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Weekly Ad
WHEN THE
GOVERNMENT
LET BANDS OF
MESSIANIC FANATICS
SETTLE ON
STOLEN LAND
IN OCCUPIED AREAS
WITH THE STATED INTENT
OF
PREVENTING PEACE
AND UNDERMINING DEMOCRACY,
NOBODY
TALKED ABOUT
A
REFERENDUM.
Tomorrow,
Saturday, in coordination with the army, we shall assist Palestinian
villagers to pick olives. Transportation: Tel-Aviv, 7.50 am,
Arlosoroff station. Jerusalem, 7.30, Gan Hapa’amon. Haifa 7.15,
Sollel Boneh. Please be punctual! If you intend to join, inform the
Gush answering machine, 03-5221732, TODAY!
Gush
Shalom ad published in Ha'aretz October 22, 2004
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Gush Olive Picking
Defense Against Settlers’
Violence
The
settlers of Tapuakh, violent disciples of Rabbi Kahane, did not shoot and run
amok this
Saturday (23.10), when peace activists approached their settlements from two
sides, in order to prevent them from disrupting the olive picking.
255 peace
activists answered the call to take part in the olive picking action at Yassouf
and Jama’een villages, which border Tapuakh north and south. The inhabitants are
unable to work in their groves and pick their olives because of fear of the
settlers, who use every opportunity to abuse them, shoot at them and pursue them
with attack dogs. Recently, one of the villagers broke a leg while trying to
escape them.
Gush Shalom
called for the big action on Saturday in order to enable the inhabitants of
these two villages to pick their olives as much as possible within the three day
the army has allotted to them. Even during these three days they cannot work
safely without the presence of Israeli peace activists. The moment the activists
leave, the soldiers tell the villagers to go away.
The olive
picking in Yassouf, next to the fence of the settlement, was successful, with
soldiers and policemen protecting both the activists and the villagers. The job
in Jama’een was more difficult. The way to the groves in the danger-zone was
long and extremely tough. It was necessary to cross rocky terrain and climb
steep hills. However, when the activists – man and women from 17 to 82 – got to
the place, work started in an upbeat mood.
Together with
the families who own the groves, they shook the tress and picked for hours,
climbing to the highest branches while conversing in a mixture of Hebrew, Arabic
and English. The heaps of olives on the nylon sheets were quickly collected in
sacks and in the end carried away by tractors. No contact with the settlers took
place, neither were any soldiers seen in the neighborhood. Since the villagers
are fasting during the month of Ramadan, the Jewish activists did not eat
either.
Another group
of activists went to Zeita village, where the situation is different. The
inhabitants are not threatened by settlers, but are cut off from their olive
trees by the so-called separation wall. The army allows only women – and not all
of them, either – to pass the gate in the wall, and not open the nearest to the
village, but compels the women to walk a mile and a half to another one.
The activists
worked hard to pick as many olives a possible, and afterwards helped the women
carry the olives to the gate. Only then did they go home to Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem
and Haifa.
Photos:
Rachel Avnery
For more
pictures
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Click to
download this document - PDF Format
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Uri Avnery
23.10.04
On the Road to
Civil War
Everybody in Israel is talking about the Next War. The most popular
TV channel is running a whole series about it.
Not
another war with the Arabs. Not the nuclear threat from Iran. Not
the ongoing bloody confrontation with the Palestinians.
The talk
is about the coming civil war.
Only a
few months ago, that would have sounded preposterous. Now, suddenly,
is has become a possibility, and a very real one. Not another
blown-up media sensation. Not yet another of Sharon’s political
manipulations. Not just a new blackmail attempt by the settlers. But
the real thing on the ground.
They
talk about it at cabinet meetings and in the Knesset, on TV
talk-shows, in editorials and the news pages. The Chief-of-Staff has
publicly warned that the army may fall apart. One of the ministers
says that the very existence of the State of Israel is in danger.
Another minister prophesies a bloodbath like the Spanish civil war.
read the
full article
Read more articles and
documents
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“STOP KILLING, START
TALKING!”
Following
the call of Gush Shalom, about 300 men and women assembled Tuesday
evening (5.10) in front of the Ministry of Defense in Tel-Aviv to
protest against the army invasion of the Gaza strip, in order to demand
“Leave Gaza At Once!”
Among the posters
and slogans:
“The incursion is a
statement of bankruptcy!”
“It won’t end if we don’t
refuse!”
“Sderot and Jebalia –
victims of the occupation!”
“Father, what is your boy
doing in Gaza?”
“It’s good to die for
Netzarim settlement?”
“Soldiers are being
killed for the settlers!”
“Soldier, stop! Black
flag!”
Other peace groups
joined the Gush initiative, among them the group “Courage to Refuse”,
which made a strong showing, and a group of Arab citizens from Jaffa. A
strong army and police detachment was guarding the entrance to the
ministry.
“This is only the
beginning,” Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom declared, “The resistance
movement will grow until we compel Sharon to bring the soldiers back
from the Gaza Strip.” Gush spokesman Adam Keller said that “the more
Sharon talks about disengagement, the deeper the army penetrates the
Gaza Strip!”
Photos:
Rachel Avnery
For more
pictures
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the historian Teddy Katz and MK Jamal Zahalka (Balad)
“Mother,
what is your boy doing in Gaza?”
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Gush Shalom Seeks Dialogue with “Russian”
Community
“We dreamed about this for a long
time, and now we are able to start this unique campaign,” a Gush Shalom
spokesman said at the opening of a press conference conducted mainly in
Russian. The conference took place on Sunday (19.9) in Tel-Aviv’s Press
Center. The representatives of all Russian media in Israel were
invited, and most of them took part.
“There lies an abysmal
chasm between the Peace Camp and the Russian-speaking community,” Gush
activist Uri Avnery said, “which we cannot tolerate. We do not accept
the opinion prevalent in the Peace Camp that a million Russian-speakers
think alike and all of them are extreme rightists, Arab-haters and
Peace-Camp haters.”
The press
conference was convened as a start of a wide and continuous campaign.
On the eve of Yom Kippur, 60 thousand copied of the brochure “Truth
Against Truth” in Russian will be distributed as an insert in the
Russian-language papers “Vesti” and “Globus”. Until now, this new
brochure has appeared only in Hebrew and English (and has been
translated abroad in German and Dutch, with the Arab edition to appear
in the coming weeks). It throws completely new light on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its origins and phases. The Russian
version is an exact copy of the Hebrew original, both in content and
form. It, too, bears on its cover the warning: “Caution! This is a
subversive text. It undermines the very foundations on which the
National Consensus is based!”
Gush Shalom, which
is not blessed with abundant funds, has decided to invest the necessary
resources for this campaign out of conviction that it is impossible to
attain peace if important parts of the Russian-speaking community does
not join the Peace Camp. “I believe that the whole Peace Camp is guilty
of ignoring this important community, as we ignored the Oriental one,”
Avnery commented, pointing out that all Russian-language media in
Israel follow an extreme right-wing line, isolating Russian-speakers
from the Israeli mainstream.
“Israeli society is
divided into five big sectors – the veteran Ashkenazi, the Oriental,
the religious, the immigrants from the former Soviet Union and the Arab
citizens. We cannot succeed in the struggle for peace while being based
only on two of them (the veteran Ashkenazi and the Arab), without
winning support within the three others.”
Together with the
distribution of tens of thousands brochures, the Gush Shalom campaign
will include publishing banners on Russian-language web-sites,
extensive public relations and ads in the Russian-language media. A
Russian-language sector on the Gush web-site is soon to follow.
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Uri Avnery and the translator Maya Gorin
present the translated brochure
Channel 9 member
Russian press
representatives
Beate Zilbersmidt and Hava Keler from
Gush-Shalom
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Gush Activists: “Let Them Go To School!”
More the a thousand schoolchildren, boys and girls from 6 to 14,
wearing their school uniforms and carrying bags, demonstrated today
(Monday, 13.9) at the wall that is being built in a-Ram. The pupils
carried posters demanding: “Let Us Study!”
150 Israeli activists of Gush Shalom, Ta’ayush, Bat-Shalom, Rabbis for
Human Rights and others joined the protest.
Throughout the demonstration, giant cranes continued to lift concrete
slabs into place, and a strong force of the Border Police was deployed
along the path of the wall. “They are waiting for one boy to throw a
stone, in order to attack us with tear gas and rubber-coated bullets,
like last time,” said Uri Avnery. However, the teachers succeeded all
through the demonstration, with the help of mayor Sirkhan Saleimeh, in
preventing even one stone being thrown, though the distance between the
pupils and the Border Policemen was only a few yards. After most of the
demonstrators had already dispersed, some children threw stones and the
policemen promptly stormed forward and used tear gas.
Since the Israeli Supreme Court permitted the government to build the
wall in this particular sector, the wall has been going up at great
speed. Only a few “holes” remain. When the wall will be finished, it
will cut the children of a-Ram off from their schools which are located
on the “Israeli” side of the wall, at a distance of a few dozen meters.
Some of the schools will have to be closed and their pupils will roam
the streets, because the remaining schools, already overcrowded, will
not be able to absorb them. Haaretz reports today that a similar
situation exists in near-by al-Issawiyeh.
This is only one of the problems caused by the wall, which is cutting
off a-Ram residents from their businesses and working-places,
hospitals, universities and even their cemetery.
Photos: Rachel Avnery
For more Photos
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Palestinian Children and Israeli peace
activists at the demonstration.
Female pupils and teachers
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PEACE RALLY WITH GANDHI
500 Gush Shalom and Ta’ayush
activists joined 2000 inhabitants of Abu Dis in a dramatic protest
rally in honor of Arun Gandhi, the grandson of the great Mahatma.
In the searing
heat, they marched through the streets of Abu-Dis to the wall which
cuts the town off from Jerusalem. The Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed
Kurei (Abu Ala), himself a resident of Abu-Dis, Dr. Arun Gandhi, Uri
Avnery, Hulud Badawi as well as religious and civic leaders advocated
non-violence in the struggle against the occupation and the wall. They
also expressed their solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners who are
on a hunger strike. Gandhi said that the wall reminds him of South
Africa during the apartheid regime. It will be remembered that Mahatma
Gandhi started out as a fighter against racism in his native South
Africa.
The rally reached
its climax when one of the protesters climbed to the top of the
8-meters high concrete wall in a breathtaking act of courage. He threw
down a rope and half a dozen Palestinian youth joined him on the top.
One of them stood there like a human statue, the flag of Palestine in
his outstretched hand. Unintentionally, the daring act was a perfect
illustration of the Gandhi method: breaking the law of the occupation
regime openly but non-violently.
After the speeches
Abu-Ala and Gandhi together wielded a hammer and hit the wall
symbolically. They were followed by the religious dignitaries and then
by Israeli and Palestinian peace activists. “We have proved that it is
possible to go over the wall,” one protester remarked. “With a bigger
hammer, it is also possible to open a hole in it. This is not a
security wall, it is a wall of oppression and annexation.”
Uri Avnery’s speech
at the Abu-Dis demonstration
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Marching
through Abu Dis
Abu-Ala, Gandhi and
Avnery (from right to left)
Gush
activists and two-flag emblem in the crowd
1.
Palestinians climbing to
the top of the wall.
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Arafat receives the delegation
Delegation members during the discussion
Arafat and the delegation around the
government table.
Arafat points at the Gush
Shalom emblem with the Israeli and Palestinian flags, which he wears at
all times.
photos:
Rachel Avnery
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Gush Shalom delegation visits Arafat
An extensive exchange of
views took place today (7.8.04) when a delegation of 16 Gush activists
visited Yasser Arafat at his battered compound in Ramallah.
The Gush decided to
send the delegation at this point, while the intense hate-propaganda
against Arafat is reaching new heights in all the Israeli media and
political forums. As the delegation declared, the aim was “to highlight
the fact that the elected president of the Palestinian people is our
partner for peace. The organized effort of the Sharon government to
break up the elected Palestinian leadership is a part of its grand
design to destroy the national structure of the Palestinian people.”
During the long meeting, delegation member raised many subjects,
including Sharon’s “Disengagement Plan”, the conditions necessary for
holding new elections for the Palestinian Authority, restoring control
over the armed Palestinian factions, the economic situation an the
Palestinian territories and more (see Press Release).
The delegation aroused great interest in the Arab media. More than 20
TV teams from all over the Arab world waited for it, and after the
meeting a press conference was arranged. The Arab and Palestinian media
published extensive reports. The Israeli media, on the other hand,
ignored it completely, except for a half-second picture on Channel 2
news – without saying where and when the event had taken place and
without a word of explanation.
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1.
The hunger strikers in
the tent.
For more photos
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“Gush Shalom” delegation at Protest Tent, 8.7.04
On the day before the International Court of Justice delivered its
judgement against the wall, a Gush Shalom delegation stayed in the
protest tent set up at the entrance of A-Ram. In the tent, a hunger
strike by a group of Palestinians and Israelis is taking place.
The delegation was warmly received by the mayor, Sirkhan Saleimeh, and
the hunger strikers.
“The wall is illegal and immoral, but first of all it is inhuman,” said
Uri Avnery, who spoke after MK Azmi Bishara, who initiated the hunger
strike. “The wall ignores the very existence of human beings, as if the
area was empty. It destroys the fabric of life of hundred thousands.
“Gush Shalom opposes the very idea of a wall. We want to live side by
side, Palestinians and Israelis, in two states with an open border
between them. Peace means that we live without barriers between us,
that you can go to the sea shore of Tel-Aviv and we can visit the
restaurants of Ramallah without passing through checkpoints, walls and
fences.”
Throughout the day, the tent was full of Palestinian, Israeli and
foreign sympathizers.
Photos:
Rachel Avnery
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Photo: Indymedia, Hungary
Photos: Rachel Avnery, Digitalized by Ma'ariv
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We lost a dear friend - Toma Sik
1939-2004
July
20, 2004
Today
we heard that Toma Sik is dead - overrun by a tractor during a nightly
walk home through the fields to his newly-bought old farm somewhere in
a forgotten part of Hungary which should have fulfilled his dream of
establishing a commune of organic-humanist (and vegan) "new peasants".
He
was a pioneer of the Israeli-Palestinian search for peace, a forerunner
of the present day pacifist-refusniks and actively involved in the
struggle for equal rights of Arabs, the cause of the unrecognized
villages, as well as environmental and anti-nuclear issues. For decades
his friendly bearded face was to be seen at any anti-occupation
demonstration. Arriving on his bicycle he would take down bundles of
leaflets, written in his inimitable style and which he produced on his
old stencil machine.
Nobody could fulfill all
the criteria which he set, not even he himself - as he would gladly
admit with a sense of humor rare among heavily principled people.
His being anarchist, vegan, pacifist, world-citizen and the rest of it
didn't prevent him from giving his all to organizations with less
universal goals such as Gush Shalom, where he played a central role
until he left Israel in the late 1990s - since when he ultimately
settled down again in his country of birth.
He is survived by his two
daughters and four grandchildren who all live in Israel.
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Yediot Aharonot June 4, 2004:
Arafat wearing the Gush-Shalom
two-flag pin.
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Gush
Shalom's Political positions:
The Green Line (the borders before the 1967 war) will be a border of
peace
between two free and sovereign states: Israel and Palestine.
All Israeli settlers in the currently occupied territories will return
to Israel.
Jerusalem will be an open city, and will serve as capital to both
states:
East Jerusalem will be the capital of Palestine;
West Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel.
Both parties can reach a just and agreed upon solution for the tragedy
of Palestinian refugees, based on these guidelines:
Israel will acknowledge its share of responsibility for this tragedy,
and will accept, in principle, the right of return.
The refugees will be offered several possible venues of rehabilitation
and compensation.
One of these venues will allow a limited number of refugees the right
to return
to the state of Israel, based on a formula that will maintain the
Jewish majority in the state of Israel.
These positions do not offer absolute justice, but rather a formula
that can be accepted by the majority of the Israeli and Palestinian
peoples.
A
detailed draft of a peace proposal
Click to
download document in Word Format
New: an alphabetical list of all settlements was added to
the document
The rules of
disengagement
Noam
Chomsky
22 July 2004 in
Mail & Guardian online
Read
the article in Mail & Guardian online
[If the link
does not work: copy into your browser http://archive.mg.co.za and search
for the title "The rules of disengagement" - or request the text by an
email to
info@gush-shalom.org ]
In
this article Noam Chomsky clarifies his position about Sharon's
"disengagement plan", as well as the Geneva Initiative,
binationalism
and
what should be the aim of activists in the short term. The article
which quotes at some point Gush Shalom,
elaborates
on
questions which came up already in the March 30 interview with Chomsky
by Stephen R. Shalom and
Justin
Podur published
as Justice for Palestine? on
ZNet, - to be found at:
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20040330.htm
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A
book about the wall by Eyal Offer
The photo exhibition "Fence or
Wall" of Eyal Ofer in the Tel-Aviv Cinemateque a year ago and
sponsored by Gush Shalom, led to a book. Several chapters and photos
available on site - comments written by Uri Avnery, Freimut Duve,
Manuela Dviri, and Ofer Eyal himself - published by Abraham
Melzer Verlag Germany
The
book home page
The book is in German
however it is possible to view an English version using Google's
automatic translator - the translation is not splendid but the photos
remain as good.
A
link to the Google translation of the book
The Israeli government claims
the Separation Wall is "Just about security.
Is this really the case?
What political agendas are served by the Separation Wall?
Click
for facts about these security claims.
All you want to know about the Separation Wall
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IDF soldier
Do not commit war crimes!
War crimes will haunt you all your life, anywhere on Earth.
There is no statute of limitation for war crimes:
Download, print and distribute:
The soldiers pocket guide
on war crimes. (Hebrew only)
 A
diary of Palestinian people under occupation,
letters and reports of ISM activists
who are here to help and witness.
Last updated at 15/04/03
Know When To
Say No
Refusal in Jewish Heritage By Shamai Leibowitz, Attorney-At-Law
The full, in depth
testimony of Haggai Matar.
The testimony is a grave accusation against the Israeli occupation.
The court martial trial of draft resisters Haggai Matar, Matan Kaminer,
Shimri Tzameret,
Adam Maor and Noam Bahat will resume next Monday, 14th July.
These five young men refuse to enlist since they regard the service in
the IDF as opposed to their conscience.
add Refusnik
Watch to your site
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The first absolutely
sincere Israeli eye-witness
testimony
on what actually happened in Jenin.
an interview with one of those who did it and are proud of it.
It was published in Yediot Aharonot,
Israel's most widely circulated tabloid paper, on May 31, 2002.
Apart from the
shocking revelations,
this is also a startling human document.
After publication -
and in spite of it -
the unit to which the man belongs
received an official citation for outstanding service
from the army command.
Read
the Full interview
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Join the Caterpillar
campaign
The purpose of this campaign, is to stop the sales of
Caterpillar heavy bulldozers to the Israeli army.
These bulldozers are used by the Israeli army
for wide scale
demolition of Palestinian homes.
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A Flash
Presentation of
Barak's "Generous Offers".
This will help you know the facts
and thereby break the Myth
download
(right click on the link and choose save target as...)
and distribute.
Barak's
"Generous Offers" |
 The
full report
of Human Rights Watch on Jenin
Elaborate
reports, articles and pictures, describing damage and vandalism
by the Israeli army, to civil institutes throughout the West-bank.
See for yourself if this is a "war against terror", or something
completely different.
Recent updates:
25/04/02 - Rammallah
26/04/02 - Educational TV
27/04/02 - Al-Naser TV studios, Ramallah
28/04/02 - many pictures of vandalism in various Ramallah offices
We are interested in more material, especially photos.
Please send any relevant material to webmaster
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