Ewa Jasiewicz

Despite attacks and slander, the Palestine solidarity movement in Poland is pushing ahead and is able to influence media coverage and popular education on Palestine.

Israel and the international community have deployed multiple deterrent tactics to try to thwart the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. But is it working? Ewa Jasiewicz comments for The Electronic Intifada.

Last month witnessed the launch of the first Polish-Israeli governmental forum held in occupied Jerusalem. The biannual dialogue accelerates an existing partnership between the two countries which includes trade agreements, joint military training exercises and arms deals under an ongoing “Polonization of Israeli Technology” drive. Ewa Jasiewicz comments for The Electronic Intifada.

The action that we recently undertook on the terrain of the old Warsaw Ghetto — to spray the words “Liberate all ghettos” in Hebrew and “Free Gaza and Palestine” in English — has been used by some commentators in Israel and the Jewish community in Poland to accuse us of anti-Semitism. Ewa Jasiewicz and Yonatan Shapira comment for The Electronic Intifada.

Later this month, ships from all over the world will converge in the Mediterranean and set sail for the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. This international coalition is called the Freedom Flotilla. Ewa Jasiewicz comments for The Electronic Intifada.

The first session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RTP) was heard in Barcelona, Spain earlier this month. The RTP is a peoples’ legal initiative designed to systematically try key actors responsible for the perpetuation of human rights violations in Palestine. In the frame this time was the European Union (EU). Two days and 21 expert witness testimonies later, the RTP found individual states and the EU as a whole guilty of persistent violations and misconduct with regards to international and internal EU law. Ewa Jasiewicz and Frank Barat comment for The Electronic Intifada.

Poland’s military has embarked on a “Polonization of Israeli technology” drive, coupling Israeli weapons-manufacturing technology with Polish manpower and raw materials. Poland’s Bumar Group has a 10-year offset deal worth $400 million with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to produce Spike missiles for drones and helicopter gunships. Ewa Jasiewicz comments.

Last night was a quiet one in Jabaliya. “Only” six homes bombed into the ground, the market, again, maybe four lightly injured people — shrapnel to the face injuries — and no martyrs. Beit Hanoun saw a young woman, Nariman Ahmad Abu Owder, just 17, shot dead as she made tea in her family’s kitchen. Ewa Jasiewicz reports from the besieged Gaza Strip.

Majid Salim, stood beside his comatose mother, Fatima. Earlier today she had been sitting at her desk at work at the Khadija Arafat Charity, located near the headquarters of Hamas’ security forces in Gaza City. Israel’s attack had left her with multiple internal and head injuries, a tube down her throat and a ventilator keeping her alive. Majid gestured to her, “We didn’t attack Israel, my mother didn’t fire rockets at Israel. This is the biggest terrorism, to have our mother bombarded at work.” Ewa Jasiewicz reports from the besieged Gaza Strip.

International Human Rights Day is observed on 10 December, and it’s time we turned the rhetoric of human rights into reality. Together with the Free Gaza Movement, I am commemorating Human Rights Day this year in Gaza, a tiny strip of land wedged between Israel and Egypt, home to 1.5 million human beings, and subject to an increasingly brutal war being waged against its civilian population by the state of Israel. Ewa Jasiewicz comments for EI.