of events that welcome the Moroccan authorities Bmanla the land of Palestine, another example is to accept the post player coming from the Zionist entity league tennis Fes …
– Calls on all national forces and created the Moroccan civil society to respond to the call of Palestinian civil society organizations to boycott 2005 “Israel”, divestment and sanctions (known as the call BDS)
To form a bulwark against the Zionist apartheid regime.
April 24, 2012
In the streets of Marrakech, a youth protest on bicycles and foot to launch anti-normalisation with and boycott of Israel was held last Sunday, presaging the spread of the BDS campaign to other centres in Morocco to coincide with Nakba (the zionist genocide of Palestinians in 1948) remembrance on May 15.
Google translation:
Launching campaigns against the normalization of youth from the streets of Marrakech
Was launched last Sunday in Marrakech youth campaign to educate public opinion, the local issue of normalization with the Zionist entity and which carried also calls for a boycott of products that support for “Israel.”
According to the campaign, Samir al-Rawi A young activists in the fight against normalization with Israel Palmdnah red, was in the form of tours bicycle and on foot with raised Palestinian flags and distributing awareness leaflets in Marrakech.
And began following tours in front of the Royal Theatre at 11 am and roamed the street Mohammed VI the Great that ended in the morning a tour inside the lighthouse, to be followed round the evening off at five o’clock pm from Square Alharta in the direction of Djemaa el Fna famous, where over there carrying a Palestinian flag large and chanting slogans against the normalization of the next episodes of the popular Djemaa el Fna.
He says Samir al-Rawi that the bodies involved, a coalition Moroccans Palestinian Intifada and the renewal student and bds maroc, played a crucial role in the abolition of Oriental Dance Festival in Marrakech, who will know the post dancers Israeli soldiers, prompting them to resume their activities of anti-normalization of the city center in a more creative and communicative with the citizens.
Activist Marrakech shows in connection with the “Hespress” that a group of Tenseekiet “coalition of the Moroccans, the Palestinian uprising” will organize the campaign in several towns within the Moroccan territory Karabat, Tangier, Oujda, and the following Altenseekiet is preparing to commemorate the first anniversary will be held on May 15, which coincides with the anniversary of Nakba, the celebration will be allocated where this subject is the organization of festivals and anniversary marches in support of the Palestinian people, pro-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem.
Tunisian BDS is also actively promoting anti-normalisation, holding a mass protest at the end of March.
Besieged Gaza, Occupied Palestine — We condemn in the strongest possible terms the Israeli war crimes committed against our people in the Gaza Strip. We call on the international community and the Arab and Islamic worlds to take up their responsibility to protect the Palestinian people from this heinous aggression and immediately terminate the continuing Israeli policy of collective punishment.
Since June, 2007 Israel has adopted a continuous series of measures harming the civilian population. In September,2007 Gaza was declared “an enemy entity,” and imports were restricted to 9 basic materials. Prohibited have been such items as certain medicines, furniture, electrical appliances, cows and cigarettes, and decreased amounts of such basic foods as fruits, milk and dairy products. Fuel and electricity supplies have also been cut. Gaza used to depend 100% on Israel for its fuels and close to 60% for its electricity. Gazans, however, resorted to digging tunnels on the Egyptian borders with Palestine in order to get fuel, medicine and other necessities. The Mubarak regime took every possible step to tighten the siege and destroy the tunnels. The ousting of Mubarak should have meant the end of the deadly siege imposed on Gaza. This has not happened yet, one year after the great Egyptian revolution! The Rafah crossing is still “partially” open; supply of fuel through tunnels has completely stopped, and the electricity ration is only for 6 hours a day! Hospital generators have stopped!
Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into the largest concentration camp with the largest population of prisoners in the world. The international conspiracy of silence towards the slow genocide taking place against the 1.5 million civilians in Gaza indicates complicity in these war crimes.
According to UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
“everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
We, therefore, call upon the international community to demand that the rogue State of Israel end its siege and compensate for the destruction of life and infrastructure that it has visited upon the Palestinian people. We also call upon all Palestine solidarity groups and all international civil society organizations to demand:
– An end to the siege that has been imposed on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.
– The protection of civilian lives and property, as stipulated in International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law such as The Fourth Geneva Convention (to which Israel itself is a signatory.)
– Immediate opening of the Rafah Crossing (24/7) and the flow of goods, fuel and medicine.
– That Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip be provided with financial and material support to cope with the immense hardship that they are experiencing
– An end to occupation, Apartheid and other war crimes.
– Immediate reparations and compensation for all destruction carried out by the Israeli Occupation Forces in the Gaza Strip.
Besieged Gaza, Occupied Palestine
One Democratic State Group
Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel
Growing up
My father’s poems
Ran through my veins
Like blood
A necessary life ingredient
A rhythm that kept my heart pumping
Growing up
My mother’s cooking
Warmed my soul
Her spices
Penetrated every fibre of my being
My Palestinian identity
Shaped
By food and poetry
By a feast of will and hope
By an assortment of words
Carefully arranged
On our kitchen table
And succulent flavors
That lingered in our heart
But of late
My father’s poems
Seem to come out broken
Fatigue crept into the mind
Of a man who waited for too long
Of late
The aroma of my mother’s spices
No longer lingers in the air
A sense of aging
A touch of despair
Like many of their generation
Time is running out
And they are still trapped
In the physical distance
Too far away from home
Strangers to the ground
On which they tread
I look beneath my feet
I too stand
In a vast land
Of aspirations not fulfilled
Dreams not accomplished
Desires relentless
Unforgotten
Sometimes
I am confronted
By the deplorable display of inhumanity
That has forced millions away from home
And kept them from returning
I hold on to my identity
I write poetry
And pray its rhythm
Will keep my children’s hearts pumping
I bring out the spices
And carefully measure my cumin
My cardamom
My sumac and cinnamon
I want to fill the air
With a defiant aroma
That will nourish my children’s soul
And remind them where we come from
I write and I cook laboriously
with resolve
I create a Palestinian feast
Of delicious verses
for all the parents
who have waited for too long
I write and I cook
I hope my pen doesn’t dry out
And my spices linger
For a while longer
Until I satisfy my hunger
For justice
I tell my children we must be patient
My generation has yielded revolutions
But revolutions take generations to yield
So let me teach you how to write and cook
How to live and hope
For a future
Where Palestinians will no longer wait
For freedom
Justice
And their simple right to return home!
by Samah Sabawi
[published with permission]
Samah is a Palestinian writer, playwright and Public Relations expert with years of experience both as an activist for human rights as well as a political analyst. She is a Policy Advisor at Al-Shabaka. Presently living in Australia, Samah awaits the end of Israel’s denial of her right to return to Palestine.
Photos of Palestinian food and spices courtesy of Palestine Food [published with permission].
“We have said it loud and clear: We will not co-exist with you in your world of inequality. If you want to co-exist with us, you are welcome to join us in our struggle for freedom, because right now, this is the only place where we exist!”
Out of these 22 were militants and 4 were civilians who were in the area of IAF strikes, but were not involved in the rocket fire.
Turkey’s PM Erdogan is adamant, correctly referring to the Israeli strikes as
“state terror,” saying that the Turkish people must “remember that Gazans are our brothers, and will always remain so.”
The use of the word “militants” by the media grates – Palestinians who resist their criminal Occupier term themselves “resistance fighters”. Far more courtesy is extended by the media to the fighters who challenge the Syrian dictatorship than Palestinian people who are entitled under international law to resist their occupier, including with the use of violence within the terms of the Geneva Conventions. The vast majority of Palestinian protest is non-violent – and this protest too is suppressed brutally by Israel. Perhaps the terminology differs not primarily because of any stranglehold the Israel lobby has on media perceptions, but because of western guilt, white supremacism, and the fact that Palestinians are seeking self-determination from settler colonial invaders who identify and are identified with the West. If the fake democracy of ethnosupremacist Israel was not associated with the West, no doubt Palestinians would be termed freedom fighters by the white supremacist western media too.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights says 70 people have been maimed by Israel’s attacks, putting further strain on Gaza’s hospitals which are frequently without power due to Israel’s vicious siege.
Kamal Abu Obada, the Deputy Director of the Intensive Care Unit at al-Shifa hospital, is constantly aware of the risks that the patients he cares for are facing. “For me as a doctor this is all very depressing. All the time I’m working to keep the patients alive and when the electricity is cut they are all at risk. If something happens to them my efforts were all in vain.”
The latest Israeli bombardment of the people of Gaza was opportunistic, switching media and the Israeli public’s attention from Netanyahu’s failure to obtain support from Obama for an immediate Iran strike, and as a routine pressure valve through spectacle – the regular maintenance of Israel’s fascist sociopolitical cycle, and possibly to escalate pressure for war against Iran [Netanyahu is now conflating Gaza into his Iranian nuke fantasy]. Israel’s military gameplayers would have known that their initial assassination of two Popular Resistance Committee leaders, Zuhair Al-Qaisi and Mahmoud Al-Hannani, would be met with rocket retaliation from an infuriated resistance who have lived under Israel’s gruelling closure – collective punishment of a civilian population – for 1736 days. For Israel’s Channel 10, the latest sadism is regarded lightheartedly as a football game.
Like flies to wanton boys are Palestinians to Israel. It kills them for its sport.
A JPost article ratchets up the awful dehumanisation of Palestinians, terming Israel’s strike as “mowing the lawn”.
“The systems are designed to protect military bases, even if this means that citizens suffer discomfort during the days of battle.”
Under siege, the people of Gaza have nowhere to hide, and nowhere to escape to, making Israel’s deliberate criminal attacks all the more terrible and malevolent. Death can arrive in an instant from an invisible point in the skies. The Gaza rockets are regarded as illegal as they have no modern targeting systems and thus whether intended or not, target civilians. Yet many of Israel’s military installations are located close to population centres. The people of Gaza do protest their incarceration by Israel non-violently, but who is there to witness their demonstrations? The people of Israel whose regime determines the lives and deaths of the people of Gaza, are remote. Approaching the apartheid fence means one is shot at by Israel’s armed-to-the teeth Occupation troopers. For most Israelis, and for the rest of the world who applauds Israel’s crimes, the Palestinians of Gaza are inconvenient lesser humans of the wrong ‘colour’, viewed abstractly and depersonalised on television.
Last week, I had intense feelings of foreboding for several days prior to the attack, and put them down to a possible scientific explanation – the intense solar storm due to irradiate the upper atmosphere. Now, I’m not so sure. Several times in my life, I’ve had similar sensations associated with premonitions of deaths of people with whom I have an emotional connection – a feyness inherited from my Scottish grandmother. I have been so discomforted I’ve been unable to blog till now about Israel’s latest war crimes, confining myself to social media. As I write I feel miserable, disappointed in the sum of the world’s humanity that Israel’s vile crimes are applauded openly. Hillary Clinton’s noxious hypocritical cheerleading is particularly appalling. Indigenous Palestinian people, like so many other Indigenous folks before them and still, have suffered many years of gross indignities, humiliations and lack of basic human rights courtesy of predominantly northern European invaders and their descendants. Israel’s colonialism and apartheid are crimes against humanity. Does a criminal regime really have a “right to defend itself”, its existing crimes, by committing more crimes? Are not Palestinians (and Bahrainis who also resist a tyrannical western darling regime), like Syrians, Libyans, Tunisians, or Egyptians, entitled to defend themselves from a criminal regime?
Initially the IOF attempted to sell its latest war crimes against the people it occupies as a strike back against perpetrators of the last year’s killings at Eilat. This calumny was swiftly exposed as propaganda by Max Blumenthal, Ali Abunimah and others.
Home Front Defence Minister Matan Vilnai confirmed Israel had reached an unwritten “understanding” with militant groups in Gaza.
“Apparently things are calming down and this round of confrontations appears to be behind us,” he told public radio.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak echoed him. “This morning the situation is relatively quiet,” he told reporters.
In Gaza, an Islamic Jihad spokesman said the radical group was willing to respect the deal, but Israel must end its targeted killings of militants.
“We accept a ceasefire if Israel agrees to apply it by ending its aggressions and assassinations,” Daud Shihab told AFP.
Both parties warned the agreement would be shortlived if the other side stepped out of line.
“Our message is clear,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a conference of senior civil servants in Jerusalem. “Calm will bring calm. Anyone who disturbs it, or even tries to disturb it, will be in our gun sights.”
“Any Israeli violation requires a strong response by all factions,” said Fawzi Barhum, a spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas rulers, who have been seeking Cairo’s help to restore calm.
The truce, he said, “was not meant to tie the hands of the resistance and its right to respond forcefully to the killings and attacks”.
News of the agreement emerged early on Tuesday after Cairo brokered what an Egyptian intelligence official described as a “comprehensive and mutual” truce.
“An agreement on ending the current operations between the two sides, including a halt to assassinations, came into force at 1am,” he told AFP, saying the deal resulted from “intensive contacts” with both sides.
But Vilnai denied Israel had agreed to halt the assassinations.
“Anyone involved in terrorism against Israel needs to know that they are in our sights,” he warned.
Senior Israeli defence ministry official Amos Gilad said the deal had been concluded with Egypt, without direct contact with Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
“We have agreed to quietness on condition there will be quietness.”
No spokesperson from Gaza has been on any news bulletin I’ve heard. No name has been given to any of the dead in Gaza. No age, gender, occupation, personhood has been ascribed to any of those murdered. They are deemed non-persons, their deaths are not worthy of condemnation. Rockets are worthy of condemnation but not bombs. Potential injuries are worthy of condemnation but not actual deaths of actual people. Some politicians are ‘concerned’ by the violence, never calling for Israel to stop it.
