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A CULTURAL BOYCOTT
Protest Israel’s partnership with the
Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF)
This year’s festival will be held from 22 July – 8 August
THE PROTEST IS NOT DIRECTED AT ANY FILM OR FILMMAKER BUT AGAINST THE CULTURAL PARTNERSHIP THAT MIFF HAS WITH THE STATE OF ISRAEL. WE ARE SIMPLY ASKING YOU TO LET MIFF KNOW THAT YOU DO NOT APPROVE OF NORMALISING RELATIONS WITH AN APARTHEID STATE THAT IS CURRENTLY OPPRESSING SOME 5.5 MILLION PALESTINIANS IN GAZA, THE OCCUPIED WEST BANK, & EAST JERUSALEM AND IN ISRAEL ITSELF.
DOWNLOAD pdf file of card MIFF2010 reverse
Photocopy, sign and post the card. If printed on paper, best to put it in an envelope before posting.
by Omar Sha’ban - Pal-Think - 9 July 2010
GAZA CITY – The Gaza flotilla brought the blockade into sharp relief and highlighted its failures. We must seize this moment and take advantage of the world’s interest in Gaza not only to alleviate the blockade, but more importantly, to find a long term solution for the overarching problem of the occupation
It has been evident to all, albeit late, that the blockade has failed to remove Hamas from power, which was Israel’s intention when it first imposed it. Rather, it devastated the social fabric and economy of Gaza, and made way for a parasitic economic pattern in which trade tunnels have created a nouveau riche business class that benefits from the blockade. Read More…
Financial Times - 28 July 2010
As we all know, peace will come to the Middle East when Israel and Palestine agree to a two-state solution, with a viable Palestinian state rising from the rubble of more than 60 years of turbulence to live peacefully alongside Israel within the 1967 borders as modified through negotiation. All that is required is political will, brave leadership and a following wind. However, visitors to Israel and occupied Palestine may require increasing quantities of blind faith to go on repeating this mantra. There is no other acceptable outcome. But the chances of the dynamic external interventions necessary for this to happen seem slight. Read More…
by Yeela Ranaan, RCUV – 29 July 2010
STOP THE VIOLENT DESTRUCTION OF THE VILLAGE OF AL ARAQIB!
On Tuesday, 1,500 police accompanied about 20 tractors to demolish and erase the village of El-Araqib. Women crying, children left to sit in the shade of the home’s ruins under the summer desert sun.
It is difficult to describe the pain and horror when such force is used to destroy your roof. The helplessness. The forces arrived before dawn, at 5:30am. By 9:00am the meager dwellings were all just piles of rubble. Read More…
by Dr Salman Abu Sitta - Palestine Land Society - 16-20 July 2010
The deteriorating situation of the Palestinian cause is no secret to anyone, including Palestinians themselves and the Arab world. There is, therefore, an urgent need to review this situation and prepare a viable political agenda able to be applied. This is not to say that there is a need for a national programme, as that is still the National Pact of 1969, which concludes that Palestine is Arab land and resistance (in all its forms) to the occupation is the means of action. Read More…
The Lancet - 2 July 2010
Executive Summary
When The Lancet published its Series on Health in the occupied Palestinian territory in March, 2009, we pledged to return to the issues raised in the series in subsequent years. On March 1-2 this year, we took part in a research conference on Palestinian health that was held at Birzeit University in the West Bank. Billed as the 2nd Lancet-Palestinian Health Alliance Conference, our goal was to nurture and encourage a network of local and international scientists to do work that would advance the health of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, as well as the wider Palestinian diaspora. The best peer-reviewed abstracts of that meeting are today published online. We also publish 3 Comments, to set the context for that meeting and to describe the current status of the Palestinian health predicament.
The abstracts provide a window into life as it is in the occupied territory. We plan to track what we hope will be progress in coming years with annual research-based meetings of the Lancet-Palestinian Health Alliance. Read More…
The razing of a Bedouin village by Israeli police shows how far the state will go to achieve its aim of Judaising the Negev region.
by Neve Gordon - The Guardian - 28 July 2010
A menacing convoy of bulldozers was heading back to Be’er Sheva as I drove towards al-Arakib, a Bedouin village located not more than 10 minutes from the city. Once I entered the dirt road leading to the village I saw scores of vans with heavily armed policemen getting ready to leave. Their mission, it seems, had been accomplished.
The signs of destruction were immediately evident. I first noticed the chickens and geese running loose near a bulldozed house, and then saw another house and then another one, all of them in rubble. A few children were trying to find a shaded spot to hide from the scorching desert sun, while behind them a stream of black smoke rose from the burning hay. The sheep, goats and the cattle were nowhere to be seen – perhaps because the police had confiscated them. Read More…
by William A Cook - The Palestine Chronicle - 23 July 2010
‘We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.’ – (Edward R. Murrow)
The State of Israel has just passed a “loyalty oath” required of all prospective citizens living in Israel illegally to swear allegiance to a “Jewish democratic state.” Concurrently, “an academic backlash has erupted in Israel over proposed new laws, backed by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, to criminalise a handful of Israeli professors who openly support a campaign against the continuing occupation of the West Bank.(Guardian 7/11/10).
It would appear that Israel is in need of a lesson on the virtues of democracy as they are anathema to tyrannical rule. Harry S. Truman vetoed the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 with this observation: “In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have.” To impose a “loyalty oath” and to criminalize professors who support actions against the government of Israel is to force compliance in thought and act, behavior more of a tyrannical state than a democratic one. Read More…
by Mustafa Barghouthi - Foreign Policy – 21 March 2010
Palestinian municipal elections were supposed to be held last week. Instead, they were canceled. A statement released by the Palestinian Authority claimed the cancellation was “in order to pave the way for a successful end to the siege on Gaza and for continued efforts at unity” between Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, and the government in the West Bank.
The cancellation of this election was an unjustified, unlawful, and unacceptable act. It damages democratic rights and makes a mockery of the interests of the Palestinian people.
But this is far more than an internal Palestinian issue. The only lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians will be based on a settlement negotiated between two democracies — this was the case in Europe, and it will be the case in the Middle East. Read More…
by Ali Abunimah - The Electronic Intifada - 21 July 2010
There has been a strong revival in recent years of support among Palestinians for a one-state solution guaranteeing equal rights to Palestinians and Israeli Jews throughout historic Palestine.
One might expect that any support for a single state among Israeli Jews would come from the far left, and in fact this is where the most prominent Israeli Jewish champions of the idea are found, though in small numbers.
Recently, proposals to grant Israeli citizenship to Palestinians in the West Bank, including the right to vote for the Knesset, have emerged from a surprising direction: right-wing stalwarts such as Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, and former defense minister Moshe Arens, both from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. Even more surprising, the idea has been pushed by prominent activists among Israel’s West Bank settler movement, who were the subject of a must-read profile by Noam Sheizaf in Haaretz (“Endgame,” 15 July 2010). Read More…
Elias Harb (Intifada) interview Archbishop Theodosios “Atallah Hanna” Archbishop of Sebastia, Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem – 23 July 2010
Elias Harb: Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel has claimed in varies publications that Jews, Christians and Muslims are able to build their homes anywhere in Jerusalem and that only under Israeli sovereignty had freedom of worship for all religions been assured in the city. How do you respond to that?
Archbishop Theodosios: The facts on the ground say exactly the opposite, more and more Muslims and Christians are having great difficulties in entering the city. We see thousands are denied the entry to their holiest sites. The Israelis authorities are even preventing the Arab Jerusalemites from entering the Holy sepulcher and the Aqsa mosque on major religious feasts. It is very apparent that the Israelis want Jerusalem to themselves and they do not want to share it with others. It is a big pity that the city of peace, which must symbolizes brotherhood and love to be transformed into a symbol of hatred and division because of Israeli actions. Read More…
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