This newsletter is also available in Spanish, Italian and Hebrew (and soon more languages) at http://www.freegaza.org/newsletterdec09. We are looking for translators, if you want to translate in other languages, please contact us through: http://www.freegaza.org/contact.

Introduction
Ernesto Paramo, UK

It has been an extremely busy time since June when we were concentrating all our efforts on sending the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY to Gaza.  It certainly was a very eventful journey. You can remind yourselves of the Israeli attack on and hijacking of the boat by watching this short video filmed by the passengers on board the hijacked boat on 30th June. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDVuQpzwsRo&NR=1

Because of the very real threat posed by the Israeli navy, we decided we would not return to Gaza until we had a mini-flotilla capable of successfully challenging, under these more dangerous conditions, Israel’s draconian siege of the people of Gaza.

Thanks to the generosity of the people of Malaysia and many others, we are well on target to getting 3-4 boats ready to go in the spring.

[Cont. reading the newsletter]

h/t: Palestine Video

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Israeli prosecutors filed an indictment in a military court against Abdullah Abu Rahmah on Monday, a leader of popular demonstrations against the Israeli separation wall in the West Bank village of Bil’in.

The charges against Abu Rahmah included incitement, stone throwing and arms possession, according to his attorney, Gaby Lasky. The arms referred to in the indictment are spent tear gas canisters fired by the Israeli army at protesters over four years of weekly demonstrations. In November, protesters gathered the canisters and launched them at Israeli troops in response to further tear-gas fire.

[Read the report]

Updated 24/12/09 @1213:
Photo Caption: An exhibition of spent tear gas grenades and projectiles in the village of Bil’in for which Abu Rahmah was indicted on. Picture credit: Oren Ziv / ActiveStills*

* The above picture is for free-of charge single-use in internet publications only. Please include picture credit. For print and higher resolution please contact rnziv@yahoo.com

By Fidel Castro
Cuba.cu

The youth is more interested than anyone else in the future.

Until very recently, the discussion revolved around the kind of society we would have. Today, the discussion centers on whether human society will survive.

These are not dramatic phrases. We must get used to the true facts. Hope is the last thing human beings can relinquish. With truthful arguments, men and women of all ages, especially young people, have waged an exemplary battle at the Summit and taught the world a great lesson.

It is important now that Cuba and the world come to know as much as possible of what happened in Copenhagen. The truth can be stronger than the influenced and often misinformed minds of those holding in their hands the destiny of the world.

[Read the article]

Ian Black, guardian.co.uk, 20 December 2009

Israel has admitted that pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others without the consent of their families – a practice that it said ended in the 1990s, it emerged at the weekend.

The admission, by the former head of the country’s forensic institute, followed a furious row prompted by a Swedish newspaper reporting that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to use their organs – a charge that Israel denied and called “antisemitic”.

The revelation, in a television documentary, is likely to generate anger in the Arab and Muslim world and reinforce sinister stereotypes of Israel and its attitude to Palestinians. Iran’s state-run Press TV tonight reported the story, illustrated with photographs of dead or badly injured Palestinians.

[Read the report]