Happy Birthday Free Gaza – Two years have passed since the week we landed in Gaza – August 23-August 28
Thursday August 26, 2010
IMEMC Staff Report
Several months ago, a religious school in the illegal Israeli settlement of Immanuel was criticized for segregating white Jewish students from non-white Jewish students in classes.
Ethiopian Jewish student - not allowed to study at new school. Photo by Jewish Middlesex
Originally, the school was fined for this policy of racial segregation, because the school was state funded. Now, the Israeli education ministry has agreed with the white parents’ request to allow the school to continue with its racial discrimination under private funding.
Mazin Qumsiyeh
23 August 2010
Returning from the Friday demonstration in Al-Walaja in unbearable heat (new video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pftDUGV9RY) we note that the talks about the talks about the peace talks are to resume in Washington September 2nd. The Obama administration decided not to spend any political capital challenging the Israeli lobby. In fact the US politicians want to blunt Republican criticism ahead of midterm elections by chalking out a diplomatic “success” in form if not in substance. Direct talks will lead to more erosion of Palestinian rights especially when conducted in Israeli-occupied Washington between Abbas whose mandate as president of the Palestinian bantustan in the West Bank expired last January and Mr. Netanyahu, a known terrorist and war criminal leading the most extreme right-wing government in the history of the apartheid state of Israel. I believe most Palestinians (Abbas included) are neither optimistic nor pleased about this development. But few of us believe it was necessary for Abbas to yield yet again. Most (including large segments of Fatah) believe it is a huge mistake that just set back the real cause for peace. I challenge those who think otherwise to public debates on the issues.
Continue reading ‘Mazin Qumsiyeh: Viva, Viva Negotiations!’
BY GEORGE BISHARAT and NIMER SULTANY
Should Israel be encouraged to enact legislation guaranteeing equal rights for all of its citizens as part of any peace agreement with the Palestinians?
Israel’s systematic discrimination against Arabs was highlighted recently when Donna Shalala, University of Miami president and former Health and Human Services secretary, was detained for three hours, grilled and subjected to an extended luggage search upon her departure from Israel.
Shalala, of Lebanese Arab descent and a long-time supporter of Israel, had visited the country with other university leaders at the invitation of the American Jewish Congress, but had stayed beyond the planned itinerary for several days. It seems evident that, despite her stature, she was a victim of profiling.
But the indignities that Shalala suffered pale in comparison to those faced by the 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of Israel on a daily basis, and not just at the airport.
Continue reading ‘George Bisharat and Nimer Sultany: Second-class citizens’
By Chris Hedges / TruthDig
Chris Hedges made these remarks Thursday night in New York City at a fundraiser for sponsoring a U.S. boat to break the blockade of Gaza. More information can be found at www.ustogaza.org.
When I lived in Jerusalem I had a friend who confided in me that as a college student in the United States she attended events like these, wrote up reports and submitted them to the Israel consulate for money. It would be naive to assume this Israeli practice has ended. So, I want first tonight to address that person, or those persons, who may have come to this event for the purpose of reporting on it to the Israeli government.
I would like to remind them that it is they who hide in darkness. It is we who stand in the light. It is they who deceive. It is we who openly proclaim our compassion and demand justice for those who suffer in Gaza. We are not afraid to name our names. We are not afraid to name our beliefs. And we know something you perhaps sense with a kind of dread. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice, and that arc is descending with a righteous fury that is thundering down upon the Israeli government.
gazafriends
6 August 2010
David Rovics has written an evocative song called “All Aboard the Mavi Marmara.” The Free Gaza team has added images in tribute to the nine brave men on board who gave their lives in pursuit of justice for the Palestinians.
This is our tribute to the men. They had names and families and children. They dreamed their dreams just as the Palestinians do.
Israeli commandos took all of that away from them by murdering them… 31 shots, most through the head and the back. The world needs to remember them. The world needs to remember the Palestinians who Israel kills every day. “All Aboard the Mavi Marmara” will be a song you will sing in your head for days. The images, we hope, you will never forget.
We sail again in the fall. Help us make that happen.
Greta Berlin, Co-Founder, The Free Gaza movement
witnessgaza.com
www.freegaza.org
http://www.flickr.com/photos/freegaza
Printed from ABQjournal.com, a service of the Albuquerque Journal
Saturday, August 07, 2010
Israeli Consul Spins Attack on Flotilla
By Greta Berlin
Co-founder, Free Gaza Movement
Once again, Israel commits war crimes against a civilian population on board six ships in international waters then whines that it is the victim of a PR smear.
Journal Staff Writer Lloyd Jojola’s interview with Asher Yarden, consul general of Israel to the Southwest, proves they think they can spin the story of piracy at sea to sympathetic journalists who will ask no probing questions, but merely spout back what the apologists say.
So let’s look at the facts instead of Israel’s spin.
Continue reading ‘Greta Berlin: Israeli Consul Spins Attack on Flotilla’
The B u l l e t
Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 400
6 August 2010
The Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly
Herman Rosenfeld and Carlo Fanelli
At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Left around the world is undergoing reformation. As the Great Recession has vividly demonstrated, more than three decades of neoliberal capitalism have eroded many of the significant gains won in the immediate decades following World War II. From wage and benefit concessions to reductions in social services, in an openly anti-union political climate, it is now being demanded that the working class pay for a crisis which it did not create. With the impasse of the anti-globalization and other new social movements that burst onto the scene in the early 2000s, coupled with the inability of many historically progressive unions, trapped in erstwhile social democratic parties, to mobilize their membership base, the Left is in a period of experimentation.
There have been important developments: the emergence of explicitly anti-capitalist parties such as Die Linke (The Left) in Germany, the Left Bloc in Portugal, and the New Anti-capitalist Party in France; the re-emergence of working class discontent in the streets of Greece, Spain, and Italy; and a left tide throughout Latin America. What about North American developments, however? A June 2010 article by Robert McChesney and John Bellamy Foster discusses the weak state of progressive forces in the United States and their inability to translate significant support for their political positions into commensurate political influence. This article updates reports on attempts in Toronto to build an anti-capitalist political movement bringing together trade unions and working class communities, first published in the pages of Relay: A Socialist Project Review and Monthly Review.[1]
Greta Berlin
6 August 2010
They said it couldn’t be done, that Americans couldn’t raise money fast enough to buy a boat to join Freedom Flotilla 2 in the fall. But never underestimate American determination in the face of Israeli intransigence and brutality. The launch of the US Boat to Gaza began last night in New York, and Free Gaza was there to participate.
Listen to Col. Ann Wright’s eloquent speech, then watch our TWITTER page for the next video uploads.
And this is just a beginning, as witnessgaza.com gets ready to go live for events across the US and across Europe.
“The Audacity of Hope” is more than just a book title. It is a call to everyone who believes in justice for Palestine… that there is hope, that civil society will do what governments refuse to do, that we will sail again and again until Palestinians gain the human and civil rights that have been denied to them for 62 years.
WE SAIL UNTIL PALESTINE IS FREE.
–
Greta Berlin,
witnessgaza.com
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