Welcome back Gaza Freedom Flotilla II activists this Sunday, 31 July, 4pm - 5:30pm
Anne O'Brien
from the CJPP list. Note the event this Sunday!! looks exciting... Please join this list if you haven't already.
Anne
From: <cj...@riseup.net>
Date: 27 July 2011 10:32
Subject: [cjpp] Welcome back Gaza Freedom Flotilla II activists this Sunday, 31 July, 4pm - 5:30pm
To: cj...@lists.riseup.net
IN BRIEF
* Community Event to welcome home Sylvia Hale and Vivienne Porzsolt - Sunday 31 July, 4pm - 5:30pm
* Meet Special Palestinian envoy, Dr Ghassan Khatib - Wednesday 3 August, 1pm - 2:30pm
* Invitation to Arabic Language BDS Workshop - Sunday 21 August, 7pm
* News, Views, Analysis
* CJPP "Boycott Israeli Apartheid" Ecosilk Carry Bags
* The Gaza Crisis - What you CAN do...
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"Blockaded from Gaza, Barred from Bethlehem"
Sunday, July 31 · 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Tom Foster Community Centre, 11-13 Darley St, Newtown NSW
"For the alleged 'crime' of saying 'We want to go to Palestine', we spent 36 hours in unpleasant, frustrating detention in Tel Aviv, were threatened with deportation from Israel, spent about $4,000 on legal fees..."
Sylvia Hale and Vivienne Porzsolt, recently returned from the Gaza Freedom Flotilla 2 and the Welcome to Palestine Flytilla, will tell us about their experiences and discuss the ways Israel frustrated their efforts to visit Palestine.
More information: cj...@coalitionforpalestine.org http://www.coalitionforpalestine.org Facebook
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&
The General Delegation of Palestine to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific
invite you to join us in NSW Parliament House to meet:
Dr Ghassan Khatib: Special Envoy of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
Ghassan Khatib is the Director of the Palestinian Government Media Centre, a former Minister in the Palestinian National Authority (PA) and former Vice-President of Bir Zeit University.
Special Envoy of President Mahmoud Abbas to Australia, Dr Khatib is meeting with Australian Parliamentarians, decision-makers and senior officials, to discuss the latest developments in the peace process and ongoing Palestinian efforts to broaden international recognition of the State of Palestine.
Wednesday 3 August 1:00-2:30pm
Macquarie Room, NSW Parliament House
Macquarie Street, Sydney
David Shoebridge MLC, Lynda Voltz MLC co-chairs: NSW Parlimentary Friends of Palestine
RSVP: david.sh...@parliament.nsw.gov.au
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=188241877905589
More information: http://www.palestine-australia.com/content.php/page/id/58
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Invitation to Arabic Language BDS Workshop
The Australian Palestinian Professionals Association and the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine, would like to invite you to a workshop in Arabic language on the concepts and strategies of the Global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.
Workshop will be conducted by activist Samah Sabawi from Australians for Palestine - Melbourne.
Date & Time: Sunday 21/08/2011 at 7:00 pm
Venue: Herb Greedy Hall located at 79 Petersham Road, Marrickville
Invitation is open to the public. We look forward to your attendance.
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NEWS, VIEWS, ANALYSIS
Israel's Blockade of Gaza: A Twenty-year-old Injustice
Mya Guarnieri, The Huffington Post, 26 July 2011
Flotilla activists still have much to learn about Gaza siege
Amira Hass, Ha'aretz, 24 July 2011
The glittering lights of the magical Greek island of Kastelorizo, from which we had distanced ourselves only two to three hours earlier, once again came into sight on Saturday night, July 16. For the 12 passengers on board the Karama - including crew and journalists whose presence the coast guard had permitted - the boat was too small. The French delegation in the flotilla had bought a pleasure yacht, called it "Dignite" (karame, dignity ) and turned it into a floating situation room, a sauna full of stale cigarette smoke, with eight sleeping berths without water for showering, a deafening motor and poisonous diesel fumes.
Another four "clandestine" passengers were supposed to join those officially registered, and to participate in the group experience of becoming adjusted to discomfort as an act of political rebellion. Three had jumped into the boat the moment it moved away from the pier, without the coast guard noticing. Or to be more exact - pretending not to notice. The only one remaining was the sociologist, the Greek professor Vangelis Pissias, who for mysterious reasons didn't get his new passport on time, and had only a passport that had expired four days earlier.
The island of Kastelorizo is about two miles from Turkey's territorial waters. In 1942 and 1943, the fear of German attacks caused the flight of its inhabitants, some of whom found refuge in Gaza for several years. The idea was that there, the sympathy for Gaza and the proximity to Turkey would neutralize the tricks of Greek bureaucracy, which proved so effective in preventing the sailing of the other eight boats. That's why it was worthwhile to invest 20 hours of sailing northeast, on a stormy sea, and to enable Pissias to negotiate with the coast guard there.
The official destination was Alexandria. The idea was to refuel there and then to continue to Gaza. That plan was abandoned out of a desire not to become involved in the sensitive political entanglements in Egypt. The 10 activists on the Karama have worked in the past year in their respective countries (France, Sweden, Greece and Canada ) to raise money from tens of thousands of people at informative meetings about the siege of Gaza, to convince trade unions to join, to interest writers and actors, to look for suitable seagoing vessels.
In the past week, they unwillingly turned into a symbol of the flotilla and into the representatives of all the hundreds of participants who didn't sail. These hundreds, including young people who are still studying in university or looking for work, paid for the cost of the flights and the stay out of their own pockets. These hundreds were united in their frank and natural revulsion at the existence of a huge prison like the Gaza Strip. The thought that an open sea could become a prison wall gives them no rest.
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Israeli left's awakening too little, too late
Raja Shehadeh, The Electronic Intifada, 25 July 2011
The strong reaction by left-wing Israelis to the recently passed "boycott law" must have astounded many in the country's right-wing government and made them wonder why such a strong reaction now. The controversial law penalizes anyone who calls for an economic, academic or cultural boycott of Israel or its West Bank settlements.
For more than four decades successive, democratically-elected Israeli governments have been working assiduously to establish and enlarge illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, beyond the 1949 armistice line that marked Israel's boundary until the 1967 war. A large number of enactments were passed increasing the linkage between the settlements and Israel making it possible for an Israeli citizen living in one of these West Bank settlements to be considered as living in Israel - even though no country considers the West Bank part of Israel.
It is only fair to mention that over the years there were Israelis on the left who were able to see the danger to their country posed by the consolidation of the settlements and their annexation in every aspect except by name to Israel. Yet the majority remained passive and uncritical.
While the left vacillated the settlement lobby worked diligently at increasing its political power, becoming a force to be reckoned with. But perhaps their greatest success was to convince most of their countrymen that the territory occupied in 1967 belongs to Israel and challenging Israel's hold on it whether by calling for the boycott of goods produced there or through any other means is tantamount to threatening Israel itself. This seems to weaken the hope that a change of direction regarding withdrawal from the settlements can occur through a change of policy engineered from within the country itself. It merely strengthens the position of those who argue that only external pressure brought about through boycotts and other political means will convince Israel to change its colonial course.
I'm boycotting - The law actually deals with boycotting Israel as a whole - not only settlements
Eitan Bronstein, Zochrot, July 2011
Israel Draws International Criticism for Sweeping Anti-Boycott Law
Democracy Now!, 21 July 2011
Israel has passed a new law outlawing citizens and organizations from advocating for boycotts against any Israeli person or entity. The law is drawing criticism from around the world as an attack on freedom of speech. Under the new law, any person, including journalists, calling for the boycott or divestment of Israel or the occupied West Bank can be sued by the boycott's targets, without having to prove that they sustained damage.
The method in Netanyahu's madness - Israel rules out non-violence
Jonathan Cook, Mondoweiss, 18 July 2011
It was an Arab legislator who made the most telling comment to the Israeli parliament last week as it passed the boycott law, which outlaws calls to boycott Israel or its settlements in the occupied territories. Ahmed Tibi asked: "What is a peace activist or Palestinian allowed to do to oppose the occupation? Is there anything you agree to?"
The boycott law is the latest in a series of ever-more draconian laws being introduced by the far-right. The legislation's goal is to intimidate those Israeli citizens, Jews and Palestinians, who have yet to bow down before the majority-rule mob.
Look out in the coming days and weeks for a bill to block the work of Israeli human rights organisations trying to protect Palestinians in the occupied territories from abuses by the Israeli army and settlers; and a draft law investing a parliamentary committee, headed by the far-right, with the power to veto appointments to the supreme court. The court is the only, and already enfeebled, bulwark against the right's absolute ascendancy.
The boycott law, backed by Benjamin Netanyahu's government, marks a watershed in this legislative assault in two respects.
First, it knocks out the keystone of any democratic system: the right to free speech. The new law makes it illegal for Israelis and Palestinians to advocate a non-violent political programme - boycott - to counter the ever-growing power of the half a million Jewish settlers living on stolen Palestinian land.
Equally of concern is that the law creates a new type of civil, rather than criminal, offence. The state will not be initiating prosecutions. Instead, the job of enforcing the boycott law is being outsourced to the settlers and their lawyers. Anyone backing a boycott can be sued for compensation by the settlers themselves, who - again uniquely - need not prove they suffered actual harm.
Call to name and shame BDS supporters
Australian Jewish News, 26 July 2011
One of America's most high-profile Jewish leaders believes supporters of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel should be "named and shamed".
American Jewish Committee (AJC) executive director David Harris, who will visit Australia next month, said there is a need to expose the people behind the BDS movement.
New Israeli Military Unit to Monitor BDS,"Delegitimization" Groups in OPT & Abroad
Tania Kepler, Alternative Information Center, 21 March 2011
Israel's Military Intelligence has established a new unit responsible for tracking groups abroad, and in the West Bank and Gaza which are aimed at "delegitimizing the State of Israel". This unit comes on the heels of Israeli legislation that would target BDS activists within Israel and abroad.
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Norway attacks: Norway's tragedy must shake Europe into acting on extremism
Aslak Sira Myhre, The Guardian, 24 July 2011
I share the fear and pain of my country - but in Norway this kind of insane act has always had its origins in the far right. No foreign group has killed or hurt people on Norwegian territory since the second world war, except for the Israeli security force Mossad, which targeted and killed an innocent man by mistake on Lillehammer in 1973.
Anders Behring Breivik, a perfect product of the Axis of Islamophobia
Max Blumenthal, 24 July 2011
Breivik and other members of Europe's new extreme right are fixated on the fear of the "demographic Jihad," or being out-populated by overly fertile Muslim immigrants. They see themselves as Crusader warriors fighting a racial/religious holy war to preserve Western Civilization. Thus they turn for inspiration to Israel, the only ethnocracy in the world, a country that substantially bases its policies towards the Palestinians on what its leaders call "demographic considerations." This is why Israeli flags invariably fly above black-masked English Defense League mobs, and why Geert Wilders, the most prominent Islamophobic politician in the world, routinely travels to Israel to demand the forced transfer of Palestinians.
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CJPP Ecosilk Carry Bags
For Peace & Justice in Palestine..
An environmentally-friendly, Palestine-friendly, ecosilk shopping bag. Strong, light and compact, to fit in your handbag or pocket.
A stylish alternative to plastic bags! A way to support the campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions for peace and justice in Palestine.
Available in two sizes & three colours. For more details click here.
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The Gaza Crisis - What you CAN do...
The Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine (CJPP) is horrified by the deaths and injuries of hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza as a result of the most recent Israeli military aggression, which began on 27 December 2008.
Israel's military offensive is unacceptable and must not be tolerated by the international community and the Australian government. To assist the Australian community to express its response to this unfolding humanitarian disaster and choose an avenue to support the Palestinian community, the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine has collated this guide to "What you CAN do..."
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The articles included do not necessarily reflect the position of CJPP
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