domingo, 23 de abril de 2017

Reality check on Palestinian prisoners: Hunger for Dignity & Freedom I

Mais de 1.500 presos políticos palestinos (dos 6.300), estão em greve de fome desde o dia 17 de abril, dia de lembrança dos prisioneiros políticos que se encontram nas masmorras israelenses ou que já lá se encontraram em algum momento de sua existência - quase um milhão de palestinos, desde a Naqba.
O grande Marwan Barghouthi, "Nelson Mandela" palestino, é o 1íder da greve de fome.  A adesão ao movimento só aumenta e a repressão e pressão dos verdugos israelenses tem sido ininterrupta e draconiana. Além da adesão de centenas de presos, o movimento está sendo apoiado pela sociedade civil palestina na Cisjordânia e na Faixa de Gaza com passeatas e outros tipos de manifestações.
 No oitavo dia de greve, chegou a notícia que a saúde do líder palestino está se deteriorando dia a dia.
 
Para completar, Marwan conseguiu publicar uma matéria paga (graças a empresários palestinos abastados, da diáspora) no New York Times - “Why We Are on Hunger Strike” - esclarecendo a razão da greve e a situação dos prisioneiros.
Dinheiro não tem ideologia nem cheiro.
O NYT é um dos maiores cúmplices da hasbara israelense, mas desta vez, ou a grana falou mais alto do que a pressão do lobby sionista ou a amizade de Trump com Netanyahu já está abrindo os olhos de jornalistas míopes comprometidos com Tel Aviv. 
Por enquanto, nem tanto e nem tantos, já que o artigo só saiu no NYT internacional. No nacional, nem pensar em aprovar um artigo explicativo dos horrores do genocídio que Israel protagoniza na Palestina. Portanto, o impacto interno foi quase inexistente, tirando a divulgação de jornalistas engajados e de leitores que buscam conhecimento; porém, o impacto internacional foi grande.
No artigo, Marwan Barghouthi descreve Israel como um "fracasso moral e político", cujo recorde de detenção de 40 por cento da população masculina palestina é típica de regimes coloniais de ocupação.
O líder palestino se refere várias vezes à prisão de Nelson Mandela e declara: "Nossas correntes serão quebradas antes de nós sermos, porque faz parte da natureza humana ouvir o chamado de liberdade a qualquer preço".
No segundo dia, a resposta de Israel a este ato político foi confinar à solitária e Marwan Barghouth à solitária junto com outros prisioneiros importantes e fizeram tudo para forçar os prisioneiros mais debilitados - física e moralmente - a furar a greve. Israel recorreu aos piores procedimentos para parar a greve, de pressionar para comer a proibição de visita, chantagens e ameaças.
 
Mas a denúncia de Marwan está no ar para todo mundo ler e informar-se: "Nas últimas décadas, segundo o grupo de direitos humanos Addameer, mais de 800.000 palestinos foram presos em Israel. Atualmente, 6.300 continuam presos. Dentre eles, alguns são recordistas do mais longo período de detenção de presos políticos. Não há uma família na Palestina que não tenha sofrido com a detenção de um de seus membros".
Marwan descreve também os dois pesos e duas medidas usados para os colonos israelenses ilegais e a população palestina na Cisjordânia como "uma forma de apartheid judicial" e insiste que o sistema de prisão política só reforça a resistência: "As prisões israelenses são o berço do movimento em prol da auto-determinação palestina. Esta nova greve de fome coletiva demonstrará uma vez mais que o movimento dos prisioneiros é o compasso que guia a luta, a luta por Liberdade e Dignidade, o nome que escolhemos para este novo passo em nossa longa luta pela liberdade [uma referência ao livro homônimo de Nelson Mandela]".
Marwan não deixa de mencionar e agradecer o crescente movimento global em favor dos direitos palestinos a um estado, à soberania e à recuperação de suas terras nas fronteiras de 1967: "Sua solidariedade desmascara o fracasso moral e político de Israel. Direitos não são definidos pelo opressor. Liberdade e dignidade são direitos universais inalienáveis à humanidade, que devem ser desfrutados por toda nação e por todo ser humano. Os palestinos não são exceção".
Como era de se esperar, a reação de Israel ao artigo de Marwan Barghouthi que marcou com letras garrafais o isolamento galopante de Israel, foi demente e desproporcional ao ato pacífico de resistência das centenas de prisioneiros políticos palestinos. 
Em uma campanha irada de hasbara-propaganda no modelo hitleriano, um dos ministros de Binyamin Netanyahu acusou o New York Times de "ataque terrorista jornalístico" e ameaçou fechar seu escritório em Tel Aviv; já outro, acusou Marwan de encenar um "ataque de terror suicida" por liderar a greve. Tel Aviv recorreu não apenas às redes sociais e jornais para divulgar sua hasbara, usou também os lobbies instalados em suas embaixadas nas capitais ocidentais e em seus consulados. Inclusive na nossa e nos nossos.
Uma prova de que Binyamin Netanyahu e seus comparsas tremeram nas bases. De raiva, e de medo da influência de Marwan Barghouthi. Tido como herdeiro natural de Yasser Arafat, Marwan é o líder mais popular da Palestina, entre os habitantes dos Territórios palestinos Ocupados, da Faixa de Gaza e os refugiados, vítimas da grande diáspora.
A estratégia de Israel para dobrar os resistentes e quebrar a greve está sendo pôr os líderes, e todos os prisioneiros políticos que se sobressaiam, em solitária, e transportá-los quase diariamente de uma prisão a outra para cansá-los; além de proibir visitas a todos os grevistas, proibir que saiam do perímetro fechado do presídio, e tortura psicológica.
Mas todos estão aguentando firme e outros estão aderindo, com o apoio cada vez maior da população, dos palestinos da diáspora e de vários sindicatos, organizações sociais e ONGs internationais.
Força Marwan! Força Ahmad!
Força a todos os presos políticos palestinos e do mundo inteiro!!



As the collective Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike for freedom and dignity completes its first full week, additional Palestinian prisoners are joining the strike launched by approximately 1500 detained Palestinians in Israeli jails on 17 April, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day.
On Saturday, 22 April, 40 more prisoners in the Megiddo prison affiliated with Fateh and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine joined the strike, prisoners’ representatives announced. This came one day after an additional set of prisoners joined the strike in Ramon prison.
The Palestinian Committee for Prisoner’s Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, and the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics released a joint statement on Saturday, April 15, 2017, just two days before Palestinian Prisoner’s Day. According to the statement, Israeli authorities have detained approximately one million Palestinians since Israel’s establishment in 1948.
On the 17th, the day Palestinians mark Palestinian Prisoners' Day, around 1.500 Palestinian political prisoners launched a hunger strike. The movement began with the publication of the op-ed by Marwan Barghouthi in the NYT Why We Are on Hunger Strike” in its international edition last weekend. It surely marked a new high point in Israel's international isolation - the Palestinian leader called Israel a "moral and political failure" - but enraged response by Israeli politicians in turn marks a new high point in hasbara, or propaganda on the nazi model. One Netanyahu minister, Michael Oren, until recently Israeli ambassador to Washington, has accused de newspaper of a "journalistic terror attack", while another accused Marwan Barghouthi of staging a "suicide terror attack" for leading the hunger strike.
However, the hasbara can't and won't change facts.
The Palestinian NGO Ma'an informed that Israel has detained approximately one million Palestinians since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in 1967, according to a joint statement released on April 15th by the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS), and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). 
As reported by Addameer, a Jerusalem-based prisoner’s support and human rights organization, roughly 6,300 Palestinian political prisoners are currently in Israeli prisons, including 500 being held in administrative detention (incarceration without charge or trial). Israel routinely uses this method of indefinite detention against Palestinians, particularly in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), holding prisoners “for periods ranging from several months to several years.” A January 2014 report from Addameer states that up to 40% of Palestinian males in the oPt have been arrested through Israeli military orders.
“The question of Palestinian prisoners is central for the Palestinian cause,” the statement affirmed.
The groups said that Israeli forces detained hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the first and second intifadas, which they referred to as one of the “most difficult historical stages" of Palestine. 
During the First Intifada, which lasted from Dec. 1987 until the Madrid Conference in 1991 aimed at reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, scores of Palestinians were detained by Israeli forces as a result of the largely nonviolent uprising which relied on various campaigns of civil disobedience. 
In 2000, the Second Intifada broke out - known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada - after then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in an act of provocation, causing heavy clashes to break out between Palestinians and Israeli forces, which developed into a full-scale uprising. 
By the time the uprising ended in 2005, Israeli authorities detained some 100,000 Palestinians, including 15,000 minors and 1,500 women, and 70 Palestinian lawmakers and former ministers. 
In addition, Israeli authorities issued some 27,000 administrative detention orders against Palestinians at the time - an Israeli policy of detention without charge or trial almost exclusively used against Palestinians, the statement read. 
Since October 2015, when a wave of political unrest erupted across the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel in what many locals refer to as the “Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Intifada,” some 10,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israeli forces, the majority of whom were from occupied East Jerusalem. 
About one third of the Palestinian detainees since 2015 were children and teenagers, the statement said. 
(The picture shows an Israeli infiltrated police officer taking a Palestinian boy prisoner) 
According to Palestinian prisoners' rights group Addameer, 300 of the 6,300 Palestinians currently being held in Israeli prisons are minors.  62, are women.
“Human rights violations and the torture of children have been documented via lawyers working in these institutions,” the statement read. "Night arrests, severe beating in front of their parents, shooting at them before detaining them, handcuffing, feet cuffing, and blindfolding, in addition to delayed notification of their right to legal assistance," were among the violations committed by Israeli forces against minors. 
Thirteen members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), including a woman, Sameera al-Halayqah, are currently being detained by Israeli forces. The oldest detained MP is Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi who has been detained since 2002 and is serving five life sentences. 
Some 210 Palestinian prisoners have died as a result “extrajudicial exterminations” or from “deliberate negligence under torture” in Israeli custody, the report highlighted, saying that the most recent case was Muhammad al-Jallad, who died in detention in February after succumbing to a gunshot wound inflicted by Israeli forces months before. 
“Since the creation of the Israeli occupation state in 1948, collective extrajudicial extermination has been committed against Palestinian prisoners by shooting them after their arrest.” the statement continued. 
Fatah-affiliated Palestinians held in Israeli prisons announced last month that they would stage a mass hunger strike on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, in an action by Marwan Barghouthi, and that is what they did. Around 1500 followed. 
On the first day thousands, April 17th, thousands of Palestinians marched across the occupied territory on Monday, with Israeli military forces suppressing the pacific demonstrations and detaining some participants.
On the second day of mass hunger strike, Palestinian prisoners were thrown in isolation and denied legal and family visits. 
 
Israeli prison authorities continued their repressive campaign against Palestinian prisoners engaged in the collective open hunger strike. On Thursday, 20 April, the prisoners’ fourth day of the strike which began on 17 April, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, several hunger strike leaders were transferred from prison to prison and thrown into isolation, while one ill hunger striking prisoner was moved to Barzilai Hospital.
Kamil Abu Hanish and Nader Sadaqa, both leaders of the hunger-striking prisoners among the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, were abruptly transferred from Gilboa prison to isolation in Jalameh prison and Ella prison, respectively. Muhannad Ibrahim, a prisoner leader in the Islamic Jihad movement, was transferred from Hadarim prison to Ella’s isolation cells. They joined several strike leaders, including Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, longest continually-held Palestinian prisoner Karim Younis, and a number of other strike leaders including Anas Jaradat and Mahmoud Abu Srour, all of whom have been thrown in solitary confinement and denied legal visits.
35 prisoners were reportedly moved from Ramon prison to other prisons, while 73 were transferred from Gilboa prison. These transfers can take days under the “bosta” system, one subject of the hunger strikers’ demands.  Palestinian lawyer Karim Ajwa said that multiple prisoners from Ashkelon were transferred to Ayalon prison, while nine prisoners from Hadarim, Nafha and Gilboa prisons were transferred to Ashkelon.
Marwan Barghouthi, member of the Fatah Central Committee and leader of the current Strike for Freedom and Dignity, is reportedly suffering serious deterioration to his health on his eighth day on hunger strike, as reported in multiple Palestinian media outlets.

As over 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners entered their sixth day of hunger strike, Israeli occupation prison administration continued its repressive policies and targeting of strike leadership.
Repressive units stormed the hunger-striking sections in Nitzan prison in Ramle, using sniffer dogs and ransacking prisoners’ belongings. 70 striking prisoners were transferred to the prison – 40 from Hadarim and 30 from Nafha, Ramon and Ashkelon. The frequent transfers and lengthy, arduous “bosta” transfer project is physically taxing for the striking prisoners, putting their health at risk. Personal belongings and blankets were confiscated as well as salt and Qur’ans. Furthemore, striking prisoners were forbidden from the recreation area and joining collective Friday prayers on 21 April

The strike calls for an end to “provocative and humiliating” searches of prisoners, an end to medical negligence, ensuring regular family visits, an end to isolation and administrative detention, as well as a long list of other demands. 
According to the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs, 65 percent of the Palestinians imprisoned in Israel are affiliated with Fatah. Palestinian prisoners held in Israel’s Nafha prison affiliated with Islamic Jihad and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) also said they would join the strike. 
“Every day, Palestinian prisoners are on the front lines of struggle, facing torturous interrogation, nighttime raids, solitary confinement, and relentless attacks on their rights at the hands of Israeli occupation forces. Those attacks are aided by international and corporate complicity, support and profiteering,” prisoners’ rights group Addameer said in a statement last month. 
“Palestinian Prisoners’ Day is a critical time to stand against state and corporate complicity with Israeli imprisonment of Palestinian political prisoners.”
In 2016, there were approximately 6440 cases of arrests of Palestinians, including 1332 children. The average dailuy rate of arrests was 17 per day. These arrests targeted journalists, members of the Palestinian legistaive council, women, human rights defenders, children as well as university students. 
 According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, the first Palestinian hunger strike happened in 1968, less than a year after Israel’s conquest of the oPt. Since then, about twenty-five hunger strikes have been held. The last and most notorious hunger strike was the “battle of empty stomachs,” which was launched in 2012, following the high-profile administrative detention of Khader Adnan, a suspected activist for Islamic Jihad. Adnan’s first hunger strike lasted an unprecedented sixty-six days and successfully drew international attention to the issue of administrative detention of Palestinian prisoners. Images of Adnan and the detainees became symbols throughout the region of Palestinian steadfastness.

For the current prisoner’s movement to achieve its demands, it will take more than resolve. Public support and mobilization on the ground is crucial, coupled with sustained media attention and scrutiny of Israel’s abusive practices towards the Palestinian population.
Meanwhile, for nearly a quarter of a century, the Oslo accords dangled an illusory peace carrot that usefully distracted the global community as Israel nearly quadrupled its settler population in the West Bank, marking even a highly circumscribed Palestinian state unrealizable.
Irael's imminent celebrations of 50 years of occupation should lay to rest any confusion that the occupation is still considered temporary. And when occupation becomes permanent as it has happened in Palestine, it metamorphoses into something far uglier.
It's past time to recognize that Israel has established an apartheid regime and one that serves as a vehicle for incremental ethnic cleansing. If there are to be talks, ending that outrage must be their first task.

The Empire Files: Silencing Palestine - Prison & Repression



Responding to international concerns with respect to the recently declared massive hunger strike held by Palestinian prisoners, the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs made up the following hasbara:
“The Palestinian prisoners are not political prisoners. They are convicted terrorists and murderers. They were brought to justice and are treated properly under international law.”
There are no less than seven lies/inaccuracies in Israel's statement:
1.       Not political prisoners? In fact, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) makes a clear distinction between Palestinians imprisoned on criminal charges and those imprisoned for “security” – or in other words “political” – reasons, including entirely separate prisons for each category.
2.       Terrorists? Terrorism is, of course, a floating signifier, a word used by one party to undermine another, and used by Israeli officials to describe pretty much everything they dislike (the New York Times, for example, were accused of “journalistic terrorism” for publishing Marwan Barghouti’s op-ed). As pointed out endlessly before, isn’t the bombing of a defenseless civilian population, such as the repeated airstrikes on Gaza, nothing short of terrorism?
3.       Murderers? This term is used to dehumanize the hunger strikers, as even the IPS confirms that only 12 percent of security prisoners were convicted of crimes related to the loss of human life. Furthermore, the competence of Israel’s legal system in convicting Palestinians of such charges is contested, as Israel officially does not offer West Bank residents a fair trial (more on this below). Most convicted Palestinian security offenders are incarcerated based on political activity, including membership of “illegal organizations” (this includes the ruling party Fatah, a group the IDF coordinates with daily). Of Palestinian children arrested, a majority are convicted of non-lethal stone-throwing, a charge for which they can face up to twenty years in prison.
4.       Brought to justice? Israel regularly holds hundreds of detainees without trial and hundreds of political prisoners under administrative detention for undetermined periods of times without disclosing their allegations.
5.      Justice?! Israel judges Palestinians in what could best be described as an apartheid legal system, under which an incompetent military court imprisons Palestinians in a staggering 99.74% conviction rate according to the IDF’s figures. This means virtually any Palestinian is guaranteed to be convicted of literally any crime. The word “Justice” is simply Kafkaesque in this context.
6.       Treated properly? In fact, Palestinian prisoners are routinely subject to maltreatment in many forms, including physical and psychological torture, prevention of medical treatment, prevention of lawyer and family visits and so on and so forth. In fact, if Israel will decide to abide by international law, it may allow for the current hunger strike to end.
7.       International Law? As revealed by the court during Marwan Barghouti’s trial, the Fourth Geneva Convention has never been introduced into Israeli domestic law, and as reaffirmed by the UN Security Council last December, Israel is in direct violation of international law.
In this light, the current scandal befalling the NY Times for publishing the words of a so-called terrorist appears as no more than a media spin meant to stir public attention away from the concrete and reasonable demands made by the Palestinian prisoners. The seven falsehoods above make it all the more important to listen directly to the people who bear the cost of resistance. To me this comes particularly close to heart, as today I walked my sister Atalya Ben-Abba to another prison term after 50 days on the inside for refusing to serve in the Israeli military. I do not commonly identify with politicians and public figures, but I am touched by Marwan Barghouti’s words, and by the glaring contrast that emerges when juxtaposed with those of the Ministry of foreign affairs above:
“Our chains will be broken before we are, because it is human nature to heed the call for freedom regardless of the cost.”
Israeli police detains Palestinian photographer at Damascus Gate, East Jerusalem, 19/04/17
This is what the IDF calls "stop-and-frisk
 

. NYT, MARWAN BARGHOUTI's op-ed: Why We Are on Hunger Strike in Israel's Prisons.
. The Guardian- Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israel go on hunger strike.

Israel sunk in 'incremental tyranny', say former Shin Bet chiefs 

.  Israel punishes hunger strikers for demanding their rights.|
. If you know you will never be prosecuted, why wouldn't you steal and destroy somebody else's property, and build in somebody else's land? For settlers, there's no reason not to break the law.
. Al Jazeera - How Israeli soldiers interrogated me;

Palestinian prisoners launch mass hunger strike.

 Israel 'lobbying FIFA' to prevent settlement teams' ban.

 . Newsweek -  Palestine: Hungry for Freedom

.  Ten killed in Ein al-Hilweh fighting.

. Power crisis leaves Gaza's main hospital on the brink |


Documentário interactivo que leva os palestinos de volta, virtualmente, a suas casas em Jerusalém, das quais foram expulsos em 1948, no processo de Naqba que dura até hoje.
An interactive documentary that digitally brings Palestinians back into the Jerusalem neighbourhoods from which they sere expelled during the Naqba, in 1948.

EDWARD SAID - Framed: The Politics of Stereotypes in News
Palestinian-American literary historian Edward Said showed how the West had the power to represent the colonial ‘other’ - while simultaneously leaving them silent.

Natalia Vinelli: Said's work is very relevant for anyone analysing international media's conception and representation of Latin America. The images and narratives that are constantly circulated by the mainstream press, by soap operas and dramas, find us cast in stereotypical roles, in line with the prejudices of the West - countries that our economies are still dependent on.
Take a news outlet such as CNN Espanol - it projects a vision of what "the perfect Latin American" should be: a businessman who is competitive, charming and open to western modernity - servile to the rules and regulations of our globalised world, apologetic about his country's underdevelopment and who feels part of a regional elite who are ultimately aligned with US interests - or at least with the globalising hegemony of free trade agreements.
This "perfect Latin American" stands in contrast to another stereotype which we could define as "the authentic Latin American" - it reflects another angle of the north's view of us. Cultural industries project an image of emotional nations wedded to the whims of authoritarian and populist leaders, and in this way, they condemn us to a permanent child-like status which prevents us from making decisions about our future. These pre-conceived "Latin Americans" are seen as children or noble savages in countries destined by their nature to live off farming and the extraction of natural resources. Our world is reduced to an immutable essence, a superficially marvellous essence which is also backward and even sometimes fearsome, but which can prosper if it follows the advice of its civilised, powerful mentors.
TeleSUR has covered Latin America from our own point of view. Not as victims or as infantilised peoples, but as subjects, as a diverse "we". The TeleSUR project dismantled the north's discourses and representations of the region in an attempt to build a counter-hegemony of information across the continent. It managed to counteract the likes of CNN and even at times to impose its own agenda on CNN.
Palestinian Museum / Museu Palestino

BRASIL
DIRETAS, JÁ!


   

Vídeo  de como Aécio combateria a corrupção cai na rede e vira piada.
Chamadas para a greve geral do dia 28 de abril 

A Igreja toma o partido certo
 Não brinquem com a Greve Geral!


E no Peru, o presidente mostra o rumo

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