The Campaign for One Democratic State Holds a Study Day in Haifa

Tags

Awad Abdel Fattah, Free Palestine, Haifa Study Day, Ilan Pappe, Majd Kayyal, ODSC, One Democratic State, Settler Colonialism, Transitional Justice

(Another version of this report appeared in Mondoweiss. It is also available in French.)

The first half of 2018 was very busy for the ODS Campaign (ODSC) – the new initiative that took on itself to revive the perspective for a positive solution to the century long suffering and struggle of the Palestinian people under Zionist colonialism. Open and close consultations were held, through which more than a hundred activists and academics participated in the formulation and the adoption of the campaign’s political program.

But then came the local elections in October 2018, followed by the Knesset elections of April 2019. The initiative is, till now, mostly based in the Palestinian population in the areas held by Israel since 1948, and local elections are a major event in local Palestinian society, where people feel they can really influence the daily management of their municipalities. Many of the campaign’s activists and supporters were deeply involved in the elections and some were elected as council members.

Aya Mana opening the ODSC study day on June 28, 2019, in Khashabi Theatre, Haifa

The Knesset elections was not only a “distraction” for the campaign, but also posed a profound political dilemma. The Palestinian Arabs with Israeli citizenship are divided to almost equal parts between those who vote in the elections and those who prefer not to participate or actively boycott it. The perspective for One Democratic State is based on the recognition that Israel is not a democratic state and that the Zionist-Jewish majority in the Knesset is the result of ethnic cleansing and holding millions of Palestinians under Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza deprived of the most basic human and political rights. So, the most natural position for the campaign was to join the boycott of the Knesset and to pose a real democratic alternative.

But the politics of the campaign led it in a different direction. It doesn’t regard itself as a new political force that aspires to sideline the current parties and movement, but an initiative to promote a political perspective that is aimed to reach not only the general public but also sections of the current Palestinian political leadership. As the campaign includes supporters of the Palestinian parties in the Knesset, it didn’t want to force them to choose between their support to the campaign and their loyalty to their parties. In a more general way, it chose not to alienate any part of the divided Palestinian public and decided to avoid publishing any position regarding participating or boycott. This decision came with the cost of agreeing to be sidelined at a time of heated political debate.

Reorganizing

After the Knesset elections the ODSC activists were meeting again to resume the campaign. The result of the elections demonstrated, once again, how Israeli politics is trapped in a spiral of racist hatred and militarist war mongering, with not even a ray of hope for peace or a turn toward more democracy and equality. The main Zionist opposition parties attacked the ultra-right government for not being harsh enough against the Palestinians. The Arab parties that tried to build a perspective for “influence through participation” faced the frustration of being rejected again as legitimate partners in Israeli politics. And the growing camp of boycotters was facing the constant question by its supporters and critics alike: “What is the alternative?”

The campaign is intended to unite Palestinians from all locations, overcoming walls, borders and political traditions to form a movement that will bring together people from all over Palestine as well as from the diaspora. It also aims to encourage active participation in the struggle against Zionism from within the Jewish society in Palestine. But, to regain momentum, the first natural move was to re-connect with the established support base within the 1948 Palestinians. For this purpose, we decided to hold a study day in Haifa on June 28.

The Khashabi hall was full

In the past, in 2008 and 2010, two big conferences for the Right of Return and One Democratic State in Palestine were held in Haifa in the Midan Theatre (at the initiative of the Abnaa alBalad movement). Since then the Midan, which used to be the most prominent Palestinian theatre in the area, became a target of government and municipal attack (mostly due to its artistic program) and is not free now to rent its halls to any gathering with political coloring. But Palestinian cultural activist in Haifa created an alternative, opening the “Khashabi Theatre”, with the overt intention of not seeking any support from the establishment and keeping full independence for its artistic repertoire as well as its right to host and encourage free speech. It was the natural choice for hosting the ODSC study day.

Solid program can influence reality

On Friday afternoon, June 28, the small hall of the Khashabi Theatre was full (about 70 people). Activist Aya Mana, which opened the first session, noted that we started at only 10 minutes after the declared time, a significant testimony to the serious attitude of the participants. The attendance was diverse, including veteran of the struggle as well as youth activists, academics, members of different movements, parties and NGOS. Mana welcomed all of them and invited everyone to take part not only by supporting the campaign and its program but also by critical discussion of the program and looking together for the most effective ways to build an influential movement toward the most essential goals of achieving justice, freedom and democracy.

Historian Ilan Pappe, one of the initiators of the campaign, was the first speaker. If I’m not wrong, it was his first public lecture in Arabic, and he passed the test very well, conveying a very clear message about the historical background of the old-renewed perspective for ODS.

Ilan Pappe speaking – probably his first public lecture all in Arabic

Pappe analyzed the origins of the Zionist movement as part of the world-wide phenomenon of European colonialism, and, more specifically, as an example of “settler colonialism”, which aspires not only to occupy and exploit the local population but to replace them by settlers. This scheme of settler colonialism easily leads to the logic of genocide, which was successfully accomplished against the native population in the United States and other colonies. He explained how settler colonialism is building a distorted national myth according to which the settler population is described as “natives” and the original native population is vilified as “threatening aliens”. Another, complementing, myth says that the homeland was “empty” until the settlers came – ignoring and denying the existence of the native population.

In this context it is clear why in Israeli politics there is no real discussion how to reach a real solution that will restore the rights of Arab Palestinians and let them live in freedom and equality. The proposition of “a two-state solution” in its Israeli context is just another variant of the same search for ways to get rid of the native population.

Pappe dedicated an important part of his presentation to the current international context of the struggle. He emphasized the importance of a growing recognition of Palestinian rights in the international civil society, and the readiness of many sectors of the solidarity movement to hear and adopt the only solution based on human rights and democracy – ODS. On the other hand, he explained that the strong support of Israel and its racist policies from reactionary forces, like Trump and many European nationalists, is not an accident. Their very base of support is an attempt to revive the colonialist-era white supremacy and incite against the people of the third world. This change of the international map concerning the Palestinian struggle opens many opportunities and demands a more active and well-targeted approach from us. As there is no more Western consensus around the support to Israel and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is at the center of the political struggle about the future of the world, it is important that Palestinian themselves will return to the basic nature of their liberation movement as a struggle for freedom and human rights for all.

Pappe elaborated about the importance of having a clear political vision and using the correct terminology to describe the current reality. For example, speaking about Israel’s Apartheid regime is different than just complaining about “discrimination”. Speaking about decolonization is different from speaking about “solving the conflict”.

Finally, in response to a question from the public, Pappe corrected a common mis-reading of history. Many speak about a dichotomy between the “Algerian way”, where the settler population was expelled, and the “South African approach” where whites were integrated as full citizens after the dismantling of Apartheid. The historical truth is that the Algerian liberation movement proposed on the French settlers the option to stay as citizens of the newly liberated Algeria, but the vast majority preferred to return to France. And many of the whites in South Africa emigrated after the dismantling of Apartheid there. The program of one democratic state is just the natural alternative to colonialism, it will return Palestine to its local and regional identities. It will abolish the privilege of the settler population and give them the option to integrate on the basis of civil equality.

Growing interest

The second speaker in the first session was Awad Abdelfattah, the main coordinator of the campaign, who previously served for a long period as the general secretary of the National Democratic Alliance party (NDA, AKA Balad). He started his talk with an optimist report about the widening influence and connections of the campaign, especially among Palestinians in other regions. Even though the campaign itself is only at its very first stages, activist from the popular resistance in the West Bank and Gaza are showing interest in the campaign’s message and liberation agenda. Some of them are explaining that they never gave up this dream and want to revive it as a perspective for a revival of the Palestinian movement. There was special interest in Abdelfattah’s report about an evolving discussion with Palestinian activists in the occupation’s prisons, including the general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmad Sa’adat. The news about the interest of the prisoners’ movement in studying the ODS program made its way to the headlines of Arab-48 site the next day.

Awad Abdelfattah: New perspective for the Palestinian liberation movement

Abdelfattah described the crisis of the Palestinian national liberation movement, getting ever more acute as it becomes clear to all that the perspective of two-state solution and the Oslo accord only led to perpetuation of the occupation. Among the most catastrophic results of the Oslo accord is the fragmentation of the Palestinian people, when the West Bank is separated from Gaza, millions of refugees are stuck out of their homeland with no perspective for returning, and Palestinians inside the 48 territories suffer from systematic discrimination but are not even regarded part of the Palestinian national cause. Another consequence was the devastation of the PLO, which has served until Oslo as a revolutionary vehicle, but was sidelined without achieving its goal of liberating the occupied land. In an ironic way you can say, he added, that the Oslo accord united all Palestinians in a sense of helplessness.

Against this background, Abdelfattah stressed the importance of uniting the Palestinians around a new vision that can give new hope to the young generations by retaining the basic tenets of the liberation struggle, while adjusting the perspective and the means of struggle to current reality and to the fast-developing technology, society and world scene. The new initiative is basically a path to a different life, and new and modern political reality, where all Palestinians as well Israeli Jews can struggle together to build a new democratic political entity on the ruins of colonialism, apartheid and racist separation. The future state is based on the principles of justice and full equal citizenship.

‘’While we are conscious to the fact that there is a long struggle ahead of us, we can start today by rebuilding our understanding of the reality and reorganizing along new lines.” He expressed his hope that “the campaign will gradually develop into a mass movement of popular resistance against the occupation.”

Abdelfattah mentioned several challenges that are facing the ODS campaign, relating to questions which are often raised by people from different political backgrounds. He explained that some issues may better be left to the dynamics of life, as the people involved in the struggle will have to cope with challenges in an innovative way.

Among the questions he was keen to relate to is the claim that the idea is utopian, given the current political reality, as the balance of forces is in favor of the colonizer which is supported by the most powerful state in the world, the USA. Another side of this claim is that no major force among the Palestinians has embraced the one state solution, and no major or small Israeli party is willing to give up the principle of “a Jewish state”.

He summed up the response to this claim by saying: First we should emphasis that we base our approach on the principle of restoring justice for all Palestinians, for those who were expelled and dispossessed and those who survived the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the the Zionist movement and its embodiment Israel. Second, the two-state solution has been dead for a long time and the two populations have become inextricably linked, as a result of the continued systematic policy of land theft and settler colonization. As a result, all of Palestine has become one geographic and demographic unit under an overt apartheid and colonial regime. We should dispel the illusion that Israel would accept an independent Palestinian state and to unite all the Palestinian people, the world civil society and anti Zionist Jews around the struggle to defeat this regime. By the way, utopia is not always a fantasy idea. Many ideas that looked as such became a reality through clear vision, wise planning and strong resolve. South Africa is a stark example, which is our inspiration.

Legal and cultural point of view

The second session, facilitated by activist Majd Nasralla, was designed to answer some of the practical questions that confront us when coming to build a movement based on the ODS perspective. One basic issue that we were asked about many times is the position of the ODS perspective in view of the international law. Some people hesitate to openly support ODS under the impression that there is some legal guarantee of Palestinian rights in the framework of the right of self determination in a Palestinian state as part as a two-state solution. They are afraid that adopting ODS, as a solution that has no international recognition, may weaken the legal basis of the Palestinian claims.

Dr. Munir Nusseibeh gave a learned view of the support of ODS from the point of view of the international law. He explained that there is no principle that demands that there will be division to states that is parallel to the division to national identities, and that the right of self determination is basically the right not to be subject to external oppression. He explained the gradual development of the international law toward the concept of the generality of human rights and the need to guarantee them to all people.

Left to right: Dr. Munir Nusseibeh, Majd Kayal and Majd Nasralla

Much of Nusseibeh’s lecture concentrated around the concept of “transitional justice”, of which he made a thorough research. He criticized Zionist legal experts and some of their western apologists that try to use this concept to dilute the Israeli responsibility to war crimes, ethnic cleansing and other crimes against the Palestinian people. He emphasized that at the hear of the concept of “transitional justice” stands the assumption of a real “transition”.

It means that a regime that is based on the denial of basic human rights should be dismantled and substituted by another regime that guarantees and end to the injustice. It also means that the new regime takes full responsibility to the consequences of past injustices and the restitution of the rights of the victims.  Only then comes the part of transitional justice that handles the perpetrators of crimes, including indictment and punishment, that can take into account the conditions and the necessity to rebuild society after a trauma. But, first of all, we should guarantee the full transformation of the legal base of the regime – which is possible only in the framework of ODS.

The last speaker was Majd Kayal, a writer and one of the central activists of the youth movements that played a major role in the Palestinian protests in the 48-territories over the last years. He spoke about the role of culture and tried to draw a view of the types of cultural activity that may help the Palestinian society liberate itself from Zionist hegemony. He said that while raising political slogans is a natural part of life and of culture, it is not the essence of what is required. In some context raising political slogans about Palestinian nationality or even waiving Palestinian flags can contribute to consolidation of the current distorted relationship of power – if it is done within a framework designated by the Zionist establishment. What is required is creating and developing an independent framework for cultural creativity that is outside the influence of the establishment and which handles all the aspects of life – from fearless criticism of the political situation to confronting deep social problems in the society and even handling purely aesthetic and artistic subjects.

Preparing the next steps

After the two full sessions, both of which included interventions and questions from the public, all were requested to divide into two workshops. The first workshop discussed the political program of the campaign, for people that are new to the idea and for those who wanted to suggest improvement to the program. The second workshop handled the required next steps toward building the campaign: political strategy and usage of the media.

After the conclusion of the discussion in the workshops, and as a consequence of the discussion in the second of them, the organizers announced the establishment of two permanent working groups to farther the building of the campaign. One working group will work on expanding the campaign among the general public and reach out to movement and political parties. The other working group will work on publishing new materials and raising the media profile of the campaign. Both working groups are open for new activist to join.

 

Free Raja Eghbarieh!

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Abna elBalad, Abnaa Al-Balad, Adalah, Balad, Haifa Court, Hassan Jabareen, Islamic Movement, Israeli oppression, Political Prisoners, Raja Eghbarieh, Sheikh Raed Salah

Update – September 16, 2018

The Israeli court in Hadera remanded the detention of comrade Raja Eghbarieh until Thursday, September 20, based on the declaration of the prosecution that by this date they are going to present an indictment against him.

Dozens of members of Abnaa Al-Balad and supporters from the Arab Palestinian public demonstrated in front of the Hadera court at the time of the remand hearing – condemning the detention of Eghbarieh as political persecution. They promised that all the oppressive measures by the Israeli regime will not silence the legitimate Palestinian resistance against Israeli Apartheid.

Free Raja Eghbarieh!

On Tuesday morning, September 11, while Israel was celebrating the Jewish New Year, the Israeli police raided the home of Raja Eghbarieh, one of the leaders of the Abnaa Al-Balad movement, in Umm Al-Fahm. They searched the house, confiscated documents, smartphones and computers, and carried Eghbarieh with them. On the next day he was brought before a remand judge in the Israeli court in Hadera. The police representatives clarified that they were interrogating him for his posts on Facebook. They said they have already waged a “covert investigation” for a long time and now want to carry on while he is under detention. They claimed that some of his posts consisted “incitement to violence” and “support for a terrorist organization”.

Raja Eghbarieh in Hadera court

The defense lawyers claimed that all of Eghbarieh’s posts were, naturally, public. They said that he was already interrogated for seven hours and admitted publishing all the posts on his Facebook page. He explained during his interrogation that all his publications are legitimate expression of political opposition to Israel’s occupation and repression against the Palestinian people. They said that there is no reason to remand his detention, even if the state wants to indict him on the charges against his pronunciations.

The judge refused to accept documented evidence that the 67 years old detainee was suffering from several serious medical conditions or to consider any terms of release on bail. In the end she remanded his detention until Monday, September 17.

The Limits of Israeli Democracy

On Thursday, September 13, Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel, filed an appeal in the District Court in Haifa. Some twenty supporters and relatives of Eghbarieh, accompanied by four lawyers, gathered in the small hall of Judge Mazen Daoud.

Adalah Lawyer Hassan Jabareen after his appearance in the appeal in Haifa

Attorney Hassan Jabareen, founder and general director of Adalah, presented the defense arguments. Hearing him you could easily be carried away and believe that we all live in a democracy, that the right for free speech is a sacred right, and nobody is arrested just for publishing his criticism against government policy on Facebook. The decision of the judge from Hadera was surely a mistake that contradicts both the law and the practice in the courts.

On the other side, representing the police was a uniformed officer named Barakat. To Jabareen’s claim that (almost) nobody is arrested just for posting on Facebook he answered with a long list of names and file numbers of people that were arrested for long periods before and after indictment for just that. For one of the names of his list he emphasized that the accused was a young man with no precedents, unlike Eghbarieh who is an influential political leader. Hearing the list of those arrested just for posting on Facebook, Jabareen could not stop himself but interrupted the officer: “They are all Arabs! Are there no Jews posting sharp words on Facebook?”

The Presumption of Dangerousness

The Israeli “law enforcement” apparatus maintains, in practice, a different legal system for Jews and Arabs. But most laws are formally worded in a general way – not conditional on the religion or nationality of the accused. One crucial way to sort things out is called in the legal system “the presumption of dangerousness”.

The decision whether to hold a suspect or an accused in detention can rely on any of several justifications. One of the most common of them is how “dangerous” the accused is. In the general case this supposed dangerousness should be tested on individual basis. In some cases even murderers were released on bail pending trial. But for offences “against state security” there is a blanket all-embracing “presumption of dangerousness” that allows the state to keep the accused for infinite time in prison until the end of the trial even if the supposed offence itself is very light. The long detention periods constitute a major pressure on the accused to agree to a plea bargain that in many cases will take them out of prison earlier than the trial itself could last.

One main argument of Jabareen in the appeal was that this “presumption of dangerousness” doesn’t apply for offences that are based on political expression. The judge rejected this claim.

The hearing was set for 15:00. After an hour or so of arguments, the judge said he will give his decision later on the same day. He received a CD from the police with “materials” – supposedly posts from Eghbarieh’s Facebook – to look at. It was almost 20:00 when he finally announced his decision. He rejected the main claims of the appeal, but accepted two minor claims. First, he agreed with the police that some of the interrogation steps require that the accused will be in detention – but not much of it. He agreed with the appeal that the remand judge in Hadera had to consider alternative measures to full detention, like house arrest. Based on these he shortened the detention period by one day, and it is now set till Sunday, September 16.

On Sunday the police may agree to release Eghbarieh or ask for another remand.

Who are Abnaa Al-Balad?

Abnaa Al-Balad (“Sons of the Country”) is a left political movement that is active between Palestinians in the territories that were occupied by Israel in 1948. To understand the roots of this movement one should understand the special history of those Palestinians that were left under Israeli rule after the 1948 Nakba in which most Palestinians were expelled and hundreds of towns and villages destroyed. It was a society under trauma, and for the first 18 years they lived under direct military rule.

In the initial period after the Nakba the only political party that was active within this section of the Palestinian population was the Israeli Communist Party. This communist party supported the basic claims of Zionism for a “Jewish state” but wasn’t Zionist itself and took an active role in defending the daily rights of the Arab Palestinian population. The first attempt to build an Arab Nationalist party, Al-Ard movement, was crushed by Israeli oppression. Abnaa Al-Balad movement, which started in the late sixties and gradually organized from local groups into a political movement, was the first movement that succeeded to resume systematic Palestinian political struggle after the Nakba.

In the eighties Abnaa Al-Balad went through deep divisions, much of them around the issue of participation in the Israeli Knesset. Finally the movement adopted a Marxist ideology and took the position of boycott of the Knesset. In spite of constant government persecutions and internal divisions Abnaa Al-Balad succeeded to keep its position as one of the recognized political movements in the Palestinian political map within the 48 areas. It is the smallest of just four movements that have grassroots organization and participate in leading Palestinian struggles, cooperating and competing with the Islamic Movement, the Communist Party and Balad. It was never registered under the Israeli law but was not outlawed either.

Abnaa Al-Balad defines itself as a Palestinian movement, promoting national identity, relating to Palestinian and wider Arab politics and rejecting integration in Israeli politics. It can claim major success in restoring the Palestinian identity of the Arab population after the Nakba and in setting the political agenda on several issues like creating wide consensus around the right of return. In addition to boycott of the Knesset it is mostly characterized by its consistent support for the establishment of one secular democratic state in the whole of Palestine.

Who is Raja Eghbarieh?

Raja Eghbarieh is the most significant leader in the history of Abnaa Al-Balad. The movement actually started in Umm Al-Fahm in 1969 as a local club that took part in municipal elections. In the eighties, as leader of the movement’s youth, he led the opposition to the traditional leadership that wanted to take part in Israeli elections and had an important role in adopting the leftist orientation. In the beginning of the first intifada, in December 1987, after a stormy general strike within 1948 Palestine, Eghbarieh, with some 10 other leaders of the movement, was put under administrative detention for six months.  After the first national conference of the movement, in 1990, he was elected to be its first general secretary.

After the Oslo Agreement, Abnaa Al-Balad wanted to build a wider front of Oslo opponents and skeptics. Eghbarieh led the discussions and negotiations that culminated in the establishment of the “Balad” party, the election of Azmi Bishara to head it and the participation of Balad in a common list with “the democratic front” in the 1996 Knesset elections.

In 1998 Abnaa Al-Balad abandoned her partnership in Balad and struggled to rebuild its independent public presence. But it soon split into a “pragmatic” faction led by Eghbarieh and a more “hardline” faction led by Muhammad Kana’aneh. After a long process of rapprochement the movement was officially reunited in 2012 with no single major leader.

For all this period Eghbarieh was not only a political leader within his movement but also represented it in different bodies that united the 1948 Palestinians in struggle against Israeli racism and oppression, mostly the “higher follow up committee”. In this role he had made important contributions as part of the united leadership of the Palestinian masses in many crucial struggles.

Silencing Palestinian Voices

Throughout the discussion of the appeal in the Haifa court, one precedent was repeatedly mentioned. It was the trials, past and present, of the leader of the Islamic Movement, Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, who also happened to be from Umm Al-Fahm. The police representative didn’t shy of stressing the political aspects of the trials – in both cases, he claimed, the accused are political leaders whose words carry influence with the public. He didn’t mention any post by Eghbarieh that is calling for violence, but he stressed his positions that “oppose the state of Israel” and the fact that “he writes many posts and receive many likes and shares”.

Sheikh Ra’ed Salah in court – endless persecution

Not only the Islamic Movement and Abnaa Al-Balad are persecuted. In the last few years Balad is also constant target to interrogations, detentions and trials. Many speakers for Israel’s government and Zionist parties express their intention to prevent Balad from entering the Knesset again.

After the recent ratification of the Nationality Law, which officially declares Israel as an exclusive Jewish state, there was a wide call in Palestinian circles to reconsider the usefulness of Arab participation in the Knesset.

Just as the Israeli state is using its heavy hands to silence any form of Palestinian political expression, the very same repression proves to the population at large and to the world the basic claims of those very same voices: that Israel is not a democracy but a colonialist system based on Apartheid and ethnic cleaning.

 

Despite Police brutality, the Demonstrations in Haifa continue

Tags

Gaza, Haifa Demonstration, Herak Shababi, palestine, Press Release, Right of Return

Palestinian political youth activists in Haifa call for a new demonstration under the title “From Haifa to Gaza” on Friday (1.6.2018) at 9:00 pm in the German Colony in Haifa. This demonstration calls for the end of the Israeli siege over the Gaza strip and for the implementation of the right of return for the Palestinian refugees to their houses, villages and cities. This demonstration will be held on the same day as a protest which will take place in Gaza under the slogan “From Gaza to Haifa.”

The slogans of the demonstration:

• Break the Israeli siege over the Gaza Strip.
• The right of return for Palestinian refugees.
• End the fragmentation of the Palestinian people.

“In Haifa and Gaza, one struggle and one hope for liberation.”

Press Release

1 June 2018

In Haifa and Gaza, one struggle and one hope for liberation

Following the calls to demonstrate in Gaza on Friday, 1.6.2018, under the slogan “From Gaza to Haifa,” Palestinian political youth activists announced a demonstration in Haifa on the same day (at 21:00, in the German Colony). In their announcement, the organizers in Haifa emphasized the unity of the Palestinian hope and struggle for breaking the ongoing Israeli siege over the Gaza Strip and for the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their houses, villages and cities.

In the call to demonstrate, the organizers highlighted the fact that Palestinians have faced Israeli crimes for decades in all parts of historic Palestine yet even so the Israeli regime has still managed to divide the aspirations of the Palestinian struggle and it’s battle against this regime. They also stated that the planned demonstration aims to break the Israeli regime attempts to separate them as Palestinian citizens of Israel from their Palestinian people in the West Bank, Gaza and the diaspora: “They tried to rob us as people of our right to live in the future in unity with freedom and dignity… this demonstration is a step in the path of a united struggle and a united hope for liberation.”

The organizers explained that the need for a unified struggle is essential in light of the fact that all Palestinians are subject to the Israeli policies whether as citizens of Israel or residents of the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967. They added that these policies that include home demolitions, forced displacement and destruction of villages, confiscation of water and resources, restrictions on freedom of movement, extra judicial killings, and political repression, are all deeply rooted in the Nakba (Palestinian catastrophe) of 1948. They stated: “If we know that Israeli crimes are united against all of us, why do we accept a fragmented resistance against them?”

The Herak Gaza solidarity demonstration in downtown Haifa on Friday, May 18, was brutally suppressed

The planned demonstration in Haifa is one of a series of peaceful demonstrations that took place in the city in the last few weeks following the Israeli massacre of demonstrators in Gaza. In the last demonstration in Haifa (Friday – 18.5.2018) the Israeli police responded with excessive violence and brutal assaults toward the demonstrators and arrested 21 of them. The detainees were subjected to physical and psychological violence during their arrest and in the police station, and seven among them received medical treatments in nearby hospitals.

 

Dareen Tatour and the Right of Return

Tags

Dareen Tatour, Internally Displaced, March of Return, National Committee of Internally Displaced Palestinians, Palestinian Nakba, Right of Return, Safsaf Massacre

(The following article was first published in Mondowiess)

We were visiting poet Dareen Tatour in her house arrest in Reineh on April 17^th, which is known here as “The Palestinian Prisoner’s Day”. Two and a half years after she was arrested for publishing a poem, Tatour is still under house arrest, waiting the verdict in her trial that is now set to be announced on May 3^rd.

Dareen Tatour in the Annual Return March

In these days Palestinians are protesting 70 years of ongoing Nakba. For Palestinians inside the “green line”, those that succeeded to stay on their land or near it after the 1948 ethnic cleansing, “The March of Return”, held at the same day that Israel celebrates its establishment, became over the last two decades the central yearly gathering to express their national identity and their aspirations for freedom and equality. This year we also witness a new initiative for mass non-violent struggle in the besieged Gaza Strip under the title of “the great march of return”. On every Friday since Land Day (March 30^th), tens of thousands of Palestinians march toward the prison-walls that Israel had built all around them. Israeli army snipers shoot at them in cold blood, killing dozens and wounding thousands. Through these marches the Right of Return regained its natural place at the center of the Palestinian liberation struggle.

To see how Tatour’s story fits within the context of these contemporary events, I decided to interview her about her personal experiences with the Nakba and the struggle for “Al-‘Awda” – the return.

Dareen’s Granma and the Nakba in Safsaf

Are you a refugee yourself? I asked her. “No”, she said, “the Tatour family lived in Reineh long before the Zionists came to Palestine.”

So how did you become aware to the ethnic cleansing of 1948? I continued to ask. “Well, it all started with my grandmother.” She said. “She told me how they were expelled from Safsaf”.

Dareen and her Grandmother – remembering Safsaf

Safsaf was a Palestinian village northwest of Safed. On October 29, 1948, it was occupied by the Israeli army. After the villagers surrendered, the soldiers performed a massacre, shooting more than fifty bound villagers and throwing their bodies into a pit. Young women were raped and killed, including a 14 years old girl. The story of the massacre in Safsaf is recognized not only by Palestinian historians but also by Israeli sources. The Israeli army held an internal investigation but its results are still a state secret.

Dareen’s grandmother was 16 years old at the time of the occupation and was already married to a man from Al-Jesh, a nearby village. At the day of the occupation she was in Safsaf and witnessed the horrors of the massacre. She told Dareen how, before the mass shooting, when the soldiers were instructing people to gather in the middle of the village, she saw how they found two young women and a young men hiding in a cave. They shoot the three of them dead before her terrified eyes.

Most of the people of Safsaf, including the grandmother’s brothers and sisters, ended up as refugees in Lebanon and Syria, thrown into an ordeal of statelessness and suffering to which, after 70 years, there is still no end in sight. The grandmother joined her husband in Al-Jesh and stayed there, where Tatour’s mother was later born. Most of the people from Al-Jesh, after hearing about the massacre in Safsaf, also fled, so more relatives, also from the grandfather’s family, became refugees. Some of them, as a result of Israeli and/or Arab massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps, later found refuge in different European countries, but most of them are still in Syria and Lebanon.

Tatour never met her grandfather, who died when her mother was still a girl. But she is proud of what she heard about him from her grandmother. He was a revolutionary and took part in the organization of the great Palestinian general strike against the British occupation and against the Zionist colonization of Palestine, back in 1936. Later he took part in the revolution that lasted from 1936 till 1939, until it was bloodily repressed by the British army.

She felt very close to her grandmother, who was telling her about life in the lost paradise in Safsaf, as well as about the Nakba and the fate of the refugees. From here came her urge to write down the stories, to photograph whatever was left from people, memories and homes, and to devote her life to the Palestinian struggle for restoring lost rights.

Photographing, Oral History and Activism

Just as she finished high school, Tatour started documenting Palestinian life before the Nakba, interviewing old people, filming on video and writing down stories. She started by interviewing her own grandmother, but soon widened her effort and started looking for displaced people from any of the more than 500 villages and towns that were destroyed by Israel in 1948. She would accompany them to their destroyed villages, or go there herself to take pictures.

She published some of her documentary evidence in the “Palestine Remembered” site, as well as her own Youtube channel, Facebook, a blog and a dedicated site she established for this purpose, “ynbu3.com” (yanbu’a in Arabic means “water spring”). During her detention and later house arrest, prevented from any access to the internet, she lost contact with the service providers of the ynbu3 site and now the site is not accessible. She is afraid that the precious materials in it might have been lost, as well as many documentary evidence that she kept on her computer that was confiscated by the police.

In 1995, a few years before Tatour began her documentation effort, representatives from groups of displaced Palestinians from different towns and villages united to form “the national committee for the defense of the rights of the internally displaced Palestinians in Israel”. In 1998, on the 50^th anniversary of the Nakba, they started the new tradition of “The Annual March of Return”. In the year 2000 the national committee established itself as an officially registered association.

Dareen organizing a visit to a destroyed Palestinian village – and taking videos

The activist of the internally displaced association discovered Tatour’s documentary efforts in Palestine Remembered and invited her to take part in a “guides’ course” that they held in order to expand their activities. Tatour joined the association and found another platform for her effort to perpetuate Palestinian memories. She combined the guidance of groups of visitors to the destroyed villages with documentary work – bringing old refugees to tell their memories to the visitors – and taking videos with their stories.

As the March of Return events evolved to draw tens of thousands participants, they now also include tents with special exhibitions. In the last marches before her arrest Tatour maintained her own tent, with an exhibition of more than 500 photos from the destroyed villages and towns, under the title “tell me about my village”.

She gave new dimension to the struggle to save the memories by using the Ynbu3 site to build connections between the internally displaced and refugees beyond the borders. Each side gave what the other missed. The people that stayed in Palestine could visit the sites of destroyed villages and send pictures. Refugees were contacting the site to request from local activists to find what remained of their houses or to send photos of the locations of endeared memories. The people in the refugee camps conveyed a treasure of precious memories and Tatour interviewed them by Skype and wrote their stories. She also helped to coordinate visits of refugees that now hold European passports to their destroyed villages. She produced three films about such “return visits” to the villages of Al-Damun, Al-Birweh and Tirat Haifa.

Wounded in Saffuriyya

While I was looking in Tatour Facebook page, which she is not allowed to do but everybody else can, I found her image lying in a hospital bed, visited by Knesset Member Jamal Zakhalka. She told me how she was wounded during the 2008 March of Return.

It was the 60^th anniversary of the Nakba. On that year there was a surge of right-extremists’ and settlers’ incitement against the March of Return, which was held on the lands of the destroyed town of Saffuriyya, northwest of Nazareth. There was a very big Palestinian presence, with many families bringing kids of all ages to take part in the educational event. As the marchers were returning from the site of the gathering toward the parking, the police allowed a group of settlers to come close and throw stones at them. As some Palestinian youth tried to confront the settlers, a big police force, including special mass-oppression (“anti-riot”) units, some of them mounted on mighty horses, attacked the whole Palestinian public with tear gas, shock grenades and batons. The police weapons caused a wild fire in the dry vegetation, which put the participants in extra danger.

Dareen in hospital – after being injured in Saffuriyya in the March of Return in 2008

There was havoc. Many people that didn’t expect such violence were confused and tried run away in all directions. Children were crying and many people lost contact with their relatives or friends. Tatour, armed with her professional camera, tried to stay calm and document the events. She still remembers the scenes of policemen beating whoever they could catch, sometimes stumping with their boots on their victims. She also vividly describes how people were wounded when the mounted police rode their horses into the crowd.

Suddenly she saw three children that lost contact with their parents and were stuck between two lines of the police, not knowing where to hide. She stopped filming and went there to help them. She succeeded to guide the children out of danger, but was caught herself between the police lines, and became direct target for their fury. Officially gas canisters and shock grenades should be shot in the air, but she remembers how the policemen were shooting them directly at her from close range.

She especially remembers one direct hit at her leg, and another shock grenade that hit her chest. She felt the burning heat of the iron and the force of the blow left her unable to breath. She fell on the ground. She remembers herself calling for help before she fainted and was evacuated by an ambulance to a hospital in Nazareth. She was hospitalized for one day before her situation stabilized.

Exactly 10 years later, on Friday, April 20, some twenty thousand Palestinians attended the 21^st March of Return on the site of the destroyed village of Atlit, just south of Haifa. It was the third march in a row that Tatour missed due to her house arrest. Some Israeli politicians and Facebook racist activists demanded to abolish the march and threatened havoc if it will take place.  They didn’t show up. I just hoped that on the next year Tatour will be marching with us again.

Kafr Qasem Martyr Muhammad Taha Fell in the Struggle against Crime

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Fighting Crime, General Strike, Israeli Police, Kafr Qasem, Martyr Muhammad Mahmoud Taha, Muhammad Taha, Palestine 1948, Palestinian lives matter, Police killing, The follow up committee

The same tragic scene that we see over and over again throughout occupied Palestine was repeated in Kafr Qasem on the evening of Monday, June 5, 2017. Angry

Shahid Muhammad Taha’s Funeral

protesters were surrounding the police station. A guard came toward them and shot Muhammad Taha with live bullets in his face and his chest. Muhammad, newly-wed 27 years old, was taken to the hospital but soon died.

Cold Blood Murder

A local lawyer that was present at the scene of the killing, Adel Bder, testified (here in Arabic) that the policemen at the place were in no danger, and that he was arguing with them and trying to calm them down before the shooting, but they insisted on opening fire on the protesters in cold blood.

Thousands of mourners attended Mr. Taha’s funeral on Tuesday, including

The funeral entering Martyrs’ Cemetery

delegations and public leaders of the Arab Palestinian population from all over the 48 occupied territories, from the Galilee to the Naqab.  They raised Palestinian flags and chanted “The martyr is loved by god”. The body was laid to rest in “the martyrs’ cemetery”, where the 49 victims of the 1956 Kafr Qasem massacre were buried.

Shooting of Palestinians by racist Israeli army and police, for any reason or no reason, is a daily event in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank. Inside the 1948 occupied territories, where the Palestinians are formally citizens of Israel, there were more than 50 cases of fatal shooting since human rights organizations started to keep records beginning with the October 2000 intifada.

As always, the racist Israeli government, political establishment, media, police and courts all unite to blame the victims and assure the impunity of the murderers.

Struggling against Crime

What is special about the murder of martyr Muhammad Taha is how it raises the question of the struggle of the Arab Palestinian society against criminality.

All the organs of the Israeli state are operating within the concept of building a Jewish state, which means that they serve the interests of the Jewish population while striving to make the lives of the Arab population unbearable. The police, doing its most to carry this mission, is specializing in issuing fines and securing house demolition and land confiscation in Arab towns and villages, but is doing nothing to fight crime as long as the victims are Arab.

Martyr Muhammad Mahmoud Taha

With no effective policing, under-funded education system, few public services and limited access to proper work, there is a wide class of hopeless youth that are easy to mobilize to serve criminal gangs, as the only way out of idleness and misery. Social alienation and the absence of the rule of law also cause many petty disputes to escalate to violence between family members, neighbors or commercial rivals.

The surge in violence within the Arab society, especial the growing number of murders, became a major concern over the last years. Many times there are conflicting positions about the right answer. Should we demand solutions from the racist Israeli police? Should we support more police patrols and the building of police stations inside Arab towns? Will such presence reduce criminality or intensify oppression and harassment of the population at large?

The Self Defense Alternative

Kafr Qasem witnessed the murder of 7 of its people from the beginning of the year before the racist police, which have its station placed in the middle of the town, added Mr. Taha to this long sad list. Reading the papers you just learn about the horror that fell upon the people there, but no details about the background to these murders. The police, of course, didn’t solve any of these murder cases and didn’t

Emergency meeting of the Palestinian Arab leadership in 48

detain suspects.

Only after the murder of Mr. Taha caused public uproar we could read in the papers about a very special experience taken by the Kafr Qasem municipality to defend its people. They established a local guard composed of a nucleus of few municipality workers and many volunteers in order to fend off criminals. The last surge in the violence happened as criminal gangs started to kill citizens that opposed their terror and extortion activities.

Locals complain that the police did nothing to stop the murderers or arrest them after the crime, even as they testify that they gave the police names of those behind some of the crimes. In fact the people of Kafr Qasem held a general strike on Sunday,

General Strike on June 7

June 4, against the free hand that the police was giving to the criminal gangs to terrorize them. In this strike there was a strong demand that if the police is doing nothing to enforce the law and protect the citizens it should get out of the town. A protest tent was placed in front of the police station.

The response of the police was to attack the defenders of the city and take revenge on the population at large, humiliating people in provocative road-blocks. On Monday the police arrested one of the leaders of the local guards, what caused a new wave of protests and the gathering in which Mr. Taha, who was also active in the guards committees, was killed.

Widening Protest and Solidarity

If the police thought to frighten the people of Kafr Qasem and make them abandon their attempts to defend themselves against the criminals, the killing of Mr. Taha may have the opposite effect. On Monday’s night there was a surge in violent

Burning police vehicle – Monday June 5

protests against the police, stones were thrown at the station building and some police vehicles were burned. On Tuesday the funeral united the whole town in protest at the police murderers but also in support of the brave guards, some of them still under police detention.

The leadership of the Palestinian Arab population in the 48 territories gathered in Kafr Qasem just as the news came in on Monday’s night. In a pre-dawn emergency meeting they condemned the police murderers, blamed the ex-Shabak head of the police Alsheikh and the racist political leadership, and called for several protest actions, including a general strike of all the Arab population on Wednesday, June 7.

The need to resist criminality and violence is a crucial issue all over the local Arab society. The behavior of the police in Kafr Qasem gave a strong argument for all those that oppose the presence of the racist police in Arab towns. Kafr Qasem’s experiment with self defense is an important example how a population that is not receiving basic services from the state, including the maintenance of personal safety, can work to improve the situation by its independent efforts.

Crazy Zionism and Capitalism

Haaretz, June 7, 2017: “Battle between the Islamic movement and crime families”

In some of the Israeli media, the efforts of the Kafr Qasem municipality and citizens to guard their city against criminals were reported as an organization of “a Muslim Militia”!

Also, notice the following paradox. Some proponent of “the rule of law” tried to defend the actions of the police by claiming that in an orderly state only the police has the permission to use violence to fight crime. On the other side, after the shooting of Mr. Taha the police defended itself saying that the person that shoot him was not a police officer but a private guard that was hired to stand in the entrance of the police station to guard the building. So, the police don’t even protect its own building in Kafr Qasem, but they arrest local people for organizing guards to defend themselves… just as the police were doing!

 

Smuggling phones is humanitarian aid, not a security risk – Free Basel Ghattas!

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Amira Hass, Balad, Basel Ghattas, Haaretz, National Democratic Alliance, NDA, Palestinian Prisoners, Political Persecution, surveillance

Pity our friends in Al-Tajamu (NDA – National Democratic Alliance, AKA Balad)… The government’s blows fall upon them one after the other. They can’t even respond to the barrage of lies and propaganda that comes to justify the arrests and political persecution. In the last blow, this Thursday, December 22, 2016, Dr. Basel Ghattas, a Knesset member for the NDA, was arrested on the accusation that he tried to smuggle cellular phones to Palestinian prisoners in an occupation prison.

Now NDA members are in a fix. If they argue that the charge of smuggling phones to “security prisoners” is not as serious as presented by the prosecution, it may be interpreted as if they plead guilty while their comrade is under interrogation in custody and, as I understand, denies the accusations. That lets the Israeli security apparatus control the public debate and spread their distorted view of things to justify every injustice and abuse against the Arab public.

Although I know and appreciate Mr. Ghattas from many struggles in which we have participated together, there is no organizational connection between us, and I have no idea whether he might have tried to smuggle phones to prison. So I consider myself free to discuss here objectively not the facts of the case but the racist lies and concepts behind his arrest.

All phones are reliable informers of the regime

Israel’s “security forces” and mobilized media talk day and night about the supposed “security risk” of smuggling phones to security prisoners. They argue or imply or are rolling their eyes to the heavens to convince us that, of course, no doubt, the phones are used by Palestinian prisoners to coordinate “terrorist attacks”. Such baseless arguments could perhaps, and even this is unlikely, be believed by Honi Ha-M’agel who spent 70 years in a cave, did not read newspapers and had no connection to the Internet…

We all know, for example, that Angela Merkel’s phone was tapped by American intelligence agencies. Could anyone, even a diehard Zionist, be so silly to believe that Palestinian prisoners’ phones are not tapped? We are all crammed in a sardine tin, under the supervision of the most stifling Big Brother superpower in the world. All conversations are recorded from all sides and all locations are identified down to the building and the room. Did you ever use navigation system like Waze? The most brilliant Israeli minds are busy exchanging the most intimate details of the romantic life of the laboratory mice under their supervision.

So, as they say, if there were no phones in the hands of the prisoners, the security services would find a way to put them there, as a tool for supervision and monitoring. How much more convenient and expedient for them to have those phones smuggled… They can be used as a fertile ground for economic blackmail and a handy justification for oppression and constant campaigns of arbitrary punishment whenever they see fit.

Lynch by the law

The invention of imaginary security risks in order to justify the crimes of Israeli apartheid is a national pastime and profession. No surprise that most Israeli politicians compete to show their support for El’or Azaria – a solder that shot dead a wounded helpless Palestinian in Al-Halil (Hebron) in March 2016. As they say, “we are all El’or”. They are all conscious partners to the same lies. If you only succeed to think that an Arab is attacking you, you are allowed to shoot him. With a little practice and some effort you can, this way, shoot every Arab you like.

The classic example of this behavior pattern was the cold blood execution of the 14 years old girl Iman al-Hams in 5 October 2004 as she passed by an occupation army outpost near Rafah. The soldiers succeeded to imagine that if her school bag was full of explosives she could constitute a danger to their lives…

This pattern grew stronger until, on October 2015, lynch of “suspected” Arabs became a national sport. The only cases in which “a mistake” was admitted, and the charges were found to be baseless, are those cases in which it eventually turned out that the lynch victims were not Arabs.

Even them

Unfortunately, as usual, even most Israelis who try to show things in a different light are captive to the false “security worldview” posing as if Israel is acting in self-defense against Palestinian “security risks”.

An editorial in “Haaretz”, from December 21, 2016, opposed dismissing Dr. Ghattas from the Knesset before exhausting the legal process. But it also supports the security-hype and lies against Ghattas by writing that he is suspected of smuggling phones to “imprisoned Palestinian senior terror operatives”. As if the Palestinian prisoners are busy organizing terror nets from prison…

Walid Daka was 25 back in 1986, when he was detained on charges of membership of a cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 30 years ago. If he was a Jew who was involved on a similar level in activities against Arabs, he may not be arrested at all or, at most, would spend a short time in prison. Today he could be a Knesset member or a minister. Since his arrest Mr. Daka excelled and earned fame for his studies, writings and political stance. He is not a “terror operative” of any kind and the only thing that may make him “senior” is the long period he spent in prison due to Zionist vendetta.

Amira Hass, full of sympathy, depicting the humane side of Palestinians, describes in detail (also in Haaretz) the humanitarian benefits of smuggling phones to prisoners. Nice of her… But she finally drifts to share the ruling slander as if those phones can be a “security risk”. She even volunteers to suggest her own methods to counter those risks: “If one really wanted to prevent future smuggling, the authorities should allow Palestinian prisoners to use public phones. Security services can listen to calls in real time, decipher them or place a guard nearby to listen. All of these can be done simultaneously.” How sad.

(This post was initially published in Hebrew in Haifa Ha-Hofshit.)

Commemorating Kafr Qasim Massacre at its 60th Anniversary

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

The 29^th 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

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.

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 10^th 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.

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 60^th 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.

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 60^th 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.

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 60^th 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.

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

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.