Hanaa Al-Shalabi is a Palestinian political prisoner of apartheid Israel. She was released from over two years in administrative detention on 18 October 2011, as part of the prisoner exchange deal. She was re-arrested less than four months later on 16 February 2012, and she immediately began a hunger strike in protest of her detention without trial or charge.
Hana has now been on hunger strike for 41 days and her appeal for release has been rejected by Israel’s military courts.
“Cultivate Hope”, a poem written on day 40 of Hanaa Al-Shalabi’s hunger strike, is by Rafeef Ziadah with music by Phil Monsour.
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.
It has come to our attention that you plan to play in Tel Aviv on 15 and 16 March. We are asking you to refrain. Your Israeli fans may be progressive and liberal, but no artist performs in Israel without clear political implications. While many of your fans in Israel may be against their own government’s policies, it’s important to note that your gig would send a message that it is okay to conduct business as usual with Israel. Only a small minority of Israeli citizens practice co-resistance with the Palestinian people, and they support artists who choose to cancel their concerts in Israel [1], as a means of working towards a truly just peace, not co-existence in the current situation.
Your many fans appreciate that you know how important family time is. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are denied family time. Human Rights Watch published a report [2] on how Israel’s military separates families from 1967 to the present.
Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement writes:
“Going to a family meal on Friday, visiting grandma, sisters meeting for a cup of coffee – all of these are regular activities that under normal circumstances are taken for granted. Now they have become a distant dream for Palestinian families divided between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Even basic, essential
activities that are part and parcel of being a family such as helping out a sick relative, attending a sister’s wedding, choosing where to live as a couple, or even just living under one roof as a family – all these have become privileges which not every family can enjoy.” [3] (see full report)
The non-violent approach is an effective way to end Israel’s crimes. The United Nations, despite numerous resolutions against Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people, has not ensured that Israel is forced to comply with international law.
Roger Waters, founder of Pink Floyd, emphasised:
“Where governments refuse to act people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For me this means declaring an intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their government’s policies, by joining the campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel. This is [however] a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott. Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa’s Sun City resort until apartheid fell and white people and black people enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said:
“International Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against the Apartheid regime, combined with the mass struggle inside South Africa, led to our victory … Just as we said during apartheid that it was inappropriate for international artists to perform in South Africa in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity, so it would be wrong … to perform in Israel.”
Playing in Israel today, in violation of the boycott call, sends two messages:
The artist has chosen to ignore the Palestinian people’s call for solidarity through a cultural boycott. [4]
The musician is aware of and accepts that the Israeli Ministry of Culture will endeavor to use an artist’s name to legitimize and promote the current oppressive, racist, apartheid government through social media like Twitter[5], through press releases, and via the CCFP. [6]
Nissim Ben-Sheetrit, former deputy director general of the Israeli foreign ministry, stated “We are seeing culture as a hasbara [propaganda] tool of the first rank, and I do not differentiate between hasbara and culture.” [7]
Over 11 million people are oppressed by Israel’s violations of human rights against non-Jews. People were and still are forced from their homes, and made into refugees. Gaza was made into a crowded, Israeli-controlled open-air jail. The West Bank is surrounded by an apartheid wall and sprinkled with over 500 roadblocks and checkpoints. [8]
While Israel presents itself as a democracy, in fact it is a democracy only for Jews. Indigenous Palestinians, most particularly in the Occupied Territories, are treated as less than human. Palestinians, lesser citizens within Israel itself, are discriminated against by 43 laws privileging Jews at their expense.[9]
Please don’t turn a blind eye to Shabrawi and Ezz ad-Deen, the two Palestinian children whose story was recently featured in The Guardian [10]. These two boys lived through solitary confinement, interrogation, shackling of hands and feet, verbal abuse (“You’re a dog, a son of a whore” – is common), sleep deprivation, and threats against their families.
Please refrain from conducting business as usual, while much of the world has stood looking in horror at Israel’s policy of administrative detention.[11] Cancel for Hana Al-Shalabi, a young Palestinian woman who has been subjected to solitary confinement, abuse and sexual harassment during her interrogation and then ordered to be detained without charge or trial for six months. She has been in administrative detention for 2 years without charge.[12] She was released for a four month period then returned to administrative detention on 17 February. Now this bright young woman, in an extraordinary act of strength, is on a hunger strike.
Until Israel complies with international law, until the millions of displaced refugees see justice, please refrain from playing Israel.
We are a group, of over 830 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.
