Good job,Jonathan!

sending prayers for justice for Jonathan today.

I salut you, Jonathan Pollak. Because of your example I will continue to financially support Jewish Voice for Peace, even though I am not Jewish. Your courage and conviction are inspiring to Canadians like me who live in a society of self-indulgent sheep.

Bravo, Jonathan!

Thank you Jonathan. Here's hoping your example will be followed by more and more Israelis.

Sending all my best wishes to young Jonathan Pollak, an unusual Israeli who understands that "never again" isn't specific only to his tribe.

"It will be the justice system itself...that will need to lower its eyes in the face of the suffering inflicted on Gaza's inhabitants,just as it... averts its vision every day when faced with the realities of the occupation".
This is beautiful and powerful and saying it in court and if the people and media get it out; it will sweep the world. Words have power. Tony

I applaud you Jonathan Pollak. Your parents must be worried but very proud of you. You demonstrate courage and I can only hope that more Jewish young adults will join the cause of freedom for the Palestinians.

I applaud you Jonathan Pollak. Your parents must be worried but very proud of you. You demonstrate courage and I can only hope that more Jewish young adults will join the cause of freedom for the Palestinians.

I just read that 'Jonathan" in Hebrew means "God gives or gift of God." Almost every nation in the world has a Jonathan too, including England, as in Ian and Brazil, Spain and Mexico. as in Juan. In French as in Jean, or in president as in Kennedy.

Maybe Israel ,this Jonathan is the gift of God to bring you back to your collective sense that all people are part of the same human race. I hope so, and I really admire this Jonathan

This reporter met Ayed Morrar, on November 14, 2005 when he and Jonathon spoke throughout America about the Palestinian led internationally supported Anarchists Against the Wall organization and their creative nonviolence against Israel’s occupation and route of The Wall.

Ayed explained how the Apartheid Wall was moved off of Palestinian property in his village of Budrus and the people chanted in English "WE CAN DO IT" and did!

Women, children, farmers, "regular people" stood up to the US made Caterpillar bulldozers and Israeli Forces who assaulted them with Billy-clubs and caustic tear gas that can cause spasticity for weeks and has also lead to death.

Unarmed women, children and farmers stood up to the Israeli forces that shot rubber coated bullets and live ammo at them; and proved non-violent activism worked to force the Israeli government to get off of their land, back off from their trees, and quit denying food to their children.

In Budrus, The APARTHEID WALL is now on the GREEN LINE because regular people stood up to their occupiers and essentially said:

Enough! This was never a land without a people; this has always been our home. If you want an apartheid wall, put it on your property, quit stealing ours! Put yourself in the ghetto, we will stand firm for freedom and right is on our side! The Geneva Convention and International Law affirm that occupied people have every right to rise up militarily against their oppressors, but we choose nonviolence to resist being ethnically cleansed from the land of our ancestors! These olive trees you uproot and destroy are our family. Every little child knows the name of every tree and we will not allow your illegal apartheid wall to cut our families apart.

Regular people chanted in English: "We can do it" and they did it in Budrus; but they are still struggling in Bilin!

Jonathon explained:

"Although Israel marketed the Wall as a security barrier, logic suggests such a barrier would be as short and straight as possible. Instead, it snakes deep inside the West Bank, resulting in a route that is twice as long as the Green Line, the internationally recognized border. Israel chose the Wall’s path in order to dispossess Palestinians of the maximum land and water, to preserve as many Israeli settlements as possible, and to unilaterally determine a border.

"In order to build the Wall Israel is uprooting tens of thousands of ancient olive trees that for many Palestinians are also the last resource to provide food for their children. The Wall also threatens the Palestinian aspiration for an independent state, as it isolates villages from their mother cities and divides the West Bank into disconnected cantons [bantusans/ghettos].

"The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem conservatively estimates that 500,000 Palestinians are negatively impacted by the Wall.

"We believe that, as with Apartheid South Africa, Americans have a vital role to play in ending Israeli occupation - by divesting from companies that support Israeli occupation, boycotting Israeli products, coming to Palestine as witnesses, or standing with Palestinians in nonviolent resistance."

"Financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile, the Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families' sole livelihood for generations." -Jan/Feb. 2007, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1776&Itemid=235

Someday, the world will realized its error and that people like Jonathan Pollak were the harbingers of justice. Intense, focused, noble. I wish him the unending joy in his work for justice and a god-like strength to last him all his days.

The conscience of the prophets who were reviled and persecuted in their time. Will the people ever learn? For the only future is a common one and the evils of colonial racism and apartheid, Nazism's "gift" to the Jewish people must be stopped, otherwise fascists the world over gain power in their name, from Canada where they govern to Europe where they echo the same bloodcurdling cry, this time against Islam.

Such is the nature of occupation. Resistance against an occupier whether is from within or without is still a threat to the occupier thus punishable to the full extent. The US is no different than Israel, if anything, worse because it does at a much larger scale. Big Terrorist and Little Terrorist, perfect together.

Jonathan Pollak's speech to the court, 27 December 2010

Your Honor, once found guilty, it is then customary for the accused to ask the court for leniency, and express remorse for having committed the offense. However, I find myself unable to do so. From its very beginning, this trial contained practically no disagreements over the facts. As the indictment states, I indeed rode my bicycle, alongside others, through the streets of Tel Aviv, to protest the siege on Gaza. And indeed, while riding our bicycles, which are legal vehicles belonging on the road, we may have slightly slowed down traffic. The sole and trivial disagreement in this entire case revolves around testimonies heard from police detectives, who claimed I played a leading role throughout the protest bicycle ride, something I, as well as the rest of the Defense witnesses, deny.

As said earlier, it is customary at this point of the proceedings to sound remorseful, and I would indeed like to voice my regrets regarding one particular aspect of that day’s events: if there is remorse in my heart, it is that, just as I argued during the trial, I did not play a prominent role in the protest that day, and thus did not fulfill my duty to do everything within my power to change the unbearable situation of Gaza’s inhabitants, and bring to an end Israel’s control over the Palestinians.

His Honor has stated during the court case, and will most likely state again in the future, that a trial is not a matter of politics, but of law. To this I reply that there is hardly anything to this trial except political disagreement. This Court may have impeded the mounting of an appropriate defense when it refused to hear arguments regarding political selectiveness in the Police’s conduct, but even from the testimonies which were admitted, it became clear such a selectiveness exists.

The subject of my alleged offense, as well as the motivation behind it were political. This is something that cannot be sidestepped. The State of Israel maintains an illegitimate, inhuman and illegal siege on the Gaza Strip, which still is occupied territory according to international law. This siege, carried out in my name and in yours as well, sir, in fact in all of our names, is a cruel collective punishment inflicted on ordinary citizens, residents of the Gaza strip, subjects-without-rights under Israeli occupation.

In the face of this reality, and as a stance against it, we chose on January 31, 2008, to exercise the freedom of speech afforded to Jewish citizens of Israel. However, it appears that here in our one-of-many-faux-democracies in the Middle East, even this freedom is no longer freely granted, even to society’s privileged sons.

I am not surprised by the Court’s decision to convict me despite having no doubt in my mind that our actions on that day correspond to the most basic, elementary definitions of a person’s right to protest.

Indeed, as the Prosecution pointed out, a suspended prison sentence hung over my head at the time of the bicycle protest, having been convicted before under an identical article of law. And, although I still maintain I did not commit any offense whatsoever, I was aware of the possibility that under Israeli justice, my suspended sentence would be imposed.

I must add that, if His Honor decides to go ahead and impose my suspended prison sentence, I will go to prison wholeheartedly and with my head held high. It will be the justice system itself, I believe, that will need to lower its eyes in the face of the suffering inflicted on Gaza’s inhabitants, just like it lowers its eyes and averts its vision each and every day when faced with the realities of the occupation.

http://972mag.com/israeli-activist-jonathan-pollak-addresses-sentencing-judge/

"Jonathan... is a man trying to prove that those who believe in occupation cannot claim to be humanitarian or civilised."

Thank you, Jonathan! You are a man of conscience!

jonathon pollak, rachel corrie, julian assange, and a host of others -- these are compelling and genuinely heroic figures. not because they themselves have long-suffered the crimes and indignities of a global ruling class, but because they are willing to relinquish their place within that ruling class, their freedom, and ulitmately their lives so that no one should have to suffer those crimes and indignities.

no, they are not victims, but they truly are heroes. we should all aspire to such selfless, compassionate righteousness.

the power structures in israel and the u.s. should be deeply, deeply ashamed.