Updates/Facebook: Support and Prayer for the Safe Release of Philip Rizk
Good backgrounder: Philip Rizk – Egypt’s Latest Political Captive
Update:
Ryan Shiffer for Voices for Creative Nonviolence writes:
Sunday, 08 February 2009 20:10
Written by Free Gaza Movement
Scottish activist Theresa McDermott has been found in Ramleh prison four days after she was “disappeared” by the Israel government after being forcibly removed from a seaborne Lebanese aid mission to Gaza. In early February Theresa responded to a call for support from internationals from the organizers of a Lebanese humanitarian aid voyage to Gaza aboard the Togo flagged ship, Tali. Theresa was one of only 9 passengers aboard the cargo ship on February 4, 2009 when Israeli gunboats intercepted it, boarded and forced the ship to Ashdod port in Israel.
All the passengers and crew aboard were released on Thursday, February 5 except Theresa. Between Thursday evening and Sunday morning there was no word about Theresa’s whereabouts except several false stories saying that “Britons” had departed to London. Finally on Sunday, Theresa was able to call her brother John in Scotland to say she was in Ramleh prison in Israel.
According to Al Jazeera journalist Salam Khodr, when the ship was boarded, the passengers were beaten and kicked by Israeli soldiers before being removed from the ship. Also see: (Video Link).
Address to Lenasia Rally
14th January 2009
From our own experience, we know how painful and dehumanising is the system of segregation, otherwise known as apartheid. Apartheid is a system based on the assumption that one group or race is superior to others and therefore has a right to all the privileges and virtues associated with that particular status. It has a right to run and determine the lives of others, excluding them from certain privileges, merely because they do not belong to the “chosen” group.
What other definition would so fittingly define a system based on different rights and privileges for Jews and Arabs in the Middle East? The bantustanisation of Palestine into pieces or strips – West Bank, Ramallah, Gaza strip and so on – run by Israel and with no rights whatsoever for the Palestinians, is definitely an apartheid system.
Israel occupied the land of the Palestinian people and created settler communities of Jews who enjoy a different lifestyle and privileges than those experienced by Palestinians. Palestinians are packed like Sardines in a tin throughout the Bantustans, with Gaza being acknowledged as the world’s biggest open-air prison.
The prime characteristics of apartheid in South Africa included:
· Segregation of the country into highly developed whites-only areas co-existing with extremely under-developed black communities, where the majority lived with no or limited rights and access to basic facilities;
· The black majority had no rights to freely participate and determine their destiny without the supervision of the superior race, which made all the decisions and enforced them through a highly militarised state machinery;
· The country was further balkanised into various Bantustans – Bophuthatswana, Kwangwane, Kwandebele, Venda, Transkei, KwaZulu, Ciskei, etc. – which were partitioned in such a way that within the same country you needed a passport to travel from one Bantustan to the other. In between these Bantustans was South Africa, a land foreign to all blacks but firmly in the hands of white supremacists
What is the situation in Palestine today?
Related:
Victory for worker solidarity
6 February 2009
The Congress of South African Trade Union is pleased to announce that its members, dock workers belonging to the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) achieved a victory last night when they stood firm by their decision not to offload the Johanna Russ, a ship that was carrying Israeli goods to South Africa. This, despite threats to COSATU members from sections of the pro-Israeli lobby, and despite severe provocation.
Soldiers kicked and beat activists, journalists before setting them free
By Andrew Wander, The Daily Star, 7 February 2009
Expelled activists and journalists of a Lebanese freighter seized by the Israeli navy, gesture upon their return at the city of Naqura in southern Lebanon, early February 6, 2009. AFP PHOTO/MAHMOUD ZAYAT
Nine Lebanese and a Palestinian were handed over at the border with Israel to the UN peacekeeping force responsible for monitoring stability in southern Lebanon.
The freed crew told how they were beaten and handcuffed after Israeli gunboats fired on the ship and sailors stormed the vessel, arresting everyone on board. The boat was then towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod where it was searched.
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