Protest Prayer in the street, Silwan, Jerusalem 02.07.2010

http://chroniquespalestine.blogspot.com/2010/07/protest-prayer-in-street-silwan.html

Arab Students Demonstrate at the Hebrew University

In the last couple of days the Hebrew University campus in Jerusalem witnessed several demonstrations made by the Arab students movements. The Arab movements Aljabha, tajamo, Abnaa albalad, Watan, Ikra and Alreslaeh called the students to participate in a demonstration which was made last Tuesday to demonstrate against Israel’s policy in East Jerusalem.

More than one hundred fifty students participated in the demonstration while holding posters and shouting slogans asking from the Israeli government to end occupation in East Jerusalem and putting an end to the settlements building in the city.
A few Israeli rightist students started to attack the demonstration while cursing and threatening those who participated in it. The University security and Israeli policemen protected the Israeli students and arrested some of the Arab students. Six students were arrested and three were injured.

The Arab student movements sent an objection letter to the Dean of the university accusing the University security of taking part in the attack against the Arab students instead of protecting them from the rightist Israeli students. The Arab movements also accused the university of taking part in the attack, which was made; the entrance to the university was closed while the students were trying to go back into the campus.
The Dean office replied that the university would respond to the letter soon and stated that the right of freedom of expression is something that the university respects. On Wednesday the incidents developed since the Arab students declared a strike for two hours between twelve and two o’clock. The Dean office and the security men called the Arab movement’s representatives and ordered them to end the strike and ask from the students to leave the University forum. The Arab movements asked for a response from the dean office regarding the objection letter but the latter refused to give any immediate response. The Arab movements refused to end the strike and the Dean office threatened to punish those who are in charge of the sit in the forum of the university. The Dean office also threatened to freeze the Arab movements work in the campus.

The Arab movements threatened to expand the demonstrations and accused the university of preventing the Arab students from expressing their opinions and national identity.
http://www.middleastpost.com/1706/arabs-students-demonstrate-hebrew-university/

Israel continues to prevent Palestinian activities and Judaize Jerusalem

In the last couple of days Jerusalem witnessed several events and clashes between the Israeli police and Palestinian and Peace activists. More than thirty five Palestinians and Peace activists were arrested because they participated in several activities made against the Israeli settlements and the Arab cultural activities in the city.
The Israeli police claimed that none of these activities were authorized and therefore all of those who participate in it were acting against the law. The activities which were made included dancing, peaceful demonstrations, and demands to give the Palestinian residents of the city a chance to live normally without being depressed and prevented from expressing their opinion.

The Palestinians claimed that the Israeli state continues to prevent any kind of freedom of expression and acts harshly with anyone who tries to live as a Palestinian in the city. Many were injured by the Israeli policemen who used force against civilians who were simply gathering to dance in the streets of East Jerusalem. The French Cultural center in East Jerusalem was closed by the Israeli police because of an activity which was made for children as a part of the cultural Arab activities which were made.
The Palestinian residents which were arrested were attacked by the police forces while they were on their way to jail. The Israeli police refused to release them although the Israeli Peace court in Jerusalem decided to release them because no charges can be raised against them.

Israel claims that Jerusalem is the united capital of the Jewish state and refuse to admit any Palestinian right in it. More than one hundred fifty Palestinians live in the city and are forbidden from getting a Palestinian nationality. The only thing they are given is a travelling document and they are treated as a second class humans who are simply an obstacle in the way to turn Jerusalem into a complete Jewish city.
Although Jerusalem is considered a part of the 1967 occupied lands by the International community, Israel ignores the Palestinians right to be treated as people who are under occupation. The Israeli intelligence service keeps on following the youth people in order to prevent them from expressing their opinion and relation to the Palestinian community in the West Bank and Gaza. Any kind of Palestinian leadership in the city is forbidden and if anyone acts as a leader he or she becomes a target for the Israeli security forces.

The city suffers from serious community problems and the people are not defended or given a chance to defend themselves. A minority knows about the suffering which they pass through every day and no one is ready to move in order to make a change. The Palestinian authority is not allowed to interfere. Jerusalemite Palestinians are not welcomed to work in professional work opportunities inside Israel and are not allowed to work In the Palestinian authority. The majority of the Jerusalemite Palestinians live under poverty and the youth are pushed into crime and use of drugs.

The only expression which can be given to the city and its neighbors is simply a ghetto. Those who live on the line with Israeli settlements suffer from daily attacks launched by the Israeli settlers who act as gangsters above the law. The situation in Sheikh Jarah is an example of what the Palestinians suffer from everyday.

Israel acts as if everything is fine in the city and that the intelligence and police can hold the city as a part of the Israeli state by continuing their depression and occupation. The small Israeli peace activists groups are treated harshly, arrested, and abused the police. The international community continues to ignore all the voices which are demanding for a fair act in order to stop the apartheid Israeli policy in the city. The International law implies on Israel not to act in any part of the occupied city as long as there is no solution between the two sides of the conflict. The Palestinians of Jerusalem must be given their rights fully and must be treated as human beings but no one dares to judge Israel for such a thing.
It is important to remember that most of the Palestinian Intifadas and reactions started from the holy city after long periods of depression and injustice in the city against the innocent civilians who are currently suffering and almost their national identity because of the Israeli occupation and depression. Jerusalem can be described as the key for peace or war in the Middle East. The current Israeli government insists on using it as a key for war. Settlers continue to raid the city, settlements are built, the holy Islamic and Christian places are attacked everyday, and the people are depressed…so the result is already clear.

Israeli MP attacks Obama for being 'racist' over settlements

As usual the US will do nothing about Israel's flagrant breaches of international law with its latest announcement of the expansion of the Gilo settlement comlex - part of its plan to envelop and then strangle East Jerusalem. But the timidity of the Obama in the face of Israeli colonialism is still too much for the zionists hence the outburst from a member of parliament by the name of Danny Danon, accusing Obama of being 'racist'.

Now where did he get that line from? Probably the right-wing nuts in the US who decided Obama was a racist because he chided a police dept. after one of its police officers wrongly arrested a black professor going into his own house. The rag bag bunch of neocons, racists and anti-semites that make up the so called Tea Party movement in the US are of course right behind the Israeli-sponsored criminality and oppression that is the hallmark of the occupation of Palestine.

MK Danny Danon lashed out at U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday, as the lawmaker participated in groundbreaking ceremony for a new housing complex for Jews in east Jerusalem.

"President Obama should not interfere with the rights of the Jewish people to live in Jerusalem," said Danon. "This ... is a racist demand, saying that Jews cannot live in Jerusalem, only Arabs."

The ceremony kicked off construction of 124 new apartments in a Jewish housing complex called Nof Zion, or View of Zion, near the Arab neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber.

Much in the same vein, a US zionist politician also present at the ceremony accused Obama of being a segregationist - which to put it mildly is a somewhat insensitive remark to make to the US's first black president. The Israelis certainly know how to lose friends and influence.

At the ceremony, New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind said Obama's call to stop Jewish settlement amounted to segregation.