Palestine

May 12, 2014December 11, 2020

Fado of the Gazan Fishermen

For Mariza

From Almina Port, Gazan fishermen
sail captive over turbulent ocean of loss
harvest shrinking shoals in three mile noose
run gauntlet of Israeli gunboats

For you I sing of exiled torment
and people of Gaza in 1948 expelled
from Ashdod which was Asdoud then,
where you are to play for expeller
who warps music to tighten ruthless grip
against return from prison to home shore

Waves pound Israel’s aggravation
Gazan women struggle to survive
enmeshed by colonial occupation
this cruel siege is strangulation,
humanity’s humiliation, starvation
of this ‘small, poor city which resists’
within pitiless apartheid fence
steadfast Palestinians subsist

Cast the net with us, with them, for BDS
prepare feast of freedom, rights and justice
when fishermen may trawl the coast
free as seagulls to seek sustenance

Sylvia Posadas, May 2014

‘As part of the ceasefire agreement of November, 2012, Israel agreed to allow the Palestinians to fish within six nautical miles, but unilaterally decreased the allotted area to three miles.

Last May, Israel decided to allow the fishermen to fish within six nautical miles, but the Israeli navy continued to attack them, even within the three nautical miles.‘
http://www.imemc.org/article/67725

‘“To go over six miles is death,” says Abu Nayim. Ideally he would be out at around 11 miles, in early November, with the last flush of the sardine season on. But Israel has not permitted any Gazan boat beyond six miles since 2006. Once, when he may have drifted over, an Israeli gunboat tossed a live grenade on to the nets. In the past month the fishing boats of Gaza have come under fire 10 times.‘
http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2013/dec/08/fishing-under-fire-in-gaza

‘There are some 4,000 fishermen in Gaza. According to a 2011 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, 90 percent are poor, a 40 percent increase from 2008 resulting
from Israeli limits on the fishing industry.‘
http://fishingunderfire.blogspot.com.au/

‘The fisherman said that since 2010, Israel has not returned any of the small fishing boats it has confiscated.

Jihad has two young children and has been a fisherman since he was ten. His family is a family of fishermen. Thirty-one people from Jihad and Shabaan’s families depended on the confiscated fishing boat. It was their only source of livelihood. Jihad’s family owns another small boat, without a motor and slightly damaged.

“Neither of them worked,” Shabaan’s father said. “There is no hope for them.”‘
http://palsolidarity.org/2014/03/soldiers-opened-fire-at-our-boat-and-engine-we-were-about-to-sink/

“Silence for Gaza” – Mahmoud Darwish

Rolling Stones Boycott Israel, Please

Iconic rockers, The Rolling Stones, are helping to inform about the boycott of Israel inadvertently, with media coverage extending even to Fox News. Meanwhile, new boycott supporters are joining The Rolling Stones Boycott Israel official Facebook page. This page, “The Rolling Stones, Apartheid Israel is Out of Time“, aims to encourage the band to cancel their 4th June date in Tel Aviv, and respect the global call for boycott led by Palestinian civil society. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has made a specific request to the Rolling Stones to boycott apartheid Israel.

An acknowledgement that the impressive impact of the BDS campaign could not be ignored came in the form of another Facebook page, which is fake and seeking to disrupt and subvert. Unlike the official page, the fake Facebook page posts erroneous and racist material to discredit BDS, BDS activists, reliable sources of information about the campaign, like Electronic Intifada and even the Rolling Stones themselves. Though their identities are unknown, the creators of the false page are clearly using familiar Israeli propaganda techniques.

The Call to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions is Worthy of Respect by The Rolling Stones

Aimed at pressuring the Israeli regime to end its crimes against humanity of settler colonialism and apartheid, to institute equal rights for all in Israel and recognise the right of Palestinian refugees driven from their homeland in 1948 to return to their homes, the BDS tactic is solidly grounded in international law and human rights. Consistently, the BDS movement and Palestinian civil society leaders reject all racism and bigotry. Thus, BDS seeks to achieve justice, freedom and equal rights for all, ending the unsustainable, undemocratic and oppressive impasse engendered and sustained by the racist, expansionist Israeli state and its enablers who provide it with impunity, in particular, the US.

Boycott Challenges Israel’s Apartheid and Settler Colonial Crimes

The Israeli regime regards BDS as an assault on its legitimacy, and indeed, the present systemic, institutionalised, discriminatory and colonial practices of the Israeli state could not withstand adoption of respect for human rights and international law. Israel ignores at least 32 UN Security Council Resolutions against it and many more UNGA resolutions.

Recently, PM Netanyahu again increased the prominence of the BDS campaign at the annual AIPAC Conference in the US, reiterating that BDS is a core threat to Israel. Yet this perception of a BDS threat by Israel is not new. For several years, propaganda tacticians at the Israeli Reut Institute have sought to counteract BDS success by ‘delegitimising the delegitimisers’, attacking the BDS movement, its human rights and justice aims, Palestinians and BDS activists with false narrative redolent with seductive right entryist mythology, libel, and initiation of hasbara networks in strategically located ‘hubs’ around the world to proliferate anti-BDS agitprop, including employees in Israeli embassies paid to monitor and counter BDS. Israeli university and student union courses train recruits to join the battle to disguise Israel’s crimes. Israeli propaganda – hasbara – is coordinated from the top down – from Netanyahu’s office to a chain of formal and informal actors.

Hasbara Social Media Infiltration

Consequently, in response to global awareness and effective implementation of BDS, Israeli hasbara initiatives have mushroomed. On Facebook alone, there is a maze of groups and pages devoted to hasbara dissemination. Armed with lists of sloganistic ‘talking points’ and associated dogma, paid and unpaid ‘defenders of Israel’ are coordinated to post throughout social media, attacking BDS campaigns and BDS activists, attempting to obscure the truth about Israel’s criminal behaviour perpetrated against Palestinians, whose prior existence in the region as an Indigenous community and whose Nakba (catastrophic mass expulsion by settler colonial zionists in 1948) Israel denies. Israel has even passed a law to punish people in Israel who commemorate the Nakba.

Not only does it expel Palestinians from their land which it covets, the settler colonial Israeli regime attempts to extinguish their history as well. As MK Haneen Zoabi said at the Russell Tribunal Hearings at Capetown:

“Israel has confiscated my land and has started to define me as the invader of the land. They call us in the Knesset, in the courts, in the media the invaders of the land … when they confiscate our land in the Galilee and the Negev, they said they are going to redeem the land, redeem, I don’t know this word, I ask about it – salvation from me, the indigenous people, there. It is not about stealing the land, it is about stealing my homeland, my relation with my homeland. They are trying to transmit, to rewrite history, they don’t like history, they don’t like to read history, what happened before 1948 and that means we were there, the Palestinian people … they like more to write history. And they say I am a risk, they must reserve the land. So the crime is not really just to steal my land, they are trying to redefine my relation with my homeland. It is not my homeland anymore. I cannot claim it. They rewrite history and I am the invader of the land.”

The falsehoods presented in Israeli hasbara form part of the duplicitous rewriting of history, relying upon repetitive saturation and intimidation to provide a transparent, shabby defence of the faltering “Brand Israel”.

Fake, Racist BDS Page

On the 10th February, 2014, a fake BDS page titled “Boycott Israel: Rolling Stones” appeared, which claimed that the page administrators had been in contact with the Rolling Stones and a few days later, that the Rolling Stones were going to cancel their gig. While some news sources were taken in by the hoax, Electronic Intifada exposed the page’s opportunistic sabotage on the 14th February. For its laudable journalistic endeavours, Electronic Intifada has been abused since by the hoax page administrators with ridiculous slurring jibes like the ‘Zionazis have infiltrated Electronic Intifada‘, Electronic Intifada has been ‘compromised‘ and then posting a graphic equating Nazis with Zionists, titled “Join the Electronic Intifada“. Israeli propaganda outfit, NGO Monitor has maintained an ongoing smear and attack campaign against Electronic Intifada for several years.

Posts on the fake BDS page seethe with racist memes, abuse, and threats, padding Zionist hasbara confections which wrongly accuse BDS of being ‘antisemitic’ and threatening performers. Racist comments on the page, posted predominantly by Zionists, are not moderated. Zionists are targeted extensively by the page admins as ‘Zionazis’ to give the false impression the page is against Zionism, whilst conflating Nazism with Zionism and Israel. In fact, as Israel perpetrates the crimes against humanity under international law of apartheid and colonialism, BDS acts directly to create accountability for these crimes. There is no ‘crime of Nazism’ for which to prosecute the Israeli regime, even if it was applicable. For sure hasbara agents know that BDS does not target individuals or Jews – BDS is squarely focused on the Israeli state and its institutions.

Attacks on the Rolling Stones

On the hoax page, the administrators post vile abuse and threats to the Rolling Stones like ‘Together we can convince this group of ailing rockers that supporting apartheid and genocide will not pay‘, ‘Return what is ours or you, and whichever shitty bands choose to tie their destiny with yours, will meet a horrible fate‘ and ‘cancel your performance in front of the Zionazis or live to regret it!‘

As one of their well-evidenced tactics, Zionist hasbara agents have propagandised that BDS advocates threaten performers. In the absence of real evidence of BDS threats against performers, the hoax page saboteurs have manufactured substitute data to confuse people without a background in the issue and to discredit the BDS campaign.

The hoax page has also posted the header image of the real BDS page in an apparent attempt to blur the distinction between the two.

The BDS movement persuades performers to support the boycott through ethical human rights education and campaigns. In contrast, the hoax page owners have now posted audaciously on the legitimate BDS page with comment designed to create a negative view of the BDS campaign, specifically accusing the Rolling Stones of having “declared themselves to be Nazis“. The legitimate BDS page moderates all racist and threatening comments as a matter of course and thus these saboteur comments were removed. It is the Palestinian people who pay for Israel’s crimes of apartheid and colonialism with ongoing daily calamities inflicted upon them, and it is Palestinians who suffer when performers break the boycott, which they are asked politely to respect.

Hasbara Marketeers

This was not the only assault on the real Rolling Stones Boycott Israel page. An Israeli hasbara organisation called “Ambassadors Online” advertised itself there as ‘a page created to fight against the ‘New Antisemitism’ and also to ‘improve Israel’s global image’. ‘New Antisemitism’ is a hasbara newspeak term which intentionally and misleadingly conflates all Jews with Zionism, in order to protect the oppressive behaviour of the Israeli state and delegitimise BDS. Boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel are supported by many Jewish organisations and individuals. However, in Israel since July, 2011, advocacy of boycott invokes heavy financial sanctions. Elsewhere the Israeli Shurat HaDin legal apparatus has been attempting to conduct lawfare suits against individuals who advocate boycott in countries as distant as Australia. By ignoring, belittling and vanishing Jewish voices who dissent from Israel’s state policies and ideology, the hasbara marketeers are indulging in antisemitism themselves, debasing the problem of real antisemitism which the BDS movement and leading Palestinians who support BDS explicitly oppose.

The use of abusive terms like ‘Zionazis’, ‘Zionist suckers’ ‘baby-murder’, ‘Zionist dogs’ by the saboteurs diverts focus and plays into the ‘new antisemitism’ mythology and reinforcing hasbara that Israel and its nationalists are singled out for special approbrium. In fact, the Israeli regime singles itself out for impunity for its very real crimes of war, apartheid and settler colonialism and it is these state practices which BDS addresses, to achieve legally guaranteed rights, justice and freedom for the Palestinian people whom Israel has oppressed for the past 65 years.

Currently, the Palestinian Authority has applied to join 15 UN treaties including the Geneva Conventions. Former Israeli Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren points to the potential for the BDS campaign to gain additional strength from this move:

“Palestinians turning to UN institutions potentially exposes Israel to massive sanctions and Tel Aviv has to deal with all these threats seriously.”

The BDS campaign is now mainstream, both for the Israeli regime and in the media. No music, not even that of The Rolling Stones, can bridge Israel’s apartheid, a racist, cruel system of institutionalised inequality and oppression. Playing Israel’s Sun City and crossing the boycott picket line affects the image of performers, an impact which can only increase over time as the BDS movement for justice and freedom of Palestinians continues to grow.

Like the Real Rolling Stones Boycott Israel page!

Accept no vile, deceptive substitutes.

Please do visit, like and share the real Boycott Israel Rolling Stones page to discover how ethical BDS human rights campaigns are conducted, and also sign the PACBI petition “The Rolling Stones: Please cancel your show and boycott apartheid Israel“.

April 5, 2014December 11, 2020

To Neil Young, from a Farmer in Gaza

Dear Neil Young

My name is Nasser Abu Said, I am a farmer in the Gaza Strip, Johr Al Deak.

We were poor but we had a family and we had a life, even if we lived by the Israeli border where incursions and regular shooting at our farm workers from Israeli soldiers and jeeps limited how much we could farm there. They knew who we were, it is open land, and they did not attack us during Cast Lead in 2009.

Then, on a quiet day in July 2010 my wife Na’eema and 5 children were enjoying the sunshine. They fired 5 tank shells and a flechette shell at our house. My five children were there and my wife Na’eema ran outside to bring in Jaber the youngest. She was hit by the nails of the flechette shell and I could hear small noises coming from her. I knew she was dying. For hours the Israeli military prevented an ambulance from coming. The children watched as she lay dying in front of their eyes. I was holding myself in, especially in front of the children. The children were crying hysterically and some had wet themselves. I lost my wife and the children have never recovered.

They attacked again with missiles in April 2011, this time burying 2 of my children in the home, injuring others but we all survived. We gave up once the house was half destroyed a second time, and have been living in tents ever since.

By going and entertaining the Israeli audience, many of whom will have committed similar atrocities while in uniform, you are giving a green light to Israel, telling them its business as usual, even if my story has happened so many times in Gaza. Is the blood of my wife not worth anything? There is a chance to help make a difference and joining the boycotts until Israel stops ruining families through occupation and siege, like they did for mine.

The international community must do something and it’s up to people of conscience to lead, so that what happened to my wife and family does not happen to any other farmers in Gaza.

Neil Young, Please Respect the Boycott of Israel

Dear Neil Young,

Many of your fans, including our organization DPAI, are concerned about the recent announcement that you plan to perform to a segregated audience in July 2014 in what is an apartheid state: Israel.

We sincerely ask that you reconsider your commitment to promoter Shuki Weiss who serves the interests of the state of Israel, providing select Israeli officials with VIP tickets to concerts he promotes.(1)

Israel truly stands apart on the world stage as an exclusivist, ethnocentric, settler-colonial state, with a powerful military and extensive political reach. Backed unconditionally and delivered impunity by the USA, Canada and the EU, Israel continues with its slow, gradual genocide against the Palestinian people who are indigenous to the land. Palestinian land has not only been stolen, but water resources pillaged, olive trees burned, and families separated from each other by a system of military sniper towers, checkpoints, walls and laws preventing family reunification (as you’ll read below). When the Indigenous people of the land, the Palestinians, protest the theft of their farms and destruction of their livelihoods, they are met with tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets and foul smelling ‘skunk water’ and arbitrary arrest by the Israeli military.

People of conscience, including musicians, are feeling the substantial, persuasive moral weight to act urgently, ethically – and clearly, BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) is an effective, powerful means to end Israel’s impunity and make it accountable for its illegal actions.

At this time, we ask you to not cross the Palestinian picket line. We sincerely hope that soon, you will perform in a state that offers total equality in citizenship to both Palestinians (refugees included) and Jews in Israel. Sadly, that state does not exist, yet.

Your support for the Indigenous nationhood of Canada and the environment is commendable. We hope you will show similar concern for the Indigenous Palestinian people. With regard to Palestinian Indigeneity, Palestinian leader, MK Haneen Zoabi had this to say at the Capetown Russell Tribunal hearings in November 2011:

“Israel has confiscated my land and has started to define me as the invader of the land. They call us in the Knesset, in the courts, in the media the invaders of the land … when they confiscate our land in the Galilee and the Negev, they said they are going to redeem the land, redeem, I don’t know this word, I ask about it – salvation from me, the indigenous people, there. It is not about stealing the land, it is about stealing my homeland, my relation with my homeland. They are trying to transmit, to rewrite history, they don’t like history, they don’t like to read history, what happened before 1948 and that means we were there, the Palestinian people … they like more to write history. And they say I am a risk, they must reserve the land. So the crime is not really just to steal my land, they are trying to redefine my relation with my homeland. It is not my homeland anymore. I cannot claim it. They rewrite history and I am the invader of the land.”(2)

Israel goes to great lengths to cover up its crimes, claiming itself to be a leader in green technology and environmentalism. Greenwashing is a tactic used by Israel to shift the focus away from shocking facts such as:

According to the OECD, Israeli “water quality” is ranked 35 out of 36 countries, better only than the Russian Federation. Israel’s water score “is much lower than the OECD average” according to the OECD, “and suggests Israel still faces difficulties in providing good quality water to its inhabitants.”
Similar problems face air quality: Israel is ranked 27 out of 36 for harmful particulate matter in the air and, “Particulate matter and ground-level ozone concentrations frequently exceed limit values for the protection of human health.”
Because of Israeli discrimination, Palestinians face severe shortages of water, a report from Amnesty International found. Palestinians are systematically denied water for basic needs, and hundreds of thousands don’t even have running water. Israel appropriates 80 percent of the water from the occupied West Bank’s main aquifer, while allowing Palestinians a mere 20 percent. In the West Bank, 450,000 settlers use as much or more water than the Palestinian population of some 2.3 million.
The fact that 95 percent of Gaza’s water is unfit for human consumption due to Israel’s siege and military attacks, and the use of desalination technology as a means to further isolate Gaza.
The frequent contamination of Palestinian villages by flows of raw sewage from Israeli settlements;
The systematic destruction of trees to facilitate settler takeover of land, such as in Wadi Qana, an area of rare natural beauty that is now also awash in settler sewage.
The threat of destruction of the West Bank village of Battir’s ancient irrigation and ecosystem by Israel’s colonization and apartheid wall – which has led to an emergency application to UNESCO to try to save the area.
Israel’s further entrenchment in the occupied West Bank under the guise of supposedly environmental companies like Better Place, which build settlement infrastructure. (3)

Here are more stark facts which no doubt Mr. Weiss has not made known to you:

Israel was established in 1948, as an exclusively Jewish state, after over 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes and land. For over 65 years, the Israeli government has used both ‘legal’ and arbitrary force against the indigenous people who still remained in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and who now comprise almost half (5 million) of the population which Israel controls.(4) Today, Palestinians are the largest and longest suffering group of refugees in the world. One in three refugees world wide is Palestinian, making up a 7.2 million refugee population worldwide.(5)

Jewish Israeli citizens enjoy systemic, institutionalized privileges such as legal advantage, well funded schools, universal healthcare, modern separate roads and high status in society, with full protection from the Israeli Army. A full 20% of the population (over 1.2 million) in Israel is comprised of Palestinians who carry an Israeli ID card. These people are subject to “Jim Crow”-style laws that enforce housing restrictions, discrimination, underfunded schools, and restrictive marriage laws. More than 50 Israeli laws discriminate against non-Jews.(6)

Approximately 2.4 million Palestinians live in the Israeli-controlled West Bank. Within this area, Israel has constructed an intricate matrix of sectors. Hundreds of Palestinian ghettos are isolated from each other using a system of sniper towers, patrol roads, cement walls, layers of barbed wire, electric fencing and arbitrary and permanent military checkpoints. Manless drones and frequent night raids inflict constant fear on a population where around half are children. From the International Court of Justice to the Red Cross, the apartheid wall has been deemed illegal. Its disastrous impact is felt on Palestinian farmers, villages, cities, families, schoolchildren, students and the entire people. From Jenin to Bethlehem, through the concrete-split streets of East Jerusalem, the wall has become another element of Israel’s colonization of Palestine, one more link in the apartheid chain.(7)

In Gaza, Israel’s collective punishment of 1.6 million people includes bulldozing once-productive farmland, shooting at fishermen as they try to make a living and bombing buildings that held preschools and universities. As the borders have been sealed shut, Gaza has been forced to depend on UN schools, and to subsist on what food and medical supplies Israel capriciously decides to let in.

Israel blatantly admits using cultural events to create a false image of itself as a progressive, artistic nation with a Western European flavor (8). Having big name bands from the USA play in Tel Aviv is a part of this larger, duplicitous effort to brand the state. Getting artists known for being true to their consciences and for working in solidarity with oppressed people, artists such as you, would be a real coup for Israel’s branding of itself, and we really hope that you refuse to allow your image to be used thus. Already the state is using your planned performance as propaganda, with the official Israeli Embassies of Canada and the US tweeting about it.

The call to boycott was made in 2005 and enjoys overwhelming support from Palestinian Civil Society. The boycott is an urgent call to people of conscience to act to hold Israel accountable for how it treats the Palestinian people. The international community has failed to act, and, in fact, has instead enabled some of Israel’s most violent aggression.

In late 2008 and early 2009, Israel implemented a brutal attack on the civilian population of Gaza. Over three hundred children were left dead, with a total of 1,400 people killed, from a population which Israel was holding captive under military force. In November of 2011, Israel launched another sustained attack on Gaza, this time murdering more than 160 people. The people of Gaza are subjected to regular airstrikes and shootings both in the “buffer zone” and at sea, in their own waters.

The cultural boycott really stepped up after the assault on Gaza and then Israel’s attack on the Freedom Flotilla in 2010. As the lead ship, the Mavi Marmara, was changing course and heading away from Israel at high speed, Israeli commandos killed nine volunteers at close-range, execution-style. This murder took place in International waters. Many highly respected musicians cancelled their concerts in Israel, or became outspoken in favor of the boycott.

Recently the American Studies Association (ASA) voted to join the academic boycott of apartheid Israel, a move that the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) followed up with a similar declaration of support for BDS, stating: “As the elected council of an international community of Indigenous and allied non-Indigenous scholars, students, and public intellectuals who have studied and resisted the colonization and domination of Indigenous lands via settler state structures throughout the world, we strongly protest the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and the legal structures of the Israeli state that systematically discriminate against Palestinians and other Indigenous peoples.”

In 1990, you played at a concert to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s release from South Africa’s apartheid prison system, as thousands of Palestinians, including children, languish in apartheid Israeli jails, we urge you to think about Mandela’s words: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Mr. Young, please respect the boycott, and make it known you will not play in Israel while it is an apartheid state and an oppressed people have called for solidarity and for artists not to cross their picket line.

Respectfully,

DPAI
We are a group, of over 1400 members, representing many nations around the globe, who believe that it is essential for musicians & other artists to heed the call of the PACBI, and join in the boycott of Israel. This is essential in order to work towards justice for the Palestinian people under occupation, and also in refugee camps and in the diaspora throughout the world.

NOTES:
(1) http://pulsemedia.org/2012/12/12/israel-2012-the-question-of-a-nation-what-does-culture-have-to-do-with-politics/#more-37168
(2) https://www.kadaitcha.com/2012/01/09/haneen-zoabis-presentation-at-the-russell-tribunal-cape-town/
(3) http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/new-green-israel-ads-cnn-greenwash-sewage-occupation-and-apartheid
(4) Current demographic figures show: 1.2 million Palestinians with Israeli ID; 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza; 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank; 5 million Israelis excluding Palestinians
(5) http://www.al-awda.org/faq-refugees.html
(6) http://adalah.org/eng/Israeli-Discriminatory-Law-Database
(7) http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ben-white/did-israeli-apartheid-wall-really-stop-suicide-bombings
(8) http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/about-face-1.170267?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.225%2C2.239%2C
(9) http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/12/29/native-american-studies-association-boycott-israel

SOURCE

December 30, 2013December 30, 2013

Cyndi Lauper – Choose Equality, Don’t Entertain Violent Segregation

Cyndi Lauper, the country you are planning to entertain imposes violent segregation, not equality

By Leehee Rothchild

I’m glad that you believe in equality, so do I. Unfortunately, my country doesn’t. In the state of Israel, equality is a word frequently used, but rarely practiced.

In the occupied territories, under Israel’s control, in East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, Palestinians and Israeli settlers share the same ground, but that’s all they share. There are separate legal systems, military for Palestinians, civil for Israeli, segregated roads, buses, and check points. There are different water quotas, and different building permits, as in, none of those for Palestinians. Settlers have freedom of movement, of work, of protest, of speech, Palestinians have none of those.

Every Palestinian protest is violently suppressed by the Israeli army. Also, most of the Palestinians living in the West Bank, cannot cross into Israel, whereas all settlers can do that. Many of them, will probably come to your show. It goes without saying that all of the Palestinians living in Gaza, under siege since 2006, will not be able to make it. Many of them are without electricity, 16 hours a day, fuel is running out. Medical operations are made in candle light, and many pay with their lives, for the fuel shortage created by Israel’s closure of the strip’s borders.

As for those Palestinians who are so-called citizens of the State of Israel. Yes, they have citizenship, but their equal status begins and ends with this piece of paper. They don’t get equal funding, for school, for welfare, for infrastructures. The Israeli education system invests 8 times more in an Israeli pupil, than in a Palestinian one. Most Palestinian towns get no public transport, and not a single train station operates in any of those. The state of Israel operates in order to Judaeise areas in which there’s a high concentration of Palestinians, such as the Naqab or the Galilee. These programmes include the demolition of Palestinian houses, the eviction of Palestinian citizens, and the expropriation of Palestinian lands. As for romantic relationships between Palestinians and Israelis, there are several organizations, supported by various Members of the Knesset, that are working to intimidate such couples, with insults, humiliations and violent threats. Such a couple will never be able to get married inside Israel, as only religious marriages are possible. And while we’re on the subject I’ll add a word about lack of equality against non-Palestinians. I’m living in a religious state, in which as a woman, I can never get equal status. I’m living in a state in which state-funded buses operate, on which women are boarding from the back, and men are boarding from the front, to cater for an orthodox community, whose equality, seems to be more important than my own. I’m living in a state in which there’s a religious court system in which only men can serve as judges, and these men decide on every matter of marriage and divorce, according to laws set more than 2000 years ago. I’m also living in a state that as we speak, rounds up African refugees into an enormous prison, for the sole crime, of seeking asylum.

Dear Cyndi, we both believe in equality, we believe in freedom, in peace, in justice, and I hope that some day, we can celebrate them together. But you can’t find freedom, where there is occupation, you can’t find justice under apartheid, you can’t find equality in the state of Israel.

Tag: Palestine