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My Husband: Jailed for Protesting Israel's Wall
On International Human Rights Day in 2008, my husband Abdallah Abu Rahmah was in Berlin receiving a medal from the World Association for Human Rights. Last year on the same day, 10 December, Abdallah was taken away at 2am by Israeli soldiers who broke into our West Bank home. Abdallah was arrested for the same reasons he received the prize -- his nonviolent struggle for justice, equality and peace in Palestine/Israel.
My husband is a school teacher and farmer from the Palestinian village of Bilin. When Israel built its apartheid wall here, it separated Bilin from more than half of its land, in order to facilitate the expansion of the illegal settlement Mattityahu East. In response, Abdallah and fellow villagers began a campaign of nonviolent resistance. Every Friday for the past five years, we've marched, with Israeli and international supporters, to protest the theft of our land and livelihoods.
In September, 2007 Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the route of the wall in Bilin was illegal and should be changed. Over two years later, the wall remains, unmoved. Many were discouraged, but Abdallah told them that the pressure of our campaign and international support could bring down the wall.
As the grassroots struggle grows here, the efforts to end our actions have intensified. The army has been instructed to use weapons against the protesters and arrest participants. Our beloved friend, Bassem Abu Rahmah, was murdered by Israeli soldiers as he tried to talk with them, while participating in a demonstration. Seventy-seven others have been arrested in violent night raids.
Among the other arrestees is Abdallah's cousin Adeeb Abu Rahmah, who, like Abdallah, never missed a demonstration and was never violent. Adeeb, a father of nine, has been in prison for five months, with no end in sight. Since the first time our home was invaded, our seven-year-old daughter Luma has been waking up screaming, and five-year-old Layan wetting her bed. Only our nine-month-old son Laith still smiles and giggles, but I cry when he calls for his father.
Leaders like former President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the leaders of South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle, have visited our village. They stood with Abdallah at Bassem's grave last August. Tutu told us, "Just as a simple man named Gandhi led the successful nonviolent struggle in India and simple people such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King led the struggle for civil rights in the United States, simple people here in Bilin are leading a nonviolent struggle that will bring them their freedom."
The afternoon before his arrest, Abdallah prepared a speech to be read on his behalf to the World Association for Human Rights since Israel would not allow him to travel to Germany for the ceremony. Abdallah wrote:
"I wish I could be with you to share in the joy of our colleagues receiving this year's prize and to celebrate with you the 20th anniversary of the removal of the Berlin Wall. But the occupation not only robs us of statehood, land, and so often of our lives, it also deprives us of many beautiful moments."
"My mother passed away in a hospital in occupied East Jerusalem, our historic capital, in August but the Israeli occupation refused me a permit to be with her. An Israeli friend held a mobile phone to my mother's ear so that I could say goodbye to her and thank her for all the love she has given me. In the darkness of all these difficulties the occupation imposes on us, the solidarity of justice-seeking people like you all over the world gives us strength."
"Unlike Israel, we have no nuclear weapons, and no army, but we do not want or need those things. With your support and the justice of our cause, we will bring down Israel's apartheid wall."
Twelve hours after Abdallah was taken to a military jail from our home, I listened as President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize and spoke of "the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice." I thought of Bassem, Adeeb and my husband, and wondered if President Obama will take action to support our struggle for freedom.
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14 Comments so far
Show AllI wouldn't hold my breath, regarding our presidential nobel laureate!!!!!
where is my "change we can belive in"?
"The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armory of the modern commander."
T.E. Lawrence, 1920 ("Lawrence of Arabia") who tricked Beduin tribes into helping the British fight (and win) against the Ottoman empire by promising them an independent state ... what they eventually got was British and French puppet governments and later the "Balfour Declaration" and Israel ...
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"What we do is report what people say and accurately."
(editor of the British Press Association, 2007)
"Whether what is said is itself a truthful account of the world is not their [the press agencies] business."
If Obama talks about the non-existent "peace-process" or the "two-state solution" another PR-fantasy, this is what they will report and and the media will repeat it over and over again ...although USrael's ACTIONS contradict everything they say ..
"..Most journalists are just recycling agency feed ...,today we get a pasteurized version of the world as news, isolated fragments of the planet's life masquerading as the truth, much of it shaped by PR and "strategic information" ... this is the mass production of ignorance"
"To present himself as a man, willing to compromise, Ariel Sharon staged a global media event about "Israel's withdrawal" from Gaza in 2005...media outlets all over the world were flooded with pictures of tearful Israelis being hauled out of their homes by the IDF.."
The "resettling" of these illegal settlers in the West Bank, stealing more valuable land from the Palestinian residents, and the ongoing settler-violence received no media coverage at all ..
"The meaning is in the context, if it is not provided, an established framework of false assumptions [provided by Israeli PR] will replace it ...
When researchers ... analysed a sample of TV output on Israel / Palestine they found that only 0,5% of the coverage dealt with the history of the conflict (many people still do not know what happened to the Palestinians in 1948 [ethnic cleansing], what the "Nakba" is, what has been going on in the West Bank, etc. .. unbelievably, some even think the occupiers are the Palestinians)"
Quotations from: "Flat Earth News" by Nick Davies (a MUST READ book in my opinion)
Israel brilliantly plays the game of "information dominance" and the media is happy to go along with it ... The Palestinians have no chance if this game does not end ...
When an 85-year old Holocaust survivor (Hedy Epstein) travels to Egypt (with "Free Gaza"-activists)and even goes on a hunger strike to get attention from the media for the monumental injustice the Palestinians (especially the people in Gaza) have had to endure, what happens?
Nothing. They ignore it. It never happened. Only independent broadcasts like Democracy Now or TRN run the story .... Total silence here in Germany .. Hedy Epstein does not fit the picture, so she must disappear ...
Reports liks this "The Humanitarian Impact on Palestinians of Israeli Settlements and Other Infrastructure in the West Bank | July 2007"
http://www.ochaopt.org/ (at the bottom of the page you can download the whole report)
and of course shocking videos like these:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13749.htm
or John Pilger's: "Palestine is still the issue" (available on google video)
are widely ignored, this is called "Issue management" in PR-speak, "hostile" issues (like the brutal occupation) are disappeared, others (good for Israel) dominate the news ...
I also suspect that the ridiculous "stealth underwear" bomber story from Nigeria is a placed "information operation" targeted at different audiences ...
... it surfaced on the anniversary of the Gaza massacre ...and effectively buried all media attention for the latter and the Goldstone report which documents the crimes of the IDF ...
Whenever someone writes something to Obama, or anyone else who is unquestionably a loyal servant of our government corpocracy, holding hope out that some social injustice will be corrected, my first thought is that that person simply doesn't get it. One of corporate America's slickest tricks in the new millenium was it's decision to get Obama elected as President of the United States so that people would feel that America had turned over a new leaf. Hope and Change would naturally embrace this new candidate with his bi-racial appearance, modest upbringing and eloquent rhetoric. Yet Obama is hardly the first or the last to fall in line with their corporate puppet masters.
Millions and millions of common Americans, struggling to make ends meet and lacking health insurance, would also sacrifice their souls to enter into the Kingdom of Corporatism despite being victims of the same predatory group. Afterall, corporatism has given us our pop and movie stars, our professional athletes and our televison and radio celebrities who earn mega bucks with every passing day. The message is clear. Drink Coke, eat your McHappy burgers, drive your overpriced, debt ladden, gas guzzling SUV's while listening to Michael Jackson and Rush Limbaugh on your ad saturated radio and be incredibly proud to have the priveledge to live in America.
Apartheid in Palestine, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the billions of government handouts to corporate America, our over crowded, for profit prisons and the replacement of the Pablo Escobars of the world with the likes of Pfizer and Sandos are non-issues with the corporte media and therefore nothing more than insignifigant distractions for the majority of Americans. This why people like Abdallah Abu Rahmah don't get any attention unless they resort to violent means. Even then the common struggle of the citizenry appears to be no match for the sophisticated and well armed State security apparatus witnessed by the Israeli Army or the our own forces back in the U.S.
As I write this I'm confident that corporate America is busy at work trying to figure out how to stamp out that last vehicle of open dissent, the internet. For once the World Wide Web becomes inaccessible to the average human being, the propaganda appartus will have achieved its greatest feat, the total elimination of alternative viewpoints.
In the meantime it is a pleasure to enjoy reading about brave people like Abdallah Abu Rahmah, even if I think they're just blowing in the wind.
It's too bad the Israelis had to build a fence to keep out the endless stream of Palestinian terrorists deliberating targeting Jewish Israelis. But the fence (not wall) works. Until the Palestinians elect a non-terror organization and are willing to recognize Israel, there can't be a peace.
It's too bad that Zionists have successfully used the tragedy of the Holocaust as cover for their own program of annihilating the Palestinians and stealing their land. It's too bad that Israel encourages families to "settle" on Palestinian land, thus making these families the equivalent of home invaders, against whom armed resistance is totally justified.
It's too bad that the U.S. has been not only Israel's partner in international crime, but has also become Israel's slave, so that while the people of the U.S. watch their economy and quality of life spiral down the drain, our government still gives Israel $8 million dollars of our tax dollars each and every day. This money is used to finance Israel's programs of genocide and apartheid against the Palestinians, and is the primary reason Muslims around the world hate the U.S.
Until the Israelis elect a "non-terror" government, and are willing to recognize international law and human decency, the Palestinians will continue to resist, as they have every right to do.
We can support them by joining the movement to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Israel, the apartheid, Nazi state.
Israel is a disease that must be excised from the earth.
The word you were looking for was "deliberately". You ignoramuses are handed a word processor and a dictionary and a spell checker and you still can't get anything right.
Speaking of DELIBERATE actions, what would you call, the land grab that has been going on for the last 40 years (nevermind the last 60s years) since 1967 when the Israeli government has DELIBERATELY - not just allowed - encouraged colonialists to live on occupied Palestinian land and live in homes taken from Palestinians?
All these actions are illegal according to international law. Israel refuses to abide by international law and uses its "special relationship" with the US to shield it from criticism.
I mean, here we have such a glaring example of DELIBERATE Israeli attempts at ethnically cleansing even the ghettos into which Israel has corralled Palestinians and this clown has the audacity to talk about DELIBERATE action.
It's beyond Orwellian. Obama winning the Noble Peace Prize was Orwellian. These clowns are far more odious and rude.
It is too bad that the Israelis had to build an Apartheid wall to justify the endless theft of land and to populate it with terrorist jews. But the Apartheid wall works (but for how long?). Until Israelis elect a non-terror organization [for their government] and are willing to recognize Palestine, there can't be peace.
How much did you get paid for spewing that line of Zionist filth?
israel and the united states will have a difficult time stopping terrorism at their airports. after all, we have ronald reagan airport in d.c., and they have david ben gurion airport in tel aviv. if we both keep naming our airports after terrorists, aren't we setting a bad example?
As objectionable as Reagan was in many of his actions, he couldn't hold a candle to Ben Gurion's crimes. Ben Gurion ordered the ethnic cleansing of an entire people while showing no remorse or feelings of guilt. When he ordered Plan D (or in Hebrew Tochnit Dalet) he considered it a necessity, something that had to be done for the Zionist enterprise to succeed. Ironically, the Zionist enterprise was morally bankrupt from day one way back when Hertzel introduced it at the first Zionist Congress.
where did letto go? he is a staunch defender of israeli's actions, no matter what they are. i miss reading his defenses, though i hardly agree with what he writes. what excuses do you have for israel today, letto? we miss hearing from you.
Please refer to one SteveMac below. Same shit, different name.
GOCHOS: God’s Own Chosen
JEWS: the Good Guys
SHIT: Antisemitic acronym ‘Self-Hating-Israel-Threatening' used affectionately by Gochos to describe Jews
GOCHITIS: Vicious psychotic delusion that one has been personally chosen by God and that those not so chosen are subhuman
ANTIGOCHOTISM a/k/a antisemitism: The slightest hint or suspicion of disagreement with a Gocho (because to disagree with a Gocho is to disagree with God herself)
ZIONISTS: Gochos
ZIONANISTS: ‘You don’t have to be jewish to be a Zionist’