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Monthly Archives: October 2016

Commemorating Kafr Qasim Massacre at its 60th Anniversary

29 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by freehaifa in Palestine 48, Popular Struggle, Zionism

≈ 5 Comments

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60th anniversary, Commemoration, Kafr Qasim, Kafr Qasim Massacre, Museum, Shadmi

The 29th of October 1956 started as a quiet day in the village of Kafr Qasim, then under military rule since it was transferred to Israeli occupation by the Jordanian king in 1949. The villagers, hard-working peasants and workers, went out early to work in the fields and in near-by stone quarries. In the afternoon a unit of the Israeli army came in and informed the village head that they are coming to impose a curfew. They told him to warn the villagers not to get out of their homes. “But what about the people that will come from work, I can’t warn them of the curfew?” he asked. “Don’t worry, I will let them in” answered the soldiers.

panorama-the-massacre

Panorama: The Massacre

Eventually, as farmers came back from their fields and workers from the workshops, the soldiers gathered them in small groups on the entrance to the village. Then the officer ordered to “mow them down” and they were shot dead, their bodies piled in heaps at the side of the road. 49 people were killed in cold blood without any provocation, for violating a curfew order that they was not aware of. 12 of the martyrs were women and girls, 17 children, the youngest of them only 7 years old.

The massacre of Kafr Qasim was not an isolated incident. It was intentionally planned by elements in the Israeli army command as part of a much bigger plan to complete the ethnic cleansing of 1948. The massacre was carried in the first day of October 1956 Tripartite Aggression of Britain, France and Israel against Egypt. Israel hoped that, under the cover of the fog of war, new massacres will cause the Arab Palestinian population to seek refuge and safety beyond the Jordanian border.

Commemorating the Massacre

The people of Kafr Qasim were not even allowed to bury their dead. The army kidnapped at gun-point some men from the nearby village of Jaljulia and forced them to bury the massacre’s victims in Kafr Qasim’s cemetery, while the curfew over the village was extended to 3 whole days. Israeli military censorship prevented any mention of the crime in the press. It required a prolonged struggle, mostly led by the Communist Party, just to publish the shocking facts about what the army did.

martyrs-pictures

Pictures of the martyrs in Kafr Qasim’s museum

In the coming years the military government continued to terrorize the population and prevent the commemoration of the massacre. As we visited Kafr Qasim today, our hosts told us how the army used to force a siege of the village on the anniversary of the massacre. It was even searching homes and confiscating any piece of black cloth in order to prevent any sign of mourning.

Only in 1966, at the 10th anniversary, as the military rule in the 1948 and 49 occupied territories was abolished, could the people of Kafr Qasim for the first time openly and more or less freely commemorate their martyrs, with solidarity delegations coming from all over the country.

60 Years On

I must confess that this year was the first time that I attended the Kafr Qasim massacre commemoration. The local tradition is to start the commemoration march at 8:30 in the morning, an unconventional timing for a public event and a real challenge if you come from far away. As we entered Kafr Qasim this morning it was suspiciously quiet and we almost thought that the event will not really start so early. But when we approached the designated gathering place at 8:40 thousands of people were already marching and we quickly joined them.Mass meeeting at the location of the massacre.jpg

We marched to the location of the massacre, at what was once the western entrance of the village but is now at the center of what has become a poverty stricken township. There, near the massacres’ memorial, a mass meeting was held. I was mostly impressed at the way that the whole population is now involved with the commemoration. Men and women of all ages attended, most of them wearing special black T-shirts with the symbol of the 60th anniversary.

Another extraordinary feature of the date was the simultaneous translation of the whole event to the signs language for the deaf. Soon we also understood why the march started so early, as the sun climbed up the sky and the heat became hard to bear.

We heard Kafr Qasim’s Mayor Adel Bdeir, the representative of the grandchildren of the victims, an Islamic Sheikh and Muhammad Barake, the head of the “follow up committee” that represents the whole Palestinian Arab population in the 48 territories. At the end a group of children release to the air 49 green and black helium balloons.Museum and Panorama.jpg

Then there was another march, following the last journey of the martyrs, from the location of the massacre to the cemetery in the East of the village, just near where the Jordanian border used to be. When we went back many people were still coming in all along the main street of the town.

The morning events were just one part of the wider 60th anniversary commemoration. Over the last month there were educational programs about the massacre that involved every pupil in Kafr Qasim’s schools. There were more marches before today and another central mass meeting was set for tonight, with more speakers from out of the town. It was said that in the next anniversaries the commemoration should not be restricted to Kafr Qasim itself.

Open Wounds

We met sisters Rim and Roz Amer, friends from the old days in “Ta’ayush” movement and activists in the Kafr Qasim commemoration popular committee. They were collecting evidence from some of the old people that survived the massacre…

They told us about their grandmother, Khamisa Amer, which was with a group of women that went out to pick olives in that fatal day. As they came back in the pickup car the army stopped them. First they took out the three men that were in the car and shoot them. Then they shoot at the group of women inside the car.Martyr Khamisa Amer.jpg

When we met Roz and Rim they were interviewing Hana’a Amer, which was 14 years at the time of the massacre and came to help in the olives harvest under the supervision of their grandmother. Hana’a was shot and wounded in her leg and head, her skull was broken, but she stayed alive lying in the pile of corpses. She didn’t understand what was going on, not grasping that all the other women around her were dead. It was her rare luck that the soldiers didn’t notice that she was not dead like the others.

Much later, when the murderers went and other soldiers came to carry the dead, one soldier tried to carry what he thought was Hana’a’s dead body by dragging her from her hand. She cried with pain and eventually was taken to the hospital. I think it was the first time, only after 60 years, that Rim and Roz heard a first-hand report about the conditions in which their grandmother was martyred.

They told us about another interview with a man that was likewise wounded but survived after staying the night under a pile of corpses. He told of his pain as he heard his neighbors approaching one after the other the army checkpoint and being shot dead, and his great agony at not being able to warn them. He told how the soldiers would shoot at any victim that was still not dead. The officer told them to shoot one bullet at each head, not to waste precious ammunition.

The Massacre is Not Over

We visited the museum for the commemoration of the massacre. For the 60th anniversary, the people of Kafr Qasim opened a stunning new section of the museum called “panorama”, where you go through a dark cave and pass by several scenes that represents the stages of the massacre. You can hear the full story there in Arabic, Hebrew or English. It starts with the quiet village life before the massacre and ends with the government’s attempts to cover for the crime.

shadmis-cent

Shadmi’s one cent

The people of Kafr Qasim see a special insult in the supposedly “traditional reconciliation treaty” (Sulha in Arabic) that was organized after the massacre. They say it was designed to wash the hands of those responsible to the massacre and forced on the villagers by the coercion of the military government.

Another insult is the trial of the officers and soldiers that initiated and perpetrated the massacre. The highest officer that was sentenced, Colonel Shadmi, was fined a symbolic one cent! Eight lower ranking officers and soldiers were sentenced to prison terms but pardoned after a short period. The responsible officers were all promoted to more important jobs.

Panorama The Trial.jpg

Panorama: The Trial

In today’s commemoration all speakers drew a straight line from the refusal of the Israeli government to take responsibility for the crime to the continued policy of discrimination against the Arab population, including the continuing confiscation of Kafr Qasim’s land, the inability to get building licenses and the systematic house demolition.

But not only discrimination is continuing, the massacre itself is going on with the intentional killing of Arab citizens of Israel taking part in protest actions in Land Day (1976) and October 2000, and the killing with impunity of dozens of others over the years for all or no reason. And, of course, Israel’s continuing massacre of Arab Palestinians continues on a much wider scale in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza under the deadly siege. It is all one and the same struggle for liberty from the same murderous racist regime.

Explanation about the reconciliation.jpgExplanation about the trial.jpg

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Free Dareen Tatour! – Hebrew Petition Translated

25 Tuesday Oct 2016

Posted by freehaifa in Dareen Tatour, Uncategorized

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#PoetryIsNotACrime, A.B. Yehoshua, Dareen Tatour, David Grossman, Tal Nitzan

Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour has been in Israeli custody for over a year for publishing a poem against the occupation. Many writers, artists and academics are between more than 200 signatories of a Hebrew petition in her defense. +972 translated it to English. Here is the full text followed by the names of the signatories.

A whole year of detention for publishing a poem –

Free poet Dareen Tatour and drop the charges against her!

dareen-tatour-poetry-is-noat-a-crime-365-days

On October 11, 2015, Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was arrested by Israeli police during a night raid on her home in the village Al-Reineh, near Nazareth. On November 2, 2015, an Israeli court indicted her for incitement to violence. At the center of the indictment was a poem Tatour wrote in protest of the killing of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, Hadeel al-Shalamoun and members of the Dawabshe family in Duma. The indictment cites the full translation of the poem, which was translated by an officer who has no qualifications in translation or poetry. Even according to this translation — which is full of inaccuracies, most of them giving the poem an extremist tone — there is a call to resist the occupation, but there is no incitement to violence.

Dareen spent three months imprisoned in various jails. After that she was transferred to house arrest far from her home, where she was forced to live with an ankle monitor and under severe restrictions. After more than half a year exiled from home, and only after numerous court hearings, was Dareen allowed to continue her house arrest in Al-Reineh (she was forced to continue wearing the ankle monitor and is not allowed to use the internet). She cannot work, and even in the six hours that she is allowed to leave her home, she must be accompanied by “overseers.” This cruelty continues all because she dared to publish a poem.

A situation in which a poet is arrested and put on trial for writing a poem contradicts the very foundations of democracy, freedom of speech and freedom of artistic expression. Over a year has passed since Tatour’s arrest, and over the past few months we have organized two events, one in Tel Aviv and the other in Haifa, in order to protest against the criminal policy taken against an Israeli citizen.

The treatment of Dareen Tatour by the authorities expresses a policy of severe discrimination against Arab Palestinian citizens’ freedom of expression. The attempt to present legitimate political protest as a criminal act prevents the possibility of honest discourse, and is intended to block dialogue between Jews and Arabs.

The protest against Tatour’s persecution has spread throughout the world, turning her from an anonymous poet into a symbol of the state’s cruelty. Jewish Voice for Peace, Pen International (which dedicated its International Translation Day to Tatour), Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker and hundreds of other authors and world-renowned cultural icons have all condemned the actions taken against the poet.

We, poets, authors, academics, and educators, who care for freedom of expression and the ability of Arabs and Jews to understand each other and build a life together with in this country, call on the state to put an end to Dareen Tatour’s persecution, to release her and immediately drop the baseless accusations against her.

 

David Grossman, A.B. Yehoshua, Tuvia Ribner, Prof. Avishai Margalit, Prof. Shimon Zandbank, Tsibi Geva, Prof. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Prof. Ariel Hirschfeld, Prof. Moshe Ron, Tal Nitzan, Dr. Ilana Hammerman, Agi Mishol, Ayman Sikseck, Nir Baram, Iris Leal, Esti G., Rela Mazali, Dr. Dana Amir, Oded Peled, Prof. Zohar Eitan, Dr. Dror Burstein, Dr. Michal Ben-Naftali, Liat Kaplan, Rachel Peretz, Assaf Shor, Dr. Yuval Eylon, Sherry Gutman, Dr. Dana Olmert, Meital Nissim, Tahel Frosh, Noam Partom, Dr. Dorit Shiloh, Sigal Ben Yair, Hadas Gilad, Sharon Es, Dr. Amalia Ziv, Dr. Diti Ronen, Eli Hirsch, Leah Pilowski, Riki Cohen, Ila Ben-Lulu, Hila Lahav, Navit Barel, Meital Nadler, Lee Maman, Alma Miryam Katz, Roy Chicky Arad, Daniel Oz, Bat-sheva Dori-Carlier, Hila Aharon Brick, Yonit Naaman, Oren Agmon, Yulie Khromchenco, Inna Ardel, Suzi Reznik, Ofra Shalev, Tali Litovsky, Hamutal Fishman, Sivan Baskin, Ron Dahan, Keren Koch, Amit Mautner, Prof. Ron Barkai, Dr. Ofir Mintz Manor, Yuval Tzoren, Hadas Carmi, Josef Sprinzak, Dr. Diana Dolev, Sharon Dolev, Noga Eitan, Omri Livnat, Ibtisam Mara’ana, Ofra Yeshua-Lyth, Vardit Shalfi, Tsipa Kempinski, Vered Kofitz, Prof. Yaakov Katriel, Dr. Uri Davis, Yosefa Mekaiten, Dr. Hannah Safran, Bilha Golan, Prof. Avner Giladi, Dr. Anat Matar, Dr. Ilan Saban, Dr. Yuval Yanai, Prof. Vered Kraus, Prof. Michah Leshem, Mira Livne, Dr. Avner Cohen, Prof. Tamar Kartiel, Michal Kristal, Dr. Osnat Barthur, Tsili Goldenberg, Moran Ezran, Ofer Neiman, Rivi Diamond, Yael Ben-Zvi, Matan Israeli, Prof. Isaac (Yanni) Nevo, Michal Goldberg, Dr. Irena Botvinick, Prof. David Enoch, Prof. Elizabeth Freund, Prof. Shlomi Segel, Yanay Israeli, Dr. Lin Chalozin-Dovrat, Dr. Zohar Weiman-Kalman, Dr. Yael Shenkar, Prof. Ben-Zion Munitz, Dr. Meir Amor, Alma Itzhaky, Dr. Tamar Razi, Prof. Haim Bereshit, Tamara Rickman, Nitzan Shoshan, Prof. Ruth Weintraub, Prof. Oded Goldreich, Dr. Amos Goldberg, Dr. Dalia Zakash, Prof. Yigal Bronner, Dr. Snait Gissis, Dr. Tamar Hagar, Avital Barak, Prof. Tal Siloni, Dr. Chaim Deuelle Luski, Dr. Nihaya Daoud, Adam Maor, Dr. Arnon Levy, Dr. Eyal Shimoni, Dr. Tamar Berger, Prof. Rachel Giora, Dr. Anat Barkai, Atty. Yifat Solel, Dr. Dafna Hirsch, Dr. Smadar Sharon, Prof. Shlomo Moran, Prof. Yossi Dahan, Prof. Yehuda Shenhav, Dr. Almog Behar, Dr. Itay Snir, Anat Asher, Prof. Alon Harel, Dr. Michal Arbel, Anat Even, Yaen Maayan, Dr. Yael Berda, Prof. Aner Perminger, Tammy Riklis, Dr. Tali Bitan, Na’aman Hirschfeld, Dr. Hagit Benbaji, Prof. Yosef Neuman, Dr. Roi Wagner, Dr. Julia Resnik, Prof. Naomi Shir, Dr. Anat Rimor Or, Prof. Orna Sasson-Levy, Gideon Spiro, Yosef Grinfeld, Tammy Barkai, Tamara Santos Traubman, Irit Sela, Ron Maklef, Ofer Shor, Dr. Ayelet Ben Yishai, Prof. Kobi Peter (Peterzil), Prof. Jérôme Bourdon, Dr. Elisheva Sadan, Prof. Amir Shpilka, Prof. Hagai Ginzburg, Dr. Yoav Kani, Dr. Shaul Seter, Yaron Cohen, Prof. Dana Ron, Pioter Shmugliakov, Leah Eini, Einat Weitzman, Itay Tiran, Prof. Natalie Rothman, Dr. Ofer Cassif, Prof. Avner Ben-Amos, Dr. Naomi Zusman, Dr. Catherine Rottenberg, Prof. Neve Gordon, Dr. Yonit Efron, Yuval Gluska, Dr. Aronon Keren, Yifat Mohar, Liat Segal, Iris Bar, Yoav Haifawi, Dr. Yosi Amitai, Eilat Hen, Rotem Reptor, Rina Shomron, Itay Tiran, Einat Weitzman, Doron Tavori.

This article was first published in Hebrew on Haokets. Read it here.

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How Dareen Tatour was forced to sign a “confession” she was not allowed to read!

16 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by freehaifa in Dareen Tatour, Political Detention, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

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Dareen Tatour, Interrogation, Kim Jensen, Lawyer Abed Fahoum, Mondoweiss, Nazareth Court, Oren Ziv, Palestine 48, Poet on Trial

Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour is in detention for over a year now, while her trial for “incitement” is being held in the Israeli court in Nazareth. You can find here a detailed report from her trial’s hearing on September 6, 2016. It was initially published in Hebrew in “Haifa Ha-Hofshit”. It was later used by writer Kim Jensen for an article in Mondoweiss on the occasion of one year of Tatour’s detention. Here an English translation is published in full detail (and my broken English) for the first time.

Poet Dareen Tatour’s trial: the truth behind the interrogations’ protocols exposed

After almost a year in detention, poet Dareen Tatour was supposed to take the stand for the first time and give her version of the events that led to her arrest. However, her testimony was postponed after the court failed to find an adequate translator.

On Tuesday, September 6, 2016, after five months of hearings, the prosecution finished resting its case with the testimony of another policeman. The cross-examination revealed that the relationship between the protocols that were submitted to the court, which are supposed to document the police interrogations of Tatour, and the reality as seen in the video documentation, is partial and tendentious at best.

Tatour arrived in the Nazareth Magistrates’ Court ready to testify. It is hard to describe the tension ahead of this testimony, which may be the highest point in the trial. A small group of activists, including three Knesset members from “The Joint List”, Ayman Odeh, Dr. Basel Ghattas and Hanin Zo’abi, came to support her.

Dareen Tatour, 34, a Palestinian poet from Reineh near Nazareth, was arrested in a pre-dawn police raid on her home on October 11, 2015. On November 2, 2015, the prosecution filed an indictment against her on charges of incitement to violence and supporting a terrorist organization. The charges are based on the poem “Resist, My People, Resist Them” and two Facebook statuses.

After spending three months in various prisons (Jalameh, Ha-Sharon and Damoun) Tatour was transferred to house arrest away from her home in Reineh. In late July, following a long legal and public struggle, the court allowed her to continue her house arrest in her home, but she is still subject to very restrictive conditions.

Lost in Translation

Even before the prosecution finished resting its case, Judge Adi Bambiliya announced that Tatour will testify on September 6 and that after it the parties should summaries. As mentioned above, the testimony that was supposed to be the center of the hearing yesterday, didn’t take place. Tatour announced that she prefers to testify in her own language, Arabic, to be able to express her position in the clearest and most accurate way. The court summoned a translator. Translation between Arabic and Hebrew is a routine part of the court’s procedures in Nazareth. But when the translator arrived he said that due to his personal connections with the Tatour family he disqualify himself from translating in this trial. The judge looked for another translator, but to no avail.

dareen-and-supporters

Dareen with supporters before the beginning of the hearing, including Knesset members Zoabi and Ghattas

The prosecutor objected and said that Tatour has no problem to speak Hebrew. She pointed to the fact that the protocols of Dareen’s interrogations in the police were all written in Hebrew. She tried to move the judge to compel the poet to testify – but this time her plea was rejected. The prosecutor, who never misses an opportunity to embitter the life of Tatour, noted and emphasized that the delay is “the fault of the defense” and therefore there should not be any relief in Dareen’s detention over the next months. Currently, if the state succeeds to find an appropriate translator, Tatour will take the stand on November 17. An additional hearing was set to November 24, for the testimony of defense witnesses.

At the center of the indictment stands, as mentioned, the poem “Resist”. A Hebrew version of the poem, as translated by a policeman, Warrant Officer Nissim Bishara, is listed in the indictment. Bishara, a policeman with 30 years’ experience at Nazareth police station, testified in April that his qualifications for translating the poem stem from his studies of literature in high school and his love of the Arabic language. Anyway – he is not a translator.

But will Dareen Tatour have the opportunity to challenge the police’s translation and present an alternative, perhaps more faithful to the original? A few days ago the prosecutor on behalf of the State Attorney, Attorney Alina Hardak, sent a letter to the defense lawyer Abed Fahoum, where she informs him that because he had not yet submitted an alternative translation of the poem he will not be able to do it anymore. Imagine the reaction of surprise and wrath from the prosecutor during the hearing when Fahoum announced that he intends to bring an expert translator and other expert witnesses to testify for the defense.

Finally, the prosecutor announced that she demands that the next hearing will be captured on video so that the prosecution will be able to check later the testimony of Dareen in Arabic beyond the translation and beyond what will be written in the protocol. This is just another step further in the unprecedented escalation taken by the prosecution to incriminate the poet at all costs.

dareen-waiting-at-court

Photo by Oren Ziv, Activestills

A Police Film or a Western?

Do you know the story about the mice that ate a tape with a movie? Later, when asked if they liked the movie, they replied that “the book was better”… This is also the opinion of many of my friends who are used to watch films and read books. But it seems that as far as police interrogations are concerned, the contrary is correct.

At the beginning of the hearing, before Dareen was called to testify, we heard policeman Samer Khalil, the last of the prosecution’s witnesses. Khalil interrogated Tatour, her fourth interrogation out of five. His testimony was required in order to submit the interrogation’s protocol to the judge.

In cross-examination the defense attorney presented a videotape of the interrogation, known as “Inbal” in police jargon, and confronted it with the virtual reality as described in the protocol.

Although the protocol mentioned only one interrogator, the same Samer Khalil, he admitted in his testimony that there were other people in the room, but he didn’t remember who they were. Looking at the video he identified them as police officers, named Haim Sivoni and Ezri Zelinger, who were responsible for the case. True, he admitted, it is common practice to write down which police officers are present in the interrogation. Why he didn’t do it this time he doesn’t know.

Beyond the practice of omitting facts from the protocol, which was proven later as consistent pattern, omitting any mention of Sivoni and Zelinger is part of the picture that was revealed throughout the trial about the luxurious life offered to  Jewish officers in the apartheid system as practiced in the Nazareth police. All the police witnesses were Arab: they sign the arrest reports, ask questions, translate, write the protocols and testify in court. Jewish officers just tell them what to do, who should they detain, what to ask and what to write. They don’t sign anything, don’t do paperwork and nobody asks them anything, nor their obedient subordinates, neither bothersome attorneys in court.

Three fat cats

The cross-examination was composed mainly of segment from the video that the defense lawyer requested the policeman to watch. After watching each segment he was requested to translate what he heard and point out to the court where it appears in the protocol.

There were sections that the officer refused to translate claiming that “there is no direct translation for it from Arabic to Hebrew” – this after he, of course, translated the whole interrogation protocol. This time the translation work was divided between the evasive cop and the defense attorney who volunteered to help him when he was struggling. And what about the connection between the video and the protocol? It turned out that all the segments which we watched didn’t appear in the protocol of the interrogation that was submitted to the court!

In most of the viewed scenes the policemen were talking with Tatour, shouting at her and trying to convince her that she was “in trouble” and she had to “confess”. The reasons given for not writing it down in the protocol were many and varied… Starting with “You can write it all” through “She did not understand the question so I explained it to her one more time” (how polite of him) to “All is in video anyway. They had to transcribe the video. I don’t know why it was not done”.

When Dareen replied with an answer that the policeman didn’t like, her reply also was not written. He explained that “she didn’t answer my question, so I didn’t write it”.

Anyone who reads the protocols submitted to the court can have the impression that questions were asked and Tatour replied whatever she wanted to reply. The general impression from what we saw in the video was more reminiscent of three fat cats abusing a bird they hunted. They are shouting at her, trying to force her to say things contrary to her will and put words in her mouth. Her faint voice sounded like an occasional squeak between their shouts.

What is written in the protocol?

If you received the impression that I was slandering the interrogators in order to undermine the credibility of the protocols because Tatour confessed during her interrogation of serious crimes – Well the opposite is true. During the five interrogations Dareen “confessed” of owning her Facebook pages and explained that the materials published there are a legitimate protest against the crimes of the occupation and settlers’ terrorism against the Palestinian population.

This is also the message she intended to convey in her delayed testimony.

The sayings attributed to Tatour in the interrogation’s protocols are full of jumbled phrases like “I wrote that it is our rights as a people to prevent us from visiting the holy places this is my intention from the publication, and it is true that I published what you suspect me of, but I had no intention to violence only to ask his right in the shape peace and we are in a democratic state and if I knew that the words that I wrote is considered as incitement I would not write…” (The Hebrew original is full of printing, grammar and syntax errors).

Also:

“Q: You are suspected of participating in conferences. Who invited you?

“A: Only twice and no more. Once in Kafr Qasim in memory of Magzara 58, and the second time in Nazareth in 2013, International Women’s Day… and there was a conference for gifted children and I read poetry”. (Majzarah – in Arabic massacre. Somehow the policemen failed or didn’t want to translate it.)

Perhaps the most “criminalizing” phrase in the interrogation is the following:

“Q: Of all your publication we see that you did and called upon people to stand up against the state of Israel and its citizens and you showed things about it?

“A: I refuse to answer this question, and according to the Israeli interrogator it is true that I published things against the State of Israel.”

But immediately below:

“Q: According to what law are you going?

“A: Sure according to the Israeli interrogator.

“Q: Do you feel you’ve violated the Israeli law and he incited people to violence against the state and the citizens?

“A: no.”

First some linguistic hints to the maze. In Hebrew “law” is spelled “hok” and interrogator is spelled “hoker”, and the difference is just one letter. Apparently the “hoker” wanted to write “hok” but spelled it wrongly twice.

Well, if so far the typing mistakes and jumbled phrases were mostly a comic relief, here what appears to be printing errors summaries the whole interrogation: Tatour is not a criminal under the law but according to the “Israeli interrogator “.

dareen-and-court-room-27

Dareen and court room 27, where all this incredible show takes place

Dead End

At the end of the interrogation the protocol reads: “This announcement was read to me and approved with my signature”. Indeed, Dareen’s signature appears at the bottom of the interrogation protocol that was submitted to the court.

When asked whether Dareen read the protocol before she signed it the policeman said that no, there was no need for it. Did she request to read it? The witness did not remember. So he was allowed to watch the “signing ceremony” in the video.

He explained that Tatour really requested to read the protocol before signing it. But he told her that there is no need for her to read it because everything is recorded on video and she will be able to complain later if something is not accurate.

He also said that he allowed Tatour to read the protocol after signing it. To the question “how?” he explained that he gave a copy of the signed protocol to the policeman that took Dareen to the court. Did the escort officer indeed give Dareen the protocol? He doesn’t know…

Meanwhile poet Dareen Tatour is detained for nearly a year on the basis of cooked protocols and distorted translations. Indeed, she would be able to complain about that later!

 

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Why were they arrested? For being Arab…

04 Tuesday Oct 2016

Posted by freehaifa in Political Detention, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Apartheid Israel, Awad Abdel Fattah, Balad, Haifa Courts, Haifa Police, National Democratic Alliance, NDA, Political Persecution, Sakhnin, Tajamu, Technion

Over the last couple of weeks, three dozen leaders and activists of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA, AKA Tajamu or Balad) were arrested by the Israeli racist police. Below is a post that I published in Hebrew in “Haifa Ha-Hofshit” on September 24, at the height of the persecutions campaign. Yesterday, Sunday, October 2, the last of the detainees, local council member Murad Hadad from Shefa’amer, was transferred to house detention.imprisoned-behind-bars

Cause and effect

John and Jack made the same traffic violation. Rich John was treated gently by the police and the court, had a good lawyer and finally got off with paying a fine. Unfortunately Jack is poor, he couldn’t afford proper legal defense and the police and courts treated him with impatience and suspicion. Finally, he finds himself in jail. It would be wrong to say that he is in jail because of a traffic violation. Jack is in prison because he is poor.

Why NDA members were arrested?

On Sunday, September 18, 2016, in a pre-dawn semi-military operation, police raided the homes of 23 members of “Al-Tagamu Al-Watani Al-Dimokrati” (NDA) in Arab towns and villages from the Naqab desert in the south through the Triangle and up to the Galilee in the north. They arrested “suspects” and confiscated equipment. The detainees included national leaders, key activists and a number of lawyers and accountants that handle the affairs of the party. On Wednesday another 13 key activist were arrested in similar pre-dawn raids.

waiting-for-detainees-sunday-18_9_2016

Waiting for the remand hearing – Haifa court, Sunday, September 18, 2016

On Sunday afternoon the first 23 detainees were brought for a remand hearing, some of them in Haifa and the rest in Rishon Le-Zion, the seat of “investigating unit”, Lahav 433. After waiting for hours in the corridors of the Haifa court I succeeded to attend the remand hearings of my friend Awad Abed Al-Fattah, The NDA’s Chairman, and several other detainees. It turned out that the accusations are about donations allegedly brought from abroad to finance the party’s activities. The prosecution claimed that the donations were not registered properly, in violation of regulations concerning party financing. There were no claims of corruption or personal gains.

Whoever follows Israeli news knows that all parties in Israel regularly face similar charges, and other much more serious concerning blatant corruption, on much larger scale. Particularly there are charges of corruption, accepting multi-million dollars in unreported transfers from foreign tycoons, against the main Zionist parties, Likud and “The Zionist Camp”. We never heard about nightly raids and mass arrests against leaders and members of these parties.

nazareth-demo-tuesday-20_9_2016-defend-tajamu

Nazareth united Demo supporting NDA detainees, Tuesday, September 20

The only reasonable explanation for the detention of the Tajamu members is that they were arrested because they are Arabs. If you want to be more precise you can add that they were arrested because they are Palestinian Arabs who dare to criticize the racist policies of the Israeli government and demand democracy and equal rights for their people.

A Severe Accusation

In the 80s I studied at the Technion in Haifa. It happened that, by that period, a young woman from Haifa, a soldier in the Israeli army, disappeared. Some piece of cloth that might have belonged to her was found near the Technion. The “investigating team” in the racist Haifa police decided to interrogate all the Arab students at the Technion…

Invitations were sent to hundreds of Arab students to appear for questioning. Anyone who didn’t receive the invitation, or failed to appear on time for any other reason, was hunted by the police from the lectures’ halls and taken to the police headquarters in Haifa’s downtown.

Friends that were detained in this campaign told me about the following incident:

While sitting in the corridors of the Haifa police, waiting to go in for questioning, they were approached by an old Arab man, who greeted them and asked:

  • And you guys, what are you detained for?
  • We? Just because we are Arabs…

The old man looked at them worried and said:

  • You are in trouble guys… this is a severe accusation!

One can also die from it

The Israeli government prevents the building of a hospital in Sakhnin, the main urban center in the middle of the Galilee, which is more than half an hour’s drive from the nearest hospital. As a result, if anyone in this region is wounded in a car accident, or goes through a heart attack or a stroke, his chances of staying alive decline significantly.

Whoever died due to failure to receive timely medical treatment didn’t die of a heart attack or a stroke. He died, in accordance with the political decision of the government of Israel, because he is an Arab.

 

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